After the Invasion of Ukraine: The Old Order is Dead - Long Live the New Order
Written by Professor Trine Flockhart
24 February 2022 will go down in history not only as the day when Russia invaded Ukraine and brutally shattered the lives of millions of Ukrainians, but also as the day when the global rules-based order ended, and the contours of a new global order started to solidify.
To better understand what is happening and what lies ahead, it is useful to take a closer look at what processes of order transformation entail. In this short article, I give a brief overview of what we know about order transformations, and what kind of global order might currently be unfolding.
The nature of order transformations
Order transformations are rare but important events that usually are accompanied with conflict, turmoil and contestation. Since the establishment of the sovereign state system at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the coinciding start of a global era, the (global) international order has changed only three times: after the Napoleonic wars in 1815, establishing the Concert of Europe and laying the foundations for European imperialism and systemic multipolarity; after the Second World War in 1945 establishing the UN system, which however became compromised by the Cold War and the emergence of systemic bipolarity; and in 1989 when the Cold War ended and the US-led liberal international order (the Western version of the UN-system) was assumed by many to be a universal ordering framework under systemic unipolarity.
Order transformations can be long drawn-out processes and their beginnings can be difficult to identify because they are driven by seemingly unrelated processes. The sources of order transformation can originate from all spheres of life, including social change and changes in political structures, technology, modes of production and perceptions of legitimacy and salience of the order’s value and power foundations. Moreover, although the end of the Cold War showed that order transformations can be swift and largely peaceful, historically, they have been neither.
Especially the long and painful transformation from the multipolar system of the 19th and early 20th century to the bipolar system seems with hindsight to have lasted about a century featuring multiple revolutions and two world wars.
The current process of order transformation
It has been clear for some time that the long run of the West’s material and ideological hegemony is coming to an end and that the vision for a global liberal order and the spread of democracy to i.e., China, Russia and the Middle East was wishful, and as it turns out, dangerous thinking.
With the realization that unipolarity was but a moment and that new non-liberal powers were claiming “their seat at the global power table”, the most prominent view has become that the world is returning to a form of multipolarity akin to the system of the 19th and early 20th century.
To be sure, the emerging global order has elements of multipolarity as it is pluralistic and culturally diverse. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a fair amount of confidence that the new global order would continue elements of the existing rules-based global order and have some parallels with the liberal international order because it was thought it would continue to advocate the rule of law, free trade and global multilateralism. However, it now seems that the emerging global order not only will share worrisome similarities with the multipolarity of the 19th and 20th century, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine indicate that it will also have some characteristics reminiscent of the Cold War.
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Rules-based Order and Liberal Order The terms, “rules-based order” and “liberal order” are often used interchangeably or as parts of particular political agendas. It is however important to distinguish between the two. In this article I distinguish between the global rules-based order as short-hand for the global ordering architecture and the US-led liberal international order as the order that was established by, and for, the West in the aftermath of the Second World War. The liberal order rests on explicit liberal values such as individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. The liberal order has over the past twenty years or so been contested, in crisis and in decline. The global rules-based order is much less specific about values and is maintained and supported through practice and tacit support by the global international society. The structure of the global rules-based order is in flux in response to global powershifts, moving from a unipolar towards a more pluralistic structure. So far it has largely been characterized by globalization, free trade and open financial markets and by (sometimes patchy) adherence to international law and multilateral cooperation. Confusingly some liberal order actors and institutions, such as the EU, occasionally refer to the liberal order as the rules-based order. |
I have argued elsewhere that what lies ahead is not a multipolar system consisting of powerful sovereign states but a multi-order world in which multiple orders coexist, whilst maintaining their individual power and identity, principles, norms and values and their own institutions and practices. In this global architecture, the liberal international order will continue to exist, but it will simply be one of several orders.
The dynamics of a multi-order world are fundamentally different from the dynamics of a multipolar one. In a multi-order world, the primary governance dynamics will be within and between different international orders, rather than between multiple sovereign states. In practice this means that the condition of anarchy will be tempered because each order represents a hierarchical social domain led and defined by the hegemon of individual orders.
Relations between orders will therefore be characterized by the logics of anarchy, whereas relations within orders will be characterized by the constellation of the order’s constitutive elements, most notably its patterns of power and the specific form of hierarchy. The nature of the participating orders will determine the logic of anarchy of the global order – especially which rules it will be based on and, if it will be cooperative, competitive or conflictual. The events of the last two weeks unfortunately indicate the latter and that long-stablished rules no longer are recognized.
