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March 5 - March 24, 2022
Populism and nationalism are on the rise. What we are witnessing is a widespread rejection of globalization and international involvement and, as a result, a questioning of long-standing postures and policies, from openness to trade and immigrants to a willingness to maintain alliances and overseas commitments.
Depending on what was done in response to Saddam’s aggression and act of conquest, the post–Cold War world could be one of international order or disorder on a large scale.
the United Nations Security Council to repudiate Iraq’s aggression and to establish and subsequently enforce a sanctions regime designed to ensure that Iraq would not benefit from its conquest and would pay an enormous price for it.
when diplomacy backed by sanctions failed to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait, to force Iraq out of that country and to restore Kuwait’s independence and government.
Russia had seized Crimea for itself and was actively destabilizing eastern Ukraine; it also demonstrated for the first time in decades a willingness and an ability to act boldly in the Middle East.
China was expanding its claims in the South China Sea amid growing nationalism and tensions in a region characterized by numerous territorial disputes and much historical bitterness.
“Emerging trends suggest that geopolitical competition among the major powers is increasing in ways that challenge international norms and institutions.”
It makes the case that it is important to do everything possible to constrain great-power competition so it does not come to resemble history’s norm.
One critical element of this adjustment will be adopting a new approach to sovereignty, one that embraces the obligations of governments as well as their rights.
the United States needs to do to succeed in the world is to define national security in broader terms than is traditional, taking into account to a much greater degree (and doing something about) what are normally thought of as domestic challenges and problems.
It is the balance between the two, between society and anarchy, that determines the dominant character of any era.
European order that was recognized at the Congress of Vienna—a gathering in 1814 and 1815 where, among others, the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, Prussia, Russia, and Austria met to shape Europe’s future—and that survived for much of the nineteenth century.
“No order is safe without physical safeguards against aggression.”
Order reflects the degree to which those with substantial power accept existing arrangements or rules for conducting international relations, as well as the diplomatic mechanisms for setting and modifying those rules. It also reflects the ability of those same powers to meet the challenges of others who do not share their perspective. Disorder, as explained by both Bull and Kissinger, reflects the ability of those who are dissatisfied with existing arrangements to change them, including through the use of violence.
any government ought to be influencing the foreign policy of other governments rather than the nature of the society over which they preside.
classical notion of order described above is normally attributed to the Treaty of Westphalia, the pact signed in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War, a part-religious, part-political struggle within and across borders that raged across much of Europe for three decades.
The Westphalian order is based on a balance of power involving independent states that do not interfere in one another’s “internal business.”
and political status quo that had developed. They rejected the legitimacy of existing international arrangements. And they were strong enough to act. The balance of power no longer precluded action or deterred them from acting.
What this teaches is that neither a balance of power nor economic interdependence is a guarantee against conflict and disorder.
as was the case with the previous world war, trade and mutually beneficial economic ties were not enough to discourage governments from eschewing aggression that could threaten those ties.
Nearly three-quarters of a century later, Germany and Japan stand out as among the few successful examples of what today would be called regime change followed by nation or state building.
Is this a credit to our nation-building efforts or to the people and cultures being rebuilt?
what was agreed to was an approach to order that recognized that what goes on within a country’s borders matters not just to its own citizens but to others.
what was done in Germany and Japan after their defeat was born more of realism than idealism.
the principal reason why both Germany and Japan were treated differently after the Second World War was the perceived exigencies of the emerging era, the Cold War. The United States and what became known as the West needed a strong, non-Communist Germany and Japan to anchor their efforts to resist the spread and reach of Soviet power and influence in Europe and Asia.
the experiment worked, possibly because both societies were characterized by a respect for authority, an educated citizenry, a clear divide between the political and the religious, and experience with both civil society and a modern economy with broad employment.
