Is the world slipping into a “New Cold War”

Writes: Prof. Ibrahim Gashi

The open aggression of the Russian Federation on the independent state of Ukraine and the clear positions of a part of the democratic world in the face of the new situation have raised concerns about the return of a world order dominated by threat, insecurity and a fragile and endangered peace at any moment.

From the earliest years of this century, tensions for world peace and security, which had hoped to end with the end of the Cold War, began to re-emerge one after another. Terrorism that was thought to be the form of new wars and the only threat to the democratic and developed countries of the world, was soon followed by fighting between authoritarian and reformist forces as well as many internal sectarian factions in the Middle East, known as the “Arab Spring”. In 2008, military invasions and interventions in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a stronger state against a weaker state returned. The promoter of this classic form of war was precisely the Russian Federation and its authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin, when he ordered military intervention against the state of Georgia (2008), severing from it two provinces inhabited by a larger percentage of Russians (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) and recognizing them unilaterally as independent states.

The Russian Federation will continue its aggressive policy towards other former USSR republics, first of all towards Ukraine, as one of the largest countries that was not included in the European and Euro-Atlantic structures, but that part of its population and leadership was manifesting such an affiliation. Given the importance of Ukraine, both economically and geostrategically, the Kremlin began to warn Kiev that it did not want a Ukraine in NATO or the EU, or even an independent and neutral Ukraine, but a Russian Ukraine. To achieve this goal in his aggressive foreign policy, the most authoritarian leader of our time, Vladimir Putin, following the Georgian scenario, decided to strike Ukraine at its most neuralgic but also weakest point, that of the Crimean Peninsula. In fact, the fate of Crimea but also of the whole of Ukraine, as we have seen, was linked to the different preferences of the two main political currents in the country, one pro-Western and the other pro-Russian. A direct consequence of the pro-Russian policy of President Yanukovych, who won the 2010 presidential election, is the Crimean crisis, which began in November 1913, at a time when President Yanukovich abrogated the association agreement with the EU and strengthened ties with official Moscow. A part of the Ukrainians started street protests demanding the strengthening of ties with Europe. Thus, once again, the dual mood of the Ukrainians was being tested. Some with Russian ethnicity or pro-Russian political affiliation supported President Yanukovych, while others with pro-European political affiliation supported the opposition and demanded the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed by the Yanukovych regime on corruption charges. The situation escalated. Opposition protests took off during the winter of 2013/2014. The intervention of the authorities was brutal. The streets of Kiev were filled with protesters and barricades. By order of the pro-Russian president the weapons were used and the first casualties fell. Anti-government demonstrators occupied buildings in central Kiev, including the Justice Ministry building. The riots left 98 dead, about fifteen thousand injured and 100 considered missing. President Yanukovych’s authority began to waver. But his departure did not mark the triumph of the opposition. In the very honorable situation created on the Crimean Peninsula, which was numerically dominated by residents of Russian origin, riots and civil unrest broke out. Russian citizens of Crimea began to challenge the constitutional order by calling on the official Kremlin to intervene. The latter in a very coordinated manner, taking advantage of the large military presence on the peninsula (part of the Russian fleet was stationed in Crimean waters for strategic reasons, according to the agreement on Ukraine’s independence of 1990). On March 18, 2014, Russia and Crimea signed a treaty of accession of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol to the Russian Federation, although the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of a non-binding declaration opposing Russian annexation of the peninsula.

Such an epilogue to the Crimean Crisis served as a multiplier overture to this scenario in other parts of Ukraine, particularly in eastern Ukraine dominated by ethnic Russians. In several cities in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, armed men declaring themselves to be local militias had seized government buildings and police stations. Talks in Geneva between the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States resulted in a joint diplomatic statement referred to as the 2014 Geneva Pact, which called on illegal paramilitary groups to lay down their arms, vacate government buildings and to return to a political dialogue that would lead to more autonomy for the rebel regions. The Geneva talks yielded almost no expected effect. The election of the new Ukrainian President Poroshenko (who is not recognized by Russian extremists, and consequently not by Russia itself) and especially his statement on the eve of the May 25, 2014 elections that “my first presidential trip will be to Donbas and that “the anti-terrorist operation of the government forces will not last two-three months, but only a few hours” served as a new impetus for the pro-Russian insurgents, who had already declared the autonomy of the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces. In these circumstances, Poroshenko turned to Moscow for talks on international mediation, a request that was rejected by the official Kremlin on the grounds that Russia will never talk about Ukraine with international mediators. On the other hand, President Poroshenko has stated that Ukraine’s sovereignty will be preserved, even promising to follow to the end the return of Crimea under Ukrainian sovereignty.

