gulliver’s shackles

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Schmiegelow & Schmiegelow | World Order

The decade between 1997 and 2008saw financial crises in Asia, Russia,and on Wall Street; US military inter-ventions, with and without UN Secu-rity Council mandates; the rise of BRIC

economies and relative decline of theG7; challenges to US power by terrorism

and insurgency; functioning nucleardeterrence between India and Pakistan;

the growth of Middle Eastern and Asiansovereign funds; climate change; sky-rocketing energy and food costs; and,finally, a global economic meltdownnot seen since the Great Depression.

In light of these events, the ways of

thinking about foreign policy in the

Western world need revisiting. Ideal-

ism appeared to have been discredited

after the Iraq war, while realism gained

new followers. But this reaction did not

do justice to either philosophy. The

neoconservative war to spread democ-

racy was the expression of a third ap-

proach, an aggressive and utopian com-

bination of idealism and realism (See

table on p. 55). We argue that the best

new world order would pragmatically

combine the still-applicable virtues of

traditional idealism and political real-

ism without relapsing into the dogmat-

ic contention that has gone on since

the days of John Locke and ThomasHobbes. It should dispense with all po-

larities, all “rise and decline” scenarios,

and all power hierarchies in the inter-

national community. The events from

1997 to 2008 make one thing clear: the

powerlessness of even the mightiest of

the nation states in solving the world’s

biggest problems.

The End of Polarity

A series of essays by US Council onForeign Relations President Richard

MICHÈLESCHMIEGELOWteaches politicalscience at theUniversitéCatholique deLouvain.

Michèle and Henrik Schmiegelow| Every pundit seemed to have a description for

the world at the dawn of the 21st century: American, Pacific, Asian, unipo-

lar, bipolar, multipolar. But the extraordinary past decade has defied such

categorizations. Not singular or even plural poles will define the new world

order, but rather wide-ranging cooperation among diverse partners.

Gulliver’s ShacklesFunctional networks and multilateral groupings will define the 21st century

HENRIKSCHMIEGELOWis a retired Germanambassador andthe managingdirector of

SchmiegelowPartners.

54 Global Issues IP • Winter • 2008




Haass reflects a breathtaking changein the analysis of America’s nationalinterests. His approach evolves inthree stages. Beginning in 2005 with aplea for global integration based onAmerica’s self-assessment as anchorof a unipolar world,1 Haass sees achance in February 2008 for Washing-ton to use a “Palmerstonian moment”in a multipolar world.2 By April 2008,

however, he concludes that a non-polar world is ultimately in America’sown best interest.3 Indeed, it is readilyapparent that a multipolar system caneasily be used against Washington by

other world powers. That risk is en- hanced by neoconservative calls for a“league of democracies” challengingChinese and Russian “autocracies” toenter a new bipolar competition of systems. Russian and Chinese political

scientists have already scrambled tocounter the universalist dissemination

of Western values by asserting Confu-cian values or those of the RussianOrthodox Church. Also, such a leaguewill have to get by without India, theworld’s largest democracy. Despiteterritorial conflicts,

an influential seg-ment of the Indianpolitical establish-ment feels greatercultural connection to China than tothe neoconservative West.4

An apparently unintended conse-quence of Robert Kagan’s 2003 bookOf Paradise and Power was that many

inhabitants of the European “paradise”suddenly saw political realism as more

harmless and conducive to peace thanidealism. French President JacquesChirac had no difficulty legitimizing his opposition to the Iraq War in 2003 by reviving the old Gaullist doctrineof a multipolar world in antithesis to

1) “The Case for Integration,” National Interest online, January 9, 2005.2) “The Palmerstonian Moment,” National Interest online, February 1, 2008.3) “What follows American Dominion?” Financial Times, April 16, 2008.4) Radha Kumar, “What Prospects for Normative Foreign Policy?”, Center for European PolicyStudies, ESF Working Paper n. 29, May 26, 2008.

The Westphalian systemensured order within thestates but not between them.

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IP • Winter • 2008 Global Issues 55




“Anglo-Saxon” hegemony. GermanChancellor Gerhard Schröder had amore difficult time. As chancellor, hecould hardly abandon the traditionalAmerican idealism to which postwarGermany owed so much. Instead, herejected multipolarity on philosophi-cal grounds: “There is only one pole,and that is the pole of freedom.” Theseremarks, reminiscent of John Lockeand Immanuel Kant, were clearly in-tended as an appeal for the “dangerous

nation” (Kagan, in 2006) to return to

traditional American idealism.Both realists and idealists expressed

their dismay at how the neoconserva-tive rhetoric of a conflict between de-mocracy and autocracy misled Georgia

into military action in South Ossetiain August 2008. The act resulted inmassive Russian intervention and cer-tain Georgian defeat. Since the UnitedStates was unable to come to the res-

cue of Georgia, the final effect of the bellicose rhetoric was to evidence thepowerlessness of its authors. RichardHaass’s words remained unheard.

