By Philip Stephens
Published: September 16 2010 21:41
Behind every conversation about how dangerous the world will turn out to be resides a simple question. To what degree will the big powers, old and new, locate their national interests in a shared understanding of collective security? We don’t know the answer but the present direction of travel is not at all encouraging.
It is possible to imagine all manner of models for a new international system. Some look to the power balancing of the late 19th century; others to the great power concert that emerged from the Congress of Vienna. In Asia, the talk is of “bandwagons” as smaller powers seek security in the slipstream of larger ones; and of “hedging” – alliances written as insurance policies against double-dealing.
One thing seems clear enough. The clean, clinical lines of cold war bipolarity have given way to something a lot messier. Whatever the geometry and complexity of any new arrangements, stability will rest on the weights they afford to competition and co-operation.
All this probably sounds a bit abstract, but it actually has chilling real-world relevance. The next few years will determine the fate of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. If, as is quite possible, the ambitions of nations such as North Korea and Iran mark the end of nuclear self-restraint, the world will suddenly be a much scarier place.
The other day in Geneva, I listened to successive speeches from Henry Kissinger and James Steinberg at the annual strategic review conference hosted by the IISS think-tank. Mr Kissinger is the high priest of Republican realpolitik. Mr Steinberg, as deputy secretary of state, is a big part of the foreign policy brain of Barack Obama’s Democratic administration. What struck me were the similarities of their analyses of the emerging landscape. Both saw in nuclear proliferation the really dangerous game-changer.
Mr Steinberg’s starting point was that the US is a pre-eminent but insufficient power. It was not going to give up global leadership any time soon, and it was the indispensable player in new security systems. But if ever there had been a unipolar moment it had now passed. US leadership was about strengthening alliances and partnerships to create a different framework of co-operation.
He did not doubt that national interest would remain the central motivating force in international affairs. What gave cause for cautious optimism was that the commonality of interests between states – on everything from climate change, to financial stability and proliferation – was more visible in today’s world than hitherto.
The premise is straightforward – interdependence has left the prosperity and security of, say, China and India as reliant as that of the west on effective collaboration. Security is becoming indivisible. The new powers have as much to lose – perhaps more – from the spread of loose nukes in the Middle East.
Mr Kissinger offered also the other side of the coin. The rising states, he observed, are averse to the shared sovereignty implied by multilateralism. So, he might have added, are swaths of the American political classes.
Asian and Latin American powers are unabashed about nationalism. Their domestic politics struggle to recognise some greater global good. They see an effort by the west to entrench its advantage. On that score, they are sometimes right.
The IISS echoes such sentiments in its Strategic Survey 2010, identifying a rise in what it calls “strategic protectionism” among the emerging powers as they take pains to define their narrow core interests.
The National Intelligence Council, which provides long-range advice for the US administration, also picks up the theme in a new report on prospects for global governance in 2025. The study, a collaborative venture with the European Union Institute for Security Studies, will be launched next week in Washington. Its basic thrust is that while interdependence should be driving demand for more collective action, domestic politics are pulling in the other direction.
Formerly localised threats, the report says, now spill over into threats to global security. Arrangements designed to promote co-operative responses are not keeping pace with the challenges.
One response is to blame the rising powers for not recognising that they have a big stake in ensuring world order does not turn to disorder. I have done so myself, castigating Chinese policymakers for the narrowness of their perspective. This is not just about competition with the west. China and India seem a lot more likely to go to war with each other than, say, China and the US.
It is worth recalling, though, that Europeans endured two appalling conflagrations before they realised what should have been obvious all along – that their national interests are better served by co-operation. History is littered with conflicts that, in retrospect, look inexplicable but at the time seemed unavoidable.
Those who think it should be easy for the rising powers to recognise the national in the collective interest might also reflect how difficult it is still for the west to make such accommodations. The election two years ago of Mr Obama as US president was supposed to usher in a new era of transatlantic partnership. Instead, Americans think the Europeans are hopeless and the Europeans moan that they don’t get enough attention in Washington.
An argument now raging about the composition of the board of the International Monetary Fund offers a glimpse in microcosm of the problem. The US and Europe agree they have a shared interest in the opening up of the fund to the rising economies. China, with the world’s second-largest economy, has fewer votes than the Benelux nations. So it is obvious the west must cede ground. It is just that the Americans think the Europeans should be first to give way and vice versa.
Trivial though this argument seems, it illustrates just how difficult it is for nations to recognise the coincidence of national and mutual interests when it comes to the much bigger questions of security. As Mr Steinberg puts it, “commonality of interest is no guarantee of common action”. He thinks the way forward is the painstaking business of building trust with rising nations, and he cites the expansion of ties between Washington and Beijing.
He is right, of course. Without trust, nothing works. The other ingredient, though, is imaginative leadership. As a European, this is where I get really depressed.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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