Peter Konchak, Law & Public Policy Scholar, JD Anticipated May 2021
Saturday, November 9, 2019, marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the physical barrier that surrounded West Berlin and separated it from the Soviet satellite of East Germany between 1961 and 1989. The crystallization of the pro-democratic revolutions that swept across the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991, the fall of the wall symbolizes a series of events the historical consequence of which is insusceptible to overstatement. The collapse of Soviet control over Central and Eastern Europe, followed by the demise of the Soviet regime itself, marked the conclusion of the Cold War, the termination of almost a century of near-continuous global conflict, and the end of totalitarianism across large swaths of Eurasia. Those events were followed, for the first time since the collapse of the European balance of power in 1914, by the establishment of international order.
Between 1914 and 1991, three global, great power conflicts—the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War—dominated international politics. At the conclusion of each of these wars, the liberal democratic states of the world had endeavored, to varying degrees, to reestablish a system for regulating international relations so that major interstate conflict could be avoided and disputes among nations resolved by pacific means. Efforts to do so in the aftermath of World War I were an utter failure. U.S. isolationism, the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism in the League of Nations, and the weakness of the United Kingdom and France in the interwar period produced a state of international anarchy in which the totalitarian powers were allowed to consolidate their economic and military strength and pursue aggressive expansionism. The consequence of that failure was the second great power conflict of the 20th century, which nearly witnessed the defeat of the liberal democracies. By 1941, Nazi Germany dominated Europe in tacit alliance with the Soviet Union, Great Britain was on the verge of defeat in the Mediterranean basin, and large parts of Asia had been consumed by Imperial Japan. But for the intervention of the United States and their own strategic blunders, the Axis Powers might have ultimately conquered the entirety of the Eurasian landmass.
As a consequence of the calamity that resulted from their failure to construct international order in the aftermath of World War I, the liberal democracies, led by the United States, redoubled their efforts to do so in the aftermath of their victory in World War II. Conventional wisdom generally holds that this effort was successful. However, while the Western Allies did establish amongst themselves an effective military alliance system and trade regime, their reliance on the Soviet Union—which was necessary to defeat the greater threat of Nazi Germany—to establish a comprehensive international order, precluded that objective from being realized for over four decades. The inclusion of the Soviet Union as a guarantor of the ephemeral global order that emerged following the defeat of the Axis powers, centered on the United Nations, thus prevented that system from operating to prevent a third major great power conflict in the 20th century. In this case, the result was not derived from the failure of the liberal democracies to attempt to construct a viable international order, but rather their inability to do so in the face of Soviet aggression. Neither the fascist powers nor the Soviet Union ever accepted the liberal democratic conception of an international order predicated on the force of law rather than the law of force. The liberal democratic powers were, however, successful in confronting great power expansionism during the Cold War via collective security mechanisms, whereas they had failed to do so in the early stages of World War II.
Nevertheless, it was only in the aftermath of the Cold War that international order was effectively reestablished for the first time since 1914. With the collapse of Soviet power, an era of near-continuous great power conflict, interrupted only by anarchy or brief moments of tactical concord, came to an end. Though disputes among the great powers still remained in some instances, the final defeat of the expansionist totalitarian powers that rose out of the chaos of the First World War and its aftermath had been defeated. The rise of those powers had made great power conflict in the Second World War and the Cold War largely unavoidable. Driven by extremist revolutionary ideology, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and their satellites were constitutionally incapable of pursuing foreign policies predicated upon rational security interests, but rather were compelled toward insatiable aggression. With the demise of those states, it was possible to extend the effective jurisdiction and revitalize the institutions of international order that had been devised in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Whereas the system of collective security enforced through the United Nations Security Council had been rendered largely inept by Soviet subversion during the Cold War, it began to operate effectively to end regional conflicts beginning in the early 1990s. Security Council authorization was secured to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 and end the Bosnian Wars in 1995. The liberalized system of trade and investment established among the Western Allies after 1945 was gradually expanded to encompass much of the rest of the world after 1991. The network of alliances created by the United States in the course of World War II and the Cold War to bind liberal democratic states in a system of collective security was expanded to newly-liberated states in Eastern Europe and entered into partnership agreements with the successor state of its erstwhile Cold War adversary. A broader regional security arrangement—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—was created to ensure interstate cooperation across much of the Northern Hemisphere, and comprehensive regional and global arms control agreements resulted in a major drawdown of nuclear and conventional forces in that region and throughout the world. Regional integration deepened in Europe via the European Union and Southeast Asia through ASEAN.
