By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Dec 17 2024 – The new geopolitics after the first Cold War undermines peace, sustainability, and human development. Hegemonic priorities continue to threaten humanity’s well-being and prospects for progress.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
End of first Cold War
The end of the first Cold War has been interpreted in various ways, most commonly as a US triumph. Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the ‘end of history’ with the victory of capitalism and liberal democracy.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and allied regimes, the US seemed unchallenged and unchallengeable in the new ‘unipolar’ world. The influential US journal Foreign Affairs termed ensuing US foreign policy ‘sovereigntist’.
But the new order also triggered fresh discontent. Caricaturing cultural differences, Samuel Huntington blamed a ‘clash of civilisations’. His contrived cultural categories serve a new ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy.
Today’s geopolitics often associates geographic and cultural differences with supposed ideological, systemic and other political divides. Such purported fault lines have also fed ‘identity politics’.
The new Cold War is hot and bloody in parts of the world, sometimes spreading quickly. As bellicosity is increasingly normalised, hostilities have grown dangerously.
Economic liberalisation, including globalisation, has been unevenly reversed since the turn of the century. Meanwhile, financialization has undermined the real economy, especially industry.
The G20 finance ministers, representing the world’s twenty largest economies, including several from the Global South, began meeting after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
The G20 began meeting at the heads of government level following the 2008 global financial crisis, which was seen as a G7 failure. However, the G20’s relevance has declined again as the North reasserted G7 centrality with the new Cold War.
NATO rules
The ostensible raison d’être of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has gone with the end of the first Cold War and the Soviet Union.
The faces of Western powers have also changed. For example, the G5 grew to become the G7 in 1976. US infatuation with the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin even brought it into the G8 for some years!
Following the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the sovereigntist Wolfowitz doctrine of 2007 redefined its foreign policy priorities to strengthen NATO and start a new Cold War. NATO mobilisation of Europe – behind the US against Russia – now supports Israel targeting China, Iran and others.
Violating the UN Charter, the 2022 Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine united and strengthened NATO and Europe behind the US. Despite earlier tensions across the north Atlantic, Europe rallied behind Biden against Russia despite its high costs.
International law has also not stopped NATO expansion east to the Russian border. The US unilaterally defines new international norms, often ignoring others, even allies. But Trump’s re-election has raised ‘centrist’ European apprehensions.
Developing countries were often forced to take sides in the first Cold War, ostensibly waged on political and ideological grounds. With mixed economies now ubiquitous, the new Cold War is certainly not over capitalism.
Instead, rivalrous capitalist variants shape the new geoeconomics as state variations underlie geopolitics. Authoritarianism, communist parties and other liberal dirty words are often invoked for effect.
New Europe
Despite her controversial track record during her first term as the European Commission (EC) president, Ursula von der Leyen is now more powerful and belligerent in her second term.
She quickly replaced Joseph Borrell, her previous EC Vice President and High Representative in charge of international relations. Borrell described Europe as a garden that the Global South, the surrounding jungle, wants to invade.
For Borrell, Europe cannot wait for the jungle to invade. Instead, it must pre-emptively attack the jungle to contain the threat. Since the first Cold War, NATO has made more, mainly illegal military interventions, increasingly outside Europe!
The US, UK, German, French and Australian navies are now in the South China Sea despite the 1973 ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) commitment to a ZOPFAN (zone of peace, freedom and neutrality) and no request from any government in the region.
Cold War nostalgia
The first Cold War also saw bloody wars involving alleged ‘proxies’ in southwestern Africa, Central America, and elsewhere. Yet, despite often severe Cold War hostilities, there were also rare instances of cooperation.
In 1979, the Soviet Union challenged the US to eradicate smallpox within a decade. US President Jimmy Carter accepted the challenge. In less than ten years, smallpox was eradicated worldwide, underscoring the benefits of cooperation.
Official development assistance (ODA) currently amounts to around 0.3% of rich countries’ national incomes. This is less than half the 0.7% promised by wealthy nations at the UN in 1970.
The end of the first Cold War led to ODA cuts. Levels now are below those after Thatcher and Reagan were in power in the 1980s. Trump’s views and famed ‘transactional approach’ to international relations are expected to cut aid further.
The economic case against the second Cold War is clear. Instead of devoting more to sustainable development, scarce resources go to military spending and related ‘strategic’ priorities.
IPS UN Bureau
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