State weakness and failure along with civil wars will remain relatively common given the many factors that bring about intrastate conflict and violence. Somalia remains a failed state thirty years after it collapsed, while over the past decade Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have all become failed states. All this has real import for the world, because it suggests that significant refugee flows will continue and that a good many governments will be unable to ensure that their territory is not used to house terrorists or criminal enterprises involved in cyberattacks or the drug trade. Additionally, weak governments will not be in a position to contribute to efforts to deal with global challenges such as climate change; in fact, they are more likely to be victims of it. And local conflicts will present opportunities for outsiders to get involved to bring about a desired outcome, be it the preservation of a particular government or its ouster. Such external intervention can determine local outcomes, as was the case when both Iran and Russia intervened in Syria. It can also lead to wars between the competing outside actors. Interestingly, it was in a “peripheral” region—Crimea, coincidentally—where the major powers in the nineteenth century found themselves in a conflict that spelled the end of their efforts to maintain a world order. The lesson for our own era is obvious.
One other form of external intervention requires mention: nation-building. The idea (sometimes also termed state-building) is controversial, in large part because it is associated with costly and unsuccessful American efforts to transform Afghanistan and Iraq into stable democracies. But nation-building worked in both Germany and Japan following World War II as well as in Colombia more recently, where a decade of sustained U.S. involvement along with economic and security-related support strengthened the government so it could defeat a terrorist insurgency and dramatically reduce drug production. Granted, the conditions that created the possibility of success in these situations do not always exist. Still, a limited, focused effort that aimed to build state capacities so that a significant degree of internal order could be maintained might well be warranted in parts of Central America and Mexico as well as in select countries in Africa and the Middle East. Again, in a global world, what happens in any country has the potential to affect us all, and there is a strong case for helping governments reach a point where they can meet their basic international obligations.
The Liberal World Order
Much has been said and written about the liberal or rules-based world order. This refers to the set of international arrangements—initially the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, and subsequently the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor of the World Trade Organization—created in the aftermath of World War II. These institutions were created to facilitate the peaceful resolution of disputes, promote free trade and development, and encourage cross-border investment and commerce.
This order was liberal in the classic sense (as opposed to the contemporary political usage), in that the countries participating tended to be democratic; the order was very much voluntary, rules based, and open to all countries. The balance of power and peace was maintained by the United States working with its allies in Europe and Asia, backed by both conventional military forces and nuclear weapons. Deterrence and arms control also contributed to the balance of power and successfully ensured nuclear weapons were not used. Free trade contributed to the strength of allies and also provided some incentive for would-be foes not to act disruptively.
Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) and China have occupied an unusual position in relationship to this order. Both are permanent members of the UN Security Council and members of the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO and have been part of such groupings as the Group of Eight and the Group of Twenty. (Russia was suspended from the G8 in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea.) At the same time, they have demonstrated little or no interest in safeguarding human rights or becoming more liberal or democratic or seeing any other country evolve in that direction. Russia has violated several of the most basic elements of the liberal world order, including respect for the borders of others and the rights of noncombatants in a war zone, while China is ignoring international legal rulings regarding the South China Sea and implementing economic and trade policies that are inconsistent with what was expected of it when it was granted admission to the WTO.
This liberal world order is now fraying, the result of a decline in America’s relative power and its growing unwillingness to play its traditional role in the world, a rising and increasingly assertive China, and a Russia determined to play the role of the spoiler. Authoritarianism is on the rise not just in the obvious places, such as China and Russia, but also in the Philippines, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. Global trade has grown, but recent rounds of trade talks have ended without agreement, and the WTO has proved unable to adequately deal with many of today’s most pressing challenges, including tariff and nontariff barriers, government subsidies, currency manipulation, and the theft of intellectual property. Resentment over the United States’ exploitation of the dollar to impose sanctions is growing, as is concern over the country’s accumulation of debt. More fundamentally, America’s allies are increasingly unsure whether they can rely on the United States during a time of crisis and are uneasy with its unilateralism.
The UN Security Council is of little relevance to most of the world’s conflicts, and international arrangements have failed to contend with the challenges associated with globalization. The world has put itself on the record as against genocide and has asserted a right to intervene when governments fail to live up to the responsibility to protect their citizens, but the talk has not translated into action. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allows only five states to have nuclear weapons, but there are now nine that do (and many others that could follow suit if they chose to). The world is having a difficult time regulating the acquisition and use of new technologies with military applications, from robotics to artificial intelligence to drones. The EU, by far the most significant regional arrangement, is struggling with disputes over migration, economic policy, and the division of responsibility between itself and its members. And around the world, countries are increasingly resisting U.S. primacy. For its part, the United States, divided politically and stretched militarily after prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, appears less willing to promote the liberal world order than it has at any time since World War II.
