Nation states are engaged in never-ending struggle to improve or preserve their relative power positions

Viktoriya Samokhina

Sanae Lemoine

ENGL F1020

November 16, 2014

Nation states are engaged in never-ending struggle to improve or preserve their relative power positions

-Robert Gilpin

The Critique of the Period of Unipolarity: What are Our Alternatives?

What is the one thing that all rational human beings are interested in? What is this interest that cuts across the ideological, national, cultural, in fact, any type of lines dividing human species? Someone might argue with my opinion, but then I will only conclude that this person who disagrees falls out of the definition of human normality. To me, all humans are interested in peace, in the world free from wars or military conflicts. Citing Edward Hallett Carr’s doctrine of the political identity “every nation has identical interest in peace, and that any nation which desires to disturb the peace is therefore both irrational and immoral” (Betts 83). Taking this pacifist idea of a common interest for peace for an axiomatic expression, I then induce that having an architecture of international relations that promotes and maintains peace is in the interest of the whole humanity. On the contrary, when such architecture starts blowing into hot conflicts with increasing frequency, it should be immediately reformed.

On October 24, 2014 in the Black Sea region of the Russian Federation, in the city, virtually unknown to the world just six month ago, but which became famous for the winter Olympics, the Russian president, the man who for the second year in a row has been recognized, according to the Forbes magazine rating, as the most powerful person in the world, gave a speech, which by its relevance to the questions of war and peace should have been widely discussed by the world community. Yet, neither the profoundness of the speech, neither the power status of the speaker, neither the popularity, for the rocket high cost of the Olympics or the grandiose spectacle shown to the world, of Sochi, made much influence to attract the attention of the public to the speech. This speech was discounted by the world community with the ignorance of a child who doesn’t yet have a full comprehension of the problems facing humanity or doesn’t want his idleness be disturbed by the issues outside of his immediate concerns. For the reason of this childish oblivion of people, I consider it to be my duty to refer to the points of the president Putin’s speech and dissect it to the form comprehensible to the most lazy-minded child, in order to make a world one small step closer to the path of peace, away from the warfare, which humans continuously find themselves in.

“New Rules or a Game without Rules” was the theme of the 11th international discussion Forum Valdai, where Vladimir Putin gave a speech, which I am referring to in this essay. The title reflects disapproval of the current state of the international relations. It hints on the undeniable drawbacks of the unipolar international relations architecture that has been constructed after the end of the Cold War and has been known for the sequence of protracted wars. The title also proposes an alternative, “new rules”, which would end the period of hegemonic abuse of power and establish a new, more fair and inclusive, world order. Thus, the 2014 theme of the Valdai club is the framework that Russian president furnished in his speech on a plenary meeting. So what are the alternatives, proposed by Vladimir Putin, to the unipolar world order, which has proved itself incapable of promoting a world peace? It is an important question to know the answer for, because if we do, we will be able to become the architects collaborating in restructuring the flawed system of the international relations we are embodied in for the purpose of constructing a system that will be conducive of peace not war.

The twentieth century is one of the bloodiest periods in the human history. Two world wars with the insignificant break of twenty something years between each other is the outrageous demonstration of hatred that people can have for one another. Then as a refutal of this aspect of human nature, after the end of the WW2 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1945-1991) the world experienced unparalleled in history peace. The term “long peace” was coined by historians to describe that period. Aside from the proxy wars, where the USA and the Soviet Union flexed their muscles, the Great Powers did not engage in total wars. Vladimir Putin tells in his October 24th speech that “the solidity of the system created back then rested not only on the balance of power and the rights of the victor countries, but on the fact that this system’s ‘founding fathers’ had respect for each other, did not try to put the squeeze on others, but attempted to reach agreements” (Putin 1). Putin stresses that respect for one another was one of the pillars on which the balance of the world order was established. Thus, he implies that the lack of respect in the contemporary world order of one nation toward another is the reason behind the decisions to enter into a war against each other. Yet according to the certain group of political scientists’ writings on the topics of war and peace, the international system is always in the state of anarchy and reflects the struggle of all against all in Hobbes’ terms. The pessimistic view of the human nature, which makes people uncompromising seekers of ways for satisfying self-interest, is the primary reason behind the untamed anarchy of the international relations. Egoistic self-interest prevents people from effectively collaborating with each other. Relationships between states constitute a prototype of relationships between individuals and are guided by the same rules. If we consider the human nature as having permanent characteristics, which is not unlikely because of the prevalence of wartimes over peaceful times, then there is no reason for us to conclude that human nature during the Cold War period was any different from the post-Cold War period. Therefore, other reasons but respect should be considered in order to understand why the post-Cold War period is lesser peaceful than the preceding it period of Cold War.

