A New Iron Curtain Is Descending across the World: Are We Equal to the Challenge?

On 5 March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Churchill uttered the famous words “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” Those words ushered in the Cold War and framed the geopolitical landscape for the fifty years that followed.

Today we stand in the midst of an even greater crisis that is global and multifaceted. It has rightly prompted the atomic scientists to move the doomsday clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest we have been to Armageddon. The indicators are all around us, but over the last twelve months one stands out: the war in Ukraine. In dramatic fashion this theatre of conflict has unmasked the catastrophic implications of great power confrontation in the nuclear age.

Though official and unofficial estimates are notoriously unreliable, it is safe to say that the number of soldiers killed and injured on each side runs into the tens of thousands. On the civilian front, the most recent UN report estimates 7,031 killed and 11,327 injured. The actual figures are thought to be much higher.

Casualties aside, every facet of civilian life in Ukraine – housing, education, health, transport, culture and even sport – has been gravely damaged. As of December, the damage caused to Ukraine’s infrastructure is estimated to have reached US$138 billion. The current figure is probably in excess of $150 billion and may soon approach the $200 billion mark.

To this must be added the heavy burden the war and Western sanctions have placed on Russia’s society and economy and on European economies dependent on Russian gas and oil supplies. The environmental damage arising from military hostilities, though yet to be assessed, is likely to be massive and prolonged.

Nor can we lose sight of the direct and indirect cascading consequences on global food security, with high food and fertiliser prices compounding the plight of many developing economies already struggling to deal with the ravages of climate change.

The mayhem in Ukraine – points to our dire predicament. It may well be a taste of worse to come. We are close to the precipice and getting closer by the day.

To deal constructively with the Ukraine conflict, let alone achieve a sustainable peace in Europe and beyond, we must first come to terms with the scale of the dangers before us.

War in Ukraine, portrayed by many as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, is at its core a conflict between Russia and the United States. A new Cold War is now with us.

The Russian use of force is legally indefensible and ethically reprehensible. No amount of nationalist rhetoric, no list of grievances, no rejection of US hegemonic ambitions can justify so much killing, such large-scale human dislocation, so much destruction of essential services,

But Russia is not the only culprit.

The US security establishment is clearly bent on arresting the decline of US power and influence, whatever the cost. The objective is clear: to restore US global dominance in a ‘rules based order, where it sets the rules that others dutifully obey.

To curb Russia’s resurgence and China’s rise, US elites are busy projecting military power through a global constellation of military alliances and security partnerships, staggering military and security budgets, an expanding network of military bases and facilities spanning all continents, and a string of proxy wars.

Are US objectives achievable? Are its two adversaries willing to play by US imposed rules? Are they prepared to play second fiddle to an America intent on global supremacy?

The answer to all three questions is NO.

Neither China nor Russia is likely to be intimidated. They are laying down clear red lines. Russia will not countenance NATO membership of Ukraine. China will not accept a declaration of Taiwanese independence anchored on US military support.

The question then is: will the United States concede that it can no longer exercise exclusive control of the security landscape either in Europe or in Asia-Pacific? Is it ready to coexist with others in a multi-centred world

The answer to that question is less than reassuring.

And overarching this geopolitical confrontation is the nuclear cloud that looms larger than at any time during the Cold War.

On the Russian side:

• Within hours of Russia’s foray into Ukraine, Putin warned: “To anyone who would consider interfering from outside: if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history. All the relevant decisions have been taken.”

• Soon after, he moved to place Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert.

• In a later speech, apparently referring to recent Russian tests of hypersonic and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, he said: “We have all the tools for this, that no one else can boast of having.”

• Speaking at St Petersburg, Putin declared: “We are not threatening anyone, but everyone should know what we have and what we will use to defend our sovereignty.”

The Russian President’s language is deeply disturbing, but it is not unique to Russia.

Last year’s NATO summit adopted the New Strategic Concept which describes NATO as “a nuclear alliance” committed to “high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors”. NATO’s nuclear posture, we are told, relies on the forward deployment of US nuclear weapons in Europe.

With short-range nuclear weapons facing each other across Russia’s long border with NATO, the Ukraine conflict has a clear message: there is no margin for error.

Unless we check and then reverse the polarisation in US-Russia-China relations, we run a high risk of nuclear confrontation.

Behind each of these moves and countermoves lies the relentless logic of ‘exterminism’, a concept proposed by eminent British historian E. P. Thompson at the height of the missile crisis in the 1980s.

Thompson pointed to the militarisation of politics. As he put it,

Decisions about weaponry now impose the political choices of tomorrow. . . The pressure rises upwards from the laboratories and strategic war-games simulation rooms all the way to the US Defense Secretary and the President’s national security adviser.

Decisions taken in Washington, he went on then become the decisions of “a non-elective, quasi-military assembly: NATO”.

The parallel process we’re seeing some forty years later is eerily striking.

So, what is exterminism? It is the relentless march of a society’s politics, economy and military machine towards extermination. As Thompson put it, though the final trigger may be accidental, extermination will not be accidental. It will be “the direct consequence of prior acts of policy, of the accumulation and perfection of the means of extermination, and of the structuring of whole societies so that these are directed towards that end.”

Only one conclusion is possible: a lasting peace requires that the cancer of exterminism itself be removed. Surgery is called for – an overhaul of the structures, processes and personnel that presently shape national security policies – and for this we need to connect the energies, resources and insights of many countries, cultures and belief systems.

Such a remedy is beyond the capacity or inclination of nuclear armed states, at least for now. It is for more principled governments, international organisations and above all civil society to take the lead, and bring about the cultural shift on which structural change ultimately depends.

Non-nuclear allies of the United States, in both Europe and Asia-Pacific, are strategically well placed to take the initiative. As independent nations, they have the moral right and legal competence to review, question and, where necessary, terminate current alliance arrangements including the stationing of US military bases on their soil, interoperability of military forces, provocative joint military exercises, participation in US military expeditions, and support for US nuclear doctrines and deployments. Importantly, a more assertive stance on the part of allied nations would be conducive to a significant strengthening of the nuclear ban treaty, a more effective global response to a range of conflicts and crises, and the more effective functioning of the United Nations.

None of this will come to pass without leadership of various kinds and from many sources. It will not usually come from the political class or the mainstream media, content, as they are, to echo the dictates emanating from the corridors of influence in Washington.

Engaging a wider public is now the urgent task. We see encouraging signs on which to build: a re-energised younger generation keen to address the ravages of climate change; and all around us signs of personal and social anxiety waiting to be channelled into constructive engagement. We have evidence of a growing appetite for more holistic ways of thinking, for ways of connecting society, economy, environment, culture and politics. For this we need new skills that make for multi-issue, multi-disciplinary conversations and projects, and a new, energising language that breaks with the cliches of the past.

With the war in Ukraine as the backdrop, this is a good time to set in motion well prepared and adequately resourced small and large community dialogues – leading up to several international consultations to review what is a rapidly unfolding emergency and identify new pathways towards a just and ecologically sustainable peace.

Yes, we need a peace plan for Ukraine, but one that does more than silence the guns. It has to be a plan that begins to reframe the national and international security conversation and shifts the geopolitical landscape from strategic confrontation to co-operative coexistence.