By Dr.Azab Alaziz Alhashemi
Firstly: European Economic Losses in Numbers
European countries have suffered numerous damages and challenges due to the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Some of the most important consequences are:
1- Economic slowdown: “Barclays Bank” has revised its forecast for the European continent’s GDP growth rate to 3.5% after the crisis, compared to the previous estimate of 4.1%. “JPMorgan” expects a growth rate of only 3.2%.
2- Trade volume: The European Union is Russia’s largest trading partner, and Moscow is the fifth-largest trading partner for the European Union. The Western sanctions imposed on Russia will severely affect the trade relations between Moscow and the European Union, especially with the G7 countries’ decision to remove Russia’s “Most Favoured Nation” status under the World Trade Organization rules.
3- Threat to European investments and assets in Russia: The European Union countries’ investments in the Russian market amount to approximately €311.4 billion (equivalent to $340 billion) by 2020. Russian investments in the European Union reached around €136 billion in 2020. There is also approximately $60 billion owed by Russian entities to European Union banks, which can be frozen. Furthermore, holders of Ukrainian sovereign bonds from Europe (amounting to around $23 billion) are at risk of default.
4- Threat to European energy security: Russia is the largest supplier of energy to the European Union, accounting for about 40% of its natural gas imports and about 33% of its oil imports.
5- Threat to food security: Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and together Russia and Ukraine provide more than a third of global grain exports. In light of the crisis, prices of basic commodities, including agricultural products such as wheat and corn, have risen by varying percentages, ranging from 40% to 60%. Forecasts indicate that global supplies of major agricultural products (wheat, barley, corn, sunflower oil) will decrease by 10% to 50%.
6- Ukrainian refugee crisis: Approximately 4 million people have left Ukraine since the start of the war, according to United Nations estimates. These numbers are expected to increase as the war continues. The estimated cost of providing relief for Ukrainian refugees is around €30 billion ($32.7 billion) in the first year alone.
7- Damage to the aviation and tourism sectors: Flight bans between Russia and European countries have impacted the aviation and tourism industries. Russia is the third-largest source of tourism in Europe. Many manufacturing sectors, banks, and financial services have also been affected.
Secondly: The Russian-Ukrainian War and the Middle East Crisis
The Russian-Ukrainian war represents one of its dimensions as an expression of competition between two empires. The first is the disintegrated Soviet Union, with its successor (the Russian Federation) fearing further disintegration. The second is the receding United States, which seeks to prevent accelerated retreat and strengthen its presence in Europe.
However, there is a growing perception among political systems in the Middle East region of the decline in U.S. policy, as highlighted in Joe Biden’s strategic plan in 2021. The ongoing Ukrainian crisis deepens this decline, which will affect the unity within the region and the extent of the response to American demands regarding the Ukrainian crisis.
While the United States faces this challenge in the region, Russian policy faces a different kind of challenge, which lies in its ability to reconcile the contradictions among regional parties in the Middle East. These contradictions include the conflicts between Russian, Iranian, and Israeli interests, the Gulf-Iranian contradictions, Israeli security requirements versus Syrian security requirements, and Russian commitments towards Palestine and Israel.
In addition to these contradictions, there is a discrepancy in the map of Russian-Arab relations. Arab countries, in terms of these relations, can be divided into two groups. The first group consists of countries that are the largest importers of Russian civilian goods, including Egypt, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, and Qatar. The second group consists of countries that are the largest importers of Russian military goods, with Syria topping the list as it imports 95% of its weapons from Russia, followed by Algeria at 81%, Iraq at 44%, Egypt at 41%, and the United Arab Emirates at 3%. The volume of Russian arms sales to Arab countries between 2017 and 2021 accounted for approximately 21% of its total sales.
If the economic sanctions on Russia include civilian goods more than military goods, Russia’s need for Arab countries that import civilian goods will be greater than its need for countries that import military goods. This may affect some of Russia’s future orientations in the region.
Thirdly: The Russian-Ukrainian War and the International System
The Ukrainian crisis of 2022 emerged amidst a multifront conflict across several regions, where Russia sought to challenge the West and counter NATO’s strategy in Eastern Europe. It attempted to impose its military force to enhance its position amid a strategic repositioning by the United States. It also attempted to withdraw American military withdrawals from multiple areas. This was in contrast to China’s expansion, which has become the strategic focus of the United States and its Western allies, as it has vigorously fortified its international standing, strengthened its alliances, and laid the foundations for a new international system where it has a greater role in managing the global scene, especially considering China’s central role in Russian moves against the West.
