Russia-Ukraine Conflict and the Wishful Thinking in Politics, Energy/Climate Change, Capitalism, Interdependence
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has had an important capitalism X climate change/energy X capitalism X ideological angle, and reveals the various modes of wishful thinking from several directions.
Wishful Thinking 1: The End of Ideological Competition has Arrived
“End of competition of ideologies” — this is an important wishful thinking on the part of global observers for the most part. The “End of History” that people are overly-taken by is just one version of it — the idea that liberal democracy is universal and will eventually be adopted by all the countries in the world, including, presumably countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, North Korea, Russia, and various other authoritarian or even totalitarian countries. No. Liberal democracy and the attendant values — free (and responsible) press, well-educated and informed society, competitive and trusted information environment, meeting basic needs, a vibrant non-oligopolistic/monopolistic business and media environments — all of these turns out to be important, and need to be balanced against the demands of capitalism and especially to rein in the attention-race-to-the-bottom dynamic in media. Also, liberal democracies require open societies — societies open to change, and sometimes, new peoples — in terms of migration and refugees even. Additionally, liberal democracies require conventional militaries to deter other actors from having wild ideas of historical re-interpretation. No, there is an active competition of ideologies at large, to defend values of self-determination and expression and the freedom to choose values for your society, and to find balance between individual and the community.
Possible antidotes:
Understand that there are diverse political regimes, and some of them want to invalidate liberal democracy or see it as a threat to their own leadership.
Defend, nurture, and promote an accountable press, and create an environment where the can be diverse forms of press organisations that can be accountable to publics and to governments.
Maintain an open society — a society open and responsible to global flows of people and ideas, and to be vigilant amidst that openness. Continue to maintain that uneasy sense of having to push way values that threaten openness.
Wishful Thinking 2: Liberal Democracy is Compatible with Anti-Regulatory Short-Term-istic Capitalism
Part of (1) but now on capitalism. It is wishful thinking that capitalism and liberal democracy can go together without strong ethical and watchful restraints. Capitalism can suborn liberal democracies through contaminating media environments. Well-financed actors can flood information environments, causing people to look to terrible information and making choices that end up hurting their societal well-being. The current and historical form of sort of anti-regulatory short-term capitalism and together with historical anxieties together, arguably, to turn Europe away from nuclear energy altogether, made connections with Russian fossil fuels. Fukushima was indeed a traumatic disaster, and a pause on nuclear energy operations was probably understandable, but to turn away from nuclear energy altogether in Germany and instead to invest in coal — this is a head-turner and hard to explain in a country that otherwise had innovative policies to encourage solar energy adoption.
More than that, the kind of capitalism that we have, have not truly delivered well-being across broad sections of society and have instead increased inequality. The preferences in energy sources is just one big way that it has manifested itself. The interdependence that capitalism created with countries that have turned out to have other priorities, as I explain in (4) have created wealth and reduced poverty globally, but have created inequalities in advanced countries. The same capitalism that pushed for growth in China is the same capitalism that reduces state action in helping workers in advanced countries adjust to new realities. It’s also the same capitalism that does not bother much with ethical sourcing for vital resources.
Possible antidotes:
Standardise ESG definitions and give ESG regulations teeth. As ESG is more tightly defined, it will give everyone assurance that capitalism can be changed and adapted for the current scope of the problem. It is an important element among others.
Capitalism needs to change as well — away from the heavily-financialised version that we see today, but to incorporate more stakeholders.
Something like Mariana Mazzucato’s Mission Economy could be a more balanced way to think about this.
Wishful Thinking 3: The Energy Transition Can Wait
And now wishful thinking and the lack of political will to act on the climate crisis and push towards even more renewable energy and energy storage is now costing the entire world even more. The world is late when it comes to renewable energy, and years of not revisiting the assumptions of wishful thinking have now led to the current state, where publics complain of high energy prices and complain about the possible high cost of transition. I can only hope that renewable energy investment momentum will increase. Every year the world depends on fossil fuels from political illiberal sources the opportunities for suborning liberal democracies continue.
I hope that nuclear energy can be reviewed, made safer, and that publics and NGOs can provide political cover for politicians to invest in nuclear energy — making that part of the energy conversation.
Even if not, I hope publics will also get behind solar and wind energy in their own backyard, and not protest (as much) if those projects are in their locations. The goal here is conserving the planet, not conserving your backyard view. Maybe in time to come, it will become a value-add to have sight of wind farms and solar energy farms.
Possible Antidotes:
Expand renewable energy and associated infrastructure; electrify society; enhance research in green hydrogen; maintain an open stance towards nuclear energy; invest in fusion-related technologies, and my personal favourite: superconductivity science and technology.
Wishful Thinking 4: Capitalism and Trade Will Knit Us Together Peacefully
The wishful thinking that capitalism will knit the world and cause political convergence is also being revealed. We have been through this before. On the eve of World War 1, it was thought that trade connectivity might not be sacrificed for the sake of nationalism and geopolitics. Thomas Friedman’s Golden Arches and the subsequent Global Supply Chain — that countries would not sacrifice economic gains for geopolitical assertion — these have turned out to be wishful thinking. Countries can and do assert themselves geopolitically on the world stage and will pay the economic price — values and raw power do matter. The world has seen the United States and European countries use their financial connectivity in an attempt to punish Russia for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty; the United States and China have forged an economic connection — and yet the United States initiated a trade war with China, enacting tariffs and regulatory controls on Chinese companies with links to the military (note here that Boeing is also a defense contractor…). China has on occasions, subjected countries to trade sanctions when those countries were deemed to have acted on something against China’s direct and indirect interests. As Mark Leonard (and his book “Age of Unpeace”) and Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig have noted, the much-vaunted global supply chain has turned out instead to be an avenue for coercive policies by everyone. People can play resource tensions, and force people to change their political and diplomatic positions.
Possible Antidotes:
Maintain an open and diverse trade posture, but prepare for resilience and self-sufficiency in essentials and target areas of economic activity. As far as possible, reduce dependence on resources that come from potentially politically fraught sources, however defined.
Conclusion
The sooner we do away with such wishful thinking of the past the better. Then we can get back to work in the directions that matter: towards a world where we are clear-eyed about the ideological-political competition that is still ongoing; to change the nature of capitalism to one that is more inclusive; to accelerate the energy transition to mitigate the climate crisis; and to become more resilient as a society by diversifying in trade and also be more self-sufficient in vital items and important economic activity.
