True to Antonio Gramsci’s prophetic wisdom, the only order in world affairs today appears to be a ‘disorder’. Blood-soaked conflicts are raging through Europe, the Middle-East, Africa and South and East Asia. Instability and uncertainty hover over all these regions. By one estimate, there were as many as 55 conflicts simmering globally in 2023 — the highest number in over 30 years. In 2024, we can count more, in more morbid forms
By Shujaat Ali Quadri
‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms emerge.’
— Italian political activist, philosopher and social scientist, Antonio Gramsci.
Déjà vu!
True to Gramsci’s prophetic wisdom, the only order in world affairs today appears to be a ‘disorder’. Blood-soaked conflicts are raging through Europe, the Middle-East, Africa and South and East Asia. As a result, instability and uncertainty hover over all these regions. By one estimate, there were as many as 55 conflicts simmering globally in 2023 — the highest number in over 30 years. In 2024, we can count more, in more morbid forms.
The role of the West, led by the United States and international institutions, dominated by their manipulations, stand exposed. However, a glimmer flickers, or, rather, it is shining on the horizon: it is that middle powers like Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and China stand to alter this ‘disorder’ back into shape.
Quest for Hegemony and Germination of ‘Disorder’: The use of the term ‘world order’ can be traced to the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, that knitted around 20 European states into a unified unit which sought to wield global influence on the rest of the world. The American grand-master of diplomacy, late Henry Kissinger, discovered the modern parlance and adopted the term world order, when US president Theodore Roosevelt propounded a doctrine, that it was the duty of the US to make its enormous power and influence felt globally.
“Roosevelt, trained in biology, was a social Darwinist who believed in survival of the fittest. The international world, in his view, was a realm of violence and conflict. The US had all the economic and geographical potential to be the fittest nation on the globe. Roosevelt favoured spheres of influence, whereby one great power would generally prevail, such as the US in the Western Hemisphere, or Great Britain in the Indian subcontinent. Japan fit that role and he approved. However, he had deep distrust of both Germany and Russia,” writes Kissinger in his masterful work, Diplomacy (1994) .
It gives clear insight how the US decided to become a hegemon in the world, and, has, in the last several decades, proven to be a chief disruptor of various regional systems – whether they are in the Soviet Union, Asia, Middle-East, Africa or Latin America. As the denouement of World War II ensured that only the US possessed military, technological and market wherewithal to lead the world, it ensured that no competition would be tolerated to challenge its preeminence.
The Soviet Union, the American ally in defeating Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, and a champion of the world’s destitutes, had to put up resistance and raise a flag of revolt against the American ‘capital-oriented’ world-reshaping, or, subjugation of the developing world. The West, and other major powers of Europe, conveniently aligned with the US to claim their share in the global dominance and stay safe in the great game.
So long as the Soviet Union existed, the US and its allies remained in check.
The prevailing world order originated with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. It was also the culmination of the Cold War and beginning of the unipolar world, with the US swaggering as the only superpower.
It led to the germination of all modern conflicts in all geographies of the world. The First Gulf War in 1991 heralded that the US would unleash destruction and disorder as a permanent policy in the Middle-East to usurp energy resources of the region.
Its European partners, especially their joint military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have devastated Iraq beyond repair. They plundered Afghanistan more brazenly, while chasing so-called terrorists, and have ensured that new variants of terror organizations could mushroom almost on every continent, where their ‘global order’ faces challenge.
Such has been the US’ quest for world dominance that American military power provided a security shield, even if its beneficiaries asked for it or not. The purpose, according to Kissinger, was to rally the developing countries in alliances with the US, under the pretext of military guarantee.
In order to realise its purpose, the US would even invent threats, if none exists, to lure these potential allies. As a result, a global economy developed in which America contributed financing, markets and a profusion of innovations, that has today evolved into Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The march of US capitalism came to a grinding halt in the late 2000s when Russia under President Vladimir Putin ended its era of hubris in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. The rise of China as the world’s manufacturing hub complimented the resurgence of Russia.
It was a tectonic shift in the world of geopolitics. The rest of the world was now making innovative strides in pursuing science and technology. Economies like that of China and the Asian Tigers showed signs of marching past the economies of the US and West.
Russia, Brazil, South Africa and India caught up with them sharply, and there began talks of the world entering the post-US era. New contours of globalisation and security apparatus changed already established assumptions of the world order, envisioned and practiced by the US-West consortium.
At this stage, some analysts suggested that the world had entered Cold War 2.0, that pitted the US and its Western allies against Russia, China and others. Each side was meant to pull strings in a direction that would make or mar the world.
New Geopolitical Realities: Middle Ground/Middle Powers
The world is multi-polar. As a resurgent Russia and rising China proved their mettle in the global arena – strategic and economic – the pivot of international fulcrum sailed in a new direction. A direction that reaches a destination where developing geographies – earlier known as Third World, and now called Global South – will have equal voice on the nostrum.
They do not accept being patronized by the West, nor are they impressed by any claim to ‘exceptionalism’. They are actively exploring the ‘third space’, or ‘the middle ground’, and are developing their own counter-narratives, such as the Asian Century, the African Century and the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.
Many of these countries have long been calling for a more representative international system, and are highly critical of roles played by the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and other such organizations that sadly serve the interests of the US and the Western bloc. Therefore, global rules, norms and institutions, designed in the mid-twentieth century to prevent military escalation and foster economic cooperation, are increasingly under pressure.
Today, there is at least one middle power of consequence in every region of the world, which was not the case in the 20th century, when the world was dominated by one great power. While the US is still the dominant military power in the world, political, economic, and technological influence is shifting eastward, to countries like China and India, making these countries more relevant to the future of the world.