Mearsheimer suggests that there will likely be three different realistic systems in the foreseeable future: a weak international system and two powerful limited systems, one led by China and the other led by the United States. The weak international system will primarily focus on supervising arms control agreements and effectively operating the global economy, with significant attention given to climate change-related issues. The institutions comprising the international system will facilitate inter-state cooperation.
During the coming multipolar era, two main directions will shape the emerging systems deeply:
The first direction: it assumes that if China continues to rise, it will engage in intense security competition with the United States, making it the central feature of international politics throughout the 21st century. This competition will lead to the creation of limited systems dominated by China and the United States. Military alliances will play a central role in these systems, which are currently in the process of formation, resembling the systems led by the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. However, China and the United States may have occasional reasons to cooperate on specific military issues, a pursuit that falls within the realm of the international system, as it did during the Cold War. The primary focus will be on arms control agreements, and Russia is likely to engage in this endeavor, as will China and the United States. Existing treaties and agreements dealing with nuclear proliferation are expected to remain in place since all three major powers want to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. However, the three parties will negotiate new treaties that restrict their military arsenals, similar to what the two superpowers did during the Cold War.
The second direction: it involves a massive amount of economic interaction between China and the United States, as well as between China and the United States’ allies in East Asia. Security competition between limited systems is unlikely to diminish these economic flows, as the benefits derived from continued trade are important and desirable. Even if the United States attempts to reduce its trade with China, the latter can compensate for it through trade with other partners.
Therefore, Mearsheimer argues that the future will likely resemble the situation in Europe before World War I, where there was intense security competition between the Triple Alliance (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy) and the Triple Entente (Great Britain, France, and Russia), but there was also significant economic interaction between these countries in general. The ultimate result is that competition between the limited systems led by China and the United States will involve them in complete economic and military rivalry. This is much like the limited systems dominated by Moscow and Washington during the Cold War. The significant difference here is that the international system will be deeply engaged in managing global economic competition, which was absent during the Cold War.
Fourthly: The Russian-Ukrainian War and the Future of the International Order
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed several weaknesses in the existing international system, especially in the United Nations Security Council and its role in overseeing the international order. The Ukrainian crisis has demonstrated that the veto power held by the five permanent members of the Security Council poses a significant obstacle to peace, and has been a major hindrance to the Council’s ability to fulfill its mission from the start. This is because the five countries are often divided into competing geopolitical blocs, and a member of one bloc can veto many crucial decisions. In the current conflict in Ukraine, the Russian veto power in the Security Council means that the United States and its allies can only impose sanctions through the “Coalition of the Willing.” While the large number of countries and the widespread use of the dollar-based payment system outside the regional boundaries of the United States give US-imposed sanctions significant influence, the global sanctions system imposed by the Security Council increases the undermining of the sanctioned economy.
On the other hand, if the Security Council is at the heart of the current multipolar system, it faces real challenges considering the increasing scope of threats to peace and security. These threats are not limited to traditional aggressive acts like those witnessed in Ukraine, which could escalate to nuclear exchanges, but also include other security threats posed by new technologies. Therefore, as part of proposals to change the way the Security Council operates, there is a suggestion to allow for the possibility of overriding a permanent member’s veto by adding a clause to Article 27 that would allow for a large majority representing two-thirds of the member countries to supersede the veto.
Fifthly: The Russian-Ukrainian War and the Future of International Operations
Based on the aftermath of the Russian-Ukrainian war, several future paths for international operations emerge, including:
Prioritizing US focus on China:
The war in Ukraine will change geopolitical perceptions much more than it changes the geopolitical reality. While Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, poses a short-term challenge, China will remain a major long-term threat. The threat coming from China is profound, as China is working to narrow the power gap with the United States and will attempt to act as a more responsible state even as it gets closer to Russia. China may assert that it is not a lawless state like Russia while increasing its efforts to create a sphere of influence through non-military coercion, as it currently does in practice.
While the United States must prioritize confronting China, it must also pay attention to the European front in countering Russia’s attempt to re-establish its sphere of influence through the use of force. The United States has no option but to confront Russia with force. Even Europe, which has tried to distance itself from the United States in recent years, has rediscovered the fact that American power is indispensable.
