On the 22 and 23 of May, just a few days after the conclusion of G7 in Japan, Bocconi hosted
an event co-organized by ISPI and OECD in cooperation with Think7 Japan. The event has
been shaped to engage young people, talking with them about salient economic and geopolitical
issues with top-level hosts.
A question that has been in all our minds from February 2022 is “when will the war end?”.
Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, gave four reasons
why the West should think of an exit strategy, at ISPI Future Leaders’ Global Policy Forum, a
conference held at Bocconi on 22 and 23 May. First of all, a continuing war would keep
destroying the Ukrainian state and, in a hypothetical aftermath of the war, it would be easier to
reconstruct the country if Ukraine wasn’t a failed state. Secondly, there is the threat of an
escalation, and the longer the war will last, the riskier it will become. Third, the Ukrainian conflict
is polarizing the international system with the risk of a new era of East/West conflict. Fourth, the
war supports the rise of illiberal populism and the instrumentalization of the conflict by populist
leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.
To understand the effects of the Ukrainian war on current geopolitical equilibria, it is necessary
to give some background.
The aftermath of the second world war was characterized by a West-centered international
world order with the dream of a peace guaranteed by multilateral institutions. In 1945, 50
governments met in San Francisco for a conference to start drafting the UN Charter. The joint
project has evolved in articles like Art.2 that condemns the use of force in international relations.
The idea of the time was that to prevent wars the world needed political and economic
multilateral institutions, with the aim of opening trade to prevent disagreements. A new
monetary order was negotiated under the guidance of the US in the Bretton Woods conference
and the US Marshall Plan in Europe put the basis for an economic union.
The European Union is an example of a supranational organization born to regulate the
economy with the “aim to promote peace” (Art. 3 Treaty of the European Union). NATO was
funded in 1949 and its funding treaty recalls the UN Charter idea of refraining from the use of
force in international relations and promoting peace. The EU, with the effort of promoting peace
and prosperity, concluded economic and political agreements with the neighboring countries.
This approach seemed to work until recent years and was definitely questioned last year, when
a war started in the European continent. In fact, with the return of the war, Europe has lost its
comparative advantage in the global world: strategic stability.
After the Cold War parenthesis of bipolarism, the multilateral system with its international
institutions seemed stable, at least in the West, but the international equilibria are far from static.
The multilateral vision of the world is changing and the new geopolitical situation is likely to
favor like-minded groups like BRICS or G7. On the other side, there are the African countries
that are doing the first steps towards a monetary union independent from the dollar.
Brazil, India, China, and South Africa are trying to define themselves as independent in this
scenario, deciding not to follow European sanctions on Russia. Polarization is a big issue for
multilateral institutions. The world is facing crises that require quick and highly coordinated
solutions, like the climate crisis. Polarization, with the creation of separated blocks, risks to
undermine the effectiveness of multilateral institutions.
One of the main ruptures between the West and Russia has been on the energy front, which,
together with inflation, has directly impacted European citizens’ lives in the last year. At the
conference, Thomas Gomart, Director of the French Institute of International Relations, has
noted that there is a tendency to return to geopolitical blocks in terms of energy security. In fact,
as energy security has become a priority in many countries, after the European sanctions on
Russian gas and oil, China and Iran shifted towards the solidification of agreements with Russia
while other countries of the BRICS like India abstained from sanctioning Putin.
The multilateral order, though, has not been threatened only by the Ukrainian war. In 2017,
Trump began blocking all new appointments of the appellate body of the WTO, the multilateral
institution that guarantees the liberal trading system, and launched a trade war with China that
violated WTO rules. The pandemic was a breaking point for multilateral institutions. In 2020 the
US withdrew from the WHO, cutting fundings and undermining the institution’s credibility. On the
economic side, COVID threatened multilateral trade disrupting global value chains.
On the light of this, Staffan de Mistura, UN Personal Envoy for Western Sahara and former
Italian Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was asked an inside perspective on the
question “Is the UN still fit for purpose?”.
The question addressed the issues of the veto power in the Security Council and its implications
especially on a polarized scenario. De Mistura was clear about the fact that the UN is not only
the Security Council, but it also includes a lot of humanitarian agencies that work in the field.
Today, the international panorama is in a crisis mode, there have been a lot of simultaneous
crises, including health, climate, regional conflicts, and migration. The only way to solve such
issues is multilateral cooperation on all levels, and tensions between superpowers are
dangerous. While the Security Council is stuck, the humanitarian agencies and other organs
can still fulfill the goal described by the second Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died
in Congo during a peacekeeping mission: “The United Nations was not created in order to bring
us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell”. But for how long?
I'm Chiara Todesco, I live in Milan where I'm attending the first year at Bocconi’s bachelor in International Politics and Government. I have done classical studies at liceo classico Carducci and I'm interested in humanities and politics. I like to study and deepen my knowledge about international dynamics. I'm active in my territory as “consigliera di municipio”.
