I was trying very hard to ignore the impending vote for US president upcoming next week. We will have plenty of time to contemplate the action and consequences of the presidential choice on US foreign policy and global leadership.
But then again I was not fully able to ignore the consequences for the international order of this event. I was caught by a very recent Special Report from CIGI on: “Scenarios of Evolving Global Order”. Now CIGI is located in Waterloo Ontario and CIGI stands for the Centre for International Governance Innovation. I have a small soft spot for the think tank as I and a number of close colleagues spent some good years there when it launched as a global affairs outfit and, I think produced some good early work on global governance, among other things.
Anyway, the Report is interesting as it attempts to:
… fill a gap between the analysis of current trends and mapping of potential futures by outlining five possible scenarios for an evolving global order. These five scenarios represent a spectrum from the most modest plausible change (reform of the current system) to the most radical (transformation of the whole system due to a global shock).
There clearly is much current discussion over the evolving global order in the context of significant geopolitical tensions between the two leading powers and the numerous conflicts burdening international relations. So the Report describes 5 different scenarios built on these assumptions:
• The current international system is not working; international institutions, including the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions, are unable to address most contemporary challenges.
• Responses to contemporary global challenges are siloed, nationally and institutionally.
• The United States’ global leadership is waning due to reduced capacity and internal focus.
• The relative economic power of liberal democracies is diminishing.
• Emerging powers — including, but not limited to, China and India — are increasingly asserting their influence and driving change.
• Finding new pathways of international cooperation on security issues may be more elusive, meaning attention may focus on cooperation on economic issues.
• Deglobalization, and regional integration as an alternative to multilateralism, continues to accelerate by many, but not all, measures.
• Momentum for nationalist and isolationist policies continues to build in many countries.
The result five different scenarios as filled out by the author team:
Scenario 1: Reform of the Existing Global System
Scenario 2: Replacement of the Existing Global System
Scenario 3: The Emergence of a Bloc-Based Global System
Scenario 4: A Case of Disorder
Scenario 5: Transformed Global Order
Each scenario is interesting and for every scenario there are two pathways described by the authors leading to an identified outcome:
The authors’ view is that these five scenarios broadly represent core directions that global order may evolve toward in the coming months and years. They acknowledge that there are numerous potential pathways that the five scenarios could take — by choosing only two for each, many possibilities remain for further exploration.
Now each scenario is worth assessing – and I will try and examine some perghaps at a later date, but I was struck by the perspective the authors identified for the structure and the dynamics for all five scenarios. As the Report suggested:
All of the scenarios explored assume the current and evolving global dynamics are multipolar (rather than other forms such as bipolar, hegemonic or concerted). It is, of course, possible that global order does not continue to evolve in a multipolar way — for example, that one group of states forms a security and economic coalition in a way that dominates all the rest or that the world devolves into a bipolar world utterly dominated by American and Chinese spheres of control. The world is currently operating with multipolar dynamics on most issues, and this is likely to continue into the future.
Now that assumption of a multipolar system struck me. The reason is I came across an interesting Substack Post from Clarence Gu and Chenghao Sun, ChinAffairs+ describing in the Post titled “Yan Xuetong & John Mearsheimer Conversation: Who Shapes Global Order, and Who Will Win the Competition?”an interesting encounter, the third in fact, between these two experts. Now Yan Xuetong is the Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University, a highly prestigious university in China and John Mearsheimer is, as he describes himself, “the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982 and an international relations theorist. More specifically, I am a realist.”
Now I have known John for many years as we were graduate students together at Cornell University with the same adviser, the recently passed Richard N Rosecrance, renowned international relations expert. But we were seldom on the same side of the fence when describing the underlying dynamics of the international system. But that is neither here nor there.
Both Yan Xuetong and John are known for their focus in international relations on ‘realism’, and in fact John’s writings identify what is known as ‘offensive realism’. And while the two differ to a degree in this encounter at Tsinghua in Beijing they both strongly endorse the notion that the system is driven by the need by states to maintain dominance in a current bipolar not multipolar world (You will note by the way that the quotes that follow have been slightly edited due at times to imperfect transcription). As John describes the international system:
How do you survive the international system? The system is where there is no higher authority. The answer is very simple. You want to be very powerful. You want to maximize your power, you cannot be certain of the intentions of those other states. It pays to be really powerful, to pay to be a hegemon.
If you think more specifically, the argument is that you can only be a regional hegemon, number one. Number two, you want to make sure that no other state is a regional hegemon. The ideal situation is to be the only regional hegemony in the international system.
All of this is to say we are involved today, in an intense security competition. It shows no signs going away. And if anything will get worse with the passage of time. This is a tragic situation. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture or American culture. And many people in China blame the United States for this trouble. … So my argument is, it’s the system that has caused this intense security competition.
Yan Xuetong is even more direct. He states:
The new trend of global order is Counter-Globalization. Then certainly today, I think because today’s title is Global Order and US-China relationship, we have to talk about how the relationship between China and US impact the current global order, my understanding is that the China-US relationship just like John argued that it will be intensified in terms of conflicts.You cannot expect China and US suddenly find a way to set down those disputes become the partners. If that happens, it means our theories are wrong. And actually, why the China-US conflicts are increasing and intensifying. It’s because now we’re in a bipolar configuration. The power structure is not multipolar.
The power structure is not multipolar. The current power structure is bipolar. And in the IR community, we all agree the situation after the World War One was multipolar, and after World War Two is bipolar.
What I mean is that the historic experience tells us, today we still have to understand what the international configuration is. It is not multipolar, not unipolar, it is bipolar, because except China no other major powers have capability or national power that account for 1/3 of the United States. None of them, except China. I don’t know how exactly we can do the measurement, but at least China’s capability is larger than 1/3 of the United States, possibly I would say 2/3 of the US.
Well, I won’t go into the five scenarios at this point though they are worth reviewing. The point here is to raise concern over analyses that are largely driven by structure rather than dynamics generated by policy – security, economic and political. These are the drivers that shape international outcomes. It is difficult at this moment to determine whether the structure is slightly less hegemonic, or is already bipolar, or in fact has become multipolar. The real analytic need, however, is to focus on the leading states and their foreign policy determinations. Structure is there, of course, but it does not drive foreign policy action or outcomes.
This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter. All comments and free subscriptions are welcome
Image Credit: Clarence Gu