Russian sanctions serve as a “turning point”
This is the opinion of Mikhail Hillard, SJU senior.
The sanctions placed on Russia mark a turning point in international affairs. Russia’s removal from SWIFT has generated a reason to shift toward China’s Digital Yuan, Beijing’s attempt to break from SWIFT. Its consequences lead to a new era of geopolitical relations similar to the Cold War. Prior to the sanctions as well as Putin’s misadventure into Ukraine, a joint statement hosted in Beijing was shared between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
The 2022 statement, made available via Kremlin.ru, amounts essentially to a declaration of shared interests as well as renewed partnership.
There are a number of things the statement covers, ranging from a “no-one-size” critique of Western democratic norms and human rights conventions to more specific lines of direct partnership regarding internet governance, economic development, the arctic and climate change.
The most relevant of these principles involves the most fundamental aspect motivating this union: an opposition to the unfair American-led hegemonic world order in pursuit of geopolitical interests in a multipolar world.
Doomsday scenarios picturing this consequential partner appear to be manifesting in real time. I’m willing to assume those of you reading this article have heard of the term “New Cold War.” If you have not, it speaks for itself. While the term isn’t all that inaccurate for describing the new geopolitical situation, reality in the ground provides stark contrasts. The interdependence of today renders Cold War analogies almost benign, rather than the new geopolitic painting a framework of a second round of Cold War relations it insteads paints the risk thereof.
The new geopolitic is a lot more subversive, a lot more high stakes, and a lot more realpolitik. In domains delegated to cyberspace, economics, information, culture, diplomacy and even more unmentioned, the costs of de-entanglement make doing so unconscionable while its accompanying moral hazards that provide states like Russia with the means to fuel their expansion the more effective option. Truth be told, the world for the past 10 to 20 years has been embroiled in this new war of geopolitical relations.
A new dynamic where the bonds of interdependence slowly melt under the heat of sharp power enforced great power competition, slowly heating from one stage to another. The next stage, if relations continue as they are, will be a fully fledged Cold War as we slowly separate from the other, heating up the oven even more until kinetic/nuclear war becomes inevitable.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked the match that will begin to melt away our interdependence, for better and worse. The next stage will be dramatic escalation or a cycle of continued escalation until the inevitable transpires.
