From Gaza to Ukraine, wars and crises are piling up
livemint.comRead our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and the Ukraine war A concatenation of crises is hardly unprecedented. Sergey Radchenko, a historian, points to the examples of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez crisis overlapping in 1956, crises in Lebanon and the Taiwan Strait in 1958 and the tumultuous years of 1978-79, when the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan unfolded in quick succession. In 1999 India and Pakistan, newly armed with nuclear missiles, waged a war over Kashmir while NATO bombed Serbian forces in Yugoslavia.
But America and its allies cannot intervene as easily or cheaply as they once did. Adversaries such as China and Russia are more assertive, and working more and more together. So too are non-aligned powers, including India and Turkey, which have growing clout to shape distant events and believe that a new and more favourable order is emerging.
And the possibility of a war directly between major powers hangs over the world, forcing countries to keep one eye on the future even as they fight fires today. The large powers are becoming more polarised on issues where they might once have pushed in the same direction. In the Middle East, for instance, Russia has moved closer to Hamas, tearing up years of careful diplomacy with Israel.
China, which in past wars issued bland statements urging de-escalation, has exploited the crisis to criticise America’s role in the region. With the exception of strongmen such as Viktor Orban, Hungary’s leader, few Western countries talk to Russia any longer. And even dialogue with China is increasingly dominated by threats and warnings rather than by efforts to tackle joint problems like climate
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