Javier Fernández Arribas
Director of Atalayar
I can’t resist starting this article with something obvious that is inexorably true: what goes wrong, is likely to get worse. The straw has fallen on the Suez Canal, with the blockage of navigation due to the grounding of the mega-ship Ever Given, the largest container carrier in the world. We are going through a very delicate moment due to the risk of a fourth wave of the coronavirus when the third has not yet ended, with serious problems of vaccine supply in the European Union, with a very serious economic crisis that is creating thousands of unemployed, with a decision of the German Constitutional Court that paralyzes, hopefully temporarily, the implementation of the EU Recovery Plan with the famous 750,000 million euros and with a geostrategic movement between two blocks that could lead to a new Cold War with unforeseeable consequences.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, has launched an international offensive to clarify positions vis-à-vis what he considers to be more than political and military adversaries, and above all economic and commercial ones. The blocs have been formed by the United States and the European Union, despite the trade agreement between the Europeans and China, which joins Russia and Iran. Biden’s intervention at the European Council after four years of estrangement due to Donald Trump’s policy places the challenge of the international situation for Westerners at levels of great difficulty for its management because of its notable pros and cons.
The game has started with strong bets: from the “assassin” for Putin and threats to the Chinese on the American side, to the response of Moscow and Beijing which double with some sanctions the bets of the Europeans. In the various international opinion institutes, numerous analyses and evaluations are being shuffled in order to contextualize what is happening and the possible consequences. At the origin of the Western need to rush its first bets, the growing suspicion about the origin of the coronavirus that is causing so much damage to Western society, mainly, can be glimpsed. The next step is given by the interference in electoral processes in favor of populism and cyber-attacks on strategic centers and institutions by China and Russia. And in this environment, the enormous doubt about the cause of the maneuver that ran the Ever Given aground causing the blockage of the Suez Canal. The Arctic route is beginning to be taken into account.
© This article is a translation of the originally published in Atalayar