The end of 2021 and especially the first months of this year reveal the aggressive plans that Putin had against the neighboring state of Ukraine. Now at the height of winter on the Russian-Ukrainian border, the Kremlin sent about 150,000 troops to a military exercise that could be described as the most open and direct threat to Ukrainian territory. The trajectory of developments from mid-February began to dynamize. According to a well-prepared plan, Putin and his military apparatus are encouraging the population of the two Russian-majority regions, Lugansk and Donetsk, to declare independence from Kiev. Of course, Putin’s scenario was already easy to read. As expected, Moscow hastened to recognize the declared sovereignty of these regions, and to be the complete irony of the game, Putin declared that a “peacekeeping” military contingent would be launched there to protect the two self-proclaimed sovereign entities. This scenario was in fact Putin’s “pretext” for launching a total military aggression over all of Ukraine, with the aim of subjugating Kiev and capturing or killing the disobedient political leader, President V. Zelensky.

Now that from February 24, the day of the beginning of the Russian aggression, even on the fifth day, Ukraine is not surrendering, in the face of an unprecedented storm of Russian missile and artillery attacks in all major cities without choosing any targets, an unprecedented human heroism of the Ukrainian people and patriotic leadership led by President Zelenski has emerged on the scene, arousing the admiration and the greatest sympathy of the freedom-loving world around the globe. These acts of heroic resistance of the people of Ukraine have made the powerful countries of Western Europe and the United States feel bad for ignoring the seriousness of the situation by initially reacting in a completely indolent and fragmented manner.

Now, on the fourth day, when the resistance and the war tooth for tooth in defense of Kiev, but above all the campaign of Russian missile, artillery and air strikes, mainly on civilian targets, leaving hundreds of civilians killed, as well as a large wave of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to neighboring countries seems to have affected the conscience but also the security of the EU and NATO democracies. The recent reactions of the White House, NATO and the EU, are in full tune and in their content are the appropriate measures in terms of their severity, but certainly relative in terms of the rapid effects that will be able to produce. In response to these measures, and in particular the decision of EU countries to supply Ukraine (as a state under attack) with weapons and the measure of removal of the Russian Federation from the SWIFT system Putin has ordered the raising of the highest level of alarm and readiness of nuclear weapons.

In this new situation, the question inevitably arises: where is the world order going? One thing can now be asserted more accurately that Putin’s military aggression in Ukraine has marked a tectonic shift in world politics and has increased the risk of superpower confrontation and the militarization of Europe. Also, if we refer to the statement of French President E. Macron that “The world should prepare for a long war between Russia and Ukraine after Moscow started an invasion of its pro-Western neighbor”, or yesterday’s statement of the Democratic congressman from California Ro Khana according to whom, “… Ukraine could end up like Russia’s Afghanistan. This really hurt them in the Cold War. “In the long run, this will be very costly for Putin, so I am in favor of sanctions and I am open to what the administration is proposing about what we need to do to help the Ukrainians from a defense perspective.” Yesterday’s decision by the German chancellor, in an extraordinary session, the first held on Sunday, to increase the budget for military capacity building to 100 billion euros and his speech before the Bundestag where Scholz described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “turning point” that required a German national effort to maintain political and security order in Europe. In line with this is yesterday’s decision of the EU that, as it is said “for the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack.” Statement by the British Prime Minister B. Johnson, given on the occasion of the beginning of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, “I am horrified by the terrible events in Ukraine and I spoke with President Zelenskiy to discuss the next steps. President Putin has chosen a path of bloodshed and destruction by launching this unprovoked attack on Ukraine. “The United Kingdom and our allies will respond decisively.”

These reactions of the West given within the first four days from the beginning of the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the sanctioning measures that are following these statements, especially the economic ones, are leading the world order towards a new confrontation, of a very large extent and scale, what we have not seen since the Cold War. It is too early to conclude that the world is slipping into a new Cold War, but of course this can be discussed at the level of analysis. Early because we have not yet seen the positioning of the rest of the world, namely the great Asian powers like China. Its indifference to this new tension will not be long. I consider that the effects that Russia’s withdrawal from SWIFT may have, and the freezing of its assets in the world, will directly affect Russia’s trade relations with China, and this will push China to clarify its position. The outlook for the future of the world order may become even clearer, depending on the course and epilogue of the war in Ukraine.