Ten ways the Ukraine war has changed the world
From the use of hypersonic missiles to drone warfare, the Ukraine conflict has seen many combat firsts. Here’s what it means on a global scale.
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The use of hypersonic missiles to pre-emptive computer hacks, satellite target tracking and drone warfare, the war in Ukraine has seen many combat firsts.
But a top 10 list has revealed how the conflict has changed the world more broadly and the effects this will have on countries as far away from the frontline as Australia.
According to a new Economist Intelligence Unit report, compiled from leading analysts worldwide, the one-month-old war has permanently reshaped the global balance of power and ended the status quo the world has enjoyed since the end of World War II.
From ending the post Cold War rules based order to a new arms race and east-west wall, Ukraine, Ukrainian war is changing the world.
1. Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine has created a new division on the European continent not seen since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. It has signalled a permanent rejection of Europe and the Western-led rules based order and aims to destroy Ukraine sovereignty and its desire to join the EU and or NATO.
2. The invasion signals the end of the post Cold War order where the US enjoyed unchallenged unilateralism while Russia has discovered a revival, China has risen and “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant challenge to the US’s role as global policeman, and suggests that the world has become much more unstable and dangerous”.
3. The war will deepen Russia’s strategic alliance with China. With it now ostracised from the international political, economic and financial system, Russia will turn east to cement its alliance with China from a marriage of convenience to a strategic partnership. Russia is helping China in the fields of energy, air and sea power, intelligence, and military and foreign affairs, and in return it has received financing and technology. With it’s shared attitude to the West, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin already declared their alliance would “know no limits” and would be “superior to political and military alliances of the cold war.”
4. Russia’s war has accelerated a phenomena created by Covid-19 with regionalism to replace globalisation. “By bringing about a decisive rupture with the West, Russia’s actions will speed up the division of the world between two rival poles. Some countries will take sides, but many others will seek to maintain a foot in both camps. As time goes on, this balancing act will become increasingly difficult.
5. A renewed focus on European security will constrain the US tilt to Asia. That is by diverting resources to deal with the crisis on Europe’s eastern fringes, the US will be hamstrung in its efforts to counter the challenge of a rising China. The US will find itself having to focus on containing a declining power (Russia), when it had wanted to be devoting its energies to containing the threat from a rising power (China). This is bad news for countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, which had been counting on more protection from the US, and which will be even more eager now to form a counterbalancing coalition against China in the Asia-Pacific region. This too affects Australia.
6. The war in Ukraine will accelerate a global arms race The end of the Soviet threat in the 1990s led to a “peace dividend” and an overall decline in global arms spending. An arms race has resumed in recent years, with China expanding its nuclear arsenal and Russia, the US, the UK, France and others modernising theirs. The number of nuclear warheads being deployed with operational forces is rising, reversing a declining trend since 1991. In addition, the development and deployment by the major powers of anti-ballistic-missile defence systems, anti-satellite weapons and hypersonic missiles are amplifying threat perceptions among competing powers and fuelling an arms race. US military spending is still more than 2.5 times greater than that of China, but it is accelerating. The war in Ukraine will lead to more weapons proliferation and a destabilising cycle of tit-for-tat arms escalation
7. Germany may begin to play a more assertive role in European security policy. In a major policy shift, Germany has provided weapons to Ukraine, invest €100bn in the German armed forces and increase defence spending to more than 2% of GDP. Russia’s war in Ukraine may help to unburden Germany of the baggage of the Second World War and allow it to play a bigger role in defining European defence, foreign and security priorities. This will start to change the balance of power in Europe.
8. Europe will be forced to decide where it stands in the new global order. Rather than rely on the US, European powers — led by France and Germany — become more serious about asserting their interests.
9. The war over Ukraine will deepen the division of the world into authoritarian and democratic camps. The invasion of Ukraine marks another watershed moment in Russia’s descent into outright authoritarianism. Vladimir Putin has since 2012 presided over increasing corruption, the erosion of freedom of speech, repression of political protest and the slow suffocation of democracy. Similarly, China has become increasingly authoritarian under Mr Xi.
10. The war will embolden others and inflame existing conflicts such as Azerbaijan (Nagorny Karabakh), China (Taiwan) and Turkey (eastern Mediterranean). The global reaction to Russia’s attempt to carve up Ukraine, and the degree to which the Western powers will intervene, will be studied carefully by those with similar aims.
INSIDE UKRAINE’S FOREIGN LEGION
Welcome to Ukraine, where the people are charming, the potato dumplings are delicious, and foreign fighters are taking on Russian tanks with 1950s-era grenades.
“I kind of feel like I’m on an awesome very dangerous vacation,” said James Vasquez.
The 47-year-old US Army veteran from Connecticut is one of 16,000 foreigners estimated to have crossed the Ukraine border to join its foreign legion of fighters since the start of the war on February 24.
During his first week of combat near the heaviest fighting on the Black Sea, Mr Vasquez has been posting dramatic video updates of destroyed Russian tanks and chronicles of his meal plan to his Twitter account.
