The New Cold War, Alliances and the Economy

In October 2025, during a Euro-Gulf Information Centre (EGIC) conference, titled ‘Expanding the Nuclear Family: Proliferation, Alliances and War,’ issues connected to the growing tensions in the international political community, were highlighted—termed here as ‘international society’ with a slight twist.

One of the central points of discussion was the relationship between capitalism and peace, often summarised in the so-called ‘McDonald’s Peace Theory’ that suggests that when nations are linked by essential and profitable economic exchanges, the costs of conflict become too high to be sustainable. Interdependence, therefore, would be a guarantee of stability. However, the most recent Russian-vs-the-West-crisis undermines this belief and suggests the question of: What has gone wrong with the capitalist system of interdependence between Russia and the West, if indeed economic connections reduce the risk of war?

During the EGIC event, the speakers were convergent in their diagnosis. On one hand, it was argued that the main mistake lay in Europe’s lack of awareness of Russia’s true nature and the very real challenges it posed: what Russia did in Ukraine had been foreseen well in advance. The West, blinded by market confidence, ignored the Kremlin’s power dynamics and political use of energy resources.

Others identified two endogenous reasons: the ‘involution’ of the European political-value system and the failure to diversify interdependence. In other words, Europe built a network of dependencies too unbalanced towards one supplier — Russia — making interdependence not a brake on war but a weapon in the hands of those who controlled the resources.

The problem, however, may have been cultural and political: an ill-calculated rationality, where the supremacy of ideology — the blind faith in the power of trade as the engine of peace — prevailed over a realistic analysis of national interests.

Among the final comments of the conference, one speaker pointed out that capitalism is not a guarantee against war. This has been believed in the past, but reality shows that it is not just a matter of ideology: egoisms, national interests and the return of a balance of power logic in a multipolar world comes into play. Economic interdependence does not eliminate conflicts: it displaces them, delays them or transforms them into other forms of competition.

A Question of Interdependence

Behind the economic considerations, however, lies a deeper theoretical knot: what happens when the principle of interdependence, borne as a guarantee of peace, comes into conflict with the sovereign architecture of international law? The crux of this reflection concerns a decisive point: behind the concept of interdependence lies a deeper logic, linked to the mechanisms of labour separation within international society.

The debate challenged the belief that economic interdependence (McDonald’s Peace Theory) is a guarantee of stability. The Russia-West crisis revealed that imbalanced and unwanted dependency (especially in relation to energy) can be a geopolitical weapon and that ideological trust in the market has blinded the West to power dynamics and national interests.

It is necessary to clarify what is meant by an International Society. It is not a ‘complete society’ in the strict sense of the term, such as that which exists within a state, but rather the presence, globally, of relational mechanisms typical of a society, i.e. stable and functional connections between subjects. Following the definition of society proposed by Georg Simmel, and taking up Hedley Bull’s analysis in The Anarchist Society, it may be argued that if by ‘society’ we mean the set of human relations that tend to create interdependencies and divisions of labour, then a form of society also exists on an international level, even in the absence of unitary and coercive institutions such as those present within a state.

Accordingly, it is unsurprising that, similarly to the national level, the separation of labour also produces interdependence on a global level. So far, one might say, nothing new: the globalised economy has been founded for a century on networks of exchange and mutual dependence. But what often escapes notice are the latent causes and effects of this phenomenon. At the national level, interdependence means that no individual is able to provide wholly for themselves. Living in a society means being linked to a complex chain of production processes and services that no one can control alone. A banal example: to make a simple piece of toast, an individual would have to grow wheat, produce agricultural tools, raise and slaughter livestock, make bread and butter, build an oven…an impossible task. Our lives therefore depend on an obligatory network of cooperation.

If this applies to individuals, at the international level the mechanism is similar: only the unit of measurement changes. The actors are no longer individuals, but aggregates of individuals, i.e. states. The International Society is thus, in a sense, a society of societies.

