Re:vision

On February 24, 2022, Russia not only launched a war against Ukraine; with its brutal and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state, it also mounted an attack against the foundational principles of the post–World War II order.^[1]

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, millions have been forced to flee their homes, and war damages have run into the hundreds of billions of euros.^[2] Russia’s revisionist war has cost innocent lives throughout Ukraine’s territory – from the Donbas to the Western oblasts (Figure 1.1). While there are innocent victims in every war, Russia’s aggression is extraordinarily brutal. War crimes are not just a byproduct of the war, but an essential feature of Russian warfare in Ukraine. In clear violation of humanitarian law, the Russian military continues to attack not just military targets, but often aims at civilian infrastructure to increase human suffering and break the Ukrainian resistance. Countless cases of sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers and mercenaries are documented, and Russian authorities have abducted thousands of Ukrainian children.^[3] On Russian TV shows, analysts casually fantasize about nuclear escalation or call for ever more punishment against Russia’s neighboring country.^[4] Compassion with Ukrainians seems almost completely absent in Russian society.^[5] With the ruthlessness of its aims and the brutality of its means, this Russian war evokes memories of the worst episodes in European history.

Debates about different visions for the future international order and its guiding principles – at the Munich Security Conference or elsewhere – are often abstract and theoretical. But the plight of the Ukrainians demonstrates that the clash of different visions can become a matter of life and death. Even for many people not directly affected, the Russian invasion represents what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called a Zeitenwende, a watershed.^[6] In all countries polled for the Munich Security Index, except for Japan, majorities see the Russian invasion as a turning point in world politics (Figure 1.2). But where is world politics turning?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained about a world order ostensibly dominated by the West – especially by the United States.^[7] For him, the war represents “the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order [and] the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world.”^[8] A Russian victory in Ukraine, and the failure of the West to prevent it, would be “a potent symbol of a new post-Western era, the collapse of the old order and the rise of a new, authoritarian-friendly multipolarity.”^[9]

Putin’s war would have been less likely if this vision were not supported by a much more powerful revisionist, who shares the Russian leader’s core grievances with the liberal thrust of the international order and his desire for a sphere of influence: Chinese President Xi Jinping. Just a few weeks before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Putin and Xi issued a joint statement about the beginning of a “new era,” characterized by much deeper Chinese–Russian cooperation. According to the statement, both countries share a friendship “without limits,” which includes “strong mutual support for the protection of their core interests.”^[10] In this spirit, Beijing has not only refused to condemn Russia’s war of aggression; Chinese media has also amplified Russian war propaganda, blaming NATO for the start of the war and “shrouding the Russian regime’s culpability.”^[11] It may be true that Beijing has also been careful not to associate itself too closely with Russia’s war on Ukraine. At times, it has even distanced itself from Moscow and publicly condemned Russian threats to use nuclear weapons.^[12] But given the close coordination of the world’s most powerful autocrats in response to the war in Ukraine, it is difficult not to see the Russian invasion through the lens of a broader contest between different visions for the international order.

Chinese–Russian collaboration to subvert and reshape elements of the inter- national order are hardly a new phenomenon. For many years, both countries, with China in the driver’s seat, have been trying to bring about an order that favors non-democratic forms of governance and the narratives and interests of autocrats in the international system – a world, in short, “where liberal values carry no merit or moral freight in their own right.”^[13] To this end, Moscow and Beijing have often coordinated their votes at the United Nations. In the realm of human rights, which has recently seen Beijing prevent the discussion of a UN report documenting massive human rights violations committed against Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims, this joint effort has been particularly obvious (Chapter 2). But efforts to push back against liberal rules and principles and replace them with autocratic ones has also been evident in many other realms of the international system (Chapters 3 and 4).

Yet none of their efforts to revise existing elements of the post–World War II order have been as fundamental and brazen as Russia’s attack against the principles of non-aggression and territorial integrity. Putin has left no doubt that in his attempt to reestablish the Russian empire, he no longer feels bound by even the minimum standards of international law. Instead, he seeks to replace them with 19th-century principles of unconstrained power politics that allow big countries to carve out regional spheres of influence, irrespective of the wishes of local populations.^[14]

Although Chinese and Russian aspirations are clearly at odds with the principles of sovereign equality and territorial integrity, both countries like to portray themselves as defenders of the UN Charter. Aware that their attempted authoritarian overhaul of the international system requires support in the “Global South,” Russia and China purport to envision a multipolar world that grants greater say to other centers of power beyond the traditional West.

