Seven questions after Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine may be the single most important geopolitical event since 9/11, if we except the 2008 financial crisis. It has upended any number of assumptions about the direction of world politics. Here is a quick summary of some of the questions this crisis has posed that remain unanswered.

First, is Russia now firmly in the China camp? New Delhi’s equivocation on the Ukraine crisis is based in part on the continuing belief that Moscow cannot be isolated, for that will send it further into Beijing’s embrace. Indian decision-makers recognise the multiple possible future stresses in the Sino-Russian relationship — leadership in Central Asia, pressures on Siberia, energy pricing, and so on — and sincerely doubt that the Russians are willing to play junior partner for a minute longer than necessary. Thus it is assumed that, in the long-term effort to contain the Chinese regime, Russia will eventually be a partner or at least neutral. This war, however, may lock Moscow into a role of confrontation with the West that leaves it no other path but excessive dependence on China.

Second, is the globalisation of finance over? Trade-led globalisation was already in retreat. But doubts about the benefits of trade in both developed and developing economies were not matched by similar or analogous doubts about financial flows and investment. Yet the unprecedented sanctions on Russia — up to and including cutting off the central bank’s access to its foreign-currency reserves — have greatly increased the probability of alternative financial pipelines being created, and for countries to begin to view financial integration as being a strategic vulnerability as much as an economic resource.

Third, has Beijing been empowered? The real worry is that China has seen the unwillingness of the West to support Ukraine and interpreted this to mean that there is also minimal resolve to defend Taiwan. The new nationalist normal pushes Beijing, its diplomats, and its policy-makers towards ever higher-pitched rhetoric about Taiwan. At some point, the internal logic of authoritarianism turns such rhetoric into action. This is, in fact, what we observed in Russia over the past decade, where a rhetorical ramp-up about Ukrainian nationhood being a lie and the country being founded on the oppression of Russian-speakers eventually left decision-makers thinking there was no option but direct intervention.

Fourth, is the European dream of a peaceful, unifying, demilitarised continent over? The great achievement of the European Union — eastern expansion — is now being attacked as provocative; the countries of Europe have shown themselves unable to stop a war and refugee crisis on their border; the notion that economic interdependence, such as that between Russia and Germany, would prevent drastic military action has been exploded; and European nations face a decade at least of heavy defence spending and rearmament. Whether this will end with a unified EU military, more coherence between existing European armies, or greater European heft in NATO is not certain. What is certain is that France and Germany, who have sought to appease and integrate Russia, have lost face while Poland and other ex-Soviet bloc states that long warned about Russian ambitions have strengthened their positions.

Fifth, is India’s two-decade-long drift to the West over? One of the surprises of the past few weeks has surely been the Indian response. Not the official response of neutrality and calls for peace, which should surprise nobody; but the quasi-official response by state-linked reporters and ruling party-linked propagandists, who have essentially focused the domestic argument around Western Russophobia and hypocrisy. Whether this was the result of an order from the top or an organic response to events is irrelevant. What it reveals is the hollowness of decades of claims that there is great popular support in India for alignment with other liberal democracies. If the Cold War has come back from the dead, well, so has nonalignment.

Sixth, will this speed up climate action, or delay it? Russia’s blatant dependence on European gas purchases to finance its war machine in Ukraine could have either effect. It could speed up the creation of alternatives to gas and petrol. Or countries could conclude they need energy sovereignty and not just energy — which can only be provided, in large parts of the world, by mining and burning local deposits of coal.

And finally — is Russia even a global player, still? A country with the power to blow up the world a hundred times over cannot even capture the capital of a smaller, much weaker neighbour after launching an invasion at a time of its own choosing. This is almost unprecedented in modern military history. An invasion meant to restore Russia to its rightful place on the world stage might end up convincing the world of the opposite —that a country long one of the great centres of global power no longer deserves the attention it has commanded for five hundred years.