– We live in a world of disorder and unrest.
That’s how he characterized the president of the republic after a week Alexander Stubb the state of the world, i.e. his future field of work. He presented his assessment at a press conference at the Munich Security Conference last week.
Stubb estimates that after the Cold War, we lived in a fantasy where the whole world adopts liberal democracy and a social market economy as its ideals. Globalization was thought to go hand in hand with it.
– This path was derailed by the terrorist attacks of September 2001 and most radically on February 24, 2022, Alexander Stubb summed up in Munich.
February 24th will be two years since Russia launched a major attack on Ukraine.
Russia’s ruthlessness has united Europe and the West more broadly.
The sanctions front against Russia has remained quite united, although Hungary has repeatedly raised concerns by opposing sanctions and supporting Ukraine.
Finland and Sweden have applied for the military alliance NATO, which has appeared to be perhaps more united than ever since the Cold War. Sweden’s NATO membership is still without a seal, just as Hungary is prolonging its strengthening.
interviewed four French experts in international politics about the upheaval in the world and what kind of new world order the war in Ukraine is creating.
A world of unstable relationships
French researchers agree with Alexander Stubb that the world is in a state of instability.
– The instability has been going on for more than ten years, and it deepened in 2016 due to Brexit and Donald Trump’s by choice, the European Council is the director of the Think Tank on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Célia Belin says.
Stubb characterized that the East, i.e. China, Russia and Iran, are challenging international legislators and institutions.
Belin also sees China, Russia and emerging economies destabilizing the balance. In a way, the relations between the countries are becoming more uncertain. Alliances are determined according to what makes sense for the respective country at any given time.
Alexander Stubb formulates the matter in such a way that in the future we will see more unholy alliances as well as alliances between two or three countries, which make it seem realpolitik. from the corner.
– It’s a bit of an à la carte world, Alexander Stubb assessed in Munich.
This can now be seen, for example, in the fact that Russia, isolated by the West, has trade relations with emerging economies such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and India.
– This makes it possible for Russia to finance its war, Montaigne Institute Special Adviser Michel Duclos resemble.
The West no longer defines the world order
The countries of the global south are also questioning the old rules and structures, Stubb estimates. These countries are often poor. Their chance to influence world development is weak, because international rules and structures are created by the West. According to the view of the Global South, the purpose of these rules is to guarantee the interests of the West in the world.
The end of the Cold War broke the East-West divide. Michel Duclos sees that now the north-south division is being replaced by a new way of perceiving the world, where the east, the west and the global South seek alliances.
This, in turn, can be seen very clearly in the manner in which the great power of the East, China, seeks partnerships. It is noteworthy that China is already the most important trading partner of well over a hundred countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
In addition, at this very moment, alliance relations are defined by another ongoing war, the Gaza war.
For many countries outside the West, it is unclear why the United States and Europe are not as vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s violent reprisals against the Palestinians in Gaza as they are in condemning Russia. The West is seen as two-faced.
Russia has naturally tried hard in the global south to strengthen this interpretation and make it a generally accepted framework narrative.
The culmination of these development costs is that the West no longer has the same say in defining world events as it used to have.
– History has been written by the West. That time is over, Célia Belin summarizes.
The EU is united – with the exception of Hungary
From Finland’s point of view, the most important thing is how Europe and the EU find their place in the changing world and what is the future role of NATO.
The unity of the EU is tight in the face of the Russian threat – Hungary is of course an exception. Hungarian leader Viktor Orban appears to be the president of Russia Vladimir Putin Loudspeaker inside the EU.
Russia supplies Hungary with oil and gas, and in return Orbán has repeatedly stopped supporting Ukraine. Hungary has been threatened with a procedure in which it would be excluded from EU decision-making. Many would show Hungary the door once and for all.
– As mischievous as Hungary is in the EU, it is perhaps better that it is in than out. Maybe Hungary is a disaster once and for all, says Célia Belin.
Hungary’s behavior as a NATO member is also strange. Many researchers rightly ask whether Hungary can be a member of the alliance if it plays into Russia’s pocket.
– Hungary has to think about whether it is safer to be outside the EU and NATO. If the answer is yes, Hungary will have to make its own decision, the head of the French foreign policy institute IFRI Thomas Gomart shapes.
Internally, the EU has become more compact because of the Russian war of aggression. At the same time, the war has brightened things in the eyes of Europeans. Europe’s geostrategic focus has shifted towards the east. Poland, the Baltic countries and the Nordic countries now form a strong outpost towards Russia.
– Russia is now unequivocally considered a threat. It wasn’t like that before the war of aggression, ECFR’s Russian expert Marie Dumoulin says.
Another eye-opening thing is related to nuclear weapons.
– Russia, which attacked its neighbor, has also threatened to use nuclear weapons. That too has been unheard of.
Marie Dumoulin points out that the European consensus was found easily in the face of the Russian threat, but it was found in a strange way.
– The EU now works without a leader and that is new. I hope it will continue to be successful, says Dumoulin.
On the other hand, from the vantage point of Southern Europe, Ukraine looks like a distant war. In the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, the same European unity could be seen in managing migration from the southern coast of the sea to Europe.
Trump’s election would be a threat to Europe
One question of destiny for Europe is, of course, NATO, its future and the connection of the US presidential election to it.
It is very possible that the Republican presidential candidate in next November’s US presidential election will be Donald Trump. In his previous presidential term 2016–2020, he repeatedly underestimated the importance of both the EU and NATO.
All the international policy experts interviewed consider Trump’s election a threat to Europe.
– If he returns to power, he will be much better prepared than last time. He has a plan. He didn’t have that in 2016, IFRI director Thomas Gomart says.
Trump does not trust multilateralism and international treaty-basedness, let alone international institutions. He wants bilateral agreements.
In return, he bragged at his campaign event that he told a prominent European leader that if Russia attacks, the United States will not come to the rescue in accordance with the fifth article of NATO, unless the European country has invested money in its defense as agreed .
So in Europe, we are now wondering what Trump’s possible return to the US leadership would mean.
Célia Belin estimates that shrinking NATO to a minimum and withdrawing American troops from Europe are being whispered in Trump’s ear. The defense of Europe is to be placed on the shoulders of Europeans.
– All in all, transatlantic relations would be very difficult, Célia Belin thinks.
President of France Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly emphasized the importance of Europe’s own defense and that Europe should not be so dependent on US military aid.
Montaigne Institute advisor Michel Duclos does not believe in Europe’s complete defensive independence, but a big change is at the door.
– NATO’s European pillar will be strengthened and nuclear deterrence will remain in the US account. This is probably the direction we are going.