-Analysis-
PARIS — If ever there was an anniversary that should unite rather than divide, it’s surely that of the end of World War II. In 1945, the United States, its European allies and the Soviet Union were jointly victorious over Nazi Germany.
A few weeks earlier, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had immortalized this alliance in a legendary photograph taken at Yalta, in what was then Soviet Crimea. The rest is all too familiar: the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the thaw and then the return of our current icy age.
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Exactly 80 years later, on May 8 in Europe, and on May 9 in Moscow due to the time difference, the anniversary of victory has the taste of gunpowder: war is back on the continent, and one that actually sets the 1945 allies against each other.
And to further confuse the strategic landscape, the United States, leader of the “free world” as it was called during the Cold War, is now, under Donald Trump, questioning the international order built in 1945, and looking to make deals with Russia.
The Moscow show
It’s in Moscow that the diplomatic scene is most symbolically intense. Three years after his invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wants to show the West that they have failed to isolate him: his Chinese friend Xi Jinping, leader of the world’s second-largest power, is visiting Russia, and his soldiers will be marching alongside the Russian army in the Red Square.
Other foreign leaders have chosen to show up in Moscow, including the leader of a European Union country, Robert Fico, the Slovak prime minister, who is breaking ranks and applauding the Russian army parade while Ukraine is under bombardment. The same goes for Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić — his country is candidate for EU membership — who places his Slavic nationalism above all other considerations.
We’re in the midst of a global recomposition.
But Putin’s favorite catch is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, who thinks he’s defending a sort of non-alignment by going to Moscow, when in fact he’s endorsing the violation of the UN Charter. This is the blind spot in Lula’s diplomacy, whose software is stuck in the anti-imperialism of another era.
Instead, we’re currently in the midst of a global recomposition. The institutions born after 1945, such as the United Nations, are on the wane, while the rule of force is returning, just like in the 19th century.
To each his own symbol
There are no longer two blocs as there were in the days of the Cold War, but instead a fractured world that still doesn’t know how it will all end. Donald Trump has accelerated the decomposition of the international order with his messy aggressiveness: one day imperial towards his neighbors, the next stabbing his allies in the back, the third unleashing an aberrant trade war.
The Moscow Club is benefiting from the repulsive effect of Trumpism.
The May 9 Moscow Club is benefiting from the repulsing effect of Trumpism. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who two years ago said out loud that the world had not seen such changes for a long time, and that Russia and China were in the driver’s seat, are taking advantage.
In a joint statement Wednesday, they declared that it was them, China and Russia, who were “defending the victorious outcome of World War II, centered on the defense of an international order based on the rule of law.” The ironic of course is that one of them is quashing that same rule of law to invade its neighbor.
On May 9, Europeans will prefer another celebration: Europe Day, marking the 75th anniversary of the Schumann Declaration, the birth certificate of the European construction. To each his own symbols, that’s what cold wars are all about.
