New World Disorder

By David Ignatius

Friday, May 4, 2007; A23

After the Iraq debacle, nearly everyone seems to agree that "unilateralism" in foreign policy is a bad thing. Leading the march of born-again multilateralists is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has been meeting with representatives of Syria, Iran and several dozen other nations in the hope that they can apply a collective tourniquet to Iraq, where America's go-it-alone approach is failing.

The "neighbors" meeting is an example of the kind of cooperative problem solving that everyone favors in theory. The difficulty is that nobody today has any real experience with how a genuinely multilateral system might work. And the more you think about it, the more potential obstacles you begin to see in the passage from unilateral hell to multilateral heaven.

The nuclear strategist Herman Kahn pondered this problem in a 1983 essay on "multipolarity and stability." Kahn made his name by "thinking about the unthinkable" -- namely, the consequences of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he recognized that the bipolar world of the Cold War had an inherent stability. The two superpowers understood the rules of the game, and because the dangers of conflict were so great, they learned to discipline themselves and their respective allies.

A multipolar world eventually would be stable, too, Kahn argued. He hypothesized that by 2000, there would be seven economic giants -- the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, France and Brazil -- and that they would gradually work out orderly rules. The problem was the transition. The moment of maximum danger, Kahn warned, would be in moving from a bipolar to a multipolar world.

We are now in that process of transition, and it's proving just as volatile as Kahn predicted. American power alone is demonstrably unable to achieve world order; we can't even maintain the peace in Baghdad. But no multilateral coalition has emerged as an alternative. The United Nations, the nominal instrument of collective security, allowed itself to be run out of Iraq by a terrorist bomb in the early months of the war.

The multilateral world is disorganized on several levels. First, it's not clear what the "poles" of the emerging order are or how they will align. Is the Muslim world a pole? If so, who will lead it -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan? Can the Muslim nations of the Middle East put aside their traditional rivalries and act responsibly in resolving a crisis? That's what the meeting of Iraq's neighbors this week is testing. An exhausted America finally seems ready for a multilateral exit strategy from Iraq, but are the neighbors able to deliver it?

Does Russia intend to organize a new pole of its own? President Vladimir Putin certainly sounds like he wants to regain a share of Moscow's old influence. But listening to an acrimonious debate last weekend at the Brussels Forum among diplomats from nations that once made up the Soviet bloc, it's obvious that this pole would be anything but stable. While a Putin ally was enthusing about the new Russia, someone in the back of the room -- a Georgian? an Estonian? a Pole? -- shouted out: "Liar," and you wondered for a moment if punches would be thrown.

The disorder goes deeper. Most of the major nations are on the cusp of political change. The United States is the most obvious example: George Bush will leave the White House in less than two years, but to whom? Public rage over Iraq is buffeting the two politicians who, just a few months ago, were their party's front-runners, Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The only certainty about the next president is that he or she will represent an America that is angry and unpredictable.

Big changes are coming in France and Britain, too. Gaullist foreign policy will outlive President Jacques Chirac, just as the Atlantic alliance will survive the departure of Prime Minister Tony Blair. But both moorings will probably be looser -- adding additional drift. And what should we expect from a post-Putin Russia -- assuming he follows through on his promise to retire next year?

I listened to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say during a news conference in Tehran last year that the post-1945 world order was ending. All of its institutions, starting with the United Nations, were becoming irrelevant, he argued. A new world would be shaped by rising powers that would create new rules of the international game.

At the time, I thought it was more of Ahmadinejad's crazy rhetoric. But I suspect that this vision of a world in transition may be correct: We're all multilateralists now, but we inhabit a world that makes the Cold War seem like the good old days.

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

The US will have to accept a multipolar world

Like it or not, the US will have to accept a multipolar world

Around the three poles of Europe, India and South America, we could create a more balanced and democratic world order

David Clark
Friday February 16, 2007
The Guardian

One of the many casualties of 9/11 and its aftermath has been the idea, fashionable in the 1990s, that a world with only one superpower would be a more comfortable place to live. This hinged on the argument that in a unipolar world order the dominant state, in pursuit of its global interests and responsibilities, acts as a producer of global public goods from which everyone benefits, such as security, stability and free trade.