Yet Sino-Russian revisionism is now facing resistance. China’s assertive policies are already producing a backlash that is undermining Beijing’s global ambitions.^[24] Moreover, the humiliating setbacks that Ukrainian forces have inflicted on the Russian offensive, together with international sanctions, have weakened Russia’s military and economy while also dealing a blow to the image of competent authoritarian rule.^[25] Recent protests in China – and also in Iran – suggest that “the inevitable overreach by societies who try to control human beings is ultimately not sustainable.”^[26] Moreover, evidence is mounting that there are more limits to the supposed “no limits” partnership than Beijing and Moscow would like to admit. It is thus far from clear whether authoritarian great powers will emerge stronger from the war in Ukraine. But even if they don’t, there is no room for complacency. The past year provided ample evidence on how enormously disruptive and destructive authoritarian revisionism has become.

Notwithstanding unequivocal violations of the UN Charter, many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have proven unwilling to speak up against Russia’s brutal attack and isolate Moscow economically and diplomatically. Often called “fence-sitters,” the new “non-aligned,” or “hedging middle,” a significant number of states have refused to take sides in the war against Ukraine.^[27] In fact, while the overwhelming majority of countries condemned Russia’s invasion (141 countries) and the attempted annexation of additional parts of Ukraine (143 countries) in votes at the UN General Assembly in March and October (Figure 1.4), those that abstained or voted against the condemnation – among them large and influential countries such as India and South Africa – are home to almost 50 percent of the global population.^[28]

Given the massive ripple effects of Russia’s war, especially for poorer countries, it is hardly surprising that material support for Ukraine has only come from the world’s rich democracies and that few other countries have introduced sanctions against Russia. In fact, not a single state from Africa or Latin America is part of the loose coalition that has imposed sanctions on Russia.^[29] But many politicians in the West were bothered by
a perceived lack of empathy for Ukraine, the reluctance to take a stand against the violation of key norms and principles, and the fact that some governments even exploited Russia’s war to advance their countries’ economic interests. From the dominant Western perspective, many countries in the “Global South” were wittingly or unwittingly complicit in Russian efforts to weaken international norms.^[30] Disappointment with the way Brazil, South Africa, and India – and the “Global South” more broadly – have responded to the Russian invasion is also evident in the results of the Munich Security Index (Figure 1.5).

Yet it would be too simplistic to conclude that the “Global South” has turned against the existing order. There are many examples of countries from the “Global South” that spoke up against Russia’s attack of key principles of the post–World War II order. Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the UN Martin Kimani launched a passionate defense of the norm against territorial conquest, while the Permanent Representative of Fiji to the UN Satyendra Prasad strongly criticized Russia’s invasion as a clear violation of the UN Charter.^[31] Moreover, almost every Pacific Island state voted in favor of the March 2 resolution.^[32] For these and other small countries, the end of their legal guarantee of territorial integrity would be particularly worrisome.

Even among the countries unwilling to unambiguously side with Ukraine, there are stark differences, with each state possessing “its own unique set of interests, concerns, and objectives” with regard to Russia and the broader international order.^[33] These may include the desire to stay on the sidelines of growing geopolitical rivalry; a perception of the war as a conflict exclusively between Europeans over European security; and vulnerability to Russian coercion that comes with dependence on Moscow.^[34] They may also include a preoccupation with what governments regard as more proximate threats, including food insecurity. In fact, the repercussions of Russia’s war, such as rising prices for food and energy, have disproportionately harmed countries from the “Global South” – a fact that Western states did not take seriously enough at first.^[35] At the same time, other influential states such as India, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia are quite actively hedging their bets in the current geopolitical standoff – both when it comes to Ukraine but also on many other policy issues.^[36] Rather than being guided by deep feelings about the international order, their responses to the war in Ukraine and their stances in the broader international contest over the international order seem to be guided by much more pragmatic reasoning.^[37]

