Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Although the world’s attention is focused on the conflict between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, the war that will have serious global consequences in the future is still being waged in Ukraine. In that country, the strategic lines of confrontation are being drawn for what could become a new war between civilizations.
Only the intelligence and sobriety of some leaders of countries such as the United States, China, or Europe can temper the warring spirits of those fighting for territory or religion.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is part of a world context of struggle between the great blocs that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990.
It can be said that the members of one bloc (the United States, the European Union, Great Britain, and its allies) represent a model of democratic governance, plurality, and generally based on the rule of law and the market economy.
The other bloc, led by China, Russia, Iran, and allies, has a different version. It positions itself as the containment dike to the “historical imperialist and colonialist forces of always” that, in its narrative, seek only to exploit the rest of the world for their benefit.
The reasons Putin offers to justify his invasion of Ukraine go back to the remembrance of World War II, accusing Ukraine of pursuing a course of action intended to isolate and contain Russia along the lines used by both Napoleon and Hitler in their various efforts to break the Russian empire and people. It even goes so far as to accuse the Kyiv government of being Nazi-inspired.
This explanatory recourse resembles the Chinese narrative about Taiwan and its right to control the Pacific all the way to the Philippines and perhaps beyond. Every expansionist project of any government requires an internal and external explanation because it implies, at some point, a war of devastation and death. Its people must accept the idea of the patriotic importance of the sacrifice of sending their young men to their deaths. And the rest of the world should know, even if it disagrees, the reasons that lead one country to attack another.
In this context, the war in Ukraine and Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbors have the same original source. Without going into explaining or justifying Israel’s actions in Gaza, we find the same players on the scene. Russia and Iran are supplying arms to Arab forces and the United States and allies, securing Israeli military strength. The crucial point of intersection in these conflicts is undoubtedly Iran. Iran provides the drones used by Russia against Ukraine and arms Hamas and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon for their attack on Israeli troops. Putin meets with Hamas leaders in Moscow and with Iran’s Ayatollah to agree to provide arms, money, and intelligence back and forth. Biden and the leaders of Britain and the European Union, on the other hand, met with Zelensky in Kyiv while visiting Tel Aviv to confer with Netanyahu on strategies to deal with Hamas in Gaza. And the United States makes a forceful military deployment in the Mediterranean, close enough to Israel and Ukraine, to generate suspicions as to what will be the ultimate “imperial” intentions of that country.
These parallels stem from the same original source: the existential confrontation between two great governance models, democracy and anti-democracy, the latter in many forms.
With this account, we cannot lose sight of the essential character of the narratives expressed through each model, despite being founded on different ideologies and/or religions, histories, or areas of the world.
In the existential confrontation between the models of government that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is necessary to remember that each one represents, even if they do not articulate it so precisely or honestly, a narrative about their insertion in the liberal-democratic or illiberal, anti-democratic or autocratic currents.
A case in point is Putin’s original allegation about the existence of a Nazi state in Ukraine as justification for the beginning of the invasion. It is clear that this explanation was intended to justify the action internally for the Russian population (reminiscent of the fight against Nazism during World War II), as well as to establish a justification that could be claimed before the world community.
Finally, as it usually happens in all wars, its first victim is the TRUTH. Behind the smokescreen of the pretensions to justify the invasion with the purpose of unifying that which should never have been separated (the dissolution of the Soviet Union), there is the Russian imperial dream, the fear of invasions from the West and the internal crisis of the Russian economic model itself, monopolistic and inefficient, without the capacity to generate sufficient wealth for all.
Finally, the dispute between democracy and anti-democracy is our era’s founding conflict/dilemma. It drags everyone in its path and forces the world’s countries, their governments, and political models to define themselves between democratic liberalism and anti-democracy in its multiple modalities. Mexico does not escape this imperative.
In strategic terms, the outcome of the war in Ukraine will impact the future of the struggle between democratic and anti-democratic forces in the world. It will affect the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. The outcome of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia will have an impact on the future of humanity.
In that sense, the war in Ukraine is the most representative of today’s dilemmas, in contrast to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which, although tragic, is still a conflict between a middle power and a terrorist organization.
The conflict in Ukraine is the most defining in terms of the direction the world will take, in terms of the consolidation, or not, of governance models aligned with liberal and democratic axes or autocratic models. That is how important is what the world is witnessing and defining in Ukraine, and that is what is at stake in the possible outcomes of this war.
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