For over a decade, debate has raged amongst scholars on the importance of the post-World War II, rules-based international order, as stated by writer Michael Mazarr in his story "How to Save the Post-War Order: The United States Should Rethink Its Defense of the System."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought a sigh of relief to some defenders of the system, as the West has united against Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal aggression. On the other hand, the war has highlighted how loose international norms are at this time.
As Mazarr said, the international order is nothing more than the prevailing norms in a particular time, and the existence of order does not mean any sort of stability. The order is enforced by the most powerful actors of an era, often under the leadership of one preeminent power or a small number of them, agreed to certain rules and norms to promote their own interests--typically, territorial security and economic prosperity. The post-1945 United States-led order to date. It is grounded in the United Nations system but incorporates regional organizations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, as well as global economic institutions, intergovernmental processes, public-private coalitions, and nongovernmental organizations that set thousands of issue-specific rules and standards.
The order promotes norms. These norms are imperfect and sometimes broken but also sometimes enforced. These norms have had an influence on the behavior of states. Mazarr spoke of the importance of the system: "countries that sought cutting-edge technology, foreign direct investment, or support from international financial organizations found themselves at least partly constrained by the order's rules and norms. Exclusion from the economic order has proved economically fatal - ensuring that the vast majority of countries adjust their behavior, at least to a degree, in order to remain tethered to the international system."
The post-World War II order developed a gravitational pull with the combined public opinions of the world's most powerful nation states serving as a superpower. It must be remembered that there were many actors to back up the combined public opinion - nongovernmental organizations, businesses, political parties, and movements now play important roles in advocating for and enforcing the order's rules. By conditioning full participation in economic, political, and even cultural networks on those rules, the states and nonstate actors at the core of the order create a formidable echo effect on world politics.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine brought many of the international community's institutions down on it. As Mazzar stated: "a core group of leading democracies and nonstate actors have rallied to the system's defense, using components of the order from the United Nations to economic institutions and networks to the International Criminal Court to threaten or impose penalties on those who defy it. These actions demonstrate that the postwar order is much more than just a product of U.S. power: far from blindly agreeing to American demands, these states and nonstate actors have defended the system out of their own volition and in pursuit of their own perceived interests."
Mazzar states that the U.S. should continue to support international norms but should restrict the enforcement of those norms. He said that a rigid approach would promote backlash amongst hedging states. In international relations theory, a hedging state is a state that takes a power vacuum due to a conflict between more important states and therefore seeks to increase its own power. Russia is taking advantage of the geopolitical conflict between China and the U.S. Remember, China and Russia are aligned in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and China is propping Russia up as we speak.
The US should concentrate on just a few norms: constraints on physical and cyber-aggression, collaboration on climate change, and cooperation to promote a stable global trade and financial system. It would accept the need to work with democracies and nondemocracies. It would promote free societies but do so by helping established and emerging democracies rather than forcing change on undemocratic ones. It would accept flawed but effective arms control deals rather than holding out for perfection.
The biggest challenge moving forward is the ability of our own country to act with restraint. If not, we could be looking at arms races in both the conventional and nuclear sphere as well as more armed conflict in various parts of the world.
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project.
