Oleg Yanovsky

Opinion | Ukraine war will force the West to accept the liberal order is gone for good

An increasingly powerful Global South demands peace – and the global system has moved too far from the pre-war status quo to simply revert back

But first, three factors must be reconciled: the West’s desire to turn back time, the rise of a new arbiter – China – and the exhaustion of warmongers

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Oleg Yanovsky

Published: 8:15am, 15 Aug 2023

The conflict in Ukraine is burning out. Despite the US sending over US$75 billion – or 0.33 per cent of its gross domestic product – to Ukraine since the war began, convincing allies such as Germany to hand over advanced armour, and submitting Russia to unprecedented economic sanctions, the front line has not moved significantly in months.

Russian forces have repelled waves of Nato-trained battalions. And, as videos of burning Leopard tanks and Bradley vehicles pile up, the global media is coming to grips with a slipping narrative. This is not a bad thing. Political settlement has gone from being a fantasy to an inevitability.

A similarly bloody and sectarian conflict, the Thirty Years’ War, exhausted Europe into accepting the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. That treaty led to today’s concept of the nation-state. It changed the architecture of international relations.

The conflict in Ukraine is at a similarly pivotal point. The Global South is gaining economic and political weight, increasingly joining the world’s superpowers at the negotiating table. The coming settlement promises to be just as momentous, a shift in the architecture of international relations of the same magnitude as the Westphalian pact.

The Ukraine war has affected countries across the world. From spiking energy prices to the looming threat of famine in Africa, the global system has moved too far from the pre-war status quo to simply fall back into it.

But there are three factors that must be reconciled before Westphalia 2.0 can be achieved, namely the West’s desire to turn back time, the rise of a new arbiter and the exhaustion of warmongers and hawks.