How the world will look after the Ukraine war

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has tipped the world as we know it on its head. Now we’re all headed for a new chapter in history.

Russia will form a “new empire” with like-minded nations in the wake of the war in Ukraine that will descend into a slowly-unfolding “disaster” while keeping itself afloat by selling resources to India, China and the developing world, a respected political scientist has predicted.

The conflict in Ukraine, which took almost everyone on the world stage by surprise, has now dragged on for more than six weeks.

While Russia’s brutal invasion has not gone according to plan – with the army suffering heavy losses and stalling at key locations – President Vladimir Putin appears dogged in his resolve.

This is despite an overwhelming amount of economic pressure that has been leveraged on the resource-rich nation, and it is taking a very real toll on the people who live there.

It all begs the question: what will happen when the fighting stops? If, that is, it stops at all.

Speaking on the Sam Harris podcast this week, Ian Bremmer – a political scientist and author – said that he sees a new geopolitical reality emerging.

He said that Mr Putin is “losing big” on a gamble that didn’t work out. And, that the scale of that miscalculation is so vast that, whatever happens, they will be in a worse position than they were before the invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: Ramil Sitdikov/AFP

“However, he (Mr Putin) is very likely going to be in power and he’s going to have 6000 nuclear warheads,” said Dr Bremmer.

“This is not just a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it is a conflict between Russia and NATO and it still will be even if we get to the point soon where we can have a ceasefire and freeze conflict on the ground in Ukraine.

“It’s going to be a hard thing to manage.”

He said that when the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended, there was a great sigh of relief across the globe. For the first time in decades, nations could focus on their economies and the standards of living of their people rather than having to prepare for the threat of nuclear war.

Meanwhile, the US, he said, had an important moment in 9/11 where it bumped up defence spending. It spent years, under various presidencies, trying and failing to convince European nations like Germany to do the same.

In the past six weeks that has all changed.

A Ukrainian serviceman walk across a destroyed bridge in the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv. Picture: Sergei Supinsky/AFP

While European nations were able to turn down the pleas for increased military spending from the likes of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden – they have now been left with no choice.

Dr Bremmer believes this is “coming of age” for the entire continent.

“This is structural. No matter what happens in Ukraine, the Europeans are going to focus on national security and defence as a top priority for the foreseeable future,” he said.

“This will be a generational coming of age for anyone living in Europe. And the European Union is the world’s largest common market so this matters a lot.”

He said that the EU was facing an uncertain future back in 2009 – shortly after the Global Financial Crisis – but that the effects of Brexit, Covid and now the invasion of Ukraine have brought union closer together.

“However, this is all happening precisely because, on the other side, there will be a new Iron Curtain,” he said.

“On the other side of the new Iron Curtain it will not be Eastern Europe. It will be Russia Belarus, a small rump piece of Russian-occupied Ukraine and a breakaway Russian republic inside Moldova.

Ian Bremmer believes a new ‘Iron Curtain’ will be formed in Europe. This map shows what the divide could look like with Russia, its allies and annexed regions united.

“That is not a fight, that is a disaster. That is a small group of populations who are badly treated, with kleptocratic governments which are massively authoritarian and heading for ruin – but armed to the teeth and led by Putin.”

He said there is no clear “end” to the conflict in Ukraine — rather, there will be a much more unstable global order with an “angry Russian faux empire” that has been cut off from the West.

However, they will still have allies, and powerful ones at that.

China – which is still on track to become the world’s most powerful economy by 2030 – has well-known sympathies with the Kremlin.

It often expresses deep concerns at what it sees as proactive measures taken by the West, including the creation of Quad and AUKUS, just as Moscow claims to have been provoked in Ukraine.

However, India also shares political and economic ties with Russia.

The nation of over 1.38 billion, for example, heavily relies on Russia for military hardware, which has left it in a tough spot.

Ukrainian servicemen patrol in a trench at the front line east of Kharkiv. Picture: Fadel SU / AFP

New Delhi has repeatedly called for an end to violence in Ukraine, but has abstained from various UN resolutions on the war in a tricky attempt at balancing its ties with Moscow and the West.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday to shore up support from the Asian nation amid ongoing Western efforts to pressure world leaders to economically isolate Moscow.

The meeting was significant given that Mr Modi was not reported to have met other top diplomats who have visited Delhi recently, including those from China, Mexico and the UK.

Podcast host Sam Harris suggested – because of the economic sanctions of the West in response to the invasion of Ukraine – that Russia could be frozen out of the world’s economy like North Korea.

However, Dr Bremmer said this simply won’t be possible. Russia, he says, simply has too many valuable resources that the world will want, and the majority of them will still be able access.

“Russia will be completely cut off from the advanced industrial economies of the West (and Japan) and that is it,” he said. “And that’s a significant minority of the world’s population.”

You can listen to the Sam Harris podcast here