The year 2022 was a tipping point in international affairs. Major trends converged to make the world more turbulent, fragmented, uncertain - and more dangerous for its now eight billion human inhabitants facing dire scientific warnings of actual and worsening climate breakdowns. There are, alas, too few signs of real hope that this can be changed for the better.
Seen from Europe the year is framed by the February 24th Russian invasion of Ukraine and the heroic military resistance of the Ukrainian people which prevented the rapid and easy victory expected by Vladimir Putin. The war’s rapidly escalating impacts on international security, energy prices, supply chains, food security and inflation were felt the world over. These brought the United States closer to Europe and sharpened its deepening political and economic competition with China, whose links with Russia were strengthened. Their antagonisms are viewed differently from India, Indonesia, Brazil or South Africa, emergent powers in regions impatient with western hegemony and no longer willing to accept its governing structures unchallenged.
The struggle to align such countries for or against Russia’s invasion at the United Nations showed some 40 per cent of its 193 member states unwilling to condemn it, notwithstanding the war’s knock-on effects; but the UN is regrettably made powerless to intervene in the conflict effectively by great power vetoes. The search for a diplomatic road to peace in Ukraine is being pursued bilaterally and multilaterally and in other forums, where new ideas on how to manage a more diverse and polycentric world are being opened up. They all have a stake in preventing escalation towards using nuclear weapons there.
China’s increasing role
That search for new rules and alignments has to take full account of China’s increasing role and of the US determination to limit or contain Chinese power. Their competition in the South China Sea, over Taiwan, for influence in Africa, Latin America and Europe and increasingly supercomputer chips and cybersecurity tests alignments and affiliations in all world regions. China is far more interdependent economically with international capitalism now than was the Soviet Union during the Cold War with the US-led West. Some 18 per cent of global economic output is Chinese compared to the US’s 24 per cent, and most major US corporations continue to manufacture there, alongside European and Asian ones. It is unclear whether the logic of growing US-China competition points to decoupling this globalised interdependence or whether it can be managed towards a new equilibrium.
China’s presumed appeal as an alternative model of capable authoritarian and illiberal development is an important ingredient of its leaders’ self-belief and legitimacy and thereby of its international support. The endorsement of Xi Jinping for a third term as president and general secretary of the communist party was accompanied by further closing of open discussion about public policy and more assertive foreign policy positions. All these were dealt a blow by the outbreak of widespread public protests against rigid enforcements of Covid-19 lockdowns towards the end of the year. An abrupt reversal of the lockdowns has followed despite fears of large increases in mortality among insufficiently inoculated older citizens. There is a good case to be made for a generous offer to supply vaccines from international actors and agencies which want to keep relations with China relatively open.
The pandemic was contained and rolled back in Europe, not least by effective coordination through the European Union. That effort added to the EU’s more resilient performance in dealing with other crises, including Ukraine, Brexit, inflation, energy and looming recession. Major choices loom over whether to pool more sovereignty in dealing with them and on how to maintain public support as it does so. These decisions coincide with the EU’s need to become a more coherent international actor in dealing with transatlantic tensions, its own turbulent neighbourhood and more widely.
Tackling climate change
The climate and biodiversity crises hang over world leaders and peoples as never before. Important agreements on loss and damage at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt open up questions about whether it is possible to achieve the necessary limits and transitions by 2030, after the opportunities for timely action earlier this century were not taken. The climate emergency is reinforced by alarming figures from the Cop15 biodiversity summit in Montreal showing that in the last 50 years 69 per cent of the planet’s wildlife has been lost, along with vast tracts of habitat.
These dire climatic natural realities will reinforce humanitarian emergencies, as seen in east Africa and Pakistan. They will add to migratory pressures from continuing wars in Yemen and Syria and from repression of women in Iran and Afghanistan.
This conflicted world craves better governance in 2023.