“A World Without Great Powers”: A Working Paper
COMPOSE Working Paper No. 003
Author: Kevin Henry Villanueva
December 2023
“Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with
space and time.” Guglielmo Marconi
“The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast, the slow one now, will
later be fast, as the present now, will later be past. The order is
rapidly fadin’, and the first one now, will later be last, for the
times, they are a-changin’.” Bob Dylan
War is a crime by any means. Sometimes, it is necessary. But when a war threatens, however, the extinction of our entire humanity, it cannot by any means be justified. It is ugly, violent, and unforgiving. It is evil. On the eighth day of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Lithuanian ambassador to NATO, Deividas Matulionis, said “We thought that peace was already a given. We were wrong. We all were wrong.” Matulonis’ words call for a serious kind of reflection, primarily among the society of states – our ‘international community’ – on the future scenario(s) for world politics. I think, however, that the time is ripe for a more radical shift in thought and action ‘outside’ of international society. New strategic and diplomatic considerations must emerge from a wider horizon that brings the international system of states into the light of new realities: an awakened ‘Global South’, a preponderant ‘Asia’, and an ailing Earth. But I fear that these realities do not make much sense unless we question the hand that ‘we’ have played in this conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. I see these two as ‘fictions’ that arise out of longer historical narratives regarding the peoples that sustain their territories, their armies, and their flags as nations. There is a war raging between Russia and Ukraine, but where are the ‘Ukrainians’ and ‘Russians’ to be found, as it were, in the fog of war?