DUBAI – “Are we ready for the new world order?”
The panel’s provocative title is ambitiously named World Government Summit here last week is framed to suggest that a new global order is taking shape – and the world is not ready for it.
There has been an increase of Write around Who will shape the Future world order since the president of Russia Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Europe was killed the most since 1939.
Fascinating conclusion: If Ukraine survives as an independent, sovereign and democratic country, US and European-backed forces will regain momentum against Russian-Chinese forces first. this is authoritarianism, oppression and (at least in Putin’s case) evil.
That sounds like good news, but there’s a flip side.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the series of COVID-related shutdowns in China, on the surface, do not seem to have much in common,” wrote Michael Schuman, a member of the Atlantic Council in The Atlantic. publications unrelated to the Council). “However, both are accelerating a change that is taking the world in a dangerous direction, splitting it into two zones, one centered on Washington, DC, the other on Beijing.”
My chats in Dubai – at World Government Summit and at Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum – show little enthusiasm or confidence in this dual vision of the future. The Middle East actors are not interested in abandoning ties with China, the top trading partner of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or breaking with Russia, which has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in saving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad through its military intervention in his war.
In addition, our Mideast partners have lost confidence in America’s commitment to global leadership or its capabilities after Afghanistan’s failed withdrawal last year. They are also facing whips from the Trump administration The nuclear deal has been trashed with Iran with the Biden administration they feel is follow it without fully accounting for Tehran’s regional aggression.
In all my travels to the Mideast over the years, I have never heard this level of frustration from Mideast government officials with American policymakers.
That said, they are watching Ukraine with fascination, because a victory by Ukraine – with a strong, united West behind it – will force a rethink of its commitment and capabilities. United States, while changing the trajectory of the decline in transatlantic influence and relevance. Conversely, a Putin victory – even at a huge cost to Russians as well as to Ukrainians – would hasten the decline of the West as an effective global actor.
My own response to the panel’s question about our preparations for the “new world order” was to quote Henry Kissinger (who else?) when questioning the premise. “No ‘global’ world order really exists,” writes Kissinger in the book “World Order. ” “What to order in our time was devised in Western Europe almost four centuries ago, at a peace conference in the Westphalia region of Germany, conducted without participation or even awareness. of most other continents or civilizations.” In the following centuries, its influence became more and more widespread.
Given that background, the question is not what the new world order will look like, but whether the United States and its allies can, through Ukraine, reverse the erosion of the past century’s gains as a the first step to establishing the first truly “global” world order. .
Former US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told me this effort is the fourth attempt at international order in the past century.
The first attempt after World War I, through the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, failed miserably. Instead, the world had European fascism, US isolationism, a global economic crisis, and millions of deaths from the Holocaust and World War II.
After World War II, the United States and its partners were significantly more successful, building the so-called “liberal international order”, through the Marshall Plan and new multilateral organizations such as the United Nations. countries, the World Bank and the IMF, NATO, the European Union and others.
The third attempt came after the West’s victory in the Cold War. European democracies emerged or were restored, NATO expanded, the European Union expanded, and it seems that for a time, rules, practices, and institutions developed in the post-World War II West. World War II and during the Cold War could absorb and direct the expansion of the international order. China has benefited from and accepted this order for some time.
What has been eroded now for a number of years is the commitment of US leaders to protect, maintain, and promote that open international order – what Kissinger says called “a remarkably expansive cooperative order of nations that adheres to common rules and norms, adopts liberal economic systems, advocates territorial conquest, respects national sovereignty, and applies participatory and democratic systems of government.”
American foreign policy leadership has rarely been consistent, but it was notably so after World War II and until the end of the Cold War. Since then, the contradictions have grown, highlighted by former President Barack Obama’s “leading from behind” and former President Donald Trump’s “America First.”
Both, in their own right, are the retreat of former President Harry Truman, and the post-World War II architecture and global leadership of the United States that he established and embraced.
In the Middle East, countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that were once our closest allies are now hedging their bets. In addition to disagreements over Iran, former President Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in his own election has raised doubts among our friends about the durability of the American political system and the consistency of his government. American foreign policy.
Additionally, our Mideast friends resent the Biden administration’s depiction of the emerging global contest as a democracy versus authoritarianism.
Anwar Gargash, foreign affairs adviser to the President of the UAE, said: “Every democratic attempt in the Arab world has become ideological or tribal, so I’m not sure that’s something we can solve. determined to succeed” told the World Government Summit. He considers the problems between democracy and authoritarianism not a binary problem, but a problem of governance, and the solution as “something in between the two”.
President Joe Biden’s release decision On Thursday, the “unprecedented” 180 million barrels of crude from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve was an admission that the United States’ traditional oil-producing partners were not ready to help him. The decision comes hours after OPEC ignored calls from Western politicians to pump oil faster – and to counter any suggestions it should exclude Russia from the organization.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited New Delhi this week thanked India for its refusal to join the sanctions against Russia, an approach shared by Brazil, Mexico, Israel and the UAE. “We will be ready to supply India with any goods that India wants to buy,” Lavrov said.
To shape the future world order, the United States and Europe first need to reverse the trajectory of democratic and Western decline in Ukraine.
The rest will need to follow.
–Frederick Kempe is the President and CEO of the Atlantic Council.
