Hundreds of business leaders, dozens of heads of state and financial institutions and numerous ministers came together at the World Economic Forum at Davos to brainstorm global recovery. While peace talks for Ukraine were attended by more than 80 countries including India, key principles for just and lasting peace in the war-ridden country still seem far from actualisation.
Europe’s situation doesn’t look as promising as EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s speech at Davos. Her upbeat tone seemed contrived as she called for rebuilding trust amid growing fractures within the global response to the unrelenting permacrisis. Commitments to climate and transparent AI seemed convoluted as fiscal austerity has engulfed the bloc. The rise of Right-wing euro-scepticism has also raised existential questions about its unity.
Conspicuously the WEF, a platform considered the Mecca of globalisation and trade, has had most of its sessions devoted to security this year–not just economic, but also hard security. The most pressing questions have been about Ukraine and Israel. In the case of Ukraine, the stalemate considered the least satisfying outcome last year has become the preferred outcome this year. It shows that war fatigue has permeated all walks of international discussion. As ongoing wars stretch longer and new conflicts sprout, the crisis in the Western order only deepens, with the apprehensions to tackle it becoming denser.
To set the record straight, the crisis in the Western order doesn’t have material vectors only. The West, especially the US, is still the preeminent military power in the world. It is also undoubtedly the global powerhouse of technology and innovation, and the dollar is and will continue to be the world’s reserve currency for the foreseeable future. The bigger problems for the West are all stemming from inward maladies, and not its outward capabilities to shape the behaviour of other actors.
Maladies within the US-led Western order
As historian Niall Ferguson has wisely identified, there does exist an overarching disjunct in American leadership, regardless of who the president is. The disjunct emerges because there is a reluctance to get too involved in far-away problems – whether it is Ukraine, Israel or Taiwan – but also an inability to walk away from them. The fundamental international character of the US is standing on globalism and isolationism–two legs that propel it to stride in diametrically opposite directions.
As long as these opposing views remain the very foundations of American political mainstream, there will be periodic unreliability of the US-led order – from which, ironically, from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump, the country itself has often been the first to withdraw.
It is true that one of the reasons for the ‘Forever Wars ’ to perpetuate is impinging upon this inward clash in the American leadership that results in a disoriented response to crises. The spending starts as a crisis response because the US feels obligated as the pre-eminent power and keeper of stability among nations. But because its half-hearted actions are not suitable enough to “solve” it, the spending becomes endless and so does the national debt. Therefore, you have an America caught in a crisis-quadrilateral, a situation where the problem is neither solved nor another averted. Domestic voters’ appetite to support forever wars only diminishes, and the majority of the global populace, the middle order pack, loses trust in the American leadership.
That said, Trump, if he wins, will inherit a different world.
The deftness with which Trump argued to “get the boys back home” and shifted US attention from CENTCOM (US Central Command) to PACOM (US Pacific Command) derived from successful Abrahm accords in the Middle East. His rhetoric to withdraw from NATO came from twofold smugness of the peace dividend that descended the EU—the Europe-Russia energy synergy and the Europe–China trade synergy. None of that exists today. Perhaps there is no getting back to the normal we were accustomed to.
There has to be a collective pursuit of finding a new equilibrium for the world. Trump, if he were to return, would find himself in a radically different security environment than he had inherited, which would make isolationism more difficult and costly.
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Is Europe’s pursuit of security delusional?
No amount of tonal confidence exhibited by Von Der Leyen and others will substitute for the fact that Europe needs to act on the strong probability of a Trump comeback. It is only fair to mention that there is markedly significant progress as several European countries have started tapping into their defence industry capabilities. Counterintuitive as it may sound (because of economic troubles), it is not the UK or France but Germany that has emerged as Ukraine’s second-largest military provider after the US. However, even if US President Joe Biden closes the southern borders in a quid pro quo with Republicans to get them to support the aid package for Ukraine, this will, perhaps, be the last multi-billion military aid package from Biden until the elections.
EU’s aid package will come, but it is the bloc’s limitations of ratcheting up ammunition support for Ukraine that doesn’t seem to have a panacea.
Therefore, if at all Europe has to apply its efforts according to logic and not atrophy, the bloc, along with London, will have to coordinate the supply of 155 mm ammunition shells and long-range weapons like the Taurus and Scalps missiles along with F-16s and perhaps a few more Patriot air defences to defend Ukraine while helping it isolate Crimea. It is this basic combination and coordination of military capabilities from Europe that will provide any closure to the West’s support to Ukraine. Otherwise, the two years of repetitive semantic sentimentality of helping Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ would get nowhere. Closure means the ability of Europe to bring Russia to the negotiating table and not the other way around.
Anything less than this might endlessly prolong the war, providing ample space and opportunity to Russia for gaining more territory down South, eventually making it harder for Ukraine to liberate its territories. At such a time, with no US to send military aid in a jiffy, looms the worst possible outcome for Europe – a Ukrainian partition and a defeat. Russia, despite its depleted fleets and all other economic problems, has been able to run a war economy and mobilise significantly huge numbers of troops. No matter how depleted as a country, Russia’s win in Ukraine will vindicate its Special Military Operation and etch in stone Europe’s incompetence to protect itself.
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Where is the Global South in this?
As the Western liberal order struggles to cope with its internal discrepancies, the emerging economies of the ‘Global South’ can’t rejoice either. Favourable economic multipolarity is enmeshed with global stability and freedom of navigation. Experiences in the Red Sea have yet again shown the fragility of global supply routes for everyone.
Therefore, without a stable security order, the so-called Global South does not have any real solutions to offer either. Restless consequential hedging amid heightened global uncertainty robs them of coherent foreign policy synergies – all in a spiral.
As much as these countries need investment, enabling frameworks and space to co-develop norms around emerging tech, they also need the endurance of supply chains and freedom of navigation that they cannot alone guarantee.
The year 2024 will be one of global ‘vox populi’, with half of the world’s population, a whopping four billion people, going to vote. Key elections across Western societies will shape and coordinate their international responses. The foremost challenge should be how to fix the internal maladies of the liberal order. That, perhaps, is how the trust deficit can be restored from North to South for a meaningful global response to the era of permacrisis.
The writer is an Associate Fellow, Europe and Eurasia Center, at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Good stuff!