As we gaze into the future, are we looking at a new Cold War?
The international landscape is taking on a tone of deja vu these days, as we return to Kremlinology and proxy wars. It feels like a new Cold war is upon us. The familiar lineup of Russia and China, with various other formerly communist states, are aligned against "the West" writ large: the US with core European countries, plus also those European post-Soviet states that turned in revulsion against their former captor. Only Belarus was left behind as a pawn of Russia. Iran is perhaps the one large country that was previously part of the US coalition and has decisively switched to the other side, though several countries like Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan are non-aligned or hostile.
But the familiar names and grudges belie vast changes in the landscape. The principal shift is that the Soviet economic system, and the communist economic systems more widely, is no longer the albatross it once was. Virtually every country has ditched communism (or, more precisely, top-down planning), discovered capitalism, and put it to work resolving fundamental economic problems and built modern economies, more or less. North Korea may be the only exception, (and perhaps Cuba), showing its entreprenurial spirit in the sphere of international crime, but otherwise hewing doggedly to a fully planned economy. China is foremost in this new authoritarian movement, having mastered a hybrid system of one-party politics and multi-party economics. This new model, (perhaps pioneered ultimately by Singapore), is a far more concerning and long-term threat than communism ever was. Straight communism was brutally impractical, and demanded correspondingly brutal methods of implementation. As it turned out, it was only attractive to the most extreme authoritarians, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh, and their starry-eyed believers.
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| Prevalence of government types, world-wide. There has been a noticeable regression over the last decade or two. |
But the new model is much more widely applicable and attractive. Even we in the US had a narrow escape during the last administration, and half the country remains in thrall to its lure. If power is one's goal, autocracy, or "managed democracy", is far more attractive than a truly competitive democracy. While in the 20th century many authoritarian states transitioned to democracy, this century has shown a different trend, as countries like Hungary, India, Venezuela, and Russia head away from more or less functional democracy.
The Ukraine war has obviously broken all this open, manifesting Vladimir Putin's seething resentment that yet one more former Soviet "Republic" and Imperial satrapy resisted all his efforts at corruption and cooptation, and through force of popular will dared to aligned itself with the West. Every country has to choose a position, and those positions were recently enunciated in the recent UN assembly vote against the aggressor. China has exposed itself as fatally hypocritical to its former mantras of non-interference, peaceful coexistence, and national self-determination. Support of its fellow authoritarian, in war that so closely mirrors the one it contemplates against Taiwan, takes precedence over any lip-service to principle or peace. The Western coalition of democracies fell naturally into line as well, in reaction to the horror that was unfolding, which everyone thought the experiences of the last century would have made impossible. Not so! The new authoritarian model has an ancillary and deeply related property, which is revived imperialist ambitions, just as it did back in World War 2, and earlier.
An interesting question is where India lands in this new alignment. It would seem a pretty simple proposition for India to condem the appalling and cruel invasion (couched in the clearest imperial and anti-democratic ambitions). India itself has been nibbled at by the bellicose ambitions of both Pakistan and China. But no. India abstained from the UN vote, along with China. India is propping up Russia by buying its discounted oil, and is otherwise mum, hearking back to its non-aligned status during the cold war. This is not helpful, as the world's largest country by population, and largest putative democracy. But India itself has been heading into an authoritarian, in its case Hindutva, direction, and clearly is torn regarding its allegiances, whether to true democracy, or to managed democracy, and its long-time quasi-friend, Russia. While it doubtless seeks to avoid the looming world where it ends up on the opposite side from an alliance between China, Russia, and possibly Pakistan and Iran, (which also abstained), that world is coming regardless. India flirted with alliance with the US over the last two decades, but this recent stance would seem to doom that relationship, or make it a non-reciprocal one. That India's stand is unprincipled goes without saying. Whether it will be tactically effective is another matter. Unlike smaller countries, India does not rely on rules in the international arena, but rather on power. Failure to support others in the face of unjustified and brutal invasion and spiteful bombardment of civilians saps international solidarity, impairs India's international reputation, and weakens its own future claims to sympathy when the wolf is at its own door. But its relationship with Russia may be valuable enough to repay those costs.
