The Eastern Mediterranean in Transition

Multipolarity, Politics and Power

Spyridon N. Litsas, Aristotle Tziampiris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472440396
• eBook ISBN: 9781317034773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Economics

The wider region of the Eastern Mediterranean is in transition. What is being evinced is a situation of continuous volatility, centering on developments such as the 'Arab Spring, ' the Greek sovereign debt crisis, Islamic terrorism, the continuation of deadlock over the Cypriot and Palestinian Issues, significant energy finds in the Levantine Basin, concerns over nuclear proliferation and, more recently, the Syrian Civil War. At a systemic level, the move towards a regional multipolar reality has also contributed to volatility by creating a crescendo of antagonisms between all the major international actors who continuously strive for more influence, power and prestige. This collective project by leading experts represents a unique combination of International Theory and International Politics analysis that deals exclusively with the wider Eastern Mediterranean. It scrutinizes in a multidimensional manner the current geostrategic and geopolitical conditions that include the latest domestic socio-political events, as well as the active involvement of the Great Powers in the region. This book should be of interest to academics, decision-makers and a general reading public focusing on a significant and influential region in flux.

Chapter 1
War, Peace and Stability in the Era of Multipolarity: What Lies at the End of the Systemic Rainbow?

Spyridon N. Litsas

Introduction

Except for their daily effort for survival at the domestic level, states implement a distinctive variety of strategies to face the systemic volatility that determines international politics as well. The varying capacity of power that every state possesses essentially brings about a significant amount of ontological heterogeneity among the systemic factors. Despite these profound parameters of disparity, nonetheless an intriguing similarity is featured in all states without the slightest deviation; this similarity is nothing but an unconditional collective faith to Peace. For all societies that are identified as organized and civilized communities Peace constitutes the ultimate good, independently of the socio-economic, historical, or cultural norms and idiosyncrasies that shape their past and present ontology. However, a question arises and begs for an answer: Can this—rather romantic—conviction about Peace apply to the systemic jungle?

I support the view that what is defined as Peace and is typically perceived as having a global dimension is, in fact, either a theoretical misconception or a political tactic. Since the dawn of history for all organized societies the political connotation of Peace meant the military defeat of the opponent and eventually its political vanishing or a perpetual political subjugation. Instead of a harmonious co-existence of all the actors in the international arena, aiming at Peace mainly gave rise to a violent preponderance in order to eliminate any form of antagonism that could ultimately lead to an unwanted War. I will base my analysis on the hypothesis that, while Peace is a political myth, systemic stability is a pragmatic political goal that can lead toward a less violent and more secure international environment. My argument is that systemic stability can be identified as a period during which the international system does not witness total war phenomena, even though it may be possible to experience continuous climax of interstate antagonisms and knotty security dilemmas.

The analysis will be grounded in the neo-realist paradigm, maintaining a systemic approach rather than reviewing the various social, political, ideological or cultural conditions that shape each and every state individually. Firstly, I will portray the very essence of Peace and its relation to War. Next, I will discuss the vague hypotheses of how Peace can be attained and preserved through the exercise of the International Law and the implementation of the so-called defensive war, and point to their conceptual weaknesses and limitations. The gist of my analysis will center around the concepts of unipolarity, bipolarity and multipolarity. Specifically, I will explore the notion of systemic stability in the context of these three frameworks and, in so doing, I will argue that it is multipolarity that can best ensure systemic stability in the international arena, the latter being defined in terms of the scarce appearance of total wars. Finally, I will conclude by suggesting that, while multipolarity is a more stable condition for the dominant systemic factors and for the entire system, still the high propensity of conventional wars can render this condition one of great challenges for ordinary states and for regions of high strategic and economic importance, such as the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Concept of Peace: Conception, Essence and Realities

Since the dawn of history it has become evident to humanity that Peace is not a given and that one has to strive hard in order to attain and preserve it. In Aristophanes’ “Irene”, Trygaeus, a middle-aged Athenian, tries and finally succeeds, with the help of the chorus, to deceive War who had imprisoned Peace in a deep dark cave and to set her free. In a similar vein, in “Lysistrata,” another famous comedy of Aristophanes, the Athenian women made a secret pact with the women from Sparta to abstain from their spousal duties if their husbands continued their war. Eventually, instincts prevailed over politics, women achieved their goal and thus Peace was re-established in Greece.

