Turning Points: In Search of a Post-Cold War Global Security Order

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Abstract

The present paper will briefly review several turning points in the evolution of the Post-Cold War global order. During the Cold War, the bipolar international order was defined by an opposition between two superpowers whose positions were carefully balanced across the world. By contrast, due to the fact that the global security architecture was, and continues to be, in flux, the past three decades have witnessed a gradual transition from a unipolar world characterized by weak and inconsistent American leadership, to unmitigated efforts on the part of Russia and China to establish a multipolar equilibrium of power. At the same time, the New World Order was breaking with the long-held tradition of placing the military component at the center of the global security system and proclaimed the so-called “Comprehensive Security Doctrine” in which supremacy of law, democratic values, global economic prosperity, social justice, human rights, environmental protection, education and other elements played an equally important role. The idea of undiminished and equal security for all states, big or small, although very attractive in theory, turned out difficult to attain in practice. An emphasis is placed on different models of democracy determined by cultural and traditional peculiarities of states, using the rules of democracy and elections to maintain power.

1. Introduction

Although we will take some major events into consideration in this paper—from 9/11 and the war on terror to the financial crisis and the revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring, and the extent to which these occurrences have led to an ongoing crisis in global security—an emphasis will be placed on the latest advances in the theory and practice of democracy in general and the institution of free elections in particular. The above-mentioned, by the potential far-reaching influence, can dramatically alter the norms of behavior of states on the international arena, the global security environment, as well as the international legal network which codifies arms control and disarmament, among other things.

For almost five decades, throughout the Cold War years, the bipolar international order was defined by the interests of two competing superpowers. Their positions were carefully balanced across the world and provided some semblance of stability.

By contrast, after the breakup of the Soviet Union (and the so-called international socialist system), the global security architecture entered the unprecedented phase of flux. The past three decades have witnessed a gradual transition away from a bipolar to a unipolar world, characterized by weak and inconsistent American leadership, and to a multipolar equilibrium of power. This process has been accelerated by persistent efforts on the part of Russia and China who started to demand their share of influence on world affairs.* One can mention the US rivalry with China; the important role of the EU, however with internal discrepancies; its relations with the USA, China and Russia.†

“The past three decades have witnessed a gradual transition away from a bipolar to a unipolar world, characterized by weak and inconsistent American leadership, and to a multipolar equilibrium of power.”

This coincided with the annunciation of the New World Order. As originally proposed by President Bush Sr., this Order was breaking with the long-held tradition of placing the military component at the center of the global security system. The new approach proclaimed the Comprehensive Security Doctrine in which democratic values, supremacy of law, global economic prosperity, social justice, human rights, environmental protection, healthcare, education, demography and other elements played an equally important role.

However, the central tenet of the new international security architecture was undiminished and focused on equal security for all states—big or small, economically prosperous or underdeveloped. Although very attractive in theory, this basic premise turned out to be impossible to attain in practice.

There is no single reason for this unexpected failure and to analyze this phenomenon we should look at the doctrines of national interest of different countries, their geographical location, political culture, social and traditional value systems, etc. But this calls for serious in-depth research. Here, we will concentrate only on one: the most important factor, which is the theory and practice of democracy.

The end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s witnessed the relentless and single-minded march of newly-liberated Eastern European countries, some Latin American and South-East Asian nations towards the democratic model. But by the end of the 90s, this process slowed down, came to a standstill and even started to reverse.‡ In other words, the democratic boom was substituted by the democratic recession.§

“The best thing that can happen to democracy to make it more attractive is its further development and refinement in the USA and Western European states.”

We witness the decline of liberal democracy¶ and value-based foreign policy, both of which have seriously damaged international security. Today, a combination of Trump’s ‘America first’ realism, which some experts qualify as ‘egoistic’,** Russia’s aggressive policy aimed at restoring the Soviet empire, the invasion of Georgia (2008), the annexation of Crimea (2014) and an incursion into the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine,†† adventurism in Europe and the Middle East, and increasing authoritarianism with the state-controlled media around the world have led to a dangerously insecure world not only for state actors but for individuals as well, as it was recently well-evidenced by the shocking assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. It is evident that oftentimes nobody is able to be a guarantor of security.‡‡

Consequently, we have a polarized world divided along the lines of poverty and prosperity, education and ignorance, liberal market or centralized economy; a world with disappearing common traditional values; a world dominated by oil and gas interests, military power, money-grabbing oligarchs establishing world order which is both unstable and increasingly insecure, terrorism, migration flows, violation of borders, etc.