The concept of “balance of power” is also mentioned by Putin as the prerequisite for the world peace. I will now look at the structural variations of the balance of power in the world order. The stability of the post WW2 order can be explained by the geometry of power in a bipolar world order. John Mearsheimer in the essay “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War” tells that the period of the Cold War is unprecedented due to the stability it brought to the anarchy, which is the a priori state of the international system due to the negative elements of human nature. According to Meirsheimer, neither the multipolar (the world order during the both world wars) nor the unipolar world order (the world order in the post-Cold War period) are as much conducive to peace as the bipolar world order. Why is multipolar world order not a peaceful organization? “A multipolar world system is much more fluid and has many... dyads” along which the war can break out (Betts 20). Meirsheimer means that the alliances structure in the multipolar world system is in flux and the states are in constant competition for leadership. On the contrary, in the bipolar world system only two great powers are in contention, while smaller powers receive their security from allegiance to one of the Great Powers and are discouraged from changing allegiances. John Meirsheimer also writes that “power inequalities invite war, because they increase the aggressor’s prospects for victory on the battlefield” (Betts 21). From this logic it follows that the unipolar world order is the example of the most unequal distribution of power, because there exists just one hegemon, whose economic and military might is unparalleled by other actors in the theater of international relations. The affect of the different organizations of the geometry of power between the unipolar, bipolar and multipolar world systems is the primary explanation behind the stability of the bipolar world structure of the Cold War.

From the logic of the political theory of John Meirsheimer about the effects of the structure of the international relations, I conclude that Vladimir Putin’s argument about the balance of power and mutual respect between states is only partially correct. He strikes the chords when he highlights the necessity of the balance of power between the states, but he misses when he also includes respect of one another as an important component of the world peace. Yet, despite being only partially correct, Putin’s argument is based on the assumption that the particular power structure of the system of international relations is an important aspect that should not be ignored, when our task is to end wars and establish peace. Therefore, it is a profoundly important speech for the public’s consideration.

I have already mentioned that this speech was widely ignored by the United Sates media. And there is no surprise in the desire to mute this speech whose primary goal is to attract the world’s attention to the way a unipolar world system compromises peace. United States in the hegemon that Vladimir Putin believes to be abusing its power. He says that the United Stated by declaring themselves the winners in the Cold War used their self-appointed position to restructure the world system to suit their own needs and threw the system into a “sharp and deep imbalance” (Putin 1). These are the relatively strong accusations of the United States in the instability of the last two decades, in the guilty responsibility for protracted wars and military conflicts initiated by the United States. If we consider the accusatory and sharp language used by the Russian president and the threat to the dominant position that these words pose, it can offer us at least a partial explanation of why his speech received so little coverage in the United States media. Putin said that “the control of the global mass media made possible when desired to portray white as black and black as white” (2). In other words, the strong propaganda machine, that the American media is, does its best to suit the political agenda of the government and would not allow the American citizenry receive critical of the America’s foreign policy news from abroad. Lawrence Davidson, a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, wrote an article on May 9, 2014 on the independent investigative journalism web site consortiumnews.com, where he said that the USA media created a reductionist approach to the world news, it selects a “narrow range of opinion” to conveys to Americans in order to create a particular world view, to “condition” (Davidson 2). “Cultural conditioning is some elements of the U.S. government feel they must go the extra mile to guarantee that the public receives an acceptable view of events. Under such circumstances the “free press” was transformed into a vehicle for the government propaganda...” (2). Davidson tells us not so much why the US government uses media to manipulate public opinion, what the threat of the honest and extensive representation of opinions is, but through what processes the US media performs this task. His argument goes further than just conveying to the readers that the US media is the effective propaganda machine of the US government, but it serves the purpose of providing a prove to my argument that the speech by Vladimir Putin would stand no chance of getting an unbiased and objective coverage in the US media, if any at all.

I have already described above that the American media has a reductionist approach to the news coverage. To get a better idea of the extent to which the coverage is limited, I would like to present here how an Australian journalist John Pilger captures this phenomenon in the article he wrote in 2001 in the New Statesman political and cultural magazine: “Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. “In our country,” said one of them, “to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What’s the secret?” (Pilger 1). Lets now look at how the Putin’s speech was talked about in one of the respected in the US journals The Economist. To answer the accusation that this magazine is not a US but a British publishing source and therefore does not reflect the approach to the news coverage in the US media, I would just give some basic information from Wikipedia about the editor-in-chief of the magazine. John Micklethwait has lived in the US upon graduating from Oxford with a degree in history, worked in the Chase Manhattan Bank for two years and then joined The Economist where he worked as the US editor of publication and ran the New York Bureau (Wikipedia). So the views of the person at The Economist who is responsible for the editorial policy is a person whose journalist career started in the USA, thus, whose views are strongly shaped by the approach to journalism in the United States.

