The New Global Direction: From “One Globalization” to “Two Globalizations”? Russia’s War in Ukraine in Global Perspective

Roland Benedikter surveys the views of globalization experts, politicians, opinion leaders, intellectuals, and international media regarding Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. On this basis, he draws conclusions about the impact on – and prospect for – the overall course and further direction of globalization. Given the general turn toward re-globalization that the globe has witnessed already since the mid of the 2010s, the question is if the liberal global order is transiting from the “one globalization” concept – as generated by the open societies of the West and Europe after 1989/91 – to a “two globalizations” system inspired by the joint rise of non-democratic and authoritarian powers such as Russia and China since the 2010s. Their now programmatic aspiration to create a “second world order” or a “parallel globalization” is using Russia’s Ukraine war as leverage to unify anti-Western powers in order to start to compete with the West’s idea of the future on the macro-, meso- and micro-levels. The competition between two different concepts of “globalization” will unfold according to the different understandings of what a productively globalized society – including reforms to be implemented through the re-globalization process – is and should be. The opposition between the authoritarian’s and democrat’s concepts of “participatory” societies is instrumental to shape and drive the contest between the “two globalizations.”