Yet frustrations about the existing order abound in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It would be far too easy to trivialize these resentments as irrelevant to states’ responses to the war in Ukraine – or as insignificant to their behavior in other arenas of the global order contest. Many of these countries “have steadily lost faith in the legitimacy and fairness of the international system,”^[38] which has neither granted them an appropriate voice in global affairs, nor sufficiently addressed their core concerns. Most recently, this has included too little help with rising food prices, access to energy, the acquisition of Covid-19 vaccines, mounting sovereign debt, and the consequences of the climate crisis (Chapters 4 and 5).

To many states, these failures are deeply tied to the West. They find that the Western-led order has been characterized by postcolonial domination, double standards, and neglect for developing countries’ concerns, rather than by liberal principles and true multilateralism.^[39] Thus in many parts of the world, the concept of a “multipolar” or “post-Western” order does not need much advertising. The West’s immediate response to the war in Ukraine certainly did not help. Rather than assisting countries in tackling spiking food and energy prices, the West reprimanded them for not showing enough solidarity with Kyiv. For countries that have experienced the West as a fence-sitter to the devastating wars and conflicts in their own regions, many of them much more deadly than the war in Ukraine, the request not to stay neutral in a European war certainly rung hollow. While G7 countries have pledged to address the detrimental global consequences of the war, for some analysts, the West’s initial messaging on Ukraine “has taken its tone-deafness to a whole new level.”^[40]

Yet as revealed in the Munich Security Index, dissatisfaction with the West in key countries in the “Global South” does not translate into a desire to see China and Russia exercise more influence over the future international order. Respondents in India, Brazil, and South Africa mostly want a greater role for developing nations when it comes to shaping international rules. But when asked to rate the attractiveness of rules made by Russia and China as opposed to rules made by the US and Europe (Figure 1.6), their choices were surprisingly clear. Alienation from the existing international order and its main guardians does not seem to equate to general support for autocratic revisionism.

From the perspective of the world’s liberal democracies, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a wake-up call to defend the principles of the liberal, rules- based international order against autocratic challengers. After the end of the Cold War, they believed that the liberal vision based on the triad of human rights, liberal democracy, and market economy had triumphed and would conquer the whole globe over time. But despite its undeniable achievements, key elements of this liberal vision have lost both domestic and international support.^[41] The storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been the most dramatic symbol of the erosion of liberal-democratic norms, which threatens not only the stability of liberal democracies, but also the liberal international order. The fact that the liberal-democratic model is increasingly contested in some Western democracies has undeniably encouraged revisionist powers to promote their alternative vision much more assertively.

Yet the past year has – for all its horrendous developments – also demonstrated that liberal ideas can still inspire. With their extraordinary resilience and determination (Spotlight Ukraine), the Ukrainian people have galvanized international support for their country’s struggle against the aggressor. In the eyes of the world, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy turned out to be the inspiring democratic hero standing up to the autocratic villain in Moscow – “a metaphor-in-miniature for the worldwide, slow-motion wrestle between the forces of democracy and autocracy.”^[42]

Russia’s aggression and Ukraine’s response have also instilled a new sense
of purpose into democratic alliances such as the G7, NATO, and the EU, overcoming feelings of “Westlessness” and “helplessness” that had worried observers in previous years.^[43] Speaking in Warsaw in March 2022, US President Joseph Biden summarized a widely shared perception: “Russia has managed to cause something I’m sure [Putin] never intended: the democracies of the world are revitalized with purpose and unity found in months that we’d once taken years to accomplish.”^[44] Against this backdrop, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of a “transatlantic moment” – a sentiment shared at many MSC events during the past year that led to the “Transatlantic To-Do List.”^[45] But as this renewed sense of purpose extends beyond the transatlantic area, the war on Ukraine has strengthened the idea of values-based cooperation between liberal democracies on a global scale. Some again refer to the “free world” or the “Global West,” made up of “rich liberal democracies with strong security ties to the US” and “defined more by ideas than actual geography.”^[46] While a significant majority of governments around the world have condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine, it is this group of like-minded democracies that has helped Ukraine persevere – politically, economically, and militarily.

