When Henry Kissinger, at the age of 98, warns that the global geopolitical situation will undergo profound changes as a result of the war in Ukraine, he endorses from his authority what we all presume and what experts analyze and describe.
Three former Spanish ambassadors, in the United States, Russia and China, anticipate that this war will bring about a new world order. We will pass, in his opinion, from a multipolar world to an imperfect bipolar world. The establishment of a new consensual international order will be imposed that addresses the new international reality, characterized, among other variants, by a weakening of Russia and the United States, a greater presence of China and a reaffirmation of Europe as a political-economic unit, reinforced in the future for greater strategic autonomy and greater self-defense capacity.
The imposition of realism as a basic principle of politics will reduce, in the opinion of these ambassadors, the weight of ideological differences, to the point of reinforcing the belief that reconfigurations are made on the basis of interests and economic and military forces. A realistic policy will be imposed that will favor interests and that will involve agreeing on new norms of behavior and coexistence between different cultures. From a Euro-American perspective, however, a key objective will remain the defense of democracy against autocracy.
For Kissinger, after the Ukraine war “Russia will have to reassess its relationship with Europe and its general attitude towards NATO.” Regarding China, he observes: “I suspect that any Chinese leader would now be reflecting on how to avoid getting into the situation that Putin got into, and how to be in a position where, in any crisis that might arise, they would not have a significant role. ”
The redefinition of goals and the selection of tools for each country to adapt to the new conditions of geopolitics forces us to think about how to position ourselves in it based on the current reality and the foreseeable evolution of the big players. Despite their indisputable real power and their inherent adherence to democratic principles, Europe and the United States perceive the need for a profound restructuring of the quality of their institutions and the improvement of an economic model committed to growth, but fundamentally to the well-being of the citizen. Russia and China, meanwhile, present different scenarios. Despite its large geographical dimensions, its wealth in oil and its agricultural potential, Russia’s weight is that of a small economy with profound internal weaknesses that are manifested in problems of productivity, poverty, an aging population, a deteriorated health, in addition to low environmental quality. China, for its part, is having to deal with slowing growth, rising debt, greater social inequality, rising unemployment and underemployment, environmental pollution, and a weak health sector.
With whom and how to align? For Latin America, the first option is obviously on the side of democracy. In the noise of the conflict, countries like Argentina and Brazil have avoided flirting with the Russians. Others, Venezuela among them, have accentuated the rapprochement with international forces such as Russia, China, Iran, Turkey. Among them, China seems to have taken a more realistic stance. The discomfort of their companies as minority shareholders in the oil business has been the same as that of Western companies. The same has happened in cooperation projects in other areas. The Russian presence, on the other hand, has reinforced their rapprochement for political purposes. In these same days, a report presented by the intelligence chiefs of the United States has described the agreements for the sale of weapons and energy and the commitments of Russia with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba to expand access to markets and natural resources as “threats to transnational security. Alignments like this, naturally, are not the most convenient. It is not Venezuela who wins in them.
Changes are inevitable. It is up to us as a country to discuss our insertion in them.
