The war in Ukraine has had a significant impact on the world political situation. With the USA, China, Russia, the EU and India, five geopolitical power poles have to find their stance – not just on the war, but among themselves.

War rages in the foreground with all its terrible facets. But in the background, the world powers are examining their positions for the future.

At the moment you can read a lot about the power structure of the Cold War, about the bipolar world of two superpowers whose gains and losses are mutually dependent: For example, while the USA was able to expand its influence in Nicaragua, it also did so to curtail the influence of the Soviet Union. A zero-sum game, but an effective and reliable system for all the world.

Not a few observers saw a similar constellation between the USA and China, albeit more in economic than military terms. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s fantasies of a new Greater Russian Empire greatly complicate matters. For many states, it is a question of taking a position on these power factors, and that applies in particular to the European Union and India.

“Even the major conflicts of the past 30 years – the second Gulf War, 9/11 or the global financial crisis – have not created such a geopolitically confusing picture as is now being portrayed in the Ukraine war,” says Bernhard Zand, an observer of American-Chinese relations in SPIEGEL’s New York office.

This resulted in two schools of thought that borrowed their names from the US initiative that initiated rapprochement between the USA and China in the early 1970s and thereby weakened the geopolitical situation in the Soviet Union: Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s trip to Beijing in 1972.

“One is sort of the option to do what Nixon did and go back with China to isolate Russia. Or vice versa with Russia to isolate China,” explains Bernhard Zand, “if you took the Russian option, that’s called the ‘Reverse Kissinger’. And the other version would be a ‘Straight Kissinger’, so to speak, de facto doing what Nixon did’.

Geopolitical triangle

With this geopolitical triangle, however, the allegory of the Cold War ends. Because against the background of the Ukraine conflict, the European Union and India, after all the largest democracies in the world, must position themselves in relation to the USA, China and Russia.

“We currently have five actors with very different motives and concerns: A multipolar world whose mechanism is more difficult and also more dangerous than this equilibrium that was ultimately found during the Cold War”.

But what trends does this system reveal, why does India abstain from UN resolutions on Ukraine, and what aspect in particular strains China-US relations?

Image Credit: Getty

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