Western leaders will continue to be put to the test by the impact of the Ukraine attack

OTTAWA—This spring’s budget will be the fourth consecutive budget or economic statement delivered by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland with a post-COVID recovery focus. After 15 months of efforts to pave the way to “build back better” in the wake of the pandemic, the government would finally have been in a position now to get wheels up on the economic rebound—then Russia launched its brutal assault on Ukraine. The Finance Department will be forgiven, I think, if this year’s budget is another in the growing list of fiscal holding plans. Leaving aside the unknown course of the horrible conflict Russian President Vladimir Putin has set in motion, the impact of the war on our lives appears certain to be immense, long-lasting and beyond prediction. So, Freeland will presumably table a nuts-and-bolts economic plan, with the exception of a down payment on a sizeable increase in defence spending. The whole world, of course, is in the same wait-and-see situation after an unprovoked attack in Europe that put an end to the 75-year postwar era. The ramifications will be unclear for years, but it seems certain that, in the widest sense, the global divide between liberal democracies and autocratic governments like Russia and China will be hardened, with profound implications for global security, geopolitics, and economic activity. Leadership on the world stage will be more crucial in the near term than in recent years and could be evaluated differently. As U.S. President Joe Biden tries to galvanize western support for Ukraine, he seems to be aided domestically by a bit of a respite in the Republicans’ Trumpian rejection of America’s need to co-operate with allies. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose future was much in doubt before the Russian attack, has benefited at least for the moment from public support for his government’s efforts to enforce western sanctions against Russia and support Ukraine, as has Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. All that is obviously preliminary and volatile. But there is some possibility that the horrors of the Ukraine invasion and the realization that the West needs to wake up to the reality of the aggressively expansionary, pro-autocracy forces in Moscow and Beijing will make a difference in the stressed political environment in western countries. What is clear is that nothing short of a unified front in opposition to this aggressive, long-term anti-democratic strategy on the part of Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have much impact. And this of course means co-operation among western countries, rather than continuous quarrelling and infighting. And it means a willingness by average people to take more responsibility for their country’s contribution to world affairs and, as a result, make some sacrifices to help build a stronger, more co-ordinated alliance to defend pluralistic democracy, open economies, and human rights. This is asking a lot, of course, at a time when politics in the West is twisted in knots by inward-looking, tribe-exulting xenophobia on a mass basis. Maintaining the framework of rules-based national sovereignty and international trade that evolved from the wreckage of the Second World War will in any case be a challenge in the new geopolitical reality embodied by the Russian invasion. Coming on top of debilitating inflation and supply chain breakdowns caused by COVID, this Putin-created shock to production and the partial unwinding of decades of global economic integration is likely to cause severe shortages and slowdowns, if not recessions, across the world economy. Rebuilding confidence in the global system will be difficult and may depend on whether the West will find ways to translate the heartening newfound military-security unity inadvertently prompted by Putin into closer co-operation in other interactions. This will require painful, concerted efforts by western leaders like Johnson and Biden to reject the easy political wins of nationalist protectionism in favour of efforts to explain to restive citizens why economic integration on a global basis, for all its shortcomings, is the only proven way for advanced industrial countries to enhance economic development and, with it, the possibility of democratic aspirations. In Canada, Trudeau has bought some time with his deal with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, time which the Liberal government will certainly need in this cascade of crises. Canadians back more support for Ukraine but are not happy about having to pay for it—a not surprising reaction amid 30-year-high inflation that can only get worse because of the Ukraine conflict. If Putin’s war is brought to some sort of conclusion, affordability looms as a decisive political issue that could sink the Liberals for good, regardless of the timing of the next election. So, it will be instructive to see if Freeland includes any measures (aside from childcare, for which the political rewards have mostly been booked) in the budget. Under today’s circumstances, many believe global efforts to fight climate change may unfortunately have to take a temporary back seat. But as of March 28, there was no sign the Trudeau government is going to postpone April 1’s planned carbon tax hike that will only add to consumers’ current travails. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

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Western leaders will continue to be put to the test by the impact of the Ukraine attack

It seems certain that the global divide between liberal democracies and autocratic governments like Russia and China will be hardened, with profound implications for global security, geopolitics, and economic activity.

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