Daily Times

The post-WW 11 global order, largely underwritten by the US and its victorious allies, is under tremendous strain. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineties, the world entered a new unipolar era with the US as the only superpower. But that didn’t last and now, the Western alliance system is in some disarray, especially with Donald Trump as US President.

I will come to that later, but first some background of the thirtieth year of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall, which divided eastern and western parts of Germany, became symbolically and, in reality, the boundary line of sorts between the two contending blocs.

Therefore, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and with it, the Soviet control of the eastern block collapsed, it was heralded in the West as the victory of the US-led free world.

Indeed, it was even dubbed the “End of History: by the American political philosopher, Francis Fukuyama.

He argued that liberal democracy may constitute “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution [and the] final form of human government,” and as such, constituted the “end of history.” Of course, Fujiyama was too hasty in his conclusion and he didn’t subscribe to this view later.

It was hoped and understood that in due course, Russia and the former Soviet-controlled eastern states, now independent countries, would transition into liberal-capitalist democratic countries.

This would, in turn, eventually lead to the dissolution of the Western NATO alliance system, which had been put together to deal with any military threat from the Soviet-sponsored Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact had died with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The transition from the Soviet Union into a single Russian state, with its former bloc partners becoming independent, created confusion and uncertainty. Russia seemed neither here nor there, with its erratic and drunken president, Boris Yeltsin, at times, not knowing the state of his government and the country.

Towards the end, Yeltsin had appointed Vladimir Putin as the country’s prime minister. After Yeltsin’s death, Putin became president in his right and that changed things fundamentally.

Putin regarded the collapse of the Soviet Union as a major geopolitical tragedy and wanted to rebuild Russia’s role as a global power. He wasn’t keen to be assigned a designated role for Russia by the new US-led global system.

At the same time, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the politically victorious Western countries had not gotten over the Soviet’s suspicion of the Russian state, especially after Putin started to assert its independent role, which was, increasingly, at odds with the US-projected unipolar world.

With his strong nationalist profile, Putin felt that, despite the end of the Cold War, Western military and political institutions, like NATO and the European Union, seemed to be encircling Russia. First, the former bloc members of the Soviet Union, now independent states, were being enlisted as new members of the European Union and NATO, even after the Warsaw Pact had been wound up.

Secondly, some of these former Soviet bloc members were experiencing popular political movements designed to overthrow regimes that might still be friendly with Russia and replace them with Western-friendly democratic governments.

One such state was Ukraine, which had a Russian-friendly government. It wasn’t keen, under its then regime, to become part of the Western bloc. The regime fell when there was a popular movement, inspired by the US.

This made Putin quite nervous about Russia’s security as Ukraine controlled Crimea, which had a strong Russian naval base.

Fearing the loss of its naval base in Crimea and continued expansion of NATO, Russia retook Crimea, thus, setting forth a new cold war of sorts between US-led Western allies and Putin-led Russia.

Russia’s occupation of Crimea led to Western economic sanctions, which is hurting its economy. And the crisis is unresolved, with Russia supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.

So far, Russia’s hope that Trump presidency would create a more congenial atmosphere to resolve the Ukraine crisis and lift sanctions has not materialised.

And this despite the fact that Russia is said to have helped Trump get elected, for instance, by hacking and making available to WikiLeaks a trove of emails about Hillary Clinton during the US presidential election.

Trump certainly is well disposed to Putin but, as he might like to put it, he is up against the “deep state”.

And his policy towards the European Union and NATO, the two pillars of Western order, is less than enthusiastic, with Trump, at times, sounding he had it with these two organisations.

One reason, openly canvassed, for his disenchantment with NATO is that its member states are not paying their fair share (about 2 per cent of their required GDP) for NATO defence.

All this is of making NATO look like in some sort of disarray.

So much so that, it has led French President Emmanuel Macron to describe NATO as experiencing “brain death”.

So far, Russia’s hope that Trump presidency would create a more congenial atmosphere to resolve the Ukraine crisis and lift sanctions has not materialised

In an interview with The Economist, he reportedly said, “The US remains our major ally, we need them. But we find ourselves for the first time with an American president who doesn’t share our idea of the European project, and American policy is diverging from this project.”

Germany doesn’t share President Macron’s publicly expressed pessimism and for understandable reasons because, even though it is Europe’s major economy, it depends overwhelmingly on the US-led NATO for its own and Europe’s defence.

In an opinion piece in Der Spiegel magazine, German Foreign Minister, Heiko Mass wrote, “It would be a mistake if we undermined NATO. Without the United States, neither Germany nor Europe will be able to effectively protect themselves.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly described NATO as the central pillar of Germany’s defence architecture.

The post-WW 11 global order underwritten by Western powers is under stress, but not beyond repair and restoration.

The US’ NATO allies would be hoping that a new American president would revitalise the Western alliance. But if Trump were re-elected, the best hope would be a holding operation.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia