Days of Future Past

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A New Ice Age

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Is war in Ukraine splitting the wo= rld into two camps again? Lucan Way=C2=A0on the emerging c= ompetition for global supremacy.

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Pavel Neznanov

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(Originally published 2022 | 1= 2.22)
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Since Russia f= irst invaded Ukraine=C2=A0on February 24, Vladimir Putin = has spoken of the attack as part of a civilizational conflict with the West= =E2=80=94like the Cold War=E2= =80=94while he and his military leaders continue to threaten the use of nuc= lear weapons. Today, the Russia of Putin looks far weaker than the empire o= f Stalin and Brezhnev ever did, with Moscow having failed to achieve almost= all its goals in Ukraine=E2=80=94and many of the Soviet Union=E2=80=99s ol= d satellite states now NATO members.
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At the same time, Russia has becom= e much closer to China than it was in the communist era, as Xi Jinping purs= ues his declared ambitions to counter the global power of the United States= . The U.S. and the EU have meanwhile moved to break off=C2=A0economic relations with Russia and halt the = development of Chinese tech industri= es. From the end of World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall, t= he world was fundamentally split into two hostile blocs. Is it happening ag= ain?
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To Lucan Way, it = is. Way is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto an= d the author of three books on authoritarianism. Much of the globe, he says= , has been dividing into two camps, democratic and authoritarian=E2=80=94= =E2=80=9Cthe free and the unfree=E2=80=9D=E2=80=94and the conflict between = them is deepening.
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But the nature and contours of thi= s new division are different. Now the two sides aren=E2=80=99t fighting ove= r an ideology, as the democratic and communist blocs of the Cold War were. = And there are regionally powerful countries today that can challenge the go= als of the democrats or the authoritarians=E2=80=94or cooperate with either= . In the absence of an organizing ideological dimension, and with the prese= nce of other powerful actors, Way sees the new era of global conflict becom= ing more chaotic=E2=80=94and ultimately more unpredictable=E2=80=94than the= Cold War ever was.

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Michael Bluhm: Pu= tin has framed the Ukraine war as a proxy conflict with the West and NATO. = Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, he says, NATO has never stopped ex= panding its borders and threatening Moscow.
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Yet the war seems to have made Rus= sia much weaker=E2=80=94even weaker than the Soviet Union was toward the en= d of its history. What do you see Putin as having done to Russia=E2=80=99s = position in the world here?
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Lucan Way: First = of all, Russia is much richer today than it was in that time of the Soviet = Union. Until very recently, it had a dynamic market economy.
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The main difference between the tw= o eras is that, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a universal ideol= ogy that could theoretically be applied anywhere: communism. It was the Sov= iets=E2=80=99 counterpart to the also-universal liberal-democratic ideology= of America and its allies.
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The Cold War involved a distinctiv= e, global competition for influence. Every local conflict around the world = became infused with this broader great-power conflict=E2=80=94in no small p= art because of these competing universal ideologies.

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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Today, liberal democracy has h= ad its setbacks around the world, but there=E2=80=99s still a universal lib= eral-democratic ideology. There isn=E2=80=99t a universal authoritarian ide= ology. There are just a lot of parochial nationalists with authoritarian pl= aybooks. The movements supporting them don=E2=80=99t speak to any universal= ideology at all. In that sense, Russia has been reduced from a country wit= h global ambitions, based on a global idea, to a corrupt dictatorship based= on the power of a single person.
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09Bluhm: A mont= h after the invasion, the historian Tim Sayle said=C2=A0that it had brought a period of newfound unity an= d shared moral clarity to the West. How do you see this today=E2=80=94with = persistent inflation and rising energy costs triggering protests across so = many European countries?

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Way: I was impres= sed in the early days of the war by the remarkable unity we were seeing in = Europe. I did feel somewhat apprehensive about the possibility of European = fatigue with the conflict=E2=80=94just because most conflicts that initiall= y spark widespread outrage tend to get normalized fairly quickly; we=E2=80= =99ve seen this in Afghanistan and elsewhere. But polls in Europe still sho= w overwhelming support for Ukraine, now nearly 10 months after the invasion= . The resilience of the sentiment has surprised me.
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Back in March, French President Em= anuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were arguing=C2=A0that the West should negotiate with Putin. B= ut they=E2=80=99ve completely abandoned that rhetoric=E2=80=94and the bigge= st reason is the simplest: Russia has just behaved so atrociously that Euro= pe is more unified now than it was at the outset of the war.
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Also in March, there was a conflic= t between the United States, on the one hand, and Macron and Scholz. The U.= S. was saying, We have to fight the Russians, give Ukraine weapons, and= win the war.=C2=A0Macron and Scholz were saying, No, we have to r= each out. There has to be a negotiated solution. But Putin has shown s= uch a complete unwillingness to compromise or adjust his fundamental goals,= despite multiple military losses, that he effectively ended that debate. =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=C2=A0

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And then, since March we=E2=80=99v= e seen a tremendous decoupling between Europe=E2=80=99s economy and Russia= =E2=80=99s. At the beginning of 2022, the European Union relied on Russia f= or more than 40 percent of its natural gas. Now that number=E2=80=99s down = to 17 percent.
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To be fair, there are elements of = Ukraine fatigue, but there are also now structural reasons for long-term un= ity in Europe against Russia. Until recently, Russia had deep ties with the= European elite. The former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was even on= the board of Gazprom, the main Russian gas provider, until the invasion. T= hose days are over. Putin has completely broken these ties. And there=E2=80= =99s no way Europe=E2=80=99s going to re-establish them=E2=80=94at least in= the medium term.

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Dan Meyers

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More from Lucan Way at The Sig= nal:
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=E2=80=9CWe=E2=80=99re= seeing a starker divide=C2=A0between the free and the unfree in t= he world today than we=E2=80=99ve ever seen before. During the Cold War, yo= u had communist and anti-communist blocs. The communist world was completel= y autocratic, but the anti-communist world included many military dictators= hips, which were propped up by democratic countries precisely because these= dictatorships were Cold-War allies. Today, with Hungary and Poland, we do = have autocracies on the Western side, but this is much more exceptional now= than it was then.=E2=80=9D
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=E2=80=9CChina is much= more powerful=C2=A0than the Soviet Union was. It has both a very = powerful military and an extremely powerful economy. The Soviet Union was q= uite poor, but it had massive conventional forces in Europe, and that was i= ts main source of power. Beijing has many more resources to challenge the U= nited States with. But there are two problems: One, China doesn=E2=80=99t h= ave a universal ideology. Two, it=E2=80=99s much more integrated into the g= lobal economy than the Soviet Union was=E2=80=94so it=E2=80=99s much more c= onstrained in its behavior. There are some Cold War elements in play today,= then, but there are also elements of mutual dependence that balance the co= nflict out.=E2=80=9D
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=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=E2=80=9CDuring the Co= ld War, militaries=C2=A0in many non-communist countries were inher= ently anti-communist, because they knew they=E2=80=99d be the first to suff= er in a communist takeover. But militaries in developing countries today ar= e often more comfortable with a country like China=E2=80=94which doesn=E2= =80=99t make human-rights demands and doesn=E2=80=99t interfere in domestic= governance to the same extent that the West does. And this could make them= more open to an alliance with Beijing. The reduction of ideological polari= zation, in this sense, helps the unfree side make appeals to certain elites= in the global South=E2=80=94appeals they=E2=80=99d never have been able to= make back=C2=A0in the Cold War years.=E2=80=9D

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