The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  A military balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw Pact—the alliance system set up by the Soviet Union in 1955—kept the peace for four decades. The existence of nuclear weapons bred a caution born of the concern that any conflict could escalate to the nuclear level, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Stability was further reinforced by a series of arms control negotiations that succeeded in limiting nuclear forces and, at the end of the Cold War, by a formal agreement covering conventional (nonnuclear) military forces as well.

  The two alliances—a U.S.-led NATO in Western Europe and a Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe—also reached an understanding governing political order in Europe. The Final Act that emerged in 1975 in Helsinki from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe declared 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. Such an approach to managing competition should not be confused with a robust peace. But it did preserve the essentials of stability in an era threatened by a real risk of conventional and nuclear war. This is precisely why these four decades are called the Cold War.

  Knitting together a Europe at peace with itself was one of the post–World War II era’s signature successes. The region that had been at the core of so much destructive history has enjoyed a long run of stability and prosperity. This stability was due in part to successful efforts to counterbalance the Soviet Union and deter its ambitions, but much of what was achieved also reflected Western Europe’s rapid economic recovery (in no small part because of the Marshall Plan), the successful democratization of West Germany, and the progress of building Europe-wide institutions. Following the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of a common threat, it has proved more difficult for Europe to maintain stability, democracy, and prosperity.

  Some of the new challenges stemmed from the unraveling of the Soviet Union. As noted earlier, the Soviet Union was in fact two empires: an internal empire, dominated by Russia but consisting of fourteen other republics and an even larger number of nationalities, and an external empire, largely controlled by the Soviet Union and including half a dozen countries in Eastern Europe. What followed the Cold War’s end was a series of protests and conflicts that might be called the wars of Soviet succession. The division and weakness in Moscow removed much of the glue that had kept nationalist forces in check inside the Soviet Union’s internal and external empires alike.

  By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union no longer existed. Instead, there were fifteen independent countries, including Russia. In addition, by then the countries of Eastern Europe had become independent in fact as well as in name, with many of them eventually joining NATO and the EU. Most of these changes occurred without bloodshed, although the wars that accompanied the breakup of what was Yugoslavia constituted an important and violent exception. Amid successive rounds of ethnic conflict, it took NATO military intervention in both Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999) to accomplish what peacekeepers, diplomacy, and economic and political sanctions could not. The war in Bosnia was brought to a close by the Dayton Accords late in 1995 and Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008. An uneasy peace in the region has prevailed since, with UN peacekeepers still deployed to Kosovo to this day.

  Alongside dealing with ethnic conflict, European governments have been grappling with what degree of integration is desirable and politically feasible among their citizens. In some ways the debate can be summarized as one between two contrasting visions for Europe, best captured by the difference between the phrases “the United States of Europe” and “a United Europe of States.”

  What the former suggests is a Europe in which authority is increasingly transferred from national capitals to the supranational authority of the EU headquartered in Brussels. Several steps were taken in this direction. The most significant development was the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in early 1992 by the leaders of the twelve countries of the EC, which created the EU. One difference between the EC and the EU was that the latter included the “pillar” of a common foreign and security policy in which the EU would in some cases act, instead of the foreign ministries of the member states.

  On the economic side, Maastricht introduced a common currency, the euro, which was launched in 1999, with banknotes and coins entering circulation in 2002. By 1993, a single EU market came into being, one that ensured the free movement of goods, services, and people across national lines. Years earlier, the so-called Schengen Area (named for the city in Luxembourg where it was negotiated) had been established, essentially erasing national borders within the EU when it came to the movement of people. During this period of political integration, the EU expanded its membership from twelve countries to fifteen in 1995, to twenty-five in 2004, and reached twenty-eight members when Croatia joined in 2013.

  But the project of building “a United States of Europe” was never to the liking of many, who feared the loss of national identity and sovereign authority, as well as the consequences of the free movement of people across borders. The alternative to this “ever closer union” is best captured by the phrase “a United Europe of States.” In this conception, the balance between national capitals and Brussels is much more weighted toward member countries. This is perhaps best exemplified in the case of the United Kingdom, which has long been at the forefront of efforts to check the power of Brussels. The U.K. joined the EC in 1973 but opted to stay out of the monetary union and keep its national currency. In 2005, voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a new European constitution, one that would have further shifted the balance of authority away from governments to what was widely considered an impersonal and unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. And in 2016, a slim majority of British voters supported a referendum calling for the country’s exit from the EU, popularly known as Brexit.

  ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CHALLENGES

  The reality of post–Cold War Europe has not matched the hopes of the EU’s strongest backers. As average citizens and elites alike have debated the appropriate distribution of power between national capitals and Brussels, the EU has been hamstrung by a succession of weak leaders (chosen in part by the leaders of national governments who wanted weak leaders in Brussels) and an unwillingness on the part of governments to devote significant resources to defense or to efficiently use the funds they had. National governments have jealously guarded control of foreign and defense policy; there has also been a lack of coordination between countries on intelligence sharing and law enforcement. When it has come to cooperation on security, Europe has fallen short of what it is capable of.