Here the decisive difference comes into play. At the national level, there is a superordinate and coercive power, the state, which regulates relations between members and ensures their balance. At the international level, on the other hand, such authority is lacking. This absence profoundly alters the functioning of the system.

In a national society, mutual dependence between citizens is an advantage because it is regulated and guaranteed: the inability of one individual is compensated by that of others, all subject to the same laws and constraints. We know that it is not good for us to cultivate the land to make toast, because we have the guarantee that someone will produce that good for us, within a context of common rules. The system is democratically modifiable, and every citizen participates in its correction through the ballot box, the courts, and civil rights. In other words, we are all in the same boat and the actions of one fellow citizen are directly the business of the other fellow citizens.

At the international level, however, there is no common boat and no state is responsible for what happens to other states or what other states choose to do. Thus, while the same mechanisms of interdependence that would presuppose an obligation of mutual interference, at the international level not only do not exist, but would even be antithetical to the very foundations of international relations by virtue of the principles of domestic jurisdiction and non-interference.

And herein lies the real dilemma, at once legal, moral and political. If the process of global interdependence continues to advance, mutual interference between states will become inevitable: by transitive property, depending on one another means being able, or having the ability, to influence others. But this principle contradicts one of the historical foundations of international law: non-interference in the internal affairs of states.

Internationally, there is no sovereign authority to compensate for mutual dependencies and to regulate an obligatory network of cooperation. There is a clear dependance on others but have no means to influence them in a stable and lasting way. This creates a perfect breeding ground for instability and conflict.

International society is defined by the presence of interdependencies and division of labour similar to those within a state. The crucial difference lies in the absence of a greater coercive authority and the hidden causal mechanisms. At the national level, the state regulates mutual dependency; at the global level, this regulation is lacking, making the system inherently fragile and fertile for conflict because compensation for the inability to produce autonomously is not guaranteed.

Conversely, if national sovereignty and the principle of non-interference are to be preserved, a halt to interdependence will have to be accepted. With dramatic consequences: if a country has no lithium deposits, it will not be able to produce batteries; without global trade, goodbye smartphones, electric cars, air conditioning systems. In short, economic modernity only exists through interdependence.

The problem is that this interdependence, unlike interdependence within a state, has no effective regulatory mechanisms. And it cannot do without them forever. Sooner or later, humanity will be forced to choose.

On the one hand, accepting interference in the affairs of others, a prelude to a supranational government but in violation of international law. On the other, to reject it, with the result that one can no longer ensure that one’s dependence on others is compensated for, and to witness a gradual economic closure, accompanied by an inevitable decline in collective welfare. While it is therefore true that in principle, going back to the initial question, the interdependence of trade and commodities is potentially a reductive one, it is also true that it implies a tendency towards interference, which cannot necessarily be received with candour by those who suffer it.

The future of International Society is therefore at a crossroads:

• Scenario 1—Supranational governance: accept increasing forms of mutual interference, creating new mechanisms of global governance.
• Scenario 2—Return to autarky: defend absolute sovereignty, while renouncing the complexity and prosperity resulting from interdependence.

In both cases, a price is paid: either political freedom or economic prosperity.

Hence the equation that interdependence must be matched by reciprocal interference, but reciprocal interference is antithetical to the rules hitherto in force, and therefore not being able to interfere (or not having the political-military strength to do so) means either an absorption of smaller societies in favour of larger ones or their closure and a return to isolationism, which is antithetical to modern living standards. Regardless of which choice is made, one will be faced with an outcome that is antithetical to what we have built up to date: one will have to choose which one hurts less to give up.

The advance of interdependence will make mutual interference between states increasingly inevitable (to ensure stability). However, this principle is antithetical to the foundation of international law: non-interference. Humanity is faced with a radical choice: accept a violation of sovereignty (with interference) in order to preserve economic modernity, or preserve non-interference at the cost of a return to isolationism and an inevitable decline in collective welfare.