See previous note - The people and culture must be a consideration when determining if nation-building is a via course of action. Should be an addendum to Nadia Schadlow's War and the Art of Governance
The lion’s share of the responsibility falls on the USSR, which in its approach to Germany and Korea signaled its readiness to mount a global challenge to the interests of the United States in Europe and Asia alike.
Are we entering another Cold (Luke-Warm) War period signaled by Russia offensive actions in Ukraine and Crimea?
The respective alliance systems of NATO and the Warsaw Pact made any war in Europe sure to be costly and uncertain in outcome.
one factor that helped maintain a form of order in a world dominated by two superpower rivals was a willingness to act to maintain local balances of power where they were seen to be threatened.
What most reinforced the strength of the order was the shared realization on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union that any direct clash between them could escalate into a nuclear exchange in which the costs would dwarf any conceivable gains and in which there would and could be no victor in any meaningful sense of the word.
the sinister genius of mutually assured destruction (popularly known as MAD) and what was known as second-strike capability, namely, the ability to absorb a nuclear strike by the other side and still be in a position to retaliate on a scale that would deter (assuming rationality was at work) the other side from acting in the first place.
Rollback was in many ways the 1950s parlance for what today is often called “regime change.” It was wisely rejected as both infeasible (the United States lacked the means to bring it about) and reckless, given that a threatened Soviet leadership could lash out militarily in any number of places and ways.
Stability during the four decades of the Cold War also benefited from the structural design of international relations at the time, namely, bipolarity. It is less difficult to manage a world of two principal centers of power than many.
today’s world could hardly be more different in that it is neither fixed nor so concentrated in its distribution of power.
To a large degree each superpower acted with restraint in the affairs of those countries close (in the geographic sense) to the other.
Could Russia have perceived the expansion of NATO on Russia's western border as a violation this unspoken rule?
1975 in Helsinki from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
On one level it reads as a tribute to the classic Westphalian notion of order. It is a multilateral accord premised on state sovereignty, the impermissibility of the threat or use of force, the inviolability of borders, respect for the territorial integrity of all European states, a commitment to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and acceptance of the principle of nonintervention in one another’s internal affairs. The one exception to this traditional approach was a commitment by all governments to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms within their own borders.
the economic and human price of imperial adventures such as its ill-fated 1979 intervention in Afghanistan.
There was a balance of power (and, as noted, one including nuclear weapons), a shared if limited notion of what constituted legitimacy, and a diplomatic process to maintain the balance of power and to deal with situations that challenged competing notions of what was desirable and acceptable.
Trade was viewed both as an engine of economic growth and as a means of creating ties between and among countries that would give them a stake in maintaining peaceful relations.
It may be a stake, but it doesn't seem to be a deciding factor when compared to other perceived vital interests.
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, more commonly known as the World Bank.
the GATT)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its most ardent proponents, but these hopes were never realistic to begin with.
the violation of the territorial integrity and sovereign status of a UN member state—was one of the few around which consensus could be generated.
a global convention that banned the production and use of chemical weapons did not come into effect until 1997; more significant, chemical weapons were used on several occasions (by Egypt in Yemen in the 1960s, by Iraq against Iran in the 1980s, by Syria in 2013) without any serious consequences for the side using them.
Vietnam for its part can be seen both as a failure to maintain order and as something of a success in that the competition was restrained. Soviet and Chinese support for Vietnam was indirect and U.S. military intervention was kept relatively localized.
Relations among the major powers of this era—the United States, China, Russia, Japan, Europe, and India—while far from harmonious, have been by historical standards pretty good. Direct conflict between one or more major powers has been absent from international relations over the past twenty-five years.
Give it time....
an examination not just of great-power relations but also of global and regional dynamics.
while other powers have often disagreed with particular U.S. policies, they did not for the most part see the United States as pursuing a course of action in the world that threatened their own vital national interests.
How about reactions to the expanse of NATO?
The governments of both China and Russia, while concerned with maintaining control over their populations and territory, also evolved in ways that made them less closed than they were during the Cold War.
