NATO has left Madrid with a strong message: Ukraine will be Putin’s grave.
The markets have interpreted this to mean that the war is raging and that the world is heading towards a global recession with high rates of inflation. That is, towards a stagflation.
The unknown will be the fall. If Russia makes good on its threat and cuts off gas supplies to Germany, it will cripple the European locomotive and with it the entire EU economy. Vladimir Putin is ready to turn the Ukraine war into a world economic war. In this scenario, Spain is going to have a very hard time because it is the European country that has not yet finished emerging from the recession caused by the pandemic.
The feeling of crisis begins to spread, and the fear is increasing. But there is a glimmer of hope. The bluster that we have heard from world leaders may be in response to gaining an advantage at the negotiating table that should start now. It is time to stage the ordagos. Putin has reacted by intensifying bombing to seize the initiative on the battlefield. As the Roman Flavio Vegetius Renato said in his work De re militari, “he who wishes for peace, let him prepare for war”.
For this reason and no other, both sides have much to lose if the war continues sine die. If only for economic reasons, peace is possible. Both sides have much to lose. Therefore, both Putin and Zelensky have no choice but to give up trying to win a resounding victory over the enemy. China and the US also have a lot at stake in the clash and will try to force things so that an armistice is reached before the general winter arrives.
But even in the hypothesis that a ceasefire is reached, things will not go back to the way they were before. Even if the guns are silenced, what is clear is that we are heading for a cold war scenario similar to that which occurred after the Second World War. That means poverty, since prosperity comes as a result of collaboration.
Therefore, the dream of an economic spring as a result of the technological and digital revolution seems to be moving away, whether the scenario is one of war or of a pinned-down peace.
A defeated and humiliated Russia, as some countries claim, would only be the prelude to a new war, as happened with Germany after the Versailles peace. And vice versa, a resounding Putin victory that ends Ukraine as a nation would only increase military tensions in the East.
The two blocks are perfectly designed. The G-7 made up of countries with enormous financial and technological wealth, in addition to their political and military weight (Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom). On the other hand, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which concentrate a large part of the population and raw materials. The sensible thing would not be confrontation, but collaboration between them to design a new, fairer and more balanced globalization that has disappeared with the war in Ukraine.
In this situation of high tension, no call has been heard to resolve armed conflicts through diplomatic channels. Nor has there been any collaboration proposal for the future.
Spain has aligned itself with the rich countries, as it could not be otherwise, in accordance with NATO resolutions. For Pedro Sánchez, this is the path that leads us to a new period of peace and prosperity in the world, although it will be difficult for him to convince his allies and voters that it is the best option.
