Close to three years have gone by in Europe’s Eastern front where war is raging – the most vicious since the Balkan wars that destroyed former Yugoslavia at the end of the past millennium, and more threatening for world peace too. The Russo-Ukrainian trench-and-drone conflict, in fact, has the potential of escalating to a global conflagration that nobody wants and nobody is prepared to prevent.
It happened twice over the last century, with catastrophic consequences. The chances, as things stand, are not good that world leaders will be able to halt the dynamics now set in motion that, left unchecked, are more and more likely to make World War Three an inevitability.
What is to be done? The question, with the United Nations Security Council totally paralyzed, sounds hollow. But the answer is increasingly urgent now, in the strident age of emerging multipolarity and uncertainty, where the old postwar balance of power is coming apart. While there is a growing awareness of the inappropriately termed Global West past dominance in a fast-changing new order, where the United States neither wishes nor can play the role of (relatively) benevolent or self-interested hegemon, transition towards a more equitable equilibrium needs to be managed. Autocracies, while contesting the rules-based and often self-serving American-led standards, award themselves the false privilege to act as if might is right.
In this unstable climate, with revolutionary technologies and artificial intelligence forcing the pace of change, the temptations of seeking shortcuts such as protectionist tariffs, anti-immigrant bans capital controls, disinformation and restrictions of civil liberties inevitably result also in economic and social decline. International institutions in a multilateral equilibrium need to be stronger, not left to fade into irrelevance and decline.