The reemergence of ethnocentric and exclusive nationalism has also undermined the current order. When nationalism morphs into hyper-patriotism that is hostile toward foreign countries and their citizens, it becomes dangerous and undermines order. Nationalism of this sort can lead to an aggressive foreign policy and an excuse for intervention on behalf of a kindred ethnic group who happen to be citizens of another country. We are seeing just this in Russian behavior toward Russian minorities in neighboring countries, most dramatically in Ukraine. It is worth pointing out that this extreme and violent nationalism developed after what was widely judged to be a national humiliation in Russia, namely, the loss of the Cold War and NATO’s enlargement.
It may seem odd that this is happening at a time of powerful global forces. But therein may lie the explanation: people are asserting their national identities in the face of forces over which they feel they have little control and by which they feel threatened, be it economically, culturally, or politically. Mounting opposition to free trade, immigration, and entities ranging from the EU to the UN may be explained in part by this tension. What this underscores is that the tension between nationalism and world order was in no way resolved by the decolonization movement following World War II. To the contrary, nationalism is a force to be reckoned with, one increasingly at odds with tolerance within societies and peaceful relations across and beyond borders.
Why is all this happening? Today’s world order has struggled to cope with power shifts: China’s rise, the appearance of s
everal medium powers (Iran and North Korea, in particular) that reject important aspects of the order, and the emergence of non-state actors (from drug cartels to terrorist networks) that can pose a serious threat to order within and between states. In short, power is more distributed in more hands than at any other time in history.
The technological and political context has changed in important ways too. Globalization has had destabilizing effects, ranging from climate change to the spread of technology into far more hands than ever before, including a range of groups and people intent on disrupting the order. Nationalism and populism have surged—the result of greater inequality within countries, the dislocation associated with the 2008 global financial crisis, job losses caused by trade and technology, increased flows of migrants and refugees, and the power of social media to spread hate.
Meanwhile, effective statecraft is conspicuously lacking. Institutions have failed to adapt. No one today would design a UN Security Council that looked like the current one, yet real reform is impossible, because those who would lose influence block any changes. Efforts to build effective frameworks to deal with the challenges of globalization, including climate change and cyberattacks, have come up short. Decisions by European governments or the EU have created a powerful backlash against existing governments, open borders, and the EU itself.
The United States overreached in trying to remake Afghanistan, invading Iraq, and pursuing regime change in Libya. But it has also taken a step back from maintaining global order, and in certain cases it has arguably done too little. In most instances, U.S. reluctance to act has come not over core issues affecting the balance of power in Europe or Asia but over peripheral ones that leaders wrote off as not worth the costs involved, such as the strife in Syria, where the United States failed to respond meaningfully when Syria first used chemical weapons or to do more to help anti-regime groups. This reluctance to act has increased the boldness of other nations, leading them to disregard U.S. concerns and act independently. The Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen is a case in point. Russian actions in Syria and Ukraine should also be seen in this light. There is a troubling historical echo to what has happened in Crimea; the Crimean War marked the effective end of the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century and signaled a dramatic setback in the current order. Doubts about U.S. reliability have multiplied under the Trump administration, thanks to its withdrawal from numerous international pacts, its conditional approach to once-sacrosanct U.S. alliance commitments in Europe and Asia, its distancing from several partners in the Middle East, and the gap between its rhetoric and its actions in dealing with both North Korea and Iran.
Given these changes, resurrecting the old order will be impossible. It would also be insufficient, owing to the emergence of new challenges. Once this is acknowledged, those who have an interest in preserving the central elements of liberal order should go about strengthening these elements and supplementing them with measures that account for changing power dynamics and new global problems. The United States and its partners would work to shore up arms control and nonproliferation agreements; strengthen existing alliances; bolster weak states that cannot contend with terrorists, cartels, and gangs; and counter the interference of authoritarian powers in the democratic process. The judgment that attempts to integrate China and Russia into the existing world order have mostly failed should not be grounds for rejecting future efforts to include them in fashioning and subsequently maintaining world order, because the course of the twenty-first century will in no small part reflect how such efforts fare. Such efforts will necessarily involve a mix of compromise, incentives, and pushback. Relationships will be a blend of competition and cooperation, with the twin goals of seeing that the former does not tip over into confrontation nor preclude the latter.
Countries will also need to work together to address problems of globalization, including but not just climate change, trade, and proliferation. These will require not resurrecting the old order but building a new one. Efforts to limit, adapt to, and possibly offset climate change need to be more ambitious. The WTO must be amended to address the sorts of issues raised by China’s appropriation of technology, its provision of subsidies to domestic firms, and its use of nontariff barriers to trade. And rules of the road are needed to regulate cyberspace and outer space. Together, these challenges call for a modern-day concert. Such a call is ambitious but necessary.
