The next few months look very uncertain. The Ukrainian conflict will enter a critical phase and will take place on three distinct but connected levels: the military, the diplomatic and the political. A war, as we know, is never just a military issue, and the current one has unleashed a planetary shock wave. The conflict naturally has a diplomatic dimension: the two “fronts” – that of the Westerners gathered behind the United States and that led by China and Russia – each try to impose their own vision. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit held in Uzbekistan in September highlighted some concern about the war in Ukraine, but also revealed unity in calling for another international order.
Paradoxically, Westerners start with a disadvantage: in this conflict they think they embody international law, but the rest of the world believes that they apply two weights and two measures. They mobilized against the Russian invasion of Ukraine even though the United States did no better in Iraq in 2003; Westerners close their eyes to human rights violations committed by their allies. Americans and Europeans multiply their gestures to convince the “global south”, as it is now called, to abandon neutrality.
Finally, the war takes place at the level of the populations, in Russia as well as within the European Union. With a central question: who will surrender first? Russia, where do the first cracks emerge after the defeat of the army in early September? Or the Europeans, mostly in solidarity with Ukraine but soon grappling with the ordeal of energy bills? Russia is betting on the tiredness or even the anger of a part of Western public opinion. So in the coming months we will see a war being fought on several levels. For the moment it is still time for escalation. as
Pierre Haski will be in Ferrara on 1 October with Axel Berkofsky, from the University of Pavia, and Maria Repnikova, a Latvian-American researcher, to talk about Asia and the war in Ukraine. Introduces and moderates Luigi Spinola of Radio3.