The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  Sovereign states and their governments are not the only pieces on the chessboard in the international system. There are also corporations, nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Greenpeace, foundations, members of the media, religious authorities, governors and mayors, and regional and global organizations—not to mention terrorists, drug cartels, and pirates. The reality is that while countries usually wield more power and influence than other actors, they are not alone in their ability to do so, and they are not always in a position to prevent others from asserting themselves. The result is a world defined more by the principle that state sovereignty is dominant than by the reality.

  SELF-DETERMINATION

  One issue tied to sovereignty is that of self-determination, or the notion that people have the right to choose whether they want a country of their own. Many countries contain within them people with different religions, languages, and, in some cases, tribes or other associations. The question naturally arises as to what criteria should be used to determine which groups or territories get to become independent countries and who should decide these criteria. No international consensus exists on the answer to either question. For instance, Taiwan fits all of the criteria of a sovereign state. Its governing authorities command a monopoly on the use of force, and it has its own military, central bank, and independent political system. Yet fewer than two dozen countries recognize it as a sovereign country due to China’s claim over the island. In addition, although the United States and more than one hundred other countries recognize Kosovo as an independent country, dozens of countries including China, Russia, and its neighbor Serbia have not granted it recognition. In other words, sovereignty lies in the eyes of the beholder. This is less central than it was after World War II, when much of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia was colonized by European countries. But the issue has not gone away, because there are groups that want, but do not have, a country of their own and areas within countries that wish to be independent.

  What self-determination means in the current context is unclear. The phrase “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” can be found more than once in the UN Charter, but it was one thing for self-determination to be a widely embraced principle in the colonial era and something else altogether for it to apply in a world in which there are already more than 190 countries. There is no easy solution for how to determine the appropriate stance of governments toward situations in which a group of people push for a state of their own. A good start, though, would be to amend the concept of self-determination and replace it with the notion that statehood is something to be granted as well as asserted. Given that the impact of a group seeking independence can ripple across the region in question or even the globe, too many people are affected by these decisions to allow statehood to be determined solely by the party seeking it.

  In the future, support for what has been called self-determination is likely to be less common than was the case in the era of decolonization. That said, existing governments should agree to consider bids for statehood in cases where there is historical justification, a compelling rationale, support from the population in question, and a viable territory for the new state. The impact on the country that would give up a portion of its territory and population should be weighed. Governments should agree to consult with one another before reaching a decision as well as with the parties involved. One useful precedent here is the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, which did not extend the principle of self-determination to the Palestinians but rather supported the notion that “representatives of the Palestinian people should participate in negotiations on the resolution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects.”

  BALANCE OF POWER AND DETERRENCE

  Order cannot be based on support for the principle of sovereignty alone. It must also be grounded in a balance of power, which means that those who oppose the order are not able to overturn it through armed force. It is unrealistic to base order on the hope or expectation that countries will demonstrate restraint or respect toward others out of goodwill. Ideally, the balance of power would be such that they are not even tempted to try to alter the status quo through force, calculating that any such attempt would fail or at least that its costs would outweigh its benefits. This is the essence of deterrence. What is critical for deterrence to work, though, is both sufficient military capability and the perceived willingness to use it. This is true whether one is talking about major powers at the global level or medium powers at the regional level.

  Order and the balance of power buttressing it can take many forms. There can be a single dominant country or empire, which is then referred to as a hegemon; this tends to be described as either a unipolar world (for example, the status of the United States just after the end of the Cold War) or an imperial order, as was the case in parts of the ancient world. Order can also be based on having two major powers; this was the case during the four decades of the Cold War in which the United States and the Soviet Union dominated a bipolar world. Other periods of history (early and mid-nineteenth-century Europe comes to mind) have been characterized by an order based on several major powers operating in a multipolar world. We may be moving in the direction of such a world.

  Alliances and Coalitions

  Whatever the number of powers, order can be either strengthened or undermined by alliances. An alliance is a collection of countries that have come together to promote what they see as their common security interests. All alliances enshrine a formal commitment or obligation to provide military—and possibly other kinds of—support if any member of the alliance is attacked or faces the immediate likelihood of being attacked. Alliances can involve the provision of assistance (be it military, economic, or intelligence), joint exercises, and at least some coordination of decision making both to prepare for potential contingencies and to help to deter them. What alliances require is the capability and the will to meet a commitment; an alliance cannot succeed if either is absent.