  Economic problems within Europe have been even more significant. As a result, the Continent has had low rates of growth. A number of problems have emerged that stem from the fact that the nineteen countries in the eurozone share a common monetary policy, set by the European Central Bank, but fiscal (tax and spending) policy was and is determined by national governments. Germany, which boasts by far the EU’s largest economy, insists (for historical reasons that created a strong aversion to any course of action that could trigger inflation) on maintaining a large budget surplus, a practice that has denied Europe the economic stimulus that would result from a Germany willing to run reasonable deficits. In addition, there is no European banking mechanism in which deposits up to a specified level are guaranteed, as is the case for individuals in the United States; instead, each country is effectively on its own. Adding to its burdens, Europe has an aging population and a worsening ratio of those of working age to those too young or too old to work.

  Populist movements have strengthened as a result of stagnating economies, high inequality, and concerns over the influx of migrants from the Middle East. One consequence is that many Europeans now favor an even less integrated, more nationalized version of the Continent than the decentral
ized vision of “a United Europe of States” would suggest.

  GEOPOLITICS

  A Russian threat to Europe has reemerged. This might have been inevitable given that the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, saw its external empire in Eastern Europe break free, and then experienced its own internal breakup. Russia accounts for roughly half the population and three-fourths of the land area of the former Soviet Union. It has retained a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a vast nuclear arsenal and has developed impressive conventional military and cyber assets. But it is a great power more in name than in reality. Russia has an economy roughly the size of Canada’s and is heavily dependent on energy, a situation typically associated with a developing country. Its population has declined for two decades; male life expectancy is only around sixty-seven, a result of alcoholism, drugs, crime, and a poor public health system. Power is highly concentrated in the person of Vladimir Putin, who has stripped institutions of nearly all of their independent authority.

  A significant source of tension between Russia and both the United States and much of Europe was the decision to enlarge NATO, which started in the late 1990s under the Clinton administration and was continued by its successors. It is rare in history for an alliance born in one strategic context (in NATO’s case, the Cold War, where it was formed to deter and defend against a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Europe) to remain in place once the context has changed and the mission has become obsolete. The question was whether NATO could and should endure—or whether its success would prove to be its undoing.

  NATO did survive in a new strategic context, mostly by taking on new missions. These missions were outside the formal treaty area that encompassed much of continental Europe and were instead in locations “out of area” but where the interests of members were nonetheless at stake. NATO morphed into something of an interventionary force for problems in places such as the Balkans, Afghanistan, and parts of the Middle East and Africa. By extending its reach, NATO became less of a traditional alliance built around a shared core security concern and more of a collection of relatively like-minded countries that would henceforth make decisions about joint action on a case-by-case basis. Participation in such actions tends to be voluntary on the part of the countries involved.

  NATO also became a body that would consolidate and anchor newly liberated (and, in the case of Germany, newly unified) countries. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all joined in 1999, motivated in large part by a hope that NATO would provide an insurance policy against the possibility that Russia might reassert itself and resume its tradition of pressuring its neighbors.

  Meanwhile, Russia was getting increasingly uneasy with this process. Russia and NATO were on opposite sides of the crisis in what had been Yugoslavia; NATO provided political backing and military support for air assaults on Serbia during the Kosovo war, something Russia (which was sympathetic to Serbia for political, historical, religious, and cultural reasons) opposed. Second, many of Russia’s neighbors were joining an alliance that Moscow had long viewed with suspicion. Vladimir Putin, who already felt humiliated over how the Cold War ended and the unraveling of the Soviet Union, viewed NATO’s enlargement as an insult and a threat, as did many of his fellow Russians. There is no way of knowing whether the trajectory of relations with Russia would have been better had there been no expansion of NATO and no way to know whether the trajectory of European security and stability would have been worse without it. My own view (a view that is a minority perspective in the U.S. foreign policy world) is that NATO enlargement was an error and that the security concerns of Eastern European states could have been addressed by other means than bringing them into NATO. This is sure to remain a matter of debate for decades to come; we are where we are, however, and there is no going back. What we do know is that Russia under Putin gradually but steadily lost interest in joining the liberal world order that had been championed by the United States. Instead, Putin’s Russia increasingly sought to undermine it.

