Great is the disorder under the western sky. The last few days have brought us two cases of clashes between friends, allies, or perceived ones.
There was an announcement by the Polish prime minister – later revoked – that Warsaw would no longer supply weapons to Ukraine to punish it for grain exports that hurt Polish farmers.
Bad stories that could signal the beginning of a period dominated by centrifugal forces capable of dismantling the united front of democracies that is the cornerstone of international alliances to contain the advance of autocracies. I don’t want to make overly mechanical connections, but I also see signs of what could happen if America became entangled in itself.
Ukraine in the European Union, here’s a foretaste…
The Polish-Ukrainian problem is alarming because of its disproportion. The Warsaw government has always said that the future of freedom and the vital interests of the West are at stake in the Ukraine war. In accordance with this declaration, Poland has done its utmost to provide assistance to Ukraine: both humanitarian assistance, in particular the reception of refugees; both military. Is it possible that this all fails because the farmers’ lobby is hurt by competition from Ukrainian wheat? In fact, the disparity seemed absurd even to the Polish governments, which regretted the initial threat and announced the start of grain negotiations with Kiev.
The narrow escape forces us to think about the problems that will arise if Ukraine joins the European Union. The cost of this expansion, while important for geopolitical reasons, will be significant. Ukraine is a very large, populous and poor country. First of all, there are the costs of reconstruction. Then other problems will arise.
Its huge agriculture, integrated into Europe’s, will absorb resources that today benefit many other farming lobbies, especially the French one. The Community agricultural policy remains a welfare monster that harms consumers, but it has always been essential to ensure the consensus of some key voters. The Ukrainian shock threatens to have a destabilizing effect. The same applies to the structural funds for the less developed regions of the Union, which today flow mainly to our south, as well as to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Poland and other eastern countries. Tomorrow they will have to make cuts to make room for Ukraine, the poorest of all (even more so after the destruction of the war).
Who will prevent these disputes from paralyzing the European Union of the future and making it even more disunited and therefore more powerless than the current one? In order to prevent disintegration, Germany and America usually played an important role. Today the credibility of the German leadership is at an all-time low. As for America, a president who is too old but has a good foreign policy team could give way to a neo-isolationist. In this case, a cohesive and disciplining influence is missing.
We need India whether we like it or not
Some similar considerations can also be made about the diplomatic crisis between Canada and India. Prime Minister Trudeau has reasons to cut corners if the Delhi government actually staged an assassination attempt on Canadian soil. It doesn’t matter whether it was a terrorist who fell victim to the blows of the murderers. We usually associate such operations with Putin, not the leader of the world’s largest democracy. Furthermore, this definition of India as the “largest democracy in the world” is now disputed by many parties (including Corriere readers).
There has been a campaign against Narendra Modi for many years, calling him a semi-fascist because of his strong Hindu identity and some policies considered discriminatory against the Muslim minority. However, the decisive factor in the election campaign against Modi was the role of a strongly ideological Indian intellectual elite, often associated with the Congress Party of the Gandhi dynasty and mired in corruption. I think that describing India as an authoritarian regime is a mistake, especially a factual one. The Indian Republic has free elections, a strong opposition press, an independent judicial system inspired by the English tradition and, finally, federalism that prevents excessive concentration of power in the central government.
We have and will increasingly need India because it is the most pro-Western superpower in the global Greater South and is essential to containing Chinese expansionism. But if Modi somehow authorized an assassin in Canada, that is very serious. In this case, too, one can imagine that the Biden administration played a valuable mediating role in preventing the diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and Delhi from escalating with incurable consequences.
Who will hold together such a heterogeneous coalition tomorrow?