As it was proven over and over again, the lack of a universally accepted model of democracy, different levels of development, traditional and cultural peculiarities are the reasons for the instinctive rejection of Western values by countries.

Another reason is the fact that democracy is as much a cultural as a socio-economic phenomenon. Consequently, the most popular Western model of democracy does not completely explain the Indian practice, which—despite regular democratic elections—includes a deep-rooted system of castes, a different standard of human rights, etc. The model of Western democracy also contradicts the uniquely individual Russian interpretation of the phenomenon (the same is true for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, etc.). One also cannot fit into the Western democratic tradition the notion of stabilizing the function of armed forces and their role as guardians of the constitution, as it is the case in some countries (Turkey, Thailand, Myanmar, etc.)

Does that mean that we either have to approach the theory and practice of democracy with a high degree of flexibility, or to admit the simple fact that democracy today has a number of different, independent, equally important forms of self-expression depending on regions, specific countries, their history, traditions and even religion?

The past 20-25 years have amply demonstrated the negative consequences of forcing democracy on countries against their own free will (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.). One can only imagine that the efforts to do so will be even less successful in the future.

The best thing that can happen to democracy to make it more attractive is its further development and refinement in the USA and Western European states.

But we do not think that there is anything immanent to democracy even in its present form, which makes it unacceptable to any region or any country, or precludes its basic tenets from being fully implemented. Quite the contrary, there is no country, political or religious doctrine that precludes them from achieving a high level of education and technological innovation, or progress in general, which are usually associated with developed democracies.§§

However, for democracy to be fully embraced and successful, there are a few preconditions.

1. It is difficult to expect that democracy can and will win everywhere and always. However, there will always be a small chance of this happening. As a rule, democracy prevails when the social and cultural environment has been prepared. In other words, democracy cannot be effectively functional without highly educated people who are accustomed to independent thinking. Independent thinking, on its part, turns into unhindered self-expression through high political activism and regular free elections.
2. Democracy cannot flourish in a society which is permeated with mutual suspicion and low tolerance.
3. Industrialization, sustained economic growth create a precondition for the modernization of the society. It is exactly the modernization that serves as the outer optics for on-going social changes within the country and globally. For example, modernization puts a spotlight on new notions like gender equality, a general democratic wave, the universal theory of peace, emergence of worldwide morality, etc.

Here, we would like to draw attention to two important facts:

• first, modernization does not mean Westernization and thus is not a threat to an indigenous culture (Japan and South Korea are not trying to be Western countries, and Western European countries are not taking after the USA);
• and second, modernization does not automatically turn into democracy.

Now let me make a few observations concerning the institution of regular and free elections, as the most telling expression of the democratic achievements of any given society. It should be mentioned at the outset that democratic societies are strong not by their elected ruling class, but by the very fact of this class being elected, and re-elected, when necessary in a free expression of the will of the people.

“Democratic societies are strong not by their elected ruling class, but by the very fact of this class being elected, and re-elected, when necessary in a free expression of the will of the people.”

Everybody more or less knows about the positive influence of elections on the advancement of democratic values. But little is known about their other—no less important functions. For example, elections are the most effective way of the collective “punishment” of the irresponsible electorate. The one which sells, barters, gives or bargains away, or in some other way diminishes the value of the greatest achievement of humanity—one person-one vote. Bad governments are elected by good people who do not vote.

And this is a more or less old and well-documented phenomenon. Yet, there is a new and rather disturbing trend emerging globally. It is the open use of administrative resources by incumbents, financial and political pressure, threats, physical violence, aggressive use of social media and “fake news” outlets, deceit, lying, cheating, “trolling”, stealing urns and, in some cases, even raiding the polling stations, as it was the case during recent elections in Georgia, and generally rigging the election results.

Among these assorted instruments, a special role is played by bribery—a form of governmentally encouraged corruption: we are talking about direct and open buying of votes, especially those belonging to the most vulnerable members of the society.