Both as a theoretical concept and as a political necessity Peace can only be perceived and defined in the light of War. Notwithstanding the oxymoron, since the dawn of time hard and vicious fighting has signaled the evolution of humankind. As a matter of fact, humanity refers to its historical past by using as a landmark the turbulent periods of war instead of the times of peaceful co-existence. This tendency toward organized violence is not a psychopathic inclination—what is usually assumed for individuals manifesting a violent behavior in their personal conduct—but rather relates to human’s desire for power in relation to, or over, others. From Thucydides to Hobbes and from Morgenthau to Carr humans’ tendency toward power in order to prevail against others is a central motivation shaping humanity’s evolution (see for example Neascu, 2009, pp. 85–94; Ahrensdorf, 2000, pp. 579–593). Peace is generally defined in terms of the avoidance of war between two states (Crawford, 2000, p. 111), representing one side of the coin in the “balance of power,” the other one corresponding to War (Wohlforth, Kaufman and Little, 2007, p. 4). In other cases, Peace is deemed the direct result of states’ choice to manifest tolerance toward the provocative attitude of problematic neighbors;¹ the reciprocal recognition of sovereignty between two states with a stormy past (Keene, 2004, p. 12); or the result of a successful implementation of a military deterrent strategy.² In a nutshell, Peace is such a multidimensional concept that makes it hard for scholars to flesh out a conclusive definition of it.

If war is an act of violence to compel our enemy to fulfill our will as Carl von Clausewitz has suggested, then peace should be viewed as a non-violent act that indicates the willingness of a state to non-violently co-exist with all other states in the international system. However, the above definition about Peace can be neither theoretically nor empirically supported. For example, how a unanimous peaceful co-existence among states can be reached in an anarchic, hence utterly antagonistic, international domain of self-help policies? What will be the attitude of the pacifistic majority towards those states with a revisionist political agenda? If the majority favors organized violence in order to control the revisionist states, then pacifism is transformed into an empty pretext aiming plainly to preserve the existing status quo instead of promoting peace and cooperation among states. It is obvious that when Peace needs to be reinforced, it obtains a political, rather than humanistic, significance. And if politics is about power, then peace no longer serves non-violent co-existence but rather strives to rationalize the short- and long-term objectives of a political unit in the international arena.³

As already mentioned, articulating a single and comprehensive definition of Peace is confronted with major difficulties in the realm of international theory. The reason is that in the daily unfolding of international politics Peace manifests a protean ability in that it takes various forms depending on the systemic conditions. This is why one of the most intriguing approaches of Peace can be found in Oliver Richmond’s analysis (2008, pp. 7–8), where Peace is portrayed as a result of political and military procedures rather than as the product of choice:

One approach to thinking about peace that is commonly used is to look back at its historical, international, uses. These generally include the following: an Alexandrian peace, which depended upon a string of military conquests loosely linked together; a Pax Romana, which depended upon tight control of a territorial empire, and also included a “Carthaginian peace” in which the city of Carthage was razed to the ground and strewn with salt to make sure it would not re-emerge; an Augustine peace dependent upon the adoption and protection of a territorial version of Catholicism, and the notion of just war; the Westphalian peace, dependent upon the security of states and the norms of territorial sovereignty; the Pax Britannia, dependent upon British domination of the seas, on trade and loose alliances with colonised peoples; the Paris Peace Treaty of 1919, dependent upon an embryonic international organisation, collective security, the self-determination of some, and democracy; the United Nations system, dependent upon collective security and international cooperation, a social peace entailing social justice, and the liberal peace, including upon democratisation, free markets, human rights and the rule of law, development, and, perhaps most of all, the support, both normative and material, of the United States and its allies.

