The Empire Strikes Back

Why the War Economy Won’t Die After Ukraine

Apr 04, 2025

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Most people think the war in Ukraine will end soon 🕊️.
They’re already planning for peace ✌️.
But the world will continue running on a war economy 💣.
And if you’re not adapting, your business, investments, and strategy are already behind 🧨.

👇
This week’s Polis Doxa breaks the illusion.
You’ll learn why ceasefires don’t bring calm, why imperialism is back in style, and how to thrive in a world shaped by insecurity.
Forget nostalgia—this is your survival guide for the imperialism economy.

🎯 Lesson of the week: The peace dividend is dead. Resilience is your new ROI.

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1. 💥 THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 🌍💣: Why Peace Is the New Illusion

We all came to believe that peace is the default.

That war is an aberration. A regrettable bug in the software of progress and a thing of the past.

And so we built a world for markets, not missiles.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

The world didn’t stop building empires. Only Europe did.

Russia doesn’t just want Ukraine. It’s keeping troops in Georgia, Transnistria, Kaliningrad,…
Deep down, it looks at the USSR 2.0.

China?
It's publishing new maps that claim swaths of India, Bhutan, Malaysia, and most of the South China Sea.
Maps that quietly say: “This is ours now.”

Even the US adopted this “empire” approach: Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada, Gaza,…

Believe it or not, even Venezuela!
It may be collapsing, but it’s also claiming chunks of Guyana with oil underneath.

The empire has returned. And it's redrawing the world. Better start looking for a death star…

2. This Isn’t a Blip—It’s a Transition

Even if Trump imposes a ceasefire on Russia and Ukraine tomorrow1, the war economy is here to stay. Because the new world order is based on insecurity.
In this world, countries can be attacked by their neighbours, their traditional allies can turn on them, their supply chains can be destroyed by tariffs or other trade blocks.
The peace dividend is over.
The War economy is back, because this is a dangerous world.

What comes next isn't diplomacy.
It's a permanent state of strategic tension.
A global arms race without uniforms or declarations.
Just budgets. Border patrols. Blacklists. Blockades.

We know the drill. It was business as usual until the 80s.

We're not heading into a peaceful recovery.
We're sliding into a full-spectrum war economy—where military logic drives economic decisions, policy gets weaponized, and even your supply chain is a battlefield.

Even sports get mobilized! And the Welfare state is questioned.

You can feel it already:
— Countries decoupling from China.
— Semiconductors treated like nukes.
— NATO members rushing to rearm.
— CEOs hiring "geopolitical risk consultants."
— Investors shifting into dual-use tech and energy security.

This isn’t a blip.
It’s a systemic pivot.
A once-in-a-generation transition.

The empire strikes back—not with bullets, but with procurement contracts. With maps. With algorithms.
And if you're still betting on a peace dividend, you're playing the wrong game.

Your company. Your portfolio. Your career.
They all live in this new reality now.

And if you're not adapting, you're exposed.

3. The Evidence Is In: Peace Is Not the Plan

I’m not asking you to believe in vibes.
I’m asking you to follow the evidence.

This isn’t just about Ukraine.
It’s about what’s already started.

It’s not impossible but it’s not likely that peace in Ukraine will happen anytime soon.

Also it’s not clear it will last long if it happens.

Unlike some people say, it’s not bond to happen.

We in Europe have shown this disgraceful capacity to endure really long wars: 3 years is nothing in the history of European conflicts.

3.1 Ceasefire ≠ Peace

Ceasefire sounds like progress.
But it's just a pause button.

It doesn’t erase grievances.
It freezes them.

And frozen conflicts don’t heal.
They metastasize.

Look at Korea. Syria. Palestine. The Donbas.

Ukraine won’t be the exception.
Peace agreements signed under pressure rarely stick.
They postpone war, not end it (Sargsyan, 2019).

Even when violence drops, risk remains high.
Recovery stalls. Investments hesitate.
Ceasefires lower the volume, not the danger (Fetzer et al., 2023).

Ukraine’s own “Peace Formula” doesn’t really aim for peace.
It aims for security—long-term, enforceable, and expensive (Pyvovar, 2025).

What we’re seeing is a stalemate model.
Not post-war diplomacy.
Post-truth diplomacy.

As Richmond (2025) argues, ceasefires today are tools of revisionist powers—bought time to rearm, regroup, and return.

Meanwhile, violence shifts underground.
Proxies stay active.
Militias grow stronger.
Instability remains the business model (Shaw & Aliyev, 2021).

Even peace movements are split.
Some call for disarmament.
Others quietly accept rearmament as the new norm (Lichterman, 2022).

The war doesn’t end with a handshake. It morphs.

And the longer you pretend it’s over, the more exposed you are.

3.2 The Peace Dividend Is Dead

After the Cold War, we cashed in.
Western nations cut defense budgets.
We moved from soldiers to social programs and helping the development of poor nations like China and Russia (!!!).

That era is over.

The Ukraine war didn’t just shake Europe’s borders.
It shattered its belief in permanent peace.

Defense spending is no longer a question.
It’s a necessity.
Across Europe, military budgets are rising.
Fast. And for good (Cox et al., 2023).