  The decision to form or join an alliance normally represents a judgment that the benefits of membership outweigh the costs and obligations and are preferable to standing alone. As Winston Churchill once quipped, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”

  Alliances are not good or bad per se. They can be a grouping designed to balance or offset a threat (be it a single country or a rival alliance) or to overthrow the existing order and replace it with another. Alliances, depending on their composition and aims, can either contribute to world order or detract from it. Each country need not be in a position to deter or defeat aggression from every potential adversary. That said, countries that wish to join forces to overturn the existing order can also form alliances to help them do so. As is often the case, what matters most are the purposes to which arrangements are put, not the arrangements themselves.

  Alliances are as old as international relations. Alliances were prevalent in ancient Greece and in medieval Europe. Somewhat more recently, alliances were central to both the outbreak of and fighting in World Wars I and II.

  A good deal of history is determined by strong countries that threaten or use armed force to assert their will over weaker neighbors. When this happens, weaker countries may enter into an alliance with one or more stronger countries so that the threatening neighbor no longer enjoys an advantage. Or they can defer to the stronger country, essentially giving up some of their freedom of choice and action in order to stay on its good side and avoid the costs of conflict.

  Such deference goes by many terms. It is sometimes described as droit de regard—a French term literally meaning a right of inspection—which involves giving another government a large say in one’s own decisions. During the Cold War, the phrase “Finlandization” was in vogue, something that derived from Finland’s careful relationship with its much more powerful neighbor, the Soviet Union. I
n the run-up to World War II, “appeasement” was the term used to describe how the Western democracies tried (unsuccessfully) to limit Nazi Germany’s ambitions by giving it some of what it sought in the hope that its ambitions could be satisfied. The great advantage of entering into an alliance is that it provides weaker countries with an option other than going it alone militarily or, more realistically, submitting to the wishes of a stronger neighbor.

  Alliances played a major role in shaping international relations in the aftermath of World War II. What was fundamentally different during this period was that the United States and a group of eleven other countries opted for a peacetime alliance. As discussed earlier in the context of the history of modern Europe, the North Atlantic Alliance, more formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was created in 1949 at the outset of the Cold War in response to a perceived threat emanating from the Soviet Union. Membership was extended to those countries that shared this outlook and embraced core democratic values. The opposing bloc, the Warsaw Pact, was founded in 1955 and included the Soviet Union and seven “satellite” countries that had little choice but to follow Moscow’s lead.

  Alliances have multiple purposes. The most fundamental is to deter and if need be defend against external foes. For a weaker state, joining with others (and in particular with one or more strong partners) can constitute the only realistic path to sustaining security and true independence if it is faced with a powerful and potentially hostile neighbor. Strategic independence or autonomy is for most countries not a sustainable proposition. The cost of joining an alliance is to accept the reality that the stronger partner will have significant influence over the weaker partner’s decisions and potentially reduce its autonomy.

  For strong countries, alliances provide a means for bolstering the ability to deter or wage war or to pursue other objectives. Allies can be a force multiplier, something that has provided and continues to provide the United States a big advantage over both Russia and China, which mostly act on their own in the world and cannot expect to receive assistance from others should they need it. An alliance can provide a channel for enhancing influence or even control, imposing some restraint on the foreign policies of its members. And the provision of guarantees can reduce the incentive for member states to develop certain capabilities of their own, such as nuclear weapons. For example, America’s alliances with countries such as Japan and South Korea reduce the need for them to develop or acquire nuclear weapons of their own. An alliance also gives them confidence so that they need not be intimidated by strong countries seeking to pressure or threaten them. No matter how strong an alliance is, the weaker partner is always worried to some degree that it will be left to fend for itself in a time of crisis. The French leader Charles de Gaulle often voiced his skepticism that the United States would risk the destruction of New York in order to save Paris, a concern that led France beginning in the 1950s to develop its own nuclear force.

  But even for a strong country an alliance involves risks and costs. It can find itself pushed into or worse yet trapped in situations not of its own choosing by the actions of an alliance member. It can also find itself constrained on occasion by what allies are not prepared to support or do. And even if such situations do not arise, alliances can require expensive military investments by the strongest member if the alliance as a whole is to be credible.

  For weak and strong countries alike, alliances constitute a major commitment of resources and involve potentially far-reaching obligations and consequences. NATO, for example, explicitly states in Article 5 of its charter that an attack on one is an attack on all, meaning that all will respond militarily regardless of whether they themselves are directly attacked. An alliance is only as credible as its members make it. It is essential that there be clarity as to what triggers the obligations central to the alliance and what those obligations are.

