NP View: Suddenly, it’s a 1914 kind of world

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine punctuated the fact that western governments have been living in a fantasy world for the last 20 years. It was a fantasy where peace, between the great powers at least, would always be the norm, where international institutions would force tyrannies to democratize and wealth generation was an afterthought to the indulgences of green-obsessed politicians. The world hasn’t so much changed, as we are now being forced to accept that it hasn’t changed as much as we’d hoped. This is what the Post’s New World Disorder series will be exploring.

We are beset by old problems: Threats from Russia and China come at a time when the West is ill prepared — Canada and many European countries have starved their militaries of resources for decades; in the United States, military spending has continued to increase, but its troop strength has diminished, especially in Europe. An energy crisis overseas is on the cusp of morphing into a full-blown disaster, a direct result of political choices. Globalization has been in retreat, most clearly illustrated by sluggish and sometimes declining international trade. And a spectre from the 1970s and ’80s, in the form of high inflation, has returned to wipe away whatever wage gains regular people had enjoyed in recent years. Boring predictability has been replaced with persistent anxiety.

The world also faces newer problems — or, rather, a new spin on an old challenge: the state of American democracy. Refusing to accept the results of elections, despite the absence of widespread fraud or any evidence of meddling, is now common among both Republicans and Democrats. The falsehoods that former president Donald Trump told his followers about a stolen election in 2020, which then led to a riot on Capitol Hill, is the worst and most recent example, but this has been brewing for some time.

As the Americans concern themselves with sorting out their internal problems, what was once a superpower that almost single-handedly underpinned global stability through the reach and force of its military and economic prowess may become a less reliable partner. As the U.S. looks inward, Canada and our European allies will have little choice but to take threats much more seriously than we have in the past.

The relative peace and prosperity that came in the aftermath of the Second World War was taken for granted, but then, like now, not all was what it seemed. The U.S. did not enter into direct conflict with the Soviet Union or with China, but the era was was marked by multiple proxy wars, most dangerously in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The parallels with Ukraine are not exact, but it does show the foolishness of behaving as if an authoritarian Russia would ever become a peaceful and reliable neighbour.

The ’70s, as now, were characterized by inflation and an energy crisis. It was also the first time the Americans began retreating from global leadership in a major way, by moving off the gold standard that the world had relied upon.

When the Cold War ended, a new era was heralded, but the world was not so different, as we are now painfully aware. The threat of nuclear war subsided in the public mind, but we now have a Russian government that is unafraid of threatening armageddon and rogue nuclear powers — like North Korea, and likely one day soon, Iran — will make us rethink traditional deterrence strategies. The decline of U.S. influence makes the world undoubtedly less safe and less stable. Governments remained aware of the dangers that persisted, but made the deliberate choice to ignore reality.

1. Brian Lee Crowley: Canada has devolved into a childish country incapable of solving big problems

2. How a faster-than-expected shrinking population could shake China — and the world

It had been apparent for years that foreign investment and international trade did not force China to become a less brutal, less authoritarian regime. But it was only in recent months and years that liberal democratic governments began reckoning with the reality that doing business with China ensured it would be run not by a western-style democracy, but by an increasingly wealthy dictatorship.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made no secret about his desire to reabsorb Ukraine. He said so repeatedly and over decades, just as western countries were putting fewer and fewer resources into their own armed forces.

Similarly, Germany was warned repeatedly by its neighbours not to become overly reliant on Russian natural gas. German leaders ignored that advice and shut down the country’s nuclear and coal plants anyway. For those who dismissed Putin’s rhetoric as just talk, the 2014 war in Ukraine should have been a major wake-up call.

Pointing out that the threats from China and Russia had been there all along is not Monday morning quarterbacking, because their intentions were obvious and made plain. Yet anyone who said so was often labelled an unsophisticated warmonger, or a racist.

In her 2013 history of the events that led to the First World War, “The War that Ended Peace,” Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan described a world at the beginning of the 20th century that wasn’t all that dissimilar from ours today.

The most brutal wars were decades in the past and Europe was enjoying a period of prosperity, which masked emerging and dangerous cracks. Great Britain’s leadership as the dominant world power was in decline, while another power, Germany, was ascendant. Military and economic competition was a constant, and leaders were making foolish mistakes. Prideful autocrats demanded respect. And yet, “Very little in history is inevitable,” MacMillan wrote. “Europe did not have to go to war in 1914.”

May our leaders make better choices than those of the past.

National Post

The Post’s New World Disorder series explores the recent shifts in geopolitics and what must be done to adapt. 

– Brian Lee Crowley: Canada has devolved into a childish country incapable of solving big problems

– How a faster-than-expected shrinking population could shake China — and the world