China wins and Russia loses.

Cristina Lladó

Madrid (EFE).- One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, experts agree that the war already has winners and losers: “whatever happens, Russia has become a pariah” and China is taking the measure to the West benefiting from the lack of attention of the United States to other world scenarios.

Thus, the war has already served to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each other, promote joint action by the EU and put an end to the “mirage” of international relations based on globalization, norms and laws.

Winners and losers

The professor of International Relations at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas Alberto Priego is clear: the big loser in this war, apart from Ukraine, which causes death and destruction, is Russia, which “whatever happens, will become a State pariah”.

It also loses the “hyper-globalized and deregulated model” that had already been touched to death by the coronavirus and now receives the final straw by revealing the European need to invest seriously in Defense, something that only States can do, he assures.

Joint Defense organizations win, such as NATO; The EU, which has become “federalized”, wins and receives an important boost to its integration process and also recovers the transatlantic link.

Renewable energies win, “not so much because they are clean, but because they avoid dependence on third parties” and the United States wins, recovering its reality and identity and “getting out of the schizophrenia between Trump’s populism and Obama’s pacifism,” argues Priego.

And Ukraine wins, which will end this war with the largest and best-equipped Army in Europe, which will facilitate its access to the EU due to the same pragmatism that led the allies to incorporate Germany into the international arena after World War II. World, he says.

The war has brought Ukraine closer to the EU

The main researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor of International Relations, Carlota García Encina, also believes that, ultimately, the war has facilitated Ukraine’s entry into the EU, a possibility that was neither desired nor very feasible before.

The war has tipped Ukrainian society, which was previously sharply divided between pro-Russians and pro-Europeans, in favor of the EU, he explains.

And the enormous European and American support has made it necessary for President Volodímir Zelenski to be “personally and carefully supervising” the use and destination given to the huge amount of money that comes to him.

García Encina agrees with Priego that the war has also revealed the significant deficiencies in weapons and ammunition in European countries and the need to promote the modernization and manufacture of their own, without dependencies from outside.

On the other hand, the Elcano researcher does not believe that this war benefits the United States beyond strengthening transatlantic ties, since ultimately it forces it to divert its attention and resources from the scenario that really worries it: the Indo-Pacific and its competition with China, which supposes a “distortion of its long-term objectives and interests”.

China, the big beneficiary

For the professor and coordinator of the International Relations degree at the European University of Valencia, Frédéric Mertens de Wilmars, there is also no doubt that China is one of the great beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine.

In his opinion, China aspires to become a great political power and “is using Russia” to change the parameters of world geopolitics, from the “soft power” that had almost imposed itself on the world stage to the “hard power” of the political and military imposition.

For now, “China is watching from a balcony to see what happens when it challenges and attacks the Western world; it is testing the opposing power and taking advantage of the fact that the United States is dedicated to Ukraine to take advantage in other scenarios, ”she says.

The EU also wins, to a certain extent, for whom the war, although it has become clear that “Europeans are nothing, nothing, nothing in terms of military capabilities”, has also marked the way towards greater integration and coordination of its policy Foreign and Defense, and the need for greater commercial and energy independence, he considers.