The end of the Cold War was welcomed with heightened optimism by the international community and, in particular, by the United Nations (UN), which announced to the world the great dividends of peace.
Decades of a world divided and confronted into large blocs were left behind, and a new opportunity for global development and democracy was opened.
That optimism even made some think that the "end of history" had been reached.
The decades that followed the 1990s quickly showed that conflicts had not disappeared from the scene and that the emerging unipolar system was not without great risks.
Far from having reached its conclusion, History did nothing but continue on its way.
The twenty years that followed the end of the Cold War showed a scenario with new turbulence (the most serious, the emergence of international terrorism as a global threat), but where the hope of accessing a less divided and polarized world remained.
In fact, in 2010 it seemed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Russian Federation were willing to celebrate some kind of marriage out of interest.
However, the disagreements of the marriage came soon.
The crisis surrounding the position of Ukraine became evident in 2013 and, from that moment until the outbreak of the war nine years later, the international community was unable to stop the threat of the Russian Federation invading its neighboring country. .
On the other hand, it is a coincidence that the war in Ukraine is not only a terrible fact, but also a symptom of a global process: the laying of the foundations of a new world that is being formed, a situation that has been seen as the one corresponding to "a new Thucydides trap";
that is, the rise of an emerging center of world power that may (or may not) displace the decaying old center, something that has often been resolved through wars.
Professor Graham T. Allison's book Destined For War shows that this has happened several times throughout world history.
True, this possibility currently has an important filter: we are in the nuclear age.
The scenario of the world war of the last century is no longer repeatable, unless the contenders want to die trying.
But beyond the ways in which this hypothetical military conflict can be assumed, what seems unquestionable is that the present world that is being formed seems to return to the division that we thought we had overcome.
Everything indicates that a growing competition is being established between two poles: an alliance of two nuclear powers, China and Russia, with an authoritarian orientation, facing a West, also nuclear, where democracy seeks to defend itself against its internal and external enemies.
Of course, just as it happened in the past, this bipolar conflict does not rule out the existence of a group of emerging countries, the best example of which is India, that are playing to position themselves in the middle, just as it did in the last century. the non-aligned movement.
A good number of Latin American countries can also be placed (in a position between the two blocks).
However, in the past, this has not diminished the division of the world that determined the Cold War.
The ideological and cultural clash between these two emerging factions also has justifying stories.
The West alludes to the need to force the other bloc to abandon power actions without rules, while China and Russia agree to demand the definitive disappearance of the unipolar world, which emerged in 1990, and the achievement of a freely chosen multipolarity.
It is not necessary to make the effort to verify to what extent this international framework can be understood as a new cold war, but what is unquestionable is that a newly divided world is being formulated.
This global division is fed by the deep sociocultural polarization experienced by most Western countries, something that is also evident in many Latin American countries.
This sociocultural division, which also affects Europe, serves as the basis in some countries for an exacerbated political polarization that often results in a breeding ground for populist offers of different orientations.
The prolongation of the war in Ukraine is a sign that the horizon of a divided world could stretch out for a good part of this 21st century.
Similarly, an early halt to the war in Ukraine would be a sign that the international community is capable of reversing this return to a divided world.
For this reason, proposals such as that of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to stop the war as soon as possible are so relevant.
Not only does it show that intermediate countries have the courage to get out of the rhetoric of confrontation and make good proposals, but also that, if they effectively favor stopping the war, they will contribute to the development of a less divided world in the coming decades.
Of course, it is not very likely that the warring parties will take peacemaking proposals seriously, but it is healthy for them to know that not everyone aligns with one of the blocs that are forming, and that many are not willing to look from the sidelines. barrier a war that causes so much destruction and death.
Enrique Gomáriz Moraga is a sociologist (University of Leeds), international consultant.
Copyright Latinoamerica21 and Clarín, 2023.