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Interview
4 February 2024 2.00 h

Pol Morillas

cidob director

“We have more global and simultaneous crises than ever”

“FOUR billion people will be called to vote... That’s a unique element of this year”

The New Year is full of ten­sions and con­flicts in an in­creas­ingly com­plex world fac­ing mul­ti­ple chal­lenges. Here, Pol Mo­ril­las, Di­rec­tor of the Barcelona Cen­tre for In­ter­na­tional Af­fairs, or CIDOB, analy­ses some of the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal trends.

At CIDOB, you de­fine 2024 as a year of bal­lot boxes and weapons...
Yes, not all elec­tions will be equally free. There will be elec­tions in Rus­sia, for ex­am­ple, and in the great de­mo­c­ra­tic pil­lars of the world – al­though they also have prob­lems when it comes to the qual­ity of democ­racy: in the US, in the whole of the EU, in India... In­deed, four bil­lion peo­ple will be called to vote. That’s a pretty unique el­e­ment of this year.
What about con­flicts?
We’re fac­ing a sce­nario of very large in­ter­na­tional con­flict, a greater num­ber of ac­tive focal points than in re­cent decades. The war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and oth­ers that we talk less about but are equally im­por­tant, such as Sudan, Yemen...
What char­ac­terises this sce­nario of con­flict?
That they are not only lo­calised con­flicts: there’s often the pos­si­bil­ity of re­gional es­ca­la­tion. All of the in­ter­na­tional pow­ers have some­thing to say about many of these con­flicts and what comes next. There’s no longer a po­lice of­fi­cer of the world, as the US used to be called, but many in­ter­na­tional ac­tors, start­ing with China, but also Rus­sia, India, Saudi Ara­bia and Turkey.
Do we turn to war as a way of re­solv­ing con­flicts?
Every in­ter­na­tional con­flict has its own local logic, as we see now in Gaza, for ex­am­ple. But there are ad­di­tional el­e­ments: a much more com­pet­i­tive in­ter­na­tional order in which the great pow­ers un­der­stand that we have en­tered ef­fec­tive mul­ti­po­lar­ity and in which every­one tries to de­fend their in­ter­ests through al­liances in each of these con­flict sce­nar­ios. And con­flict res­o­lu­tion frame­works, the guar­an­tors of in­ter­na­tional peace and se­cu­rity, such as the United Na­tions Se­cu­rity Coun­cil, are es­pe­cially in­op­er­a­tive be­cause they’re sub­ject to these dy­nam­ics of geopo­lit­i­cal con­fronta­tion, of na­tional in­ter­ests to the ex­treme, and no one there­fore has the ca­pac­ity to ac­ti­vate mul­ti­lat­eral or global cri­sis res­o­lu­tion mech­a­nisms.
Why are June’s Eu­ro­pean elec­tions im­por­tant?
It will be a time to ac­count for Eu­ro­pean ac­tions in re­cent crises: the pan­demic – the Next Gen­er­a­tion funds, their use and joint debt – and the re­sponse to the war in Ukraine. But it will also de­cide what Eu­rope we want for the com­ing years. And this Eu­rope has a kind of dis­course, con­tained until now, of re­turn­ing to the na­tion state, of de­vo­lu­tion of pow­ers to mem­ber states. And this is de­fended by Eu­roscep­tic par­ties as a whole, which are not al­ways far right. We’ll see what ma­jor­ity is formed in the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment and from there will come the issue of mi­gra­tion and asy­lum, fis­cal rules, the green tran­si­tion... and, ex­ter­nally, whether Von der Leyen’s idea of geopo­lit­i­cal Eu­rope is con­sol­i­dated, of being a power in it­self in a much more mul­ti­po­lar and much more con­fronta­tional world of in­ter­ests.

In­ter­view IN­TER­NA­TIONAL

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