Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has become commonplace to say “the world has changed.” This is only partly true. As some have pointed out, it isn’t so much that the world has changed as that our perception of it has. Vladimir Putin was always a threat to the international order. It’s just that, after Feb. 24, it became impossible for the democratic world to look away from this obvious reality any longer.
Nevertheless, the policies implied by this changed understanding add up to a very changed world: rearmament on all sides; further NATO enlargement, to include Finland and Sweden; the attempted diplomatic and economic isolation of Russia, to name only the most obvious. Neither can any of this be regarded as temporary. It will have to last, not only for as long as Russia is in Ukraine, but for as long as Mr. Putin is in power. Mere withdrawal from Ukraine – to be reversed, perhaps, when the heat is off – cannot be enough for sanctions to be lifted. For the issue is not Ukraine. It is Mr. Putin.
So, permanence is one measure of how the world is changed. When Mr. Putin crossed the Ukraine frontier, he made it impossible for the democracies ever again to treat his regime as they would a normal government. But notice that choice of words: not “the world” or “the international community,” but “the democracies.” Russia rampant would be problem enough on its own. But as events have made painfully clear, the world is far from united in its resolve to hold Russia to account.
It was an important statement for Canada and other countries to walk out of last week’s meeting of the G20 when the Russian representative began to speak, but it was equally telling that so many countries stayed. It has been difficult enough rallying the rich democracies to the task at hand – to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, to stop buying Russian oil and gas, and so forth. But much of the rest of the world remains on the sidelines, if not in the camp of the autocracies.
That’s autocracies, plural. Because it isn’t just Russia that must now be regarded as a threat to the world order. China has likewise shown an increasing unwillingness to abide by international norms, as Canadians can well attest. As if the stakes in Ukraine were not already high enough, it was evident from the start that this was in some respects a dress rehearsal for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan – as Hong Kong was a rehearsal for Ukraine, and Syria a rehearsal for Hong Kong.
Rather than a world united against Russian adventurism, then, we are back to a world divided between the democracies and the autocracies, with yet a third group aligned with neither. The post-Cold War dream of a world gradually converging on democracy has been delayed, if not destroyed.
The most immediate consequence of this is for trade. The guiding assumption of the past few decades, that the democratic world could trade in good conscience with the non-democratic world, was in turn premised on two broad assumptions: one, that the dictatorships with which we did trade, while unpleasant, were not expansionist – a threat to their own people but not to others; and two, that by trading with us they might be led over time to become more like us: more liberal, more democratic, or at least not less so.
Neither of those assumptions, or should I say illusions, can be sustained any longer. Russia’s tilt to imperialism is the more overt, but China’s may surpass it in time. Each has rewarded our attempts at engagement by spiralling further into tyranny and barbarism.
Until lately I was among those arguing that trade with Russia or China was on balance in our interest – that the gains to the economy were large, while the costs to national security could be kept to a minimum. I see no reason to change my mind about the first – the evidence on the gains from trade with China, in particular, is overwhelmingly positive – but I have about the second. Because the gains from trade, it is now clear, add to the cost to national security.
Trade is mutually beneficial, as the axiom holds, or it does not take place. But as much as we might wish to enrich ourselves, we cannot afford to enrich our enemies. Neither can we afford to be beholden to them, as Europe’s abject dependence on Russian energy illustrates. So the dream of globalization is also on hold, pending some major realignment of the planetary balance of power.
It pains me to seem to line up with those who have always opposed trade with China, on simple protectionist grounds, even if they sometimes phrased this in national-security terms. But the argument that we should be less receptive to trade with China is not an argument that we should produce the same goods ourselves; Rather, it is that we should prefer to trade with countries that are aligned, at some minimal level, with our strategic interests: “friend-shoring,” as opposed to onshoring.
Indeed, if trade is to be less free between the democracies and the autocracies, it follows it should be more free among the democracies and their friends, the gains from the second offsetting the losses from the first. In the contest for global influence, moreover, we can deploy trade to our advantage, aggressively opening our markets to countries that are willing to align with us even as we are closing them to others. The democratic world collectively has a lot more to offer the developing countries than do Russia or even China.
That said, it’s unclear as yet how far we should take this. Russia has clearly placed itself out of bounds: Sanctions in its case should be as near absolute as possible. But as for China, and the others, it will depend: on how egregious their conduct is, on how broad the support for sanctions is, and on how much economic pain we are willing to bear as a result. It makes sense to reserve the worst penalties for the worst offenders. Too absolute a stance – not only punishing the perpetrators, but those who trade with them, and those who trade with them etc. – and you risk casting the whole enterprise in doubt.
So yes, the world has changed. Global free trade may no longer be our aim, but multipolarism – a world of very large trade blocs – can still be.
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Andrew Coyne