Contravening Russia’s imperial fantasies, EU leaders have made clear that they envision a European future for Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, and have granted the former two the status of candidate countries.^[47] In addition, the EU has imposed a series of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, financed arms supplies for Ukraine, and launched a training mission for the Ukrainian armed forces. While NATO allies have made clear that they will not engage their own forces, to avoid a broader NATO–Russia war, they have upped their individual and collective support. Although critics believe that they should do more, the degree of Western support is unprecedented, and has certainly exceeded expectations in Moscow.

Since they see Russia’s war as a broader assault on the European order and the international rule of law, people in the West have not only changed their views on Ukraine, but also reevaluated their security environment in general. As new data from the Munich Security Index shows, differences in views on Russia, which were considerable before the invasion, have sharply

declined or even disappeared. While respondents in all G7 countries are now more willing to oppose Russia economically and militarily, the shifts in France, Germany, and Italy have been the most dramatic (Figure 1.7). It seems as if Russia’s blunt war of aggression has finally driven home the message that revisionists must be confronted – even in those societies that had long ignored the writing on the wall.^[48]

At its 2022 Madrid Summit, NATO issued its new Strategic Concept, which refers to Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”^[49] NATO members also announced more forward-deployed combat formations and pre-positioned equipment on the Eastern flank, and the aim to increase high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted, “this constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defense since the Cold War.”^[50] On a national level, many governments have reexamined their respective strategic postures. Sweden and Finland decided to abandon their traditional non-aligned policy and have applied to join NATO. Countries such as Poland, which have long warned about Russian revisionism, are doubling down on defense investments and buying more heavy equipment.^[51] Germany, where Zeitenwende was chosen as the “word of the year,” has decided to raise defense spending, make many overdue investments, and discard some of its traditional foreign policy beliefs that turned out to be outdated.^[52] While Berlin is working on a new national security strategy, Japan – another influential power often accused of punching below its weight – has already published a new one. Tokyo not only announced that it would double its defense spending, aiming to reach two percent of its GDP by 2027, but also embraced a controversial “counterstrike capability” to hit back against a potential aggressor.^[53] All these developments are bad news for autocratic revisionists, who had banked on the passivity and indecisiveness of liberal democratic governments.

One of the few things that world leaders can agree on is that the world is entering what the new US National Security Strategy calls a “decisive decade” for the future shape of the international order. Notions such as Zeitenwende, “historical crossroads,” or “inflection point” are omnipresent.^[56] While material power will matter, this struggle is also, and perhaps foremost, about competing visions.

Leaders have tried to frame this contest for the international order using different dichotomies: democracies versus autocracies, rich versus poor, West versus the rest, or those that support the rules-based order versus those that do not. As data from the Munich Security Index shows, these framings resonate to different degrees, but none dominates the perceptions of the respondents in the 12 countries polled (Figure 1.9). As the chapters in this report show in more detail, there remain different cleavages, depending on the topic.

Still, looking at the big picture, the systemic competition between liberal- democratic and autocratic visions and their respective proponents has become increasingly central to the contest for the international order. While the revisionists have tried to describe the ongoing struggle as a competition between the West and the rest, even respondents in China, Brazil, India, and South Africa do not see this as a major geopolitical fault line today (Figure 1.9). Instead, many democratic leaders have described the current struggle as a competition between democracies and autocracies.^[57] This framing captures a significant part of the ongoing contest and resonates comparatively well, with between a quarter and a third of the respondents seeing it as the dominant fault line in global politics today. Indeed, it is hard to deny that the most worrisome attacks against the post-1945 order come from “powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy,” as the US National Security Strategy puts it.^[58] Conversely, democracies remain the key supporters of the liberal, rules-based order. As UN voting data shows, there is a clear link between regime type and voting patterns regarding key international norms (Figure 1.10). And without the support of the liberal democracies of the world, Ukraine would not have been able to withstand Russian aggression.