The transition from a multi-polar to unipolar world is giving rise to volatility and positive reorientation, in the policies of these middle, alternate or rising powers. One interesting case is that of Turkey.
It has been a member of NATO since 1952. But, in the face of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, it has maintained relations with Moscow, and facilitated talks between Ukraine and Russia. Unlike most European countries, Turkey has adopted a confrontational stance toward Israel, especially in the ongoing Gaza crisis.
Similar is the case of Japan, a bedrock treaty ally of the US. It has a staunch policy of always closely engaging ASEAN, irrespective of Washington’s fluctuating attention to Southeast Asia.
While Western nations are beginning to de-risk from China and Russia, and as the space for dialogue between them shrinks, middle powers of the Global South are forming unprecedented economic, diplomatic and strategic links with one another. For example, Indonesia now trades more with India than the US, and is building naval submarines with South Korea — a strategic venture that is not possible with any Western country, Russia or China.
It also matters that three middle powers of the Global South — Indonesia, India and Brazil — are assuming the G20 presidency successively, and are working closely within the group’s ‘troika’ mechanism to maintain policy coordination. Meanwhile, more Global South countries — 40 according to the South African government — are lining up to join BRICS, than those wishing to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
All in all, the middle powers are rewriting the world affairs playbook.
Conflicts and Cooperation
Two major conflicts define the present disorder and blood-stained chaos unleashed by the US-West combine: the Ukraine conflict and Israel’s everyday genocide in Gaza, after the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Both these conflicts are direct results of policies adopted by the US-West to preserve and maintain their order of world affairs. Renowned political scientist, John Mearsheimer, has argued for years that the US, in pushing to expand NATO eastward, and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has been increasing the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers. It has laid the groundwork for Russia’s defensive/aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis”.
The current crisis in Ukraine that started in 2022 has been boiling and all efforts to reconcile the conflict have failed, as the US-West’s calculation doesn’t see the solution of the crisis as a favourable design of their set standard of a world order. Mearsheimer agrees with this assertion.
“Even as per the Monroe Doctrine, once practiced in letter and spirit by the US, there’s no country in the Western hemisphere that we will allow to invite a distant, great power (NATO) to bring military forces into that country,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker.
Similarly, as we are jotting down this paper, in the daily genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Israeli forces, more innocents have been killed. Despite gory pictures of civilians dying and their videos being shared on social media, there wouldn’t be any change in terms of a firm policy of the US and key European powers which are backing Israel. On the contrary, after the assassination of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, the US has sent its warships and weaponry to defend Israel.
The world recuperated from the devastating Covid menace nly two years ago. Still, it has returned to conflict and the era of morbidity, because of the hegemony hysteria of the US-West.
The race for weapons has begun anew. The global defence spending has grown by over 9 per cent last year, reaching a record $2.2 trillion. For the first time since 2019, military expenditures increased in all major regions, including in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle-East and Africa. Rising tension and anxiety are rapidly transforming the international defence-industrial landscape.
The West is spending a combined 32 per cent more than it did when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Several nuclear powers have not only ramped up their nuclear rhetoric, they are actively upgrading and modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
Warfare is expanding into economic and technological domains. The West has launched a barrage of economic and technology-related sanctions against its adversaries in recent years, albeit with mixed outcomes.
Thus, the central question facing every one of us in 2024 is, how can we foster global cooperation in an era of international competition?
At a minimum, this will require developing processes and platforms to align interests and incentives to serve both people and the planet. It will require new forms of multi-stakeholder partnerships — including at the regional level — that leverage the capabilities of states, companies, and non-profits to drive collective action.
It will also require elevating a serious engagement with geopolitics in the highest echelons of decision-making, from cabinet offices to boardrooms. The only way to manage a multi-polar transition, in which we all survive and thrive, is if we learn to rapidly identify risks, adapt to them, and find new ways to cooperate, and shun any urges of dominating others.
The India Way
In the new-age global landscape, individuals, communities and societies have to learn to navigate together. The civilisational wisdom in my country, India, has been that the world is a family – vasudeva kutumbkam — as our foreign office famously but responsively claims as its foreign policy mantra.
India today is part of every world grouping, be it BRICS, SCO, ASEAN, QUAD, G20, and several others. In every grouping, India is firmly committed to play a pivotal, cooperative and responsible role. India is ready to cooperate with any country in the field of science, space technology, climate change, medicine, vaccine production, commerce, education and research.
India’s former foreign secretary, Shyam Saran, in his latest book, How India Sees The World, has articulated India’s world view. I quote a para:
“Modesty is inherent in Indian cosmology. Our view of the world is not India-centric, unlike that of other cultures… There is acceptance of different, coexisting and equally valid realities, which is encapsulated in the ancient Sanskrit sloka from the epic Rig Veda: Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti – truth is one, but sages call it by different names.
Great powers will stand to gain much from this insight into Indian civilization, and the world may move towards a new harmonious order. Amen!
References:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/05/why-geopolitics-matters-more-than-ever-in-a-multipolar-world
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (1994, pp. 38–40)
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (1994, pp. 40–42)
Henry Kissinger, World Order (2015, pp. 1-10)
Henry Kissinger, World Order (2015, pp. 361-374)
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Middle-powers-are-the-new-architects-of-the-world-order
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
Shyam Saran, How India Sees The World: Kautilya To The 21st Century, (2018, pp. 276-292)
Dr Shujaat Ali Quadri is Editor, DFRAC, a media organization of fact-checkers based in Delhi.