  The inequality between what members of an alliance bring to it can be a source of tension. “Burden sharing” is never equal; it is not just that each member possesses different military and economic capacity but that each has its domestic politics that often limit what it is able to contribute. NATO has often been roiled by American frustrations over the failure of most European members to meet the agreed goal of spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense. This can be overdone because what matters more than such calculations is how money is spent and whether the benefits derived from the alliance outweigh the costs, however unevenly they may be borne, which has been the case both here and for the United States in Asia.

  Alliances are creatures of their context. When that context changes—in particular, when the situation that triggered the building of an alliance fades or disappears—there are several options. First, the alliance can cease, a victim of its own success. This was the case after both world wars for the victorious alliances.

  An alliance can also disappear when it is defeated and is no longer permitted to exist by the victors or desired by its members. This was the case with the alliance among Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II and then again with the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact after the conclusion of the Cold War.

  A successful alliance (one that has prevailed in some struggle) has additional options. It can remain in existence but ratchet down what it does or prepares to do. Another option is to find new and different things to do, and if it happens to be an alliance with geographic limits, it can change those limits and find new places to be active. In the aftermath of the Cold War, for example, NATO decided not just to continue but to expand its membership and take on missions outside the area for which it was originally constituted.

  There are any number of alternatives to alliances, from acting alone (unilateralism) to forming less formal but still collective “coalitions of the willing.” These can be informal “start-ups” focused on a narrow, particular mission or something more general. Another alternative is to work through regional and global organizations, although in practice such an approach tends to lead to a more diluted response or inaction given the differing views of members of such broad groupings and, in some cases, the requirement for consensus or unanimity as a precondition to taking action. This is a principal reason why standing regional bodies as well as the United Nations often disappoint. All such groupings constitute versions of collective action or multilateralism, something not to be confused with multipolarity, which is simply a description of the distribution of power in the world, one that indicates there are multiple centers of power.

  One final caution. Terms like “alliance” and “ally” are thrown around casually, often as synonyms for a friendly country. But these terms should be saved for those circumstances in which fundamental security obligations exist. Countries can be friends, even close partners, but allies have a solemn obligation to come to one another’s defense.

  International Society

  As discussed earlier, a society is something more than a system. A balance of power is necessary but not sufficient for a society to emerge and operate. Alliances can either add to or detract from order. Here we look at four additional factors—the prevalence of democracy, the degree of economic interdependence, the extent of global governance, and respect for international law—that determine whether one can speak of an international system, society, or something in between.

  DEMOCRACY

  One factor that tends to contribute to world order is the extent to which countries are democracies. Or, to be more precise, mature or robust democracies. Democracies can be headed by a separately elected president (as is the case in the United States and France) or a prime minister who leads the largest party in the parliament, as is the case in much of Europe. What democracies have in common, though, is not just free and fair elections but also checks and balances that limit the power of government officials and that protect the basic rights of individuals.

  More than 40 percent of the world’s countries and roughly the same percentage of the world’s
people live in countries classified as free and democratic. India is the world’s most populous democracy, the United States the world’s second largest. Approximately one-third of the world’s people live in countries (including China) that are decidedly unfree and undemocratic. The rest (roughly a quarter) live in countries such as the Philippines and Mexico that fall somewhere in between. There are more robust democracies now than there were half a century ago, but there have been some notable counterexamples to the advance of democracy in the second decade of this century.

  There is considerable evidence that mature democracies, that is, those countries with strong constitutions, meaningful checks and balances on the exercise of power, and extensive individual rights, tend not to attack other democracies. This is often referred to as the “democratic peace” theory. History suggests this is true, but immature or illiberal democracies—that is, those lacking in many of the features that make a democracy strong or robust—show no such constraint and, to the contrary, are particularly vulnerable to being hijacked by extreme nationalist appeals. Turkey, the Philippines, Poland, and Hungary all come to mind here. What’s more, mature democracies—nations where power is truly checked and balanced—tend to be relatively rare and extraordinarily difficult to bring about, something that makes the democratic peace theory more of a concept than a reality.

  THE NUMBER OF DEMOCRACIES HAS INCREASED SINCE WORLD WAR II

  Note: Only includes countries with a population of 500,000 or more.

  Source: Polity IV Project, Center for Systemic Peace; The Economist.

  ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE