Opinion – Mathias Alencastro: 2022 was the third most important year of the century and leaves four challenges for 2023

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After 2005, when the logic of relations between the United States and China changed definitively, and 2016, the year of Donald Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum, 2022 goes down in history as the third most important year of the century. He leaves us four challenges.

Prevent the great divergence

In a debate gripped by ideological passion and fragile historical interpretations, two truths about the Ukrainian War seem immutable. On the one hand, the Russian “special military operation”, which was supposed to lead to the fall of Kiev in three days, failed in all its objectives. On the other hand, the United States saw the Ukrainian counteroffensive as a way to put pressure on geopolitical rivals.

The stalemate on the battlefield prevented the great divergence between West and East that was seen as inevitable at the beginning of the war. The last major events of the year showed that the United States and China are ready to negotiate a way out of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The challenge is to raise the cost of the conflict for Russia and, at the same time, lower the cost of negotiation, creating a safe exit for Ukrainians and a political solution for the regime of Vladimir Putin.

Relaunch climate policy

Lula’s election, and the defeat of the first openly ecocidal government in history, ends a cycle of turbulence in climate diplomacy initiated by the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Accords in 2017. After years of difficulties, the European Union was forced to make the energy transition by force, pressured by the war.

The shock of war is spurring Southern countries to accelerate their entry into the post-carbon era. But all care is little. Badly implemented, green public policies can provoke social revolts, as in the case of the Yellow Vests in France.

regulate the big techs

Elon Musk’s circus drift on Twitter, the announced fiasco of Mark Zuckerberg’s mega-investment in virtual reality, and the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried after the billionaire bankruptcy of FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency funds, opened a unique window of opportunity for companies and states return to the negotiating table.

Taken to the brink of collapse by a president who radicalized politics through social networks, Brazil has the strength and legitimacy to make the regulation of new technologies the starting point of the new global governance.

preserve democracies

In 2022 democracies folded, but did not break. Far-right movements must learn to live without the autocrats that emerged after the 2008 financial crisis and the advent of digital mass communication. After, at least temporarily, the risk of the collapse of democracies, the challenge now is to design new forms of governance.

In the European Union, the instability of national Parliaments is being compensated by the strengthening of institutions in Brussels. In Latin America, the fall of Peruvian ruler Pedro Castillo is a reminder that regional integration depends on the consolidation of democracies. Time flies. A year from now, the region will prepare for a new knockout: the presidential clash between Democrats and the Trumpist right in the United States.

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