The war between Russia and Ukraine does not only concern the two opponents, it is not a problem between the aggressor and the attacked. It’s not just the war between Putin and the West, between the Kremlin and the Atlantic Alliance.
It is perhaps the first round of the struggle to build the new world order, the 2.0. We are witnessing live the dispute over the new rules that will regulate the behavior between states and their hierarchy in the near future.
Because the truth is that we are facing an event that never happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are not talking about the war between a superpower, albeit a very bad one like Russia, and a much weaker sovereign state. There had already been upheavals of this kind, conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Georgia and in Ukraine itself.
But today we experience something different. It is a clash between the sides taking place on all fronts, military, diplomatic, economic, financial, communicative and involving the whole world. And it is, even if it doesn’t appear, the exact manifestation of an asymmetric war, a war in all areas of the world system. War without borders, which we hope will not become total. War in which each contender chooses terrain and methods of attack according to their strengths and the enemy’s weaknesses.
Because NATO is at war with Russia, it is not fighting directly, but is arming Ukraine and has launched an economic war against Moscow.
World War II, albeit limited. There are the NATO states, but Belarus and China are involved, there are the states that abstained from the UN General Assembly, India, the behavior of Saudi Arabia.
The real war, the one in which people die and primarily those who have nothing to do with it, that takes place on the battlefields, takes place in Ukraine between two armies and is the one that makes the news. Here the former Red Army dictates the rules, iron and meat the laws. The numbers, the history, the tradition are no joke. Let’s not be fooled by the proclamations, by the pictures of the Russian convoys mired in the mud. The siege and bombing strategy will prevail sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.
Then there is the economic war, that of the sanctions that the West has unleashed to strangle Putin, to hit the circle of oligarchs, to drain the water from the tank in which he is swimming and hoping for a coup.
And finally, poorly illustrated to public opinion, what appears to be the real game. It should be made clear that this is not just about the NATObacked relations between Russia and Ukraine. We talk about the struggle for control of hoarding and the now hegemonic role of the dollar as a currency.
The thing in its brutality is simple. In Agrifood, a journal specializing in agriculture, I read: “Russia, the world’s largest exporter of fertilizers, gas and wheat, has invaded Ukraine, a country that is the world’s third largest exporter of wheat. Notably, Kyiv is the EU’s fourthlargest external food supplier, with roughly a quarter of its grain and vegetable oil imports, including nearly half its corn, actually coming from Ukraine. The EU is particularly dependent on Kyiv for a number of products: sunflower oil (88%), rapeseed (41%) and honey (26%). On the other hand, imported corn is essential for feeding pig and chicken farms on the continent. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the two former Soviet republics together provide about 23% of world exports of this grain. According to other calculations, the combined percentage would be closer to 30%.
Impressive numbers that are reminiscent of the consequences of the rise in food prices during the Maghreb food crisis in 2008. “All of this hits the poorest and sows the seeds of political instability and unrest around the world,” said UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres. In fact, 45 African countries import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, and 18 of them, including Egypt, Congo, Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, import at least 50%.
In terms of oil, Russia is the world’s thirdlargest producer at 11.3 million barrels per day, after the United States and Saudi Arabia. And Europe is the top customer of Russian crude, with purchases accounting for 60% of total exports, with Italy importing 13% of its needs.
And finally the currency war, the game of games, with the attack on the hegemony of the dollar and the dedollarization of trade centered on the RussoChinese relationship. But even more striking is the behavior of Saudi Arabia, despite having had an iron pact with Washington since 1945. First, Riyadh refused to comply with American requests to pump oil to lower the price of crude oil, which had been skyrocketed by the war. and then accepted Chinese currency instead of the dollar when selling oil to Beijing. But to underline the distance to Riyadh, there is also the purchase of twelve Chinese L5 trainers.
The rush to list the yuan as a strong currency has only just begun, with central bank reserves in Chinese currency only 2.7% versus 59.1% in dollars and 20.5% in euros, while the same Central Bank of Russia 32.3% in euros, 21.7% in gold, 16.4% in dollars and 13.1% in yuan. But the freeze on central bank reserves in Moscow itself has only accelerated the move away from the dollar.
For these reasons, the war launched by Putin is the first war of the 21st century to shape the new world order. Game in which the competitors do not have the same weapons and the interdependencies are stronger than it seems, starting with the United States itself, a country with declining industry, a national debt of 28.5 trillion dollars, of which about 1, 1 trillion is held by China, equal to 123% of GDP in 2021, and the dollar as the world reference currency is under attack.
In an integrated global economy, having the world’s first army and being independent of Russian gas is not enough to dictate one’s terms. As proof, just look at how not only Arabia but also India, Mexico and Israel have behaved in the face of sanctions. Certainly not all countries are enemies of the United States.
American unipolarity is gone forever. Sooner or later the war in Ukraine will end with an agreement. In order for it to last, in addition to border and security issues, all major powers must sit at a peace table alongside the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in order to design a new Yalta, a new Bretton Woods, a new role for the United States, a UN rethought with a Security Council. Because Putin will pass, but Russia, China, India are destined to stay and count more and more.
And from now on, world leaders, including very small Italy, must discuss the general terms of peace in order to design a new world order.
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