If Washington now faces Chinese and Russian challenges, it must necessarily empower its allies and renew burden-sharing arrangements in Asia and Europe. The Biden administration’s grand strategy helps accomplish both by focusing on building a networked framework of flexible partnerships, institutions, alliances, and groups of countries. The United States has developed the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance (FVEY) into the Quad security dialogue, signed the AUKUS trilateral security agreement, and strengthened bilateral military alliances as part of Biden’s networked approach in Asia.
If the Asian and European parties cannot achieve a balance in the face of China and Russia alone in the foreseeable future, they help enhance local political support for the United States to continue military commitment in the two regions. By strengthening the role of its allies and increasing their political activation, Washington can build permanent regional balances of power in Asia and Europe, supported by US military power. This may force Beijing and Moscow to adopt a more rational approach to their neighbors.
Results:
In the context of the axes covered by the study and in light of the developments, data, and contexts of the Ukrainian crisis in 2022, several key conclusions can be drawn:
First: Regarding international units, the Ukrainian crisis revealed the limits and nature of the role that major parties can play in the current system, such as the Russian Federation, which moved events and already initiated many of its transformations, both in the pre-war phase and during the war. In contrast, the role of the United States and its allies stood out, as they found a significant threat to many of their values, principles, and civilizational model in the war, and at a stage of the war where a real threat to the existence of many countries and parties in the Western camp emerged, especially in Eastern Europe, whether they joined the European Union or NATO after the disintegration and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Regarding international units in the post-Ukrainian crisis stage, it can be said that there are strong possibilities for the emergence of new countries, while some countries with their existing borders before the crisis may disappear. We may also witness a trend towards building new alliances, some of which may reach the level of integration, especially among some Eastern European countries (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) that activated Article 4 of the NATO Charter among themselves in the face of existential threats to their security and stability.
Second: Regarding the international structure, the repercussions of the crisis may lead to a radical change in the structure of the current international system. From the researcher’s perspective, it may move towards a more dominant and unilateral Western system, considering the significant damage that Russia and its allies will suffer in the current confrontation if the war in Ukraine continues. The economic sanctions imposed on Russia can bring it back to the situation it was in 1999, and the significant increase in oil and gas prices, its major sources of national income, will not help due to the sanctions imposed by countries, giant companies, and huge financial and economic institutions. The researcher does not believe that China can get directly involved in providing military support to Russia if the war extends beyond the European theater, as China is more eager to preserve its capabilities and secure its model at least temporarily to contain the direct consequences of the Ukrainian crisis.
Third: Regarding institutions, whether organizational, legal, or normative, in line with the previous observation, it can be said that the world after the Ukrainian crisis will move towards further dominance of Western institutions. This was evident in the crisis, as most political, economic, security, military, health, sports, artistic, and media institutions – to a large extent coordinating their orientations, practices, and procedures – moved against Russia, its policies, and its allies. The majority of entities, institutions, and companies affiliated with the Western system rallied against Russian policies. This included the United Nations system, NATO, the European Union, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and international financial institutions. They also sent text messages and official speeches to most political systems worldwide, stating their positions on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Fourth: Regarding international operations during and after the Ukrainian crisis, they rely on combining the utmost forms of cooperation within the Western system (units and institutions) and the utmost forms of conflict between the Western system and those within its orbit on one hand, and the Russian Federation and those within its orbit on the other hand. This duality of cooperation and conflict will continue for several years until the structure of the international order returns to a state of temporary stability before a new wave of conflict begins with the remnants of the Russian Federation or with China, which is waiting for an opportunity to leap to the top of the international system.
Fifth: Emphasis should be placed on the fact that the transformations and developments occurring in the structure of the international order have consequential positive and negative impacts on all sub-regional systems that are based on this order, including the regional system of the Middle East. This is naturally linked to the extent of liquidity and significant interplay between the international and regional levels, as well as between the international and local levels in many regional crises. It is also connected to the patterns of interactions that link the local, regional, and international actors, the nature of these alliances, their durability, and the governing frameworks and controls. This means that some regional actors may face pressures and political, economic, and security sanctions if they attempt to exceed their predetermined functional roles set by the United States and established for decades.