However, the relevance of the regime-type fault line clearly varies across policy fields, as the chapters in this report demonstrate. Issues such as human rights (Chapter 2) or the governance of global infrastructures (Chapter 3) and development (Chapter 4), which are intimately tied to the liberal core of the rules-based order, are much more prone to provoking splits between a democratic and an autocratic vision of order (Figure 1.10). But thinking only in terms of democracies versus autocracies risks brushing over the fact that the contest between authoritarian and democratic visions “is being waged within states as much as between them.”^[59] Most importantly, however, it risks missing other relevant dynamics in the global order contest and hampering global collective action in important respects.^[60] On trade (Chapter 3), energy (Chapter 5), or nuclear weapons (Chapter 6), for example, the constellation of state interests is more complex. Moreover, to solve many of the world’s global problems, particularly climate change and global health crises, democracies need the support of non-democratic states.^[61] Even the new US National Security Strategy, built on the democracy–autocracy dichotomy, acknowledges that while cooperation among democracies is key, the United States will “work with any country that supports a rules-based order.”^[62]

The combination of authoritarian efforts to subvert the global order and the widespread reluctance to confront this type of revisionism in many parts of the “Global South” is an urgent call to action for all those who seek to preserve an international order based on rules that apply to and are respected by all states. In fact, in all the countries surveyed for the Munich Security Index, 50 percent or more of the respondents stated that they still see a need for international rules that apply to all states equally. What is thus urgently needed is a reinvigorated vision of the liberal, rules-based international order that ensures that existing international rules and principles are attractive to a much broader global constituency. With the exception of Germany, where 63 percent of respondents agree that international politics need to be governed by universal rules and principles, agreement is stronger among the respondents from China (63 percent), India (61 percent), South Africa (61 percent), and Brazil (57 percent) than among the respondents from all the G7 countries (54 percent on average). At the same time, Chinese respondents’ strong support for the idea that international politics should be based on rules that apply to all countries equally suggests that the rules respondents have in mind might not be the same in all the societies surveyed.

First, they need to recognize the autocratic challenge for what it is: the attempt to fundamentally transform the international order. For too long, many have underestimated this challenge and thus allowed autocratic revisionists to slowly but surely push the boundaries of the order. Russia’s war against Ukraine should be a wake-up call, as it foreshadows the order that autocratic revisionists have in mind. It is a reminder of the benefits of a liberal vision based on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law – and should motivate the necessary resistance to this alternative vision.

Second, liberal democracies need to nurture a strong global community of like-minded states. Given the eroding consensus in many democracies on the liberal-internationalist policies that informed the “liberal order building”^[67] after World War II, building domestic support for a new “grand strategy of democratic solidarity”^[68] is of paramount importance. To this end, liberal democracies need to refine their own visions of a desirable order and make clear what they want to achieve – not just what they want to avoid. In contrast to China, which is very confident in its own vision for the international order, in France, Germany, and Italy, the three EU countries polled for the Munich Security Index, only 15 percent believe that the EU has a very clear vision of how it would like the international order to be run, while 25 percent believe it has no vision at all (Figure 1.11).

Third, liberal democracies need to build a larger coalition of states beyond the liberal-democratic core. While strengthening values-based cooperation among the world’s liberal democracies is necessary, it is clearly not sufficient. For too long, democracies have overestimated the attractiveness of the liberal, rules-based international order. The wake-up call provided by Russia’s war and the diffidence of many countries from the “Global South” has roused them from their complacency, reminding them that the international order, just like democracy itself, is in constant need of renewal.^[69] Given the grievances and widespread perception of exclusion among many states of the world, merely defending the status quo will not be enough. While the international order needs no revision, it is clearly in need of reform. To win the hearts and minds of “not yet aligned” governments and societies, liberal democracies need to re-envision the order as one that better represents the many countries that have hitherto been confined to the role of rule-takers, as one that better delivers on its promises, and as one that truly benefits everyone equally.

As such, this moment of crisis for the liberal international order might also be its greatest chance for renewal. If its proponents succeed in enlarging the coalition of committed stakeholders, the revisionist moment will remain just that – a moment confined to history rather than the birth of an authoritarian international order. And President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people will have played a big part in this achievement.