For some the success of a state in emerging as a regional hegemony able to dictate its will over all the others is portrayed as “Peace” because it contains the notion of stability. However, this is not the archetypical exegesis of Peace. Rather, it indicates the willingness and the ability of the regional hegemon to prevail over the other states in the region and establish itself as an alpha element. It thus becomes obvious that under these conditions “Peace” is not the long searched means toward non-violent interstate co-existence; it is evidently inclined toward the prevalence of one or a few over the rest of the regional or the international actors. Viewed in this way, War and Peace operate as political tools that either promote organized violence or signal the ability and the willingness of exercising organized violence against those actors that do not accept the existing status quo. As Richard Ned Lebow (2010, p. 97) argues, although they are commonly treated as dichotomous categories, Peace and War in reality represent two ends of a continuum. In between these two poles political evolution takes various forms of cooperation and violence.

A characteristic approach suggesting that the emergence of Peace can only be achieved through the prevalence of one actor against others is the well-known Democratic Peace Theory and its implementation in the world arena (see for example Rasler and Thompson, 2005; Russet, 1993; Litsas, 2012). In fact, when Peace is embedded in a specific ideological, religious or socio-economic context it follows that it will inevitably lose its idealistic ambiguity. Instead, it will be transformed into a political device readily available to a state or an alliance willing, and able, to put forward its strategic goals in the international arena. Evidently, Peace is stripped off the long established idealistic conformity, thus adopting the rather Jesuitical dictum “the end justifies the means.” From the moment Peace is endowed with certain political features and implications and thus forfeits its idealistic ambiguity it automatically becomes subject to heterogeneous targeting on the part of every state in the international system. It is through this process that the concept of Peace subsides in the International Relations theory, giving rise to the concept of systemic stability instead.

Can You Tame the Fire? Two Times the Charm

Neorealist theory supports the view that War is the result of the anarchic and antagonistic conditions penetrating the structure of the international system (Waltz, 1998). War does not constitute only a choice of strategic maneuvering but also a prolific political methodology in order for a state to manifest its power to the rest of the international system or just to implement a “rally round the flag” policy designed for domestic consumption. As Richard Ned Lebow (2010, p. 9) points out:

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher benefited from the same “rally round the flag” effect in the Falklands War, and Tony Blair somewhat less so in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Thucydides was the first historian to describe this dynamic in his account of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles’ masterful speech turned around Athenian opinion, which had previously rejected Corcyra’s plea for a defensive alliance.

The multifaceted nature of War leads to the following oxymoron: theoretically everyone believes in the eradication of War but no one can actually implement a political formula to achieve this. In the following sections the two means that are alleged to serve this objective, namely international law and defensive war will be scrutinized.

A) International Law

This approach focuses on the implementation of international law and the operation of multinational organizations as a political apparatus toward the decisive eradication or the pivotal restraint of War. Such views were widespread mainly during the Cold War era, when the anti-war movement was popularized among the Western youth. This is clearly illustrated in the following quote of Philip Quincy Wright (1961, p. 87), an emblematic figure in the theory of international law in the 20th century:

International Law, through its rule of order, has a large role to play in the elimination of war, and through its principles of justice, in the settlement of international disputes. Conversely, the elimination of war through diplomacy, international organization, economic assistance, and education, is of major importance in the development of international law, as in the extension of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. Peace, adjudication, and law are each dependent on the others, and their reciprocal development is the way to a more satisfactory world in the atomic age.

Such approaches have given rise to the liberal theory, which among other things argues that the unpredictability of international politics can be regularized by the implementation of international law to almost every aspect of systemic evolution (Corten, 2011; Norton-Moore, 1989). The rather enchanting rationale of this view is to limit and eventually eradicate the anarchic and antagonistic nature of the international system through the predominance of international law and the elevation of multinational organizations to a dominant position so that they will be able to regulate political osmosis among the states at international level. Consequently, as long as every form of dispute can be solved through the application of international law War will eventually become a distant and unpleasant memory.

