The extension of wars creates an unprecedented danger for the state of the world. Assuring peace and finding ways to solve armed conflicts is a fundamental duty of governments. Europe has a particular responsibility to start searching for ways to end the war that is taking place within its region – the war between Russia and Ukraine. [This article is signed by eleven European experts and public figures including the undersigned. It is published today in the Corriere della Sera and will appear in various outlets in Europe in the coming days. A Finnish translation will come out in Ydin on 30 May.]

This is my contribution to GTI Forum What’s Next for the Global Movement? In effect, it summarises some of the ideas of World Statehood: The Future of World Politics.

It is difficult to make even a moderate and cautious turn towards a more social democratic and ecologically oriented direction unless there is a broad transnational or worldwide movement behind it. In this regard, DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) can be seen as one of the few glimmers of hope. Established in early 2016 in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, DiEM25 has assumed many characteristics of a world party, thus offering valuable insights for the larger project. This is my contribution to the GTI Forum Experiments in Movement Unity in November 2023.

Abstract: Could the war in Ukraine have been avoided? Familiar counterfactuals include: (i) NATO’s 2008 announcement on Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership was an unnecessary provocation and (ii) implementing the Minsk II agreement could have prevented the full-scale war. What is often ignored, however, are the political economy dynamics of global (in)security and how it manifests itself in this particular case. First comes the immediate context of the development of Russia, shaped spectacularly by the “shock therapy” of the 1990s. Second, what happened in Russia can be seen as a compressed version of the consequences of neoliberalism more generally. Third, the unevenness of economic growth as well as related imbalances and crisis tendencies shape power relations and are liable to securitisation. The war in Ukraine and these wider developments are multiply connected. For one thing, the strained Sino-American relations have affected China’s orientation and reduced its willingness or ability to prevent or end the war. Finally, it may be asked whether it is relevant to understand causes when the war is ongoing. [This is a next-to-final version of a short paper published in The Defence Horizon Journal #3 August 2023.]