The problem with multipolarity isthat it only gains attention as the op-posite of unipolarity. It is viewed sim-ply as resistance to an existing empireor hegemonic state. This was the case

with the Peace of Westphalia, whichended the universal claim of the HolyRoman Empire and established theinternational system of sovereign na-tion states. It was once again the casewith French President Charles deGaulle’s sensational recognition of China in 1964, a move that de Gaullesaw as negating the bipolar systemand its Anglo-Saxon hegemony.

The Westphalian system is the only historical example of a multipolarmodel being successfully established as

an international system. But this saysnothing about its suitability for pre-

serving the peace between states.While the European states in the sys-tem endeavored to bring about domes-tic peace, economic developments, andsocial coexistence, they regarded theinternational system as an area wherethey had a free hand to choose betweendiplomacy and war. They used thisfreedom with gusto, and most oftenwith the aim of expanding their ownpower, territory, and access to

economic resources. This practice wasrooted in a Hobbesian system thatensured order within the states butnot between them.

Respected realists like Haass andformer US Secretary of State HenryKissinger have praised the Europeanpentarchy (Great Britain, Russia,France, Prussia, and Austria) as anexemplary world order. Yet in the 18th

and 19th centuries, there were no fewer

than 52 wars among the five members,not to mention numerous wars withstates and territories outside Europe.It appears doubtful that the willing-

ness to switch alliances at any time,which Lord Palmerston saw as inGreat Britain’s national interest, actu-ally contributed to preserving peace

and the balance of powerIn order to avoid wars at least part

of the time, balance of power requiresextraordinary statesmen, such as Ottovon Bismarck, Palmerston, and Kiss-inger. As soon as these statesmenabandon ship, the system threatens tocollapse. This is why the rest of theworld could not really find comfort inHaass’s plea for a “Palmerstonian mo-

ment” on the part of the United Statesas a substitute for the unipolarity it

had abandoned after the Iraq war.





This is also true of the EuropeanUnion, which has no foreign policy-making authority of its own. Withoutthe approval of its member states, theEU cannot make decisions concerningwar or peace. Germany will alwaysremain a particular limitation since itmust have parliamentary consent formilitary missions. The European

Union therefore cannot keep up withChina, India, Russia, and other cen-ters of power organized as nationstates. As a consequence, Haass be-

lieved that NATO was losing its valuefor the United States, and that Palm-erston-style changing alliances werepreferable.5 The European Union isnot included on most lists of the 21stcentury global pentarchy, least of all

Kissinger’s. The real change implied by a “Palmerstonian Moment” of to-day’s United States is that the pent-archy has moved from Europe to thePacific region, with the majority of the power in China, India, and Japan.

Multilateralism and Functionalism

A multipolar world order along the

lines of a globalized Westphalian sys-tem has not been triumphant, however.

The three new Asian powers are alsothe driving force behind a renaissanceof multilateralism, and are pursuing aforward-looking strategy of functionalintegration in Asia. The increasingunilateralism of the Bush administra-tion resulted in an equal drive towardmultilateralism by China. The North

5) See also Richard Haass.

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The new Asian powers arethe driving force behind arenaissance of multilateralism.

Korean nuclear crisis marked the firsttime China voted in favor of sanctionsin the UN Security Council—target-ing a neighbor that has long beenconsidered its friend. In the six-waynegotiations on North Korean nuclearnonproliferation, Washington beganrelying on China to work out a solu-tion. Haass highlights the North Koreatalks as strong evidence in favor of anonpolar world.6

The leading East Asian powersclosely observed Europe’s functional

integration. They drew their own con-clusions from both the strengths and

weaknesses of theEuropean modeland adapted it toAsia. As in Europe,the functional inte-

gration of Asia produces such attrac-tive advantages that there is no justifi-cation for further wars. The Asianand European examples best exempli-fy a modern world order surmountingthe risks of the Westphalian system.

Asia’s adoption of European sys-tems cannot be viewed as eurocen-trism or as an aggressive expansion of

Western values. In integrating theireconomy with the world, the Chineseapparently see no contradiction withtraditional Confucian norms, for exam-

ple. Russia, which thus far has profited

mainly from rich natural resourcesand is much less integrated into theworld economy, is already feeling chal- lenged to learn from its Asian neigh- bors. Russia’s renewed power after2006 fed former President VladimirPutin’s aggressive foreign policy. But his successor Dmitri Medvedev was

supposed to convey a softer image. Thenew president was quoted as sayingthat, in the end, Russia will earn theworld’s respect not “through strength but through responsible action.”6 Un-fortunately, this sentiment was abrupt-

ly suspended with the “bipolar” derail-

ment of Georgia’s South Ossetian ad-venture. But despite the nationalisttradition of the Russian OrthodoxChurch, cultural relativism will even-tually give way to a functional calcula-tion of interests in Russia as well.Much depends on the West’s recoveryof its own capacity for functional cal-culation of interests in relation toRussia.