  The rift in the relationship between Russia and much of Europe and the United States widened in 2008 over Russia’s decision to intervene in Georgia, a former Soviet republic that had become an independent country, by supplying money and arms and ultimately by sending in troops to fight on behalf of separatist groups. Ukraine, however, was the subject of the greatest differences between Putin’s Russia and its Western critics. Ukraine was a republic in the old Soviet Union and became independent in 1991. Russia was uneasy about the possibility of close EU-Ukraine ties, especially if they diminished Russia’s influence over Ukraine and might pave the way for Ukraine’s entering NATO. Matters reached a full boil in late 2013, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian protesters took to the streets in the capital, Kiev, and ousted its pro-Russian president after he tilted away from forging closer ties to the EU. The spectacle of an autocratic president being ousted by protesters who favored moving their country into the EU, NATO, or both was for obvious reasons too much for Putin.

  Clashes soon broke out in Crimea, a region of Ukraine with an ethnic Russian majority that had been part of the Russian Republic in the former Soviet Union; Crimea became part of the Republic of Ukraine only in 1954. The fighting quickly escalated as locals of Russian ethnicity gained control of the region, armed with Russian-supplied equipment and backed by Russian soldiers. Within weeks Russia had annexed Crimea, following a referendum passed by an overwhelming majority of Crimea’s population. The reaction of the United States and much of Europe was to dismiss the referendum as a sham, conducted as it was in an area mostly controlled by Russian-backed rebels. Understandably, a military response was ruled out; not only was Ukraine not a member of NATO, but it would have been difficult and risky to defend the territory of a weak country on Russia’s border. Instead, as is often the case, economic sanctions became the favored foreign policy instrument, one representing a step more serious than a continuation of unpromising diplomacy, but also one far less costly than military force. The problem is that here and elsewhere history suggests that sanctions can rarely alter what a government decides to do on issues of major importance.

  Instability in Ukraine was by no means confined to Crimea. Russian equipment and soldiers (not wearing formal uniforms so as to mask their nationality) also made their way into eastern Ukraine, a region that borders Russia and where a significant minority of the population is ethnically Russian. Low-level fighting between Ukraine’s military and local militias supported by Russia continues there, and to date has taken 13,000 lives. A cease-fire and political agreement, termed the Minsk Agreement, was signed by Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany in early 2015, but it has never been fully implemented, with each side blaming the other for not observing one or more of its parts.

  All this is relevant for reasons that transcend the importance of Ukraine, a country of some forty-five million people. What happened broadly affected perceptions of and relations with Russia, which is still the preponderant military power in its neighborhood. It also reintroduced a military dimension to Europe that many observers thought had vanished with the end of the Cold War. Russia paid a political and economic price for its actions. It was expelled from the Group of Eight (G8) gathering of major powers, and the United States imposed heavy sanctions on its economy. But these punishments, along with the decision by the United States in 2018 to provide Ukraine with defensive arms, were not enough to lead Russia to reverse a policy that enjoyed popular support at home. Russia also intervened militarily in Syria starting in 2015; unlike Ukraine, this was done at the government’s request, albeit in an often brutal manner. Russia worked to influence both the U.S. presidential election of 2016 and many elections in Europe, including the vote on Brexit, and claimed waters off Ukraine as its own in 2018. The result is that U.S. relations with Russia (and relations between much of Europe and Russia) sharply deteriorated.

  LOOKING AHEAD

  Europe, as noted earlier, has in a short span of time gone from being the most pre
dictable and stable region—one where history seemed to have truly ended (as suggested in an influential essay published in 1989 by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama)—to something dramatically different. Democracy, prosperity, and peace all seemed firmly entrenched. Not anymore. Much of what had been widely assumed to be settled is not.

  There is no single explanation for these developments. What we are seeing is both populism on the left, the result of stagnating wages, rising income inequality, and a resentment of elites, and populism on the right, fueled by nationalism amid local and global changes, above all an opposition to immigration. The EU, for its part, has gradually lost its hold on the public imagination and will be further weakened by Brexit.

  Why this matters should be obvious. Europe still represents a quarter of the world’s economy. It contains the largest constellation of democratic countries, a number of which are willing to work to make the world a better place. The last century demonstrated the cost of a breakdown of order on this continent. Europe’s trajectory in the twenty-first century, which once seemed pointed toward peace and prosperity, is now less clear.

  East Asia and the Pacific

  East Asia and the Pacific (mostly referred to here and elsewhere as “Asia”) is a study in contrasts. Its thirty-one countries range from China, the world’s most populous country (until it is overtaken by India) with nearly 1.4 billion inhabitants, to Nauru, an island country of some 13,000 citizens. Similarly, China has the world’s second-largest economy, with an annual output of over $13 trillion (more than eleven times as large as it was in 2000), while Nauru stands at just over $100 million. The region, the venue of intense combat during World War II as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars, has been relatively peaceful and stable over the past four decades and remains so. At the same time, it is also home to many countries with growing militaries, along with multiple territorial disputes and deeply held historical animosities.