The first decade and a half of the twenty-first century has demonstrated that we are living in a time of rapid change, unanticipated crises, and general turmoil. These disruptions are occurring against the background of declining US influence and the rising power of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Traditional inter-state security concerns coexist with new security preoccupations, such as the rivalries likely to erupt over the resources of the global commons, the threat of cyber warfare, and the economic and social repercussions of globalization. Will the twenty-first-century state be able to address the challenges posed by rapid change presaged by all these developments?
The state, as we know it today, has evolved since its beginnings in seventeenth-century Europe propelled both by materialâeconomic, military, and technologicalâand by ideological forces. 1 Capping three decades of inter-confessional war among a multiplicity of political jurisdictions in Europe during 1618â48, the centralized autonomous state first emerged as the primary container for the political community of individuals residing within its borders. State sovereignty as defined by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had religious and spatial connotations, referring both to the autonomy of governments from external interference, particularly in the choice of religious faith, and to a clear delineation between domestic affairs and secular inter-state relations.
The consolidation of the state in the eighteenth century occurred against the backdrop of the industrial and scientific revolutions. Two major consequences ensued. The stage was set for political and economic competition among major European powers, and for European imperial domination of Asia and Africa. The settlement and colonization of the Americas had begun in the late fifteenth century with Spanish and Portuguese voyages of âdiscoveryâ of the âNew World,â followed later by English, French, and Dutch migrations. Even as territorial spaces in Europe were divided among competing and sovereign states, economic activity fueled by capitalism spilled over borders and forged an interconnected worldwide web of market linkages. In the realm of ideologies, the late eighteenth century American (1776) and French (1789) revolutions fostered the rise of nationalism and transformed the state. No longer was the state seen as the preserve of the monarch. As people started to identify with their state, they began to demand greater rights.
Nationalism undermined the principles underlying empire as ideas of democracy, the rule of law, and popular sovereignty spread. Over the course of the twentieth century, empires collapsed in Europe and overseas imperial colonies were replaced by independent states on the Westphalian model. The carving of territorial spaces into politically independent states went hand in hand with economic globalization while advances in the technology of transportation and communication telescoped both space and time. The global race among states to modernize and industrialize has exacerbated pressures on the environment and also led to the unmooring of identities that often accompanies rapid socioeconomic changes. These pressures have spurred movements toward religious extremism and terrorism. Globalization has reduced aggregate levels of poverty but increased economic inequalities within and among states.
Transformative changes are taking place in the natural and social worlds triggered by industrial and technological developments that are shrinking geographical space while paradoxically increasing cultural and social tensions among peoples within and between states. Rising popular aspirations in developing countries have overtaken the capacity of often corrupt and inefficient governments to respond adequately to human needs. Identity politics are fueling intense nationalism in countries, raising the specter of intra-state and inter-state violence. Growing transnational challenges deriving from natural and human causes have severely constrained the ability of any single state, even the most powerful, to be successful in tackling them unilaterally. Environmental degradation, climate change, depletion of energy and water resources, pandemics, and cyber warfare, along with the triumvirate of organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism, and cyber warfare are problems that cross territorial borders with great ease, aided by the technology of communication and transportation and the processes of globalization.
The paradox of the global predicament is that geography is at once destiny and an irrelevance. Traditional geopolitical and geo-economic preoccupations, as seen for instance in the seemingly intractable Russia-Ukraine conflict that began in 2013, in the episodic instances of armed incursions between India and Pakistan, or in the conflict among major powers generated by the development of power vacuums in a vast swath of the post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa, continue to remain salient and have the potential to spark violence that spills over borders. Geographical proximity confers advantages to regional hegemons in spheres they deem important to their national interests. Countries that are rich in energy and water resources enjoy significant advantages bestowed by geography.
In matters of trade, capital flows, ideological and value-based transmissions, and ecology, however, borders are rendered invisible. The interconnectedness of global problems is illustrated well by the emerging competition over the Arctic Ocean resources. A warming planet, a by-product of an industrialization process that is now global, has gradually begun to melt the ice sheets in the Arctic, which, in the future, is expected to become a seasonally navigable ocean. In August 2007, Russia symbolically planted the Russian flag on the Arctic Ocean floor to assert its claims, setting off a fierce competition among states of the Arctic Ocean littoral to establish claims over seabed resources. The ongoing and, according to climate scientists, irreversible collapse of the Antarctic glaciers is likely to create a cascade of effects, including rising sea levels, with grave consequences for the globe.