After six straight hours of combat in the past day, two men shot, one killed, Mr Vasquez said his unit destroyed seven tanks and armoured vehicles and retook a Ukrainian village that had been occupied by Russians since the start of the war.
“They terrorised the people and took their food. Today we entered, took out 7 tanks and countless Russians thus liberating these people,” he wrote.
Posing with destroyed Russian tanks just “taken out”, Ukrainian soldiers cheer: “Welcome to America”.
Long day pic.twitter.com/omB3eyXDDE
— James Vasquez (@jmvasquez1974) March 25, 2022
For those of you correcting me on tanks. I know some are armored vehicle. Just did not want to get into semantics but here’s some tanks to make you feel betterðŸ‘ðŸ»ðŸ‘ðŸ»ðŸ‘🻠pic.twitter.com/uWDtwlLDC9
— James Vasquez (@jmvasquez1974) March 25, 2022
More than 7,000 US citizens have applied to join Ukraine’s foreign legion, according to a figure provided by Ukraine’s embassy in Washington to Newsweek.
After Americans, the official foreign legion is made up mostly from Britain, Poland and Canada, which has the largest community of ex-pat Ukrainians behind Russia. There are also a few women, including West Australian Danica Joysdottir.
Ms Joysdottir left her four-year-old son behind and flew from her hometown of Kendenup to Ukraine in February, hoping to work as a medic.
“I would rather not kill anybody, but the number one stance is to defend the people who are being attacked,” she told ABC. “I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”
She is one of at least 20 Australians that contacted the Ukraine embassy to answer the call of Volodymyr Zelensky for foreigners to join the resistance.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has issued a no travel notice, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned of “violent attacks”, and the Ukraine embassy told Australians to “check legislation” on the unclear legality for joining the foreign legion.
But foreigners went anyway and horror stories quickly emerged of ex-pats sent to the front lines without adequate kit or ammunition to be used as “cannon fodder”. Carl Walsh, a former combat medical technician who previously served in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq for over 20-years, told The Telegraph It was a “death wish”.
“To join the international legion, the Ukrainians wanted to take our passports off us, sign a year contract, give us training for two days – 48 hours – and then within another 48 hours we would be fighting in Kyiv,” he said.
“They didn’t even have weapons in camp to train with.”
The foreign legion saw a mass exodus after a Russian air strike killed 35 people at a training facility near the Polish border, which was blamed on phone signals from between 12 to 14 British volunteers visible to Russian surveillance.
A spokesman for the newly-formed International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine, Corporal Damien Margrou, confirmed some claims of ex-recruits who got cold feet from indefinite contracts and air strikes, which Russia claimed killed 180 mercenaries – a figure Ukraine denies.
Following the attack, the legion allowed some recruits to break their contract, which they sign for the duration of martial law that was declared for 90 days from the invasion on February 24. It will be renewed in May and will not be lifted until the end of armed conflict. It is essentially an indefinite contract valid for the duration of the war.
If they don’t follow military rules or if they desert without getting a proper discharge, they can be court-martialed under Ukrainian military law.
In theory, they have the same treatment as Ukrainian servicemen,” he said. “In practice … we’ve been very understanding with people having to leave for various personal or other reasons.”
“We cannot guarantee the safety of anyone coming to Ukraine, it is a war zone. It’s not a holiday camp. We will do everything we can to keep our boys safe, that’s the reason why we created this legion,” he said.
“But we can’t guarantee anyone’s safety, it’s a war zone.”
Among the heartbreaking observations made by Mr Vasquez has noticed is a surprising number of stray dogs with missing limbs and elderly Ukrainians, neither of which have the means or physical ability to evacuate the war zone.
He went to Ukraine, via Poland, in mid-March and headed into the “belly of the beast” on March 18 after stocking up on canned tuna.
He hitched a ride to the front line in a three-vehicle convoy bringing supplies to trips, with his vehicle driven by a 22-year-old girl who was formerly an equestrian.
“They are also shocked to see an American passport when I hit checkpoints. They let me right through because they think it’s awesome an American soldier is here to fight alongside them,” he said.
He’s the only American and not part of a unit of US soldiers, as he said the Kremlin’s propaganda machine has told Russians.
Since waking up on that first morning to five rockets, fired from the Black Sea, destroying a military airport about five blocks from his position, he says his unit captured 159 Russian soldiers and upgraded his weapon with a “heavier kick” that busted his lip. The RGD-5, “a 1950 era grenade” still does the trick. I
In his downtime, he’s cooks 30 pounds of steak for his men on bricks, and with a British volunteer trains Ukrainians on the art of war.
“These men are remarkably undertrained but what they lack in skills they make up in courage so when we have downtime I train them on tactical manoeuvres, use of thermal and night vision, proper weapon cleaning etc. here 10 days and they are fast learners,” he said.
“They are eager and fast learners. It’s really an honour to be fighting with these fine men.”
Myself and a UK soldier regularly hold training on our down time. Tactical maneuvers, first aid, etc. they are eager and fast learners. It’s really an honor to be fighting with these fine men pic.twitter.com/SalpaiZ7l0
— James Vasquez (@jmvasquez1974) March 25, 2022
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