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That is the basis on which the advocates of US primacy have always defended its legitimacy. Paul Wolfowitz's famous Defence Planning Guidance paper of 1992 talked about the need for the US to "account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established economic and political order". Far from being the conceit of neoconservative intellectuals, faith in the benign effect of US power was shared by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Things look very different today. The intervention in Iraq has strengthened the very forces of extremism and violence it was meant to weaken, with the result that we are in much greater danger. The Bush administration continues to drag its heels on the environment and prevent the action needed to meet an even greater threat in the form of climate change. The US's unwillingness to address its $764bn trade deficit and its determination to continue consuming beyond its means is responsible for global economic imbalances that threaten meltdown and worldwide depression. Instead of acting as a provider of global public goods, the US looks more like a global free rider, using its power selfishly and irresponsibly to the detriment of the greater good.

A common mistake is to see this as a reflection of the American character, rather than as the inevitable consequence of unrestrained power. The truth is that any other nation in the US's position would do the same and probably much worse. Dominant powers are always prone to trampling on the interests and rights of others. The problem with US hegemony is that it's hegemonic, not that it's American. As Vladimir Putin pointed out in a speech at the weekend (an extract of which was published on these pages), the unipolar model is inherently flawed because it concentrates power in ways that are unhealthy and undemocratic.

Very true, but how strange to hear it from the lips of the Russian president. In each of the criticisms he levelled at the US, more or less the same could be said about the government he leads. Putin deplores America's conduct of the war on terror, but the brutality of his assault on Chechnya makes the abuses at Guantánamo look mild by comparison. The bullying of Russia's neighbours through energy cut-offs, trade embargoes and the sponsorship of local insurgencies shows scant regard for the high-minded diplomatic principles espoused in his speech.

And when it comes to ripping up treaties and ignoring international law, Putin has little to learn from Bush. He refuses to accept Russia's obligations as a signatory of the Energy Charter Treaty, for instance, and prefers the unilateral use of energy dominance for geopolitical and commercial advantage. Putin's only real objection to a unipolar world order is that Russia is not the unipole. In every other respect his foreign policy doctrine is similar to the neoconservative approach he purports to oppose. Anyone who takes his concern for democratic standards seriously hasn't been paying enough attention to the erosion of political and civil rights under his leadership.

Britain, along with the rest of Europe, certainly needs a strategy for creating a more balanced and legitimate distribution of global power, but it shouldn't be one that follows Jacques Chirac's efforts to offset US influence through big power summitry with an authoritarian Russia. It must be one that is true to Europe's democratic values. Of course, the concept of power balancing is in itself controversial. For some, such as Tony Blair, the suggestion that US power needs to be balanced is evidence of anti-Americanism. But his alternative of seeking influence in Washington has been given more than a fair wind, and he has precious little to show for it.

There is an alternative that allows Europe to pursue an effective power balancing strategy without resort to the cynical realpolitik of old, and it has been made possible by the remarkable political transformations of the last three decades. Almost two-thirds of the world's population, accounting for three-quarters of nation states, now live under democratic rule. It is those states collectively that form the body of legitimate world opinion and must be mobilised. US policymakers have marginalised the United Nations on the grounds that universal membership confers power and legitimacy on despots and tyrants. But what was striking about the debate on Iraq was the fact that most world democratic opinion was opposed to America's approach. The objective of power balancing must be to ensure it is brought to bear more effectively in future.

India will, on current trends, overtake China to become the world's most populous country by the middle of the century. Unlike China, it is an established democracy and ought to be a natural ally in any attempt to create a more balanced and democratic world order. Another priority should be South America, where the democratic gains of the last 20 years have been as great as those of eastern Europe. Its regional trade blocks, the Andean Community and Mercosur, are in the process of merging to form a South American Community of Nations modelled on the EU. With a population of 361 million, there are plans for a single market, a common currency and a common foreign policy.

Around these three poles - Europe, India and South America - it would be possible to galvanise a new global democratic sentiment that rejects unipolarist assumptions without being antagonistic towards the US. The end of American primacy is coming, whether Washington likes it or not. The choice is between a bipolar system in which it faces an authoritarian and increasingly confident China, or a multipolar order in which it can share the challenges of global leadership with other centres of democratic power. The shift from unipolarity to a democratic multipolarity should be our common project of the 21st century.

· David Clark is chairman of the Russia Foundation and was a special adviser at the Foreign Office from 1997 to 2001
Dkclark@aol.com