What will the coming multi-order look like?
The assumption in the West was for long that there were no attractive alternative orders that could compete with the liberal order. It was assumed that states would position themselves vis-à-vis the liberal order in terms of closeness of allegiance and their integration into the order’s institutions such as NATO and EU. The prominent liberal order scholar, G. John Ikenberry has argued that most states would eventually choose to align themselves in one way or another with the liberal international order because it was “easy to join and hard to overturn”.
Today however, there are several alternative orders in the making, including Putin’s vision for a Eurasian order, Xi’s vision for a Sinetic “Belt and Road order”, and the different ambitions for a religiously based Muslim order. Moreover, the other BRICS countries - India, Brazil and South Africa - are still “sitting on the fence”, whilst ambitions for regionally based orders in for example Latin American or Africa also could be in the making.
The nature of the new multi-order world can be glimpsed by how the existing and emerging orders align with the rules-based order and how they “recruit” members into their order. The emerging contours of the Chinese and Russian orders are indicative of what kind of global ordering architecture is in the making, although much will depend on what their relationship will be.
The Chinese “Belt and Road” Order
China has been building a Sinetic order as an alternative to the liberal order for years, but importantly from a position supporting the rules-based order as China supports globalization, free trade, multilateralism and the rule of law. At the same time China is distancing itself from the US-led liberal order, by establishing parallel and competing institutions and practices such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and by forging new relationships of dependency through trade relations, its international aid and development programme, primarily in Africa, and through its multi-billion infra-structure project – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China’s strategy reflects a clear-eyed understanding that the Chinese political model has little appeal outside China and the success of the Chinese order hinges on economic power and the ability to bestow economic benefits. The method of bringing states into the “Belt and Road Order” therefore hinges on building long-term economic relationships, which in time is believed to lead to allegiance and dependency.
The Russian Eurasian Order
Putin laid out his ambitions in 2011 for a union consisting of former Soviet republics that would develop into a powerful supranational body beginning with economic ties and then deepening the integration to include politics, security, and culture. Although the Eurasian initiative, at least rhetorically supports the global rules-based order, the blatant violation of the sovereign rights of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 as well as documented interference in domestic political processes and a growing disregard for multilateralism, the rule of law, and the sanctity of agreements, suggest that the compatibility between the Eurasian order and the global rules-based order is low. However, as is the case with the Chinese order-building ambitions, enthusiasm for the Eurasian order outside Russia seem at best lukewarm and Russia is not able to offer economic benefits in return for allegiance. Without China’s ability to exercise economic power and without the liberal order’s power of attraction and lure of memberships of its institutions, Russia’s options are appeal to shared culture, political persuasion/pressure and energy dependency. Moreover, as seen in those states such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, who have only a value-based connection with the liberal order (as opposed to institutional membership of NATO and the EU), Putin has clearly opted for brute military force to either prevent other former Soviet republics joining the liberal order, or, as in the case of Ukraine, to force a regime change and de facto allegiance to the Eurasian order.
Conclusion
Even though 24 February marks a day where the transformation towards a multi-order world became clear for all to see, there are still many open questions about the final form of the new global order. Liberal internationalists were clearly wrong to think that there were no alternative options to the liberal order and that the liberal order could be universal. Even so the liberal order is still better placed in terms of recruitment than the Russian and Chinese orders, because the liberal order has an undeniable power of attraction that is founded on values, democracy and economic prosperity. Moreover, in contrast to the Russian and Chinese orders, the liberal order is not constrained by geography, culture or ethnicity and it accepts different levels of integration with the order’s institutions and the possibility for the development of regionally specific institutions with alignment to the (core) liberal international order.
In hindsight, perhaps the biggest mistake of Western academics and policymakers was to naively assume that everyone wants to be part of the liberal project, that “old wars” for territorial gain were a thing of the past and that states have a free choice in their alignment with international orders. It is time to acknowledge that economic benefits, political pressure and brutal military force are also important factors in the forging of international orders.
As to which form of multi-order world to expect – it seems that the cooperative version of the multi-order world died on the 24 February 2022. The situation now is that the old order is dead, long live the new one – but the big question is if the new order will be one, we can live with?