About to be one year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, experts agree that the war already has winners and losers: “whatever happens, Russia has become a pariah” and China is taking the measure of the West, benefiting of the lack of attention of the United States to other world scenes.

Thus, the war has already served to highlight each other’s strengths and weaknessesencourage joint action by the EU and put an end to the “mirage” of international relations based on globalization, rules and laws.

The professor of International Relations at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas Alberto Priego is clear: the big loser in this war, apart from Ukraine, which causes death and destruction, is Russia, which “whatever happens, will become a State pariah”.

Also loses the “hyperglobalized and deregulated model” who had already been touched to death by the coronavirus and now receives the lace when the European need to seriously invest in Defensesomething that only States can do, he assures. Joint Defense organizations win, such as NATO; the EU that has been “federalized” wins and receives an important boost to its integration process and also recovers the transatlantic link.

Renewable energies win, “not so much because they are clean, but because they avoid dependence on third parties” and wins the United States that recovers its reality and identity and “he comes out of the schizophrenia between Trump’s populism and Obama’s pacifism,” argues Priego.

AND Ukraine wins, which will end this war with the largest and best equipped Army in Europewhich will facilitate their access to the EU due to the same pragmatism that led the allies to incorporate Germany into the international arena after World War II, he says.

The main researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor of International Relations, Carlota García Encina, also believes that, ultimately, the war has facilitated Ukraine’s entry into the EU, a possibility that was neither desired nor very feasible before. the war has tilted in favor of the EU to Ukrainian society, which was previously sharply divided between pro-Russians and pro-Europeans, Explain. And the enormous European and American support has made it necessary for President Volodimir Zelenski to be “personally and carefully supervising” the use and destination given to the huge amount of money that comes to him.

García Encina agrees with Priego that the war has also revealed the significant deficiencies in weapons and ammunition in European countries and the need to promote the modernization and manufacture of their own, without dependencies from outside.

On the contrary, The Elcano researcher does not believe that this war benefits the United States beyond reinforcing transatlantic ties, as it ultimately forces you to divert your attention and resources from the scenario that really worries you: the Indo-Pacific and its competition with China, which implies a “distortion of its long-term objectives and interests.”

For the professor and coordinator of the International Relations degree at the European University of Valencia, Frédéric Mertens de Wilmars, it is also beyond any doubt that China is one of the great beneficiaries of the war in Ukraine. In his opinion, China aspires to become a great political power and “is using Russia” to change the parameters of world geopolitics, from the “soft power” that had almost imposed itself on the world stage to the “hard power” of the political and military imposition.

For now, “China is watching from a balcony to see what happens when it challenges and attacks the Western world; it is testing the opposing power and taking advantage of the fact that the United States is dedicated to Ukraine to take advantage in other scenarios,” he says. The EU also wins, to a certain extent, for whom the war, although it has become clear that “Europeans are nothing, nothing, nothing in terms of military capabilities”, has also paved the way towards greater integration and coordination of its policy Foreign and Defense, and the need for greater commercial and energy independence, he considers.