It should be obvious that, as a collective action problem, the way to avoid war is for all other countries to band together to forstall, condemn, reverse, and punish belligerent invasions like that started by Russia. Allowing Russia to get away with a half-a-loaf negotiated takeover would only invite future attempts by it or other aggressors. Punishment, when concentrated on the perpetrators, (not necessarily their national and captive populations), is critical to deterrence.
So it was heartening that most countries were not so cynical and saw the general danger well enough to have supported the UN resolution, toothless as it was. The question overall is whether international relations progress to a new world order, or regress to an old one. Since World War 2, Europe has enjoyed substantial and deepening peace, with an especially peaceful re-integration of Germany, re-establishment of the Baltic nations, Poland, and most nations of Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia was the only region that fell into warfare, and continues in an uneasy constellation of truces, mostly enforced by the dream of joining the peaceful and prosperous European community. While the breakup of the Soviet Union was caused by, and furthered, long-standing nationalist sentiments, those sentiments were kept in check by guardrails of the "new", or liberal international order, which prizes peace and tranquility, under the policing of NATO combined arms, with those of the US at the forefront. Of course Russia had its role as well in managing the post-beakup nationalisms, for instance in Chechnya and Georgia, and it was not interested in any liberal order. But the assault on Ukraine is an entirely new line that has been crossed.
The old world order is one that foreign policy "realists" relish. The old spheres of influence, and balances of power warm the hearts of Metternichian traditionalists, savoring the way it has always been. There, guile and propaganda, selective alliances and stealth were the order of the day, throwing small countries to the dogs while the big countries do what they wish, each pursuing imperial dreams. They claim that this is just the way things are, there is no alternative, and any hopey-changey ambitions for a better international system amount to just another League of Nations or toothless UN.
One can grant that the international scene is not, yet, bound by a legal system or effective police powers. The US has tried to be the policeman, and done a generally well-intentioned, but poor job of it. We run a vast network of military bases that has stretched over the globe, and exert soft power of many kinds. This has given room for countless small nations to pursue their dreams, subject to, but not crushed, by great power spheres and pressures. Taiwan grew into a flourishing independent democracy, Poland shook off centuries of partitions and subjugation. People power rose up in the Phillipines, in Ukraine, and in the Middle East. Africa has had a fitful time, but generally has been able to at least breathe free of explicit colonial oppression. US policy over the last few decades has been a race to establish a civil international order that is entrenched enough to survive our own demise as a superpower. Even the Iraq war was, at least in spirit, intended to break the patterns of authoritarianism that plague the Middle East, and implant a new, prosperous democracy. But bringing a new and happy dispensation on a plate of hellfire did not work out so well. Indeed, the implanted Western democracy of Israel shows more signs of aligning with the local political patterns than of changing them.
So, change is hard, as is management of international relations in the absence of rules and police. The realists would say that other nations, both major competitors and spoilers, always line up against the powerful nation of the moment, due to natural competitiveness. But the Ukraine war should be, if any international event can be, the most glaring example of the boundary line between possible systems, and possible futures.
One can liken the old order to a city with gangs or mafia families. The gangs are always in flux, growing, shrinking, and competing. Long times may go by with relatively stable constellations, but then all hell breaks loose and the warfare is in brutal earnest. The new international order is, in contrast, more like a modern city, with representative government, laws, and a police force. Its violence confined to small-time spoilers, criminals and malcontents. Large scale warfare is unknown. Who wouldn't want the second over the first? Well, that takes solidarity- that nations do not only look out for themselves for the moment, but take a long view of the system and their long-term interests, and band together globally to make that future happen.
Perhaps the US is uniquely able to pursue this vision of international relations due to (in addition to its wealth) its makeup as a polyglot nation, its long experience with self-government at all levels, its fascination with the Western and the Police procedural as its reigning entertainment forms, and its modest remove from the European wars of imperialism and domination. We were motive forces behind both the UN and the League of Nations. Whatever the cause, the logic remains that international peace relies entirely on the collective will hold it as an ideal, and then to enforce it. This future does take some imagination, which realists seem to be lacking. But international standards have advanced significantly. Slavery used to also be just the way things were in a naturally competitive world. Poison gas used to be a standard weapon of war. We can change the landscape of international competition.
With a modicum of international solidarity and policing, the international community can put an end to imperialistic wars of aggression. And that movement starts now, in Ukraine, by beating back Russia and all the lies, cruelty, and stupid condescension that it stands for.
