The war in Ukraine is not new — it is a return to the Cold War

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/03/2022 (925 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Supporters of Ukraine say the war against them by Russia is necessary to ensure the survival of a rules-based world order.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is particularly eloquent on the subject. She argues that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — if allowed to hold — will negate decades of progress.

“Since before the end of the Second World War … Canada has been deeply engaged in, and greatly enjoyed the benefits of, a world order based on rules,” Freeland said in a seminal 2017 speech.

It was a great speech. But it wasn’t entirely accurate. The concept of a world order based on rules is a relatively modern one, and does not describe the real world in which Canada has lived since 1945.

That world was defined less by international rules and more by the great power politics of the Cold War. In that sense, the current standoff between Russia and the West is not new. Rather, it is a return to that period, not so long ago, when the West faced off against the Soviet bloc.

It was not a period when the world adhered to a common set of rules. Quite the contrary. In the original Cold War, there were two sets of rules — one for the capitalist and one for the Communist world.

The benefits that Freeland lauds flowed only to those nations who were on America’s side in the Cold War. Those who were not were denied access to the financial institutions that bolstered capitalist economies like Canada’s. They were also denied access to the new technologies that allowed the West to get rich.

If Britain needed help in protecting its currency, it had access to the International Monetary Fund. If East Germany needed such help, it did not.

Politically, the countries involved in both the old and the new cold wars have followed a simple rule: Might is right.

Thus, when NATO decided to create and protect the fledgling state of Kosovo in 1998, it simply did so. Russia objected, but its objections were ignored. In 1998, Russia did not have the clout to take on NATO.

The fact that great powers were unilaterally altering borders in Europe, which is treated as such a crime in the Ukraine war, was deemed singularly unimportant during the war in Kosovo.

None of this is meant to deny the fact that Canada has done well since 1945. But we succeeded not by slavishly following the diktat of some theoretically appropriate world order.

Rather, we have been successful in navigating, through the various iterations of the Cold War, the twists and turns of our relationship with the U.S.

In 1950, Canada signed on with the U.S.-led forces fighting in Korea under United Nations command. Thanks to some fancy footwork at the UN Security Council, the resolution authorizing those forces avoided the Soviet veto. Still, the Korean War was one of the few instances when the UN was used as designed — to enforce peace.

When Freeland talks of a rules-based new order, she is usually referring to more recent economic developments, such as the establishment of the World Trade Organization or the rejigged North American Free Trade Agreement.

But these carry their own problems. The WTO has destroyed manufacturing in countries like Canada. The new NAFTA (now called CUSMA here) has not interfered with bipartisan U.S. affection for “Buy American” policies.

A few years ago, Canada spearheaded an alliance of South and Central American countries devoted to regime change in Venezuela.

The hope here was that opponents of President Nicolás Maduro would use their privileged access to the rules-based new order to force him to resign.

But now, thanks in part to the war in Ukraine, the Americans are talking of a rapprochement that would keep Maduro in power while encouraging him to produce more oil.

This might surprise those committed to a rules-based order. It won’t surprise anyone who remembers the Cold War.

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Reach him via email: walkomtom@gmail.com