Analysis shows that in developed societies one can most effectively fight the “idea, vision, philosophy” with the same, either with the combination thereof with administrative and financial resources, or with special interest groups, etc.

But in poor countries, money is and, for the observable future, obviously will remain, the most effective weapon. Here, we are not only talking of directly buying votes, but also of buying political scientists, mass-media outlets, black PR companies, institutions specializing in mind control, etc. with a view to influencing the electorate for the benefit of their clients and achieving the desired results.

Again, analysis proves that in countries in which free elections do not have a long-established history and have not become a respected tradition and which yet have to constitutionally or otherwise legally codify the system of checks and balances, the population is losing trust in its effectiveness fast, and this in turn encourages further radicalization of the society.

As it turned out, developed countries are not totally immune to these negative occurrences. Known facts of Russian interference in the election in the USA in 2016, election in Norway in 2017, election in Georgia in 2012, suspected interference from China, North Korea, WikiLeaks, etc. speak volumes of the readiness of these perpetrators to travel the extra mile to create divisiveness in the free world and throw the system of free elections into turmoil.

But recently we have started to observe another new and disturbing trend. Namely, the unmitigated efforts of those who were elected through free democratic elections and who are still in power to resort to any and every legal and mostly illegal trick to extend their staying in power indefinitely in contradiction to the constitutions and organic laws of their own countries. This is happening in Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Venezuela, etc.

In a certain way, the old, time-tested tradition of periodically changing a country’s leadership through elections is faced with a new method of using the institution of free elections to stay in power indefinitely under the guise of blessing from the population. But we can say that the recent, most notable failure of such attempts in Venezuela, Turkey and Kazakhstan is a source of optimism that the old tradition is not weakened and is fighting back. And here we pin our hopes on the collective wisdom of the People. Yes. It is the People, patriots, the society of highly educated, professional, thoroughly modern individuals—those who tasted the fruits of Democracy and remember the flavor to whom we entrust our future and the future of mankind in general.

After WWII, peace was kept by the balance of power and the Doctrine of Deterrence with its different modifications like “Massive Retaliation”, “Minimal Deterrence”, “Mutually Assured Destruction”, etc. However, the world today is faced with qualitatively different challenges, most of them non-military in nature and global by application. While issues like international terrorism, ISIS, domestic civil wars in Syria, Russian military adventurism, asymmetrical wars, etc. can be dealt with by heightening military awareness and resolving the emerging problems that cannot be resolved by the instruments of the Doctrine of Deterrence.

For a modern notion of global security, cyber security has become the vital and most viciously attacked element. It is difficult to prevent cyber-attacks and to predict stability in the sphere because of fast technological innovations.¶¶ Social media, which in some cases can make and disseminate false information,*** is gaining more and more importance.

To approach this problem at a practical level, the world at large will have to develop a new set of non-military deterrence instruments, some of which will be of “positive” and some of “negative” nature.

For example, negative world opinion, moral pressure to bear economic and trade embargos, financial and legal sanctions will represent a negative set of deterrents; while the encouragement of states to claim their fair share of development and general progress, to fully participate in the distribution of wealth generated through modern science, technological advances, global financial systems, equitable distribution of trade benefits—will be considered as positive instruments.

2. Conclusion

We need new international security paradigms. In other words, the New World Order based on the recognition of the new reality that the military, political, social, environmental, cultural, religious and cyber threats are equally great and important and as such should be included in the new Comprehensive Security Doctrine which will be adopted universally and which will be based on the combined activities of existing international military and non-military organizations like the UN, EU, NATO, TTP and others. These organizations should act with a high degree of cooperation and in harmony, meaning that progress should be in all directions and success in one area should have a positive impact on advancement in another.

Of course, since it is a developing, complex and overwhelming concept, the New World Order cannot be described fully within the format of a conference and general statements. Hopefully, in the months and years to come some of the ideas outlined in this paper will find a rightful place on the agendas of international conferences and in the research curricula of leading scientists specializing in the political, military, social, legal and other aspects of international security. The governments of small and medium-sized states must be called on to suggest ways of restoring and strengthening the global security order, strongly lobbied governments should re-center their focus on universal values in their foreign policies, and international institutions like the UN have to be strengthened.

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