A new world order

As the 1000th day of war in Ukraine approaches, their Lordships' House debated the issues, including the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and a recalibration of international power dynamics.

In an excellent, wide-ranging, well-informed debate, some thirty-plus peers rose to speak. A lot of attention, inevitably, was focused on the aggressor, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. However, Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) warned that the West should never underestimate Russia's fear of an external threat posed by NATO's proximity to its borders. Whether this is a fear genuinely shared by Putin or cynically exploited by him in order to keep his people complaisant remains unclear.

Lord Craig of Radley, a Crossbench (ie independent) peer, also spoke about the perception of a threat from NATO by Russia. He likened this to a secret "Article 5A" of the North Atlantic Treaty. Article 5 famously reads 'an attack on one is an attack on all' but Russia may fear 'an attack by one is an attack by all', which puts Russia's antagonism in an entirely new and more understandable light

Lord Howell of Guildford (Con) spoke of Presidents Putin and Xi "hoovering up Commonwealth countries" in Africa, a view echoed by Lord Robathan (Con) who said this was "the most dangerous time since the Cuban Missile Crisis". In his opinion China will constrain Putin from exercising the nuclear option in response to NATO but he also alluded to the coincidence of the BRICS meeting in Kazan and CHOGM in Samoa, with some Commonwealth leaders, notably of India and South Africa, choosing to attend the former rather than the latter forum.

Lord Balfe (Con) also touched on this issue saying, bluntly, that BRICS matters to them and CHOGM doesn't. Putin's aspiration to set up an alternative international payment system via BRICS as a challenge to the preeminence of US dollar transactions is, he claimed, the result. He pointed out, as did other peers, that the Russian war economy is booming and, just as Napoleon and Hitler failed to conquer Russia, the West won't either. He said there is no such thing as victory in this context.

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) are but two of many overlapping international groupings, including NATO, the UN (United Nations), the Quad (United States, India, Japan, Australia), AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States) and G20 - and not forgetting the EU (European Union). The attendance at the BRICS meeting of António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, has prompted much comment and some criticism but it seems like a pragmatic exercise of realpolitik in a rapidly-evolving international networking ecosystem.

The key question is, does this make the world a more or less safe place? Being temperamentally a glass-half-full type of person I tend towards the former. Indisputably, we are living at a dangerously febrile moment in world history; arguably, as the noble Lord Robathan claimed, the most serious since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Israel has just launched a retaliatory bombing raid on Iran, the wider Middle-East is in turmoil, North Korea is apparently making troops available to Putin in his fight against Ukraine, China is sabre-rattling against Taiwan and tensions are ratcheting-up worldwide as a result.

And yet, and yet... The world is still trading and its leaders are still talking, and in a multiplicity of fora. This surely gives cause for hope? Churchill said "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war" (recycled later by Harold Macmillan as "jaw jaw is better than war war") which seems to be what is going on right now behind the fog of war. 

But the elephant in every conference and breakout room will inevitably be what happens in the US elections in ten days' time, the outcome of which, be it a Trump or Harris Presidency, is bound to have a profound impact on the current global status quo - a point eloquently made by Lord Whitty (Lab) in the Lords debate.

Geopolitically, we live in 'interesting times', but hopefully not apocalyptic ones.

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