The new centers of power are notalone in calling for integration. Net-

works of cooperation have sprung upacross the globe: in Africa (AU, SADC),

America (OAS, Mercosur, NAFTA,SICA), Asia (ASEAN, ASEAN+3,East Asian Summits), Eurasia (SCO),the Gulf region (GCC) and the PacificRim (APEC, US-Japanese Treaty onSecurity and Cooperation).

These functional networks may besuspect to traditional powers since

6) See Haass, “What follows AmericanDominion?”

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they appear to tie them down. Forinstance, Washington observed withamazement how the ties betweenASEAN, China, Japan, and Korea

(ASEAN+3) led to an astonishingdepth of economic integration with-out US involvement. And all this hap-pened within the geographical reachof APEC, a US creation. On May 22,2008, reviving the 1977 Fukuda doc-trine of his father, the Japanese primeminister Yasuo Fukuda assuaged USconcerns by advocating a long-termtransformation of the Pacific into a

“inland sea” analogous to the 17th-century Mediterranean. He invitedthe North and Latin American coun-

tries bordering the Pacific to partici-pate, along with Australia, New Zea-

land, the ASEAN states, China, andRussia. A student exchange program

emulating the European Erasmus sys-tem would establish this functionalintegration in the minds of future gen-erations. It seems Europe has managed

to make a contribution to the move-ment toward a new world order afterall.

Today’s interdependent worldfaces problems that truly demonstratethe powerlessness of “power.” Haass

emphasizes this point using the ex-ample of American soldiers in Iraq.Though equipped with high-tech

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The recurring crises inUS financial marketsdemonstrate the fallacyof “economic power.”

weapons, they are constant victims of “low-tech” ambushes by insurgents.Another example is the reluctance of India and Pakistan to actually use themillions of soldiers and large nucleararsenals at their disposals in the Kash-mir conflict.

The recurring crises in the US fin-

ancial markets demonstrate the fallacyof “economic power.” For Kissinger,the conservative political realist, thediscontent of globalization’s losers is aserious concern. He castigates the

“profligate and obscurantist practices”that caused the US subprime crisis

(and preceding cri-ses), and advocatesthe combination of an economic and apolitical world or-der.7 This takes us

far from the Westphalian system, of which Kissinger has always been theforemost proponent. Traditional polit-ical power cannot slow down or stopthe melting of the polar icecaps, globalepidemics, or the depletion of finiteresources. It is becoming increasinglyclear that everyone is in the same boatwhen it comes to finding solutions toglobal problems.

When the US subprime crisis grew

into the worst economic meltdownsince the Great Depression of the1930s in September/October 2008,globalization surprised the world witha rapid succession of neo-functional-ist spillovers:Throughout September : Internationalpolicy coordination of central banksgoes into effect, a practice which had

been considered out of fashion in theunipolar 1990s;October 14: EU member states imple-ment a joint-action to recapitalizetheir banks and guarantee inter-bank

lending, a method that is immediatelyadopted by the US.October 21: When the full impact of the financial crisis on the economiesof China and the G7 states became ap-parent, a meltdown of commodityprices including a “reverse oil shock”(Daniel Yergin) changed the perceived

power balance between the G7 and“authoritarian” but resource-rich Rus-sia, Venezuela, and Iran.October 24–25: At the ASEM summit,a basic agreement is reached betweenEU members and ASEAN+3 members on the necessity of strengtheningregulatory supervision and stabiliza-tion of global financial markets.

November 15: At US invitation, a sec-ond “Bretton Woods Summit” is heldto discuss adapting the IMF and theWorld Bank to the challenges of the21st century.

Problem-Solving Community

A more dispassionate approach toforeign policy is needed. Revivingphilosophical pragmatism in the spirit

of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey would be a good startingpoint. Their ideas provide an effectiveantidote to the violence-prone utopia-nism of the neoconservatives, whichintellectual historian John Gray seesas having much in common with themethodology of Marxist world revolu-tion.8 Philosopher Leo Strauss left a

7) Nikolai Petro, “Seizing the Medvedev Moment,” International Herald Tribune, March 14, 2008.8) Reviewed in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , “Der Übergang der Utopie zu den Neokons,”April 16, 2008.





similarly disturbing mark on the neo-conservatives. His discourse on a

“Platonic elite” that should withholdthe truth from the uneducated masseswas a startling step backward from both critical rationalism and the polit-ical philosophy of the open society.

The advantage of American philo-

sophical pragmatism is that it does not

force praxis into the service of a theory

that dogmatically seeks self-confirma-

tion—such as neoconservatism in the

Iraq War. Inversely, it examines all

available theories with respect to theirusefulness for problem-solving. Euro-

pean transatlanticists might well take a

cue from it. Such a change would bewarmly welcomed by America’s part-

ners in Asia. Japanese economic policy-

makers have already used this philoso-

phy as the basis for a strategic pragma-

tism that is recognized and used as a

model throughout the region.9

A problem-solving world commu-nity is urgently needed. Its fundamen-tal transcultural norm should be asimple categorical imperative: act insuch a way that the maxim of your

action is compatible with the survivalof humanity.

9) Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton University Press, 1971).


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