The United States will need to show restraint and recapture a degree of respect in order to regain its reputation as a benign actor. This will require some sharp departures from the way U.S. foreign policy has been practiced in recent years: to start, it must be more prudent in using military force or weaponizing U.S. economic policy through the overuse of sanctions and tariffs. But more than anything else, the current reflexive opposition to internationalism and multilateralism needs to be rethought. It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in designing and building it to take the lead in dismantling it.
All of this also requires that the United States get its own house in order—reducing government debt, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, investing more in basic research, adapting the social safety net, adopting a smart immigration system that allows talented foreigners to come and stay, tackling political dysfunction by making it less difficult to vote, and undoing gerrymandering. The United States cannot be an example to others around the world nor can it effectively promote order abroad if it is divided at home, distracted by domestic problems, and lacking in resources. The good news for Americans is that their country has the means to do all this and still maintain an active or even leading role in the world, one that reflects the fundamental truth that in a global era what happens beyond a country’s borders affects what happens within those same borders. Evidence for this view stems from the four decades of Cold War experience, when defense spending constituted a far higher percentage of GDP than it does today without detracting from the nation’s economic vitality.
The major alternatives to a modernized world order supported by the United States appear unlikely and unappealing. A Chinese-led order, for example, would be an illiberal one, characterized by authoritarian domestic political systems and statist economies that place a premium on maintaining domestic stability. There would be a return to spheres of influence, with China attempting to dominate its region, likely resulting in clashes with other regional powers, such as India, Japan, and Vietnam, which may build up their conventional or even nuclear forces in response.
A new democratic, rules-based order fashioned and led by medium powers in Europe and Asia, as well as Canada, however attractive a concept, would simply lack the military capacity and domestic political will to get very far. A more likely alternative is a world with little order—a world of deeper disarray. Protectionism, nationalism, and populism would gain ground, and democracy would recede. Conflict within and across borders would become more common, and rivalry between great powers would increase. Cooperation on global challenges would be all but precluded. If this picture sounds familiar, that is because it increasingly corresponds to the world of today.
History is replete with governments and leaders who viewed the existing world order as illegitimate because it did not protect what they saw as their vital interests or accord them a place in the world that they judged commensurate with their power or ambitions. Napoleon, Bismarck, and Hitler would surely fit here. History also teaches that order is not the natural state of international affairs and does not just emerge or continue automatically; to the contrary, it requires commitment and concerted effort by governments and others who are willing and able to put aside their differences in an effort to sustain it. The question is whether the governments and those who choose them in this era are prepared to make such a commitment. The answer to this question will tell us whether the past seventy-five years since World War II have been an aberration, and the world will
come to resemble more what existed in the century before, or whether the liberal world order and its many benefits will endure.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Close to fifty years ago, when I was a student at Oberlin College, I somehow found the courage to ask my religion professor, Thomas Frank, how long it took him to prepare the extraordinary lecture he had just delivered. He studied me through squinted eyes, rolled up his left sleeve, looked at his watch, sighed, and answered. “I’d say about thirty years and thirty minutes.”
The process of writing a book is quite similar. One of the questions I get asked most frequently when I talk about one of my books is how long it took me to write it. The answer is not as simple as you might think. Take this book. It would be accurate to say that I began it in late 2017, as that is when I first put pen to paper or, more accurately, fingers to keyboard. A first full draft was completed by early spring 2019. Rewriting and editing took up the late spring through the summer and early fall. But the writing of this book actually took considerably longer if one counts the time I devoted to thinking through what to include in and how to structure this one.
As is my pattern, after finishing the first draft I asked people to read it. Given the nature of the book, I asked more people than usual for their reactions, in part to increase the odds I got the substance right, but also to make sure it worked for people of various backgrounds, be they young or old, students or non-students, experts or generalists. Some read and reacted to the entire manuscript, others to a single chapter. But all of them—Ted Alden, Alyssa Ayres, Tom Bollyky, Marie Brenner, Dan Caldwell, John Campbell, Steven Cook, Trish Dorff, Sam Haass, Bruce Hoffman, Martin Indyk, Amy Jaffe, Charlie Kupchan, Dan Kurtz-Phelan, Lee Levison, Jim Lindsay, Susan Mercandetti, Caroline Netchvolodoff, Shannon O’Neil, Stewart Patrick, Richard Plepler, Gideon Rose, Adam Segal, Brad Setser, Stan Shuman, Sam Vinograd, and Iva Zoric—added value by way of suggestions, criticism, and corrections. Any remaining shortcomings should be laid at the feet of the author.
The World: A Brief Introduction Page 27