Global Disorder/Kuresel Duzensizlik.

• Author: Maull, Hanns W.
• Position: Erosion of old, 'liberal' international order - Report

Introduction

The present international order was under severe stress even before the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. (1) Political scientists as well as practitioners of international relations have noted the erosion of the international order (2) for at least a decade, and more recently many observers have concluded that the changes had reached alarming dimensions. (3) One of those voices belongs to Henry Kissinger. In his most recent book, World Order, Kissinger extensively mapped what has happened to the international order in recent decades. (4) In short, there is a broad consensus that the old 'liberal' international order (LIO) has been eroding for quite some time. Why this has happened, what will remain of the old order, and what will take its place, however, are still vigorously debated questions. This article attempts to establish some of the causes for the erosion of the international order and to identify some of the characteristics of the current global disorder.

How Does the Erosion of Global Disorder Manifest Itself?

The shift towards global disorder over the last decade has become manifest in at least four dimensions of the LIO: in its normative foundations, its institutions, in numerous policy areas, and in the way conflicts have been managed.

Normative Expansion, Erosion and Re-ideologization of World Politics

The normative basis of the current LIO can be found in the Atlantic Charter of 1941, originally signed by U.S. President F.D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill; it was developed more extensively in the Charter of the United Nations that was adopted at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. Today, those normative foundations are represented by the body of international law that, in turn, draws on a number of different sources: the normative principles of the modern world of nation states, especially the principles of the sovereignty and equality of all states, as well as the principle of non-interference in their internal affairs by others. Those norms first emerged at the Peace of Westphalia in the middle of the seventeenth century; they continue to guide the interaction of states to this day. Other sources on which the LIO draws are the norms of European liberalism in its political (rule of law, individual freedom, human rights, democratic participation in decision-making) and economic (individual property rights, free enterprise, market economy) aspects, and the devastating experiences of the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, which led to a generalized ban on the threat and use of force in interstate relations (with only a few carefully defined exceptions).

The LIO was designed during World War II and implemented thereafter, but it was quickly superseded by a new development, the rise of the Cold War. As a result, the LIO became part of a larger international order, that of the East-West conflict, which dominated world politics from 1947 to 1989. Only during the last quarter century, after the end of the East-West rivalry, did the LIO take hold--and then rapidly expanded and innovated - as the new, universal international order. Thus, its normative foundations were deepened and stretched geographically and functionally; that is to say, the scope and range of its principles, norms and rules were extended. At the same time, however, some of these norms lost their binding force and were accordingly weakened. For example, the number of countries that claimed democracy as their domestic political system continued to grow for some time despite some setbacks, but many of these 'new' democracies were in fact hybrid systems. In these systems, 'democracy' was reduced to more or less free and fair elections to acclaim a self-selected leadership. From the point of view of the LIO, these democracies must be considered as defective, as they uphold, at best, a few of the basic principles of a liberal political order.

The number and variations of such hybrid systems have increased in recent years, led by the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China. From the perspective of political liberalism, considering their similar political orders as authoritarian systems with populist elements, it would be more appropriate to call them 'defective democracies'. Similarly, regarding such hybrid systems as Russia or China as 'market economies' is somewhat misleading from the perspective of economic liberalism: the functioning of markets in those countries is usually not so much related to property rights and the efficient allocation of resources. Rather, their focus is the expansion of the power base of the government and the creation of wealth for certain privileged groups.

Similarly, there has been some ambivalence in the enforcement of human rights in the LIO. On the one hand, the scope of human rights has been greatly expanded over the last two decades, for example by the concepts of 'human security', the millennium development goals, and the doctrine of a 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) for the international community when governments are unable or unwilling to protect their peoples against mass murder. On the other hand, a look at the composition of the UN Human Rights Council (5) shows how problematic the implementation of these extended human rights is in practice.

Overall, it seems that the liberal normative foundations of the current international order are losing their appeal, and therefore, also some of their support as 'appropriate' binding principles and values. The pressure on them comes from different directions, though all seem to relate to ideational responses to globalization: one direction is the ideologization and 'weaponization' of religious fundamentalism, especially in its extreme forms that do not so much question and challenge Western values as try to eradicate their bearers violently. Those attacks on Western liberal principles and values are sometimes conducted through proxies or are supported by states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Iran, but also by non-state (or pseudo-state) actors such as Al Qaida, Boko Haram or the so-called Islamic State. Since it is very unlikely that the appeal of Western liberal principles and values will disappear, but since it is also hard to see how fundamentalist ideologies could be defeated any time soon, the conflicts over values and ideologies will persist. They could be muted into a situation of mutual tolerance and peaceful coexistence below the level of violence, but that unfortunately does not seem likely. Much more plausible is a continuation of violent confrontation, driven by the demographic dynamics of the so-called youth bulge: the large increase in the number of (often quite well-educated) young men, in particular, with dim perspectives for gainful employment and satisfactory social lives in the Middle East and Africa.

Multiple Crises of Institutions

The second dimension of the erosion of...