MANY LOSERS AND FEW WINNERS

The EU also suffers

Another loser of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the various sanctions regimes was (and is) the European Union, at least surprisingly at first sight. The Community has to pay now for the decade-long poor leadership not only in Brussels, but also in the capitals of its major member states. Thus, among others, the erratic energy policies of the recent German governments have resulted in serious energy shortages and crises at home. The competitiveness of the German economy, the ’locomotive’ of the European economy, has been rather seriously hurt by the short-sighted decision of terminating nuclear energy first, then the equally shortsighted green dogmatism of the better part of the German political elite. On top of all, the exchange of relatively cheap Russian energy for relatively expensive other (including American LNG) energy sources tends to undermine the position of the EU at large in comparison with the power centers of Washington and Beijing in a broader sense. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has demonstrated again (after the Balkans’ crises in the 1990s) that the EU as a political actor is losing its pouvoir in the world quite fast.

EU vis-á-vis the U.S.

The United States was a sort of winner politically and strategically in 2022. Russia maneuvered itself into a situation from which it would be next to impossible to emerge as a winner. One of the implications is that Moscow is not likely to be able to pursue the ’soft balancing’ of the U.S. it has been engaged in in the past few years. Second, the EU has become even more dependent on the U.S. than before; it is not only military security that the EU is dependent on Washington, but it is also energy supply/security that weakens the EU’s positions vis-á-vis the U.S. Of course, they are the closest allies of each other, but in the real world where the states are ’ice cold monsters’ (Friedrich Nietsche), raw interests do play a role in economic, political, and strategic questions – and the interests of the EU and the U.S. do not overlap every time and everywhere.

Headaches for the Biden administration

As for the U.S. itself, the Biden administration was a winner and a loser at the same time in the single most important domestic event, the congressional (or midterm) elections. The Republicans were not able to retake the House and the Senate as well; in reality, they even lost a seat to the Democrats in the latter. However, no matter how slim the Republican majority is in the House (222-212), they are bound to give a lot of headaches for the administration both in their role as legislators and in the role of the U.S. Congress as an oversight body. The Biden administration’s ’honeymoon’ in 2022 came to an end on November 8; the ambitious and large-scale omnibus bill of USD 1.7 trillion in late December was most likely the last one of its kind for some time to come.

Chinese ambitions

The fourth largest center of power, China was tied up for the preparations of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in mid-October 2022 for the better part of the year. President Xi Jinping was able to stabilize his hold on the Party (and the country), and carved out a good position for himself to embark upon an ambitious program of catching up with the U.S. in the military and economic fields as well.

He was making belligerent statements during the year with regard to Taiwan, and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) stepped up its activity around the island to demonstrate the seriousness of the commitment to unify the People’s Republic and the Republic of China in the foreseeable future. The belligerence of President Xi was serving domestic political purposes to some extent without any doubt. Otherwise, China was playing it safe in the major international conflict: it did not join the sanctions regimes against Russia, it was taking advantage of the reoriented Russian energy exports but, overall, it was sitting on the fence watching very carefully how far the U.S. was willing to go in protecting a country, which is seen by some as a ’pivotal’ one for Washington.

2023 May Not Be Better

Beyond the critical issues in world politics, the man-in-the-street almost everywhere encountered difficulties from higher energy prices to inflation and rising costs-of-living especially in the industrial countries, outright challenges to survive in a number of poor countries in Asia and Africa because of the disruptions in supply chains and shortages of staples as well as the resurgence of COVID-19 (for instance, in China), some dire consequences of climate change (draughts in large areas), just to name a few of the outstanding problems. Presidents and prime ministers in their New Year’s addresses invariably strike a positive note, but not this time. The speeches were full of warnings and hints that things will not be better than in 2022. We can only hope that they are mistaken – as they were so many times in the past year.

Tamás Magyarics is a foreign policy analyst