When considering the coverage given to the Putin’s speech by The Economist it is hard to avoid thinking that the media’s goal is becoming more to entertain than inform. Instead of playing a role of informants of the public about the objective facts, it acts as Sherlock Holmes: it poses itself as a skilled investigator who is capable of seeing beyond the direct meaning of words, and uncover secret messages that are being transmitted as if the speech text is written not to inform the audience about the position of the political leader, but to confuse the outside world about the real intentions. For example, the Economist’s article highlighted that the Russian president “joked and smiled... enjoyed flaunting his characteristic toughness... leaving foreign journalists with the ability to twist facts and distort meanings” (Economist 1). First of all, this statement is the sharp contrast to the declaration Vladimir Putin made in the beginning of his speech, when he said that he would speak “directly and frankly.” He specifically emphasized the need to be blunt, speak openly and express what we really think in order to find solutions for the problems (Putin 1). Second of all, this article tells nothing about the content of the speech, it simply destructs the attention of the readers from the important points by making unimportant and secondary aspects prevalent. The article performs some sort of the inversion of reality. Thus, it’s apparent that the coverage by the Economist given to the Russian president’s speech is the intentional substance-less anti-Putin propaganda. It is reflecting the tit-for-tat response to Putin’s anti-American attack, yet it is much more dangerous because it is twisting reality, not exposing it.

The US media helps the US government cover up its criminal militaristic foreign policy and the real view the world community has about the actions of the US. The columnist for The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research Jonathan Power writes that: “One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States”, one anonymous well-placed British diplomat recently observed, “Everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism” (Power). Therefore, the need for restructuring the system of the world order, where the hegemonic power’s inclination to abuse its power and irritate the world community by unilateral actions is growing, what creates infinite number of potential fault lines alone which the conflict can break out, is imperial. Vladimir Putin tells that the small group of countries under the aegis of the US “started presenting the policies they put together in their corridors of power as the view of the entire international community” (Putin 2). The growing terrorist threat against the United States stems from the alienation of the huge Muslim world community by the US actions in the Middle East, is just one of the examples how the hatred caused by the arrogant unilateralism becomes dangerous. In order to secure the western access to the Persian Gulf oil fields the US has been meddling in the domestic politics of the Gulf countries starting as far as after the end of the WW2 but unscrupulousness of such actions reached an apogee in the post-Cold War period. Two wars in the Middle East on the dawn of the 21st century is the appendix of the US power growing increasingly unbalanced and dangerous to the world peace.

I have mentioned above the potential alternatives to the current unilateral world order: bipolarity and multipolarity. Using the argument offered by John Meirsheimer, my conclusion about the best possible choice for the world order is the bipolar system. It is the most peaceful solution because it offers rigid alliance structures and limits the potential fault lines along which the conflict can break out. At the same time it also discourages one Super Power from taking unilateral actions, because of the potential high cost of antagonizing the strong opponent. This power structure also prevents both Super Powers from engaging in the military conflict with one another for the same reason of high potential costs. Thus, since the struggle for self-interest among the states is ingrained in the character of people who constitute the elements of the matrix of states is permanent, the world order which has the best possible cushion against the military conflict should be reconstructed. Vladimir Putin in the Valdai speech reminds the world about the benefits of the world order of the Cold War. He proposes to develop that system and adopt it to the new realities because “despite its various shortcomings... it is the system that is capable of keeping the world’s current problems within certain limits and regulating the intensity of the natural competition between countries” (Putin 1). In conclusion, I would like to say that this is not an easy task to redraw the lines of distribution of power among the states, considering the desire to resist this process by the United States and the natural competition for power among the states, which limits the prospects for reaching agreements. Yet, it is imperative to realize the benefits of the more equal distribution of power over the unilateral dominance and avoid the urge to resist the transformation.

Words Count 3277

Works Cited

Putin, Vladimir. "New Rules or Game without the Rules." Valdai Forum. Russia, Sochi. 24 Oct. 2014. Speech.

Mearsheimer, John J. “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War.” Conflicts After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace. Ed. Richard Betts. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2012. 18-35. Print.

Carr, Edward Hallett. “Realism and Idealism.” Conflicts After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace. Ed. Richard Betts. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2012. 82-99. Print.

Davidson, Lawrence. "How the US Propaganda System Works." Consortium News, 9 May 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

Pilger, John. "In the Freest Press on Earth, Humanity is Reported in Terms of its Usefulness to US Power." New Statesman, 19 Feb. 2001. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

"Hard Talk." The Economist, 1 Nov. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

Wikipedia contributors. "John Micklethwait." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

Power, Jonathan. “America is in Danger of Alienating the World.” Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, 3 March, 1999, Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

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