From Anna Karenina to Eurasia: The Ukraine War Is a Contest Over the New World OrderA conversation with Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen was the first person that I spoke to after I returned to the UK from my family summer holiday in Canada. We recorded a long conversation about his book, The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order. I had just finished it on the trip, alongside Anna Karenina. The pairing was accidental but useful. Tolstoy’s Russia is a country watching the West industrialise and trying to work out what liberalism, modernity and power actually mean. Diesen’s book is about the same problem, four centuries later. The Peacemonger is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The core argument in Glenn’s book is that the Ukraine war is not primarily about Ukraine. It is the most violent _expression_ of a larger transition. Five centuries of Western maritime hegemony—built on financial power, technological advancement, and control of maritime trade routes—has ended. A multipolar system is struggling to be born. The interregnum, as Gramsci put it, is the time of monsters. The modern order Glenn describes begins with Westphalia in 1648. After the Thirty Years’ War it became clear that no single power could impose a universal religious or political hegemony on Europe. The solution was sovereign states, a balance of power, and an attempt to manage security as something indivisible rather than zero-sum. That settlement was confined to Europe’s imperial powers. That didn’t stop them being imperialist Adam Smith saw the contradiction early: connecting the world through the discoveries of the Americas and the East Indies was a civilisational achievement, but the concentration of power in Europe made the resulting trade relationships predatory. Sovereign equality in Europe still meant sovereign inequality in Europe’s relations with the wider world. Greater economic equality would, Smith thought, eventually change the character of connectivity. That day has arrived. In the unipolar ‘moment’ after 1991, the United States discarded Westphalian restraint. Rather, there was a liberal rush to promote universal values—democracy, human rights, the “responsibility to protect”—that justified limited sovereignty for others and full sovereignty for the western hegemon. NATO expansion was the military _expression_ of that claim. The inclusive architecture sketched in the Charter of Paris and institutionalised in the OSCE was set aside. Dividing lines moved east. Jack Matlock, George Kennan, William Perry and dozens of other senior figures warned that this would restart the logic of the Cold War. They were ignored because the alternative—accepting a genuine balance of power—would have constrained American freedom of action. The result is the present war in Ukraine, the place where the unipolar project tried to finish the job: weaken Russia, keep the United States anchored in Europe, and free Washington to concentrate on China. A Russian victory which appears inevitable, Glenn argues, does the opposite. It confirms that liberal hegemony cannot be restored and that the largest power in the emerging system, China, is non-Western. That is the civilisational shift with huge consequences for the global balance of political, military and economic power. As I often repeat, wars are won by economies, not armies. Europe is fighting to the last Ukrainian and the last euro. Russia has the industrial depth and the energy surplus to face down liberal expansionism through Ukraine (which is very far from being liberal). Point out that western policy is damaging and self-defeating and you are “pro-Russian.” Point out that sanctions failed to collapse the Russian economy and you are undermining resolve. The rest of the world hasn’t bought into project Ukraine. Kishore Mahbubani’s observation still stands: the great majority of humanity lives in countries that declined to sanction Russia. They did not do so out of affection for Moscow. They did so because they do not want a restored 1990s unipolarity and the hubris that would accompany it. BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have waiting lists for a reason. Hegemonic power, Glenn writes, rests on three pillars: finance, technology and connectivity. China now leads in many of the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. Russia and China are building land and maritime corridors that reduce dependence on Western chokepoints. Both are constructing payment systems and trading arrangements that chip away at dollar and SWIFT dominance. They are copying the formula that once made Britain and then America dominant, this time from a continental rather than purely maritime base. And with an industrial base that the west cannot match. Europe’s response has been the opposite of adjustment. Cheap Russian energy was recast as an “addiction.” Diversified supply that had kept prices low in 2014–16 was dismantled in favour of more expensive American LNG. The result is deindustrialisation at home and higher prices for Russian oil sold to India and others. Energy security used to mean reliable, affordable supply from as many sources as possible. It now means political alignment with Washington, even when that alignment raises costs and reduces leverage over Greenland, tariffs, or anything else. A Eurasian order, if it consolidates, will not be a Chinese replica of American hegemony. The states driving it talk in Westphalian terms: distinctive civilisations, sovereign equality, no universal template imposed from one centre. Xi’s “flowery meadow” metaphor and Russia’s own multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state are versions of the same idea. Gorbachev’s “common European home with many rooms” was an early, aborted attempt at the same logic. Liberalism’s internal contradiction makes the transition to a new world order harder. It proclaims tolerance for different conceptions of the good life while insisting there is a single righteous path that everyone must eventually walk. Applied internationally, that becomes the right to intervene in other countries’ internal affairs. Applied domestically, it becomes a narrowing of permitted disagreement and internal repression of free speech. The same pattern appears in energy policy, gender and sexual identity, immigration and war. Principles that cannot be contested cease to be liberal. Europe still has choices, though. Technological cooperation with the East, new transport corridors, a financial posture that is not purely Atlantic, and an energy mix that treats price and reliability as features rather than moral failings. However, all of those options require seismic policy change in western capitals requiring governments to start from their own interests rather than moral posturing (a much harder leap than you can imagine). This seems unlikely anytime soon. The western political class remains trapped in the 1990s, trying to drag the United States back onto the continent through cloying subservience and vassalage. I will see Glenn in person at the end of the month. His book - The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order - is not really about the Ukraine war. The war is merely a clouded Overton window that western policy makers peer through anxiously. The uncomfortable truth is that we need a better relationship with Russia; it’s just that no one can see it. Anyone who wants to understand why the present moment feels so chaotic should read Glenn’s book. The old world is dying. The new one has not been born. The monsters are already here, in Ukraine, on our streets, sitting in our parliaments and mainstream newspapers. The transition will continue to be messy and violent. You can watch the full conversation though the video link below. :Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace. You're currently a free subscriber to The Peacemonger. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |