Dangerous Peace

New Rivalry In World Politics

Alpo M Rusi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367159177
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429720543
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Alpo Rusi provides a broad vision of the strategic landscape for the coming century, warning against dangers inherent in the emerging world order. He predicts a more complexand potentially hostilemultipolar system based on four or five rival trading blocs. Despite the centrality of trade rivalries, the role of military force will not vanish. Although he considers superpower conflict unlikely, he expects that lower-level conflicts will become more prevalent. Consequently, Rusi believes that the trading blocs will have to actively pursue security arrangements that will safeguard the traditional role of the nation-state. }Examining the international system from a geopolitical and geoeconomic perspective, Alpo Rusi provides a broad vision and bold forecast of the emerging strategic landscape for the coming century. An asymmetrical world system is emerging. The United States is now the sole true world power; it forms the core of a unipolar order characterized by an uneven division of world power and economic resources. Rusi argues, however, that this postCold War order will not survive into the next century.Rusi suggests that the power vacuum in the former Soviet empire will be filled by China in Asia and by the European Union in Eastern Europe, Russias disintegration and decline in world power status will continue but may have reached its bottom line economically, and Islam will gain strength in various parts of the world, embracing a new international role. He also predicts that the world will be split into four or five distinct trading blocs: A European bloc formed around the European Union; an East Asian bloc, potentially strong, interventionist, and even aggressive, formed around China and the Singapore economic region; Japan, as a strong and still competitive economic power; and a Pan-American bloc, also strong but potentially isolationist, formed around the United States. One of the question marks will be the future ability of an orthodox Russia to facilitate conditions for an economic space. According to Rusi, these trading blocs will develop new political or geopolitical interests. For example, the European bloc will extract fossil fuels from the former Soviet Union instead of the Middle East, thereby changing the existing global trade system. Each bloc will have certain internal problemsthe Europeans will be linked to the unstable successors to the Soviet Union, the East Asian Bloc will have to contemplate whether Chinas economic growth and geopolitical expansions will create a new bipolar world in the early twenty-first century, and the Pan-American bloc will struggle with continuing political and economic instability in South and Central America.Finally, Rusi warns that it is crucial for the European and Pan-American blocs to build upon the traditional Euro-Atlantic relationship. Without it, he argues, a truly polarizedand potentially hostilebloc system will take root, most likely lining the Western pan-regions against Chinas expansiveness. }

1
Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429039164-1

"The communities of mankind, like every human achievement and contrivance, are subject to endless variety and progression."

-Reinhold Niebuhr

"The international system of the 21st century will contain at least six major powers: the United States, Europe, China, Japan and probably India, as well as a multiplicity of medium-sized and smaller countries."

-Henry A. Kissinger

"Of the eight billion people expected to populate the earth by 2020, five billion will live in Asia, and of this, one billion will reside in 50 cities with more than 20 million inhabitants each"

-Riccardo Petrella¹

This book is about the transition of the international system from bipolarity into a more complex, essentially multipolar, order. In this system, the key actors are powerful nations leading free-trade spaces, the latter of which will assume their roles as increasingly competitive politico-military blocs.² This historical development had its most visible manifestation when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. That event presented symbolically a social revolution as well as one in international relations. While many of the trends and processes evident in Europe and in other continents before 1989 are present and will remain powerful for years to come, we are now better able to understand—in Joseph Nye's terms—that "the tectonic plates have shifted" in world politics as a result of the events of 1989-91.³

After the end of the Cold War, it was often repeated that the events of the end of the 1980s symbolized "something fundamental that happened in world history." Some observers concluded that the old political world map had become obsolete. Many agreed with Alvin and Heidi Toffler that "we are undergoing the deepest rearrangement of global power since the birth of industrial civilization."⁴ There is certainly some truth in their proposition. The post-Cold War international system will be in a state of flux for many years to come. Order, admittedly tenuous during the Cold War, has given way to chaos in several parts of the globe. Consequently, with respect to the security policy repercussions of the end of the Cold War, idealists and realists have clashed in journals and governments alike.⁵

The immediate effects of these developments are obvious: German unification, liberation in Eastern Europe, and the spread of nationalistic and ethnic conflicts virtually throughout the globe but particularly in Europe. In the long term, however, the tectonic shift of plates, and its geopolitical repercussions, will be the most decisive feature of the systemic change. This turning point could be characterized as a departure from the American century and a heading towards the Asian and Pacific century. The sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union and the dramatic rise of China as an economic world power are the central factors of this change.⁶

Consequently, an assymetrical world system is now emerging as a configuration to replace the symmetrical Cold War bipolar structure. At this point, the United States remains the only true world power; it constitutes the core of a semi-unipolar but fragile order that is characterized by assymetries of global power divisions and economic resources. Yet its weaknesses are such that the post-Cold War "order" will not survive into the 21st century.⁷ This book attempts to shed light on the overall development of the international system change and to make a forecast with respect to the security aspects of the rivalry between the emerging politico-economic blocs at the end of the 1990s and early 21st century.

As a result of the disappearance of the global ideological and political division, a new era of growing interdependence and globalization has really begun. The burgeoning economic and technological dynamism is a major unifying factor in the Pacific, Europe, and America alike, reshaping the interests, outlooks, and conceptions of security for a new generation of decision makers. Consequently, as Robert A. Manning states,

the new logic of geoeconomics, and the imperatives flowing from the paramount importance attached to commercial and technological capacities, is pitted against the traditional logic of geopolitics: new requirements for partnership versus lingering suspicions aid old ideas of nationhood.⁸

This geoeconomic logic also argues for a much-needed expansion of the definition of what constitutes security, and what has been termed "comprehensive security."

The liberalization of world trade and the increase of interdependence will also, however, accelerate the emergence of trade blocs in the longer term. This development results from the deepening and enlargement of regional integration. As one prominent observer, American scholar Jack Snyder, puts it: "This (regional integration) will continue from the Pacific Rim to the Baltic Rim. These regional arrangements and a strong multilateral system must be seen as complementary to each other." Snyder, however, adds that for the time being "the statistics do not support the contention that the world is headed toward a system of exclusive regional trading blocs."⁹ This book makes the argument that although economic statistics do not yet necessarily support the argument of the emergence of trading blocs, geopolitical logic and power politics cannot be overlooked in the emerging international system. This ensuing political logic will strengthen the emergence of a multipolar order based on rival trade blocs centered on the big powers.

Behind the emerging trade blocs one can discover the principal nationstates of earlier centuries: Germany (the European Union), Russia (the Commonwealth of Independent States, the rump of the former Soviet Union), the United States (the North American Free Trade Agreement), and Japan as well as China (an East Asian economic area). Even a dynamic and economically powerful Japan is bound, however, to remain a "civilian power" overshadowed by China. The old Westphalian international system of nation-states has come only partly to its end. That system was well described by the great Austrian statesman Metternich, who argued that "the society of states is the essential condition of the modern world."¹⁰ The international hierarchy and order of the Westphalian system were defined and redefined by hegemonic wars. Now it seems that this pattern has vanished. The hierarchy of the new "world order" is emerging primarily as a result of global political and economic processes, not military power and hegemonic wars. This "order" will still be based on the system of states, although forces and arrangements that are international or subnational will have increasing importance. As Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky state, "within [the] broad structure, new patterns, not based on military power, will be increasingly important"¹¹ Great power rivalry will not vanish, although the conditions of the system may change and the actors may assume new roles and names. This multidimensional rivalry is one of the basic preconditions for a dangerous peace over the longer term.¹²

This book does not share either the realist or idealist approach as such in discussing the conditions of peace within the forthcoming multipolar trade bloc order. In theoretical terms, the book deals with the interaction between economics and strategy in the emerging multipolar order. Beginning with the thesis that Paul Kennedy describes in his Rise and Fall of the Great Powers as the basic feature of the "modern," that is, post-Renaissance, period of international relations–"each of the leading states...strives to enhance its wealth and its power, to become (or to remain) both rich and strong"¹³–this research volume analyzes primarily the peace and security repercussions of the emerging new rivalry between the trade blocs of big powers within the ever present "modern" and conflictual period of the history of mankind. History has not ended, although it may take a new form.¹⁴

Moving on from Kennedy, the thesis of this book is that, barring deliberate management of international relations, the world will evolve into four or five politico-economic or cultural spaces or blocs, which will gradually become the chief dramatis personae on the global stage:

1. a European bloc (the European Union and its neighbors);
2. an East Asian bloc (around "a Greater China" and an East Asian economic area);
3. a Pan-American bloc (centered on the United States, with or without a North America Free Trade Agreement);
4. a Slavic and Orthodox Russian bloc (around the Moscow-led post-communist Russia); and
5. a Japanese-centered economic bloc (this one, however, may find itself in some kind of orbital relationship with the Chinese-led bloc).

The international system of the post-divisional economic interdependence–in other words, the globalization of market economy—as such may be developing toward a more stable and peaceful foundation. "There is virtually no conflict that a country can win that will do as much good for it as increasing its GNP by a percent or two for a few years," as two prominent scholars argue.¹⁵ This imperative of "welfare over warfare" may be durable. Although the liberal democracies are presumably inclined to handle new economic conflicts peacefully, there is no certainty that a semi-democratic big power, let alone an authoritarian one, would limit promotion of its interests to peaceful means.¹⁶ As a result, the emerging trading blocs will have to pursue security arrangements that to a great extent safeguard the traditional role of the nation-state. This book will therefore examine the international system change simultaneously through two distinct but intertwined theoretical concepts: geoeconomics and geopolitics.¹⁷ However, the book makes an assumption that geoeconomics will be a more decisive factor relatively sooner, as these new-old power centers emerge during the era of increasing interdependence: "The economic foundations of political power are, in the long run, critically important determinants of changes in the great powers' pecking order," as Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond conclude.¹⁸ Geopolitics will, however, subsequently regain its primacy as a defining factor of international relations, and in particular relations between the new big powers, once the bloc consolidation is substantially complete.

Consequently, changes in power relations–and geopolitics—result mainly from the major changes of the power capacities, i.e., the economic foundations, of states. If there are too many "winners" and "losers" simultaneously in the international system, a conflictual situation, and even a war, may ensue.¹⁹ Fundamental geopolitical transitions generally have only happened after hegemonic wars. Since the Cold War, however, the global geostrategic landscape has changed to a great extent peacefully. This process of geopolitical transition still continues, not simply at the European level, but, more dramatically, at the global level as well.²⁰

The collapse of the Soviet imperium has created a power vacuum. This vacuum will be partly filled by the European Union in Eastern Euope, ope, while in Asia it will be partly filled by China; furthermore, Islam, surging in various parts of the world and embracing a new international role, is also threatening Moscow's hold on its former and current satr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Collapsing Bipolarity
• 3 Emergence of the New Economic System
• 4 New Geopolitical Actors on the Rise
• 5 Toward A New Global Rivalry
• 6 The Global Order for the 21st Century: Positive Interrelationship or Conflictual Rivalry?
• 7 Constructing the Real Future
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index