How the state system, which is the organizing political institution in world politics, is likely to cope with these many challenges is the central question this book will seek to address. In a 2013 lecture at the Brookings Institution, former European Commissioner for Trade and former Director-General of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy noted that the planetary scale of problems we now face âcannot be addressed within frontiers. Some form of global governance is needed.â 2 He outlined three optionsâthe post-Westphalian European model of pooled sovereignty, a neo-Westphalian model, and an âa-Westphalianâ (or in other words, the anti-Westphalian) modelâas primary contenders. 3
The post-Westphalian European model, Lamy argued, has not been emulated by countries in other regions, has been unsuccessful in moving toward a political union, and is facing the challenge of âEurosion.â While Lamy is hopeful that the European Union will be able to overcome âthe gap between economic and political integration and between citizens and institutions, as well as the gap in economic dynamism between Europe and the rest of the world,â he casts the European model as sui generis but nevertheless sees it serving as a âlaboratory for supranational governance.â 4
The neo-Westphalian model would involve progressively new arrangements among existing âinformal fora,â such as the G-20, the United Nations system, and specialized organizations. 5 The improvements to these arrangements would come from better coordination, greater transparency, enhanced monitoring, stronger global accountability mechanisms, regional integration, mini-global governance at the regional level, and a move at the international multilateral level away from a consensus model of decision-making to some form of majoritarian voting.
The âa-Westphalian model,â according to Lamy, calls for âmore innovative, more creative systems to deliver the desired outcomes of governance about global issues.â 6 Unlike the post-Westphalian and neo-Westphalian models that globalize local problems through âtraditional command and control top-down models that respect the primacy of the nation-state over other players and stakeholders of globalization,â the a-Westphalian model localizes global problems through a âmore bottom-up, less top-downâ approach and establishes a âmore networked, decentralized way of generating convergence, cooperation, and collaboration.â 7 The example Lamy offers of such a model at work is the â[c]ross-cutting coalitions, innovative partnerships among non-profit organizations, businesses, cities, national and international bodiesâ that âproved to be effective in the fight against AIDS or in coping with the Y2K challenge.â 8
Lamy does not indicate which model is likely to emerge as the vehicle for global governance. Whether power will devolve to the local level or move upward toward global governance, the state is likely to continue, as Roland Axtmann has suggested, to âretain the ânodal roleâ in expanding the web of state powers, mediating between the increasing number of significant supranational and subnational scales of action.â In a world in which the fungibility of hard power has diminished, states will be compelled to devise new modalities to temper conflict and competition and to craft ways to institutionalize cooperation, especially because great powers are increasingly unable to use hard power unilaterally to achieve their preferences in all issue areas. This is particularly true with regard to public goods, such as clean air, matters relating to the global commons (the high seas, the atmosphere, Antarctica, and outer space), and transnational challenges, such as terrorism and climate changeâareas where inter-state cooperation is both difficult and indispensable.
In juxtaposing both traditional (geopolitical and geo-economic) and non-traditional (transnational and non-state) challenges to the inter-state order, this book will attempt to address some of the serious global challenges of the present century. The founding premise of the book is that while the challenges we face transcend political borders, the answers can only be generated within the context of the prevailing inter-state system and international organizations, with leading countries working together to innovate and institutionalize modes of global governance that are effective and fair. In this new political universe, concepts such as polarity, power, alliances, and deterrence, that dominated the analysis of international relations during the Cold War, enable us to capture only a narrow slice of a twenty-first-century world buffeted by transnational forces that defy simple inter-state logics. The concept of global governance will become indispensable both to understand and to resolve the transnational challenges that will increasingly confront us. 9 As the United Nations Task Team on the post-2015 UN Development Agenda noted: âIn a more interdependent world, a more coherent, transparent and representative global governance regime will be critical to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensionsâeconomic, social, and environmental.â 10
The Structure of the Book
The first part of the book explores the global inter-state context with a focus on some of the major powers of the twenty-first century, such as the USA and the European Union, the Russian Federation, China, and India, and on the significant global challenges they face or pose. The second part examines an array of select global issues on the policy agenda of political leaders both in states and international organizations.
In Chapter 2, Norma Noonan asks whether the twenty-first century will represent the end of the Western Age after centuries of European domination followed by the preeminent global role of the USA after World War II. In the twenty-first century, Noonan argues, the USA and European countries face not only the challenges of a rising China and other emerging powers but also more diffuse threats from non-state actors, such as Al Qaeda, and ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Domestic challenges of declining economic competitiveness, rising socioeconomic inequalities, and âleadership fatigueâ place further strain on US leadership. Whether we are in an age of world order or global disorder, Noonan suggests ways for Europe and the USA to develop flexible strategies for the challenges that lie ahead.
In Chapter 3, Tatiana Shakleina uses a realist lens to look at the reconfiguration of the territorial map of the world since the end of bipolarity. Shakleina argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union left the USA as the sole superpower but also opened the space for many countries to jockey for influence. These âtraditional and emerging powers,â according to Shakleina, differ in their views of global problems and will therefore âopt for selective engagement in world order formation and in solving global and regional problems.â She posits several possible future scenarios along a conflict-cooperation continuum based on the success or failure of achieving consensus am...