6.7.7.2 Supporting a Rules-based World Order
Countries can support a rules-based world order by co-operating with each other in the UN and complying with the agreements reached there
The only way to avoid war, or to end a war that has started, is to resolve underlying political problems. An armed conflict can be seen as the outcome of a political failure:
● As Clausewitz famously wrote, in his book On War, “war is a mere continuation of policy by other means”. [Volume 1, Section 24].
● Rupert Smith expressed it differently, in his book The Utility of Force: “our confrontations and conflicts must be understood as intertwined political and military events, and only in this way can they be resolved”. [p. 372]
The United Nations (UN) was set up after the Second World War to provide a forum for adjudicating on disputes and resolving political disagreements, as part of a framework of rules-based international relations (6.6.6). There are agreed international economic regulations (3.4.1.3) and a framework of international law (5.3.6) within its umbrella. These rules require respect for other countries as equals and a willingness to comply with the requests of international organisations. And there is evidence that this is popular: the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, explained in 2007 Why the World Has Changed in the U.N.’s Favor:
“public support for the U.N. remains strikingly high. A new poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org found large majorities (74 percent) believe the United Nations should play a stronger role in the world, whether in preventing genocide and defending nations under attack or aggressively investigating human-rights abuses”.
Joseph Nye acknowledged the value of supporting the UN, in his lecture Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics:
“…countries, including the United States, should find it in their self-interest to work with and through the UN, because they need that legitimacy for their own soft power.”
In response to a question at the end of the lecture, he said that:
“The UN has a great deal of soft power of its own. In other words, it is attractive, and that gives it a certain amount of power. What the UN can convey that is particularly important is legitimacy…”
A policy of avoiding coercion can open the way for cooperation and fruitful trade relationships. Ron Paul wrote an article, I advocate the same foreign policy the Founding Fathers would, asking:
“by what superior wisdom have we now declared Jefferson, Washington, and Madison to be “unrealistic and dangerous”? Why do we insist on throwing away their most considered warnings?
A non-interventionist foreign policy is not an isolationist foreign policy. …. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seek change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.”
Compliance with a rules-based-world-order does not imply abandoning the pursuit of national interest. Economic competition, within a framework of free trade (3.5.4), can be proactively pursued by helping a country’s industries and services to be efficient and competitive. And a policy of ‘playing by the rules’ strengthens a country’s influence, for example when negotiating with others on environmental challenges (6.7.5).
There have been successful examples of security interventions with UN authorisation, for example driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in what the BBC described as Operation Desert Storm: Last of its kind, and the innovative way in which Sierra Leone was protected against unspeakable atrocities:
Janine di Giovanni’s article, Sierra Leone, 2000: A Case History in Successful Interventionism, describes how Brigadier Sir David Richards only succeeded in this authorised intervention by exceeding his brief: “he made a remarkable unilateral decision to go beyond his mandate in order to save a civilian population from the overwhelming likelihood of an allout slaughter”. “…He began making forays into the bush to make overtures to the Kamajors, an alliance of tribal groups from the south and east of the country with strong traditions as hunters and warriors”. Working with local leaders in this way was a successful strategy and pointed to a better way of making other authorised military interventions in future.
Several opportunities have been missed. Stephen F. Cohen’s book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, argues that Russia might have joined a rules-based world order had different paths been taken – if Trotsky’s “New Economic Policy” had been adopted instead of Stalin’s aggressive nationalism, and later if Gorbachev had not been overthrown by Yeltsin (with US support) – according to M.J. Carly’s review of the book.
Rules-based international relations can be stable, as demonstrated by the EU for example. At a global level, though, it has been undermined by weaknesses with the structure of the UN as a legal system (5.3.6.4), by politicisation and disagreement in the UN Security Council (6.6.6.2), and by UN failures to keep the peace in practice (7.4.4). The invasion of Iraq by America and Britain, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and numerous lesser infringements, have shattered people’s confidence in the current system. Countries have defaulted to ‘realpolitik’, as described below (6.7.7.4).
For rules to be effective on a global scale, some concessions would need to be made to those powers who do not agree that liberal democracy is self-evidently the best form of government – because a broad consensus is needed on what the rules should be. The subject of reforming international security is addressed in the last chapter of this book (9.5).
This page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/6772d.htm.