EGIC: Are we sleep walking into a Cold War 2.0?

 ROME – As tensions continue to soar in international political community, the EGIC held their monthly conference to discuss Expanding the Nuclear Family: Proliferation, Alliances & War, in what was a timely held discussion. 

 While this week world leaders attempt to bring peace to one of the most violent and internationally contentious conflicts that the Middle East has seen in recent years, one has to wonder whether installing Tony Blair as the new premier in Palestine is set to bring peace in our time or something a little more enduring. As conflicts rage on in every corner of the earth, it is hard to imagine that history ever truly “ended” after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War was declared over, as Francis Fukuyama once famously suggested. After the creation and utilisation of nuclear warheads during WWII, which brought such profound and continually horrifying destruction to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the idea that they could be used again and to destroy entire countries left the word with baited breath as the USSR and USA raced to arm themselves. Decades later, after the official end of the Cold War, it would appear that a new Cold War or perhaps a continuation of the old one is on the horizon and at the EGIC experts including academics, ambassadors and former government advisors grappled with what that could mean for us. 

 Can capitalism save us? 

 One of the arguments raised was the for the co-existence and dependence of capitalism and peace on one another. When two communities are closely tied by trade and the necessity of it to both survive and thrive fiscally, it becomes far too financially risky to go to war with one another thus, creating a form of peace and stability. If we multiply and diversify this by many countries, it ought to become an even more stable system of interdependence, creating a certain level of peace. This theory is sometimes characterised as the McDonald’s theory, in that, countries where McDonald’s, the epitome of American-led capitalism, has a presence, do not go to war with other countries where McDonald’s has a presence, as it would seemingly be against their interests. Of course, McDonald’s is the high-street facing example that can easily be used as a symbol of this but it typically this interdependence on other countries for energy and serious industry, where this idea becomes important. Thus, the more self-sufficient a country is, the more it will have the ability to get hostile with its neighbours, should it so choose to, for it then has nothing, such as trade stopping it. This is what has been seen in recent years in particular, with Russia, who has been pushed further and further out from the international community, blocked from join NATO and finally sanctioned during the initial invasion of Ukraine. This isolation, it may seem, has only further emboldened Russia, who is largely self-sufficient. 

 This has also brought, for want of a better term, new players into the game on an international level with China, who has become a major player in world-political affairs, as well as the gulf-countries, who would be able to supply natural gas and oils in the absence of Russian ones and are working increasingly closely with western nations. 

 Many nations have also been building up their nuclear arms programs, without the consent of the international community, as now India, Pakistan, North Korea and potentially Israel and Iran, who have not declared whether they have nuclear programs or not publicly, have nuclear weapons, expanding tensions from West vs East to India and Pakistan and Israel and Iran who are in active conflict with each other, respectively. This certainly would complicated matters in the event of a new Cold War and fundamentally change the playing field. 

   What went wrong after the first Cold War:

 Some argued that severe mistakes were made following 2009, when nuclear powers originally entered into talks about nuclear disarmament. None of the big five nuclear powers (US, Russia, China, UK and France) were willing to give them up. However, as the ambassador pointed out, despite tensions being noted in the media, the Cold War period was actually one of the longest periods in European history without a single physical battle, ironically creating one of the longest periods of peace in European history. And this truly is the meaning of peace in the traditional pax romana sense, however, it is less holding hands and over-coming the human desire to conquer and destroy others, and more having such a hold over your enemy that they simply cannot contest you. This is the only condition in which peace can exist, a sharp contrast to the peace “provided” by trade and capitalism. 

 Something has shifted in recent years, however, in particular with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, who is a nuclear power, has been invading Ukraine using more traditional war tactics, leaving the international community at a loss as to how to intervene. Since the nuclear threat is too heavy handed, it has not been entirely clear as to where we can head from here and how to intervene militaristically. 

 What happened to the promised protection from Britain and France?

Both Britain and France promised their warheads to protect the integrity of the international community back when they remained world-super powers but as both countries are laden with domestic strife, world leaders worry that they would not have the resources nor desire to come to the aid of other nations. They have both already failed to step-in and fulfil this role of ‘international policing’ when chemical weapons were being used in Syria and so, who would suppose that they would be willing to help in other moments of crisis. 

 Did the Cold War really end? 

More optimistically, if one may be permitted to use the word in a discussion regarding nuclear Armageddon, this brink of a Cold War 2.0, in which we seem to find ourselves simply appears to be the continuation of the previous one, just with more nations involved and an ever-changing battle-field. Thus, we are not truly embarking into the unknown and there is so much that we can and should learn from history. In fact, increasingly we have seen new world powers, such as the gulf-countries, come to the aid of the international community by creating a neutral-spaces for negotiating peace and supporting the west in its time of need, which is something that could not have been imagined 33 years ago during the end of the first iteration of the conflict. 

 This new age, of course, brings with it some uncertainties and new threats, such as cyber-attacks and the precision of drone striking but as for arms races and nuclear Armageddon, it would appear that things are quiet on that front for now and could remain so for a while longer. 

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