Even neutral states like Sweden and Finland joined NATO.
Their strategy: survival.

The U.S. is shifting toward Fortress Economics.
According to Solty (2023), bloc confrontation is back.
Except now, it’s asymmetrical.
Cyber warfare. Energy blackmail. Trade weaponization.

No one’s asking “should we rearm?” anymore. Only “how fast?”

And that changes everything.

3.3 The Return of Empires

We thought imperialism died with the 20th century.
Remember how the UN replaced it with “the right of self-determination”?
”Any people has the right to determine their future”.

That was the (right) idea that led to the breakup of European empires (the last to do that was Portugal, my own county, as usual, decades too late).

Russia defended the right of self determination of the people in Angola, Mozambique, Guiné, Cabo verde, São Tomé e Príncipe and Timor. And they were right (not sure Russia stood for Timor, I’ll have to ask people).

There’s no right of self determination for Ukraine, Kaliningrad, Transnistria, Georgia, …
Pieces of an imperial puzzle.

China prints new maps with other people's land on them.
Claims entire seas. Borders. Even airspace.
Imperialism by cartography.

And now the U.S. started making claims about Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada, Gaza.

All these “empires” use narratives (official speeches and other propaganda) that could perfectly had been used by Bismark or some 19th century european king (even the Portuguese king).

As Robinson (2007) explains, global capitalism created a new kind of empire.
Less flags. More flows.
Of capital, influence, weapons, and logistics.

And in places like Ukraine, it's not just one empire rising.
It's multiple, clashing.
As Ishchenko & Yurchenko (2021) put it: inter-imperialist rivalry.
Not Cold War II.
But something more chaotic—and less controllable.

Modern empires don’t wear crowns. They wear pipelines, tech monopolies, and proxy militias.

And every one of them is rearming.

3.4 The World Is Getting Meaner, Not Safer

This isn’t a transition back to peace.
It’s a pivot into permanent competition and conflict.

The war in Ukraine triggered more than troop movements.
It accelerated a global shift—away from cooperation, toward confrontation.

According to Solty (2023), we’ve entered a new bloc era.
But it’s no Cold War rerun.
It’s asymmetrical.
Unpredictable.
Faster.

Not just tanks and nukes!
But chips, data, food, energy, propaganda.

Private militias are back.
Sanctions are now siege weapons.
Supply chains? Political minefields.

Shaw & Aliyev (2021) show how even after civil wars end, armed groups don’t disband.
They mutate.
Into political parties. Into contractors. Into power brokers.

We’re no longer living in post-war peace.
We’re navigating pre-war geopolitics.

The world isn’t about who wins anymore. It’s about who weathers the storm.

3.5 How to Win in the War Economy

So, we are in a Cold War II + World War III, all at once.

You can’t opt out of this shift.
But you can outmaneuver it.

War economies reward those who adapt.
Who build for volatility.
Who see risk as raw material.

So how do you win?

If you’re a professional:
Learn risk analysis.
Understand logistics.
Follow the money—into cybersecurity, AI, energy security, defense-tech.

If you’re a business:
Stop optimizing for efficiency.
Start optimizing for resilience.

If you’re an investor:
Look at what Smith (2015) calls imperial capital flows.
Military budgets are the new growth funds.
Geopolitical hedging is the new diversification.

And if you lead people?
Get comfortable with complexity.
Because strategy now means scenario planning, not five-year plans.

Just look at how much the world changed in the past five years.

As Richmond (2024) argues, the logic of stalemates forces every actor to gain leverage, not resolution.
That includes you.

This isn’t about thriving in peace. It’s about positioning in conflict.

The age of the peace dividend is over. So is the age of the global peace maker (US).
But that doesn’t mean you lose.
It just means you lead differently.

4. Isn’t This Just Fear-Mongering?

Won’t markets stabilize post-conflict?

You might be thinking:
“Isn’t this too pessimistic?”
“Won’t things calm down after the Ukraine war?”
“Aren’t we overreacting?”

Fair.

But let’s look at the facts.

Ceasefires don’t disarm militias.
They don’t rebuild trust.
They don’t dismantle supply chain fragility.
They just hit pause—while the arms race hits play.

This isn’t fear-mongering.
It’s pattern recognition.

And as Richmond (2024) puts it, the new global order isn’t built for resolution.
It’s built for stalemates.
Tension isn’t the exception.
It’s the operating system.

You don’t need to panic.
You just need to prepare.

🎯 “The war economy is not the exception. It's the new operating system.”

5. You Can’t Build a Strategy on a Lie

The lie is simple.
That this war will end soon.
That peace will return.
That we’ll go back to business as usual.

But here’s the truth:
We’ve entered a war economy without a war declaration.
The empires are back.

And they’re shaping your world—your markets, your career, your investments—whether you like it or not.

You can’t wait for the noise to stop.
You need signal now.
A map. A method. A strategy.

Because in a world of instability, the ones who win aren’t the strongest—they’re the most prepared.

Modern empires don’t wear crowns. They wear sanctions, ports, and proxies.

Here’s my take: The war economy is just warming up. But I might be wrong. What’s your take?