For a quarter century after its inception, the international order that emerged at the end of the Cold War was therefore remarkably effective at promoting global stability, prosperity, and peace. The 1990s and 2000s were not without crises or instability. The UN Security Council was unable to agree on a united course of action with respect to Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003. The implied threat of military force was necessary to restrain China from pursuing aggression against Taiwan from 1995–1996. And liberal democratic reform in the Russian Federation stalled and gave way to the rise of authoritarianism under the Putin regime amid a series of brutal wars in Chechnya. Nevertheless, stalwart enforcement of international rules and norms by the United States and its allies, and the cooperation of those powers with their erstwhile great power adversaries, created an international environment more tranquil than any that had been known since August 1914.
Events of the last five years have, however, demonstrated the fragility of the post-Cold War international order. Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and ongoing campaign in Eastern Ukraine have brought great power conflict back to the forefront of events in Europe for the first time since 1991. Though it may be too early to definitively characterize relations between the Western Allies and Russia as constituting a major great power conflict, Russian covert cyber and special operations in Europe and the United States have dramatically escalated the scope and intensity of a conflict that was largely limited to Russia’s periphery only a few years ago. Similarly, Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea has not yet involved active armed conflict, nor have its increasingly realistic military drills aimed at Taiwan. But the growing aggressiveness and assertiveness of the Chinese regime suggests that there is a serious risk of escalation that would threaten to precipitate a major great power conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.
Moreover, the past five years in the Middle East have been characterized by direct and indirect Iranian military campaigns that have bolstered that country’s strategic position in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Largely unchecked or actively supported by the world’s great powers, Iran has seemingly grown bolder in recent months, striking at international shipping in the Persian Gulf and a major oil facility in Saudi Arabia. Iranian moves have in turn prompted Israeli and Saudi efforts to escalate their involvement in Syria and Yemen, respectively. And the Iranian regime has recently begun breaking its core commitments under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was designed to restrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
The global community thus now faces the reality that the international order of 1991, which was forged amid the democratic revolutionaries that toppled communism in the Soviet Bloc, is under severe strain and appears vulnerable to collapse. If this were to occur, the relatively peaceful, interconnected, prosperous, liberal, and democratic world in which humanity has lived for almost three decades, would come to an end. As the above text hopefully demonstrates, the prospect of recreating such a system, were it to be destroyed, would prove a herculean effort. This would not necessarily result in the kind of international anarchy that obtained in the aftermath of the First World War—the Western alliance system and other arrangements binding the liberal democracies to each other might well survive, although in the worst case they too could be dismantled. Even if that were not to occur, however, the end of international order would almost invariably result in the potential for major conflict among great power coalitions as occurred in the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War.
The question is whether, in the event of such a conflict, or in order to prevent such a conflict from emerging in the first instance, the liberal democratic states of the world will act collectively to defend and, if necessary, reconstitute an international order predicated upon the rule of law. Though perhaps unlikely, it is still possible that those states can effectively enforce Russian, Chinese, and Iranian compliance with the 1991 order absent major great power conflict. The effectiveness of economic sanctions, the dangers associated with such conflict, and the relative isolation of those powers when compared to the high degree of integration among the liberal democratic states suggests that such an approach could possibly work. Nevertheless, the core problem with the current order is that is presupposes great power collaboration to defend the rule of law, and therefore stymies effective enforcement of the system’s rules against those powers when they contravene the strictures of that order. Thus, insofar as the liberal democracies successfully endeavor to save or reestablish the 1991 international order, they would do well to reform it so as to prevent such a threat from global concord for the fourth time in two centuries.