Alas, in reality international law does not constitute a set of legal dictums that is able to regulate or control every incident that takes place in the international arena. Consider the archetypical imagery of Themis, the Greek goddess of Justice; she is typically depicted wearing a blindfold, holding a sword on one hand and a scale on the other. At the international level, however, could Themis be depicted with an analogously compelling decisiveness to impose fairness and equity in every systemic factor? At first glance, the answer would probably be “yes.” Yet at international level Themis’ movements are not self-propelled but rather dictated by a set of attached strings. In other words, at international level Themis is no longer an angel of justice but a puppet designed to justify the political decisions of the dominant systemic actor. International law is thus implemented according to the will of the powerful elements at the expense of the weaker ones. This is why Edward Carr (2001, p. 161) does not view international law primarily as a branch of ethics but instead as a vehicle of power. However, the thematic broadness of international law and the inefficacy to bypass Great Powers’ interest does not invalidate its gravity regarding how international politics could function in an egalitarian form. Rather, a pragmatic limitation is posed on the ability of international law to eradicate the anarchic systemic structure and consequently War. In the words of Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner (2005, p. 225):

International Law is a real phenomenon, but international law scholars exaggerate its power and significance. We have argued that the best explanation for when and why states comply with international law is not that states have internalized international law, or have a habit of complying with it, or are drawn by its moral pull, but simply that states act out of self-interest.

Since international law fails to ultimately regulate states’ strategic endeavors in their struggle for survival through the means with which they are endowed in the anarchic systemic environment, international arena remains a realm of high antagonism. Under these circumstances, War is deemed the decisive instrument to manipulate the will of others and a unique apparatus to maintain an autonomous route in the international arena. At the end of the day, it is rather challenging to deal with Thrasymachus’ reply to Socrates, as their dialogue is reported in Plato’s Republic I. When Socrates supports the view that justice is a political virtue that seeks the good of all, Thrasymachus replies that justice is the advantage of the stronger (as cited in Jackson, 2005, p. 18). Alas, international politics constantly proves Thrasymachus right.

B) Defensive War

As far as defensive war is concerned, first of all it needs to be pointed out that the idea that War can be eliminated from international politics through the prevalence of defense over offense should not be confused with the Waltzian Defensive Realism Theory. It is rather a form of political choice that may determine the course of action and the very nature of antagonism between the states. For example, during the Chinese system of multiple independences, 77...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• 1 War, Peace and Stability in the Era of Multipolarity: What Lies at the End of the Systemic Rainbow?
• 2 Structural Changes and Emerging Patterns of Strategic Behavior in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Transition from Bipolarity to Multipolarity
• 3 Russian Foreign Policy in the Eastern Mediterranean since 1991
• 4 US Foreign Policy in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Limits of Smart Power
• 5 The Dragon’s Rise in the Great Sea: China’s Strategic Interests in the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean
• 6 Penelope Unraveling: The Obama Administration’s Policy in the Eastern Mediterranean
• 7 “Smart” Leadership in a Small State: The Case of Cyprus
• 8 Structure over Agency: The Arab Uprising and the Regional Struggle for Power
• 9 Reorienting Turkish Foreign Policy: Successes, Failures, Limitations
• 10 Vernacular Security in the Eastern Mediterranean after the Arab Spring: The Cases of Egypt and Jordan
• 11 Twitter vs. Penguens on TV: #GeziParkProtests, Social Media Use, and the Generation Y in Turkey
• 12 Beyond Hegemony: Cyprus, Energy Securitization and the Emergence of New Regional Security Complexes
• 13 A Most Vicious Weapon: Rape, War and Civil Strife in the Arab World
• 14 Reasserting Normalcy in Iran’s Foreign Policy Realm: Continuities, Challenges and Opportunities
• 15 The Call of the Sea: Strategic Opportunities and Challenges for Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean
• 16 The Israeli–Greek Rapprochement: Stability and Cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean
• Index