The war in Iran, now added to the conflict in Ukraine, clearly marks the end of the old world order, this according to economist and analyst Vladislav Inozemtsev (Владислав Иноземцев), writing for the website Vazhnyye Istorii (Важные истории, Important Stories), where he outlines potential future scenarios.
In 1989 Francis Fukuyama made the most famous assertion regarding the "end of history", and the triumph of liberal-democratic ideals over communism and Nazism, at a time when the Soviet Union still existed but was already in decline.
Some trace the beginning of this transition to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR; others point to the war in Iraq, the annexation of Crimea, or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The concept has even been invoked in more eccentric contexts, such as when Donald Trump referred to Canada as the 51st US state, or suggested that Greenland be handed over to the US.
While Russia’s actions in Ukraine since 2014 have served as a significant catalyst, the Kremlin’s various ventures, from the 2008 war in Georgia, through the interventions in Crimea and the Donbas, to the 2022 invasion, have remained contained, never extending beyond the immediate vicinity of the “Russian perimeter”.
As Inozemtsev states, “they resemble the actions of a mouse trapped in a room, scratching at the walls or trying to bite the door.”
Unlike Moscow, Washington is capable of projecting its power anywhere in the world, as demonstrated by events ranging from Caracas to Tehran (with likely more to follow).
In the past, the United States sought to provide a formal justification for its actions: the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, for instance, was not authorised by the UN Security Council but was justified by a resolution concerning the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo (which called on Yugoslavia to cease the violence).
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was likewise unauthorised, yet the United States made an effort to secure such authorisation; Secretary of State Colin Powell spent 75 minutes attempting to prove that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed biological weapons, the infamous Powell’s “vial”. In 2011, Russia did not block the move to close Libyan airspace.
While Trump’s remarks over Canada and Greenland amount to nothing more than empty words, the situation with Iran marks the first time in 80 years that the world’s greatest power has launched a war without even the slightest attempt to gain international legitimacy, doing so simply because it wants to and because it can.
It only makes sense to speak of a “world order” when we not only have certain general principles, but also institutions to uphold them. The first attempt to establish such an order, undertaken following the Napoleonic Wars at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, can hardly be considered, in the strictest sense, the embodiment of true order.
Nevertheless, the agreements reached on that occasion helped to reduce the number of wars in Europe for a long time, with the solemn proclamation of the “Holy Alliance”, proposed by the victorious Tsar Alexander I, who sought to unite Russian Orthodox, Austrian Catholics, and Prussian Protestants into an early and rather illusory political and religious “European union”.
The regimes that emerged following the creation of the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945 can claim to have established an “order”; but the former did not prevent the world from plunging into a new global conflict 20 years after the first, while the UN, by contrast, managed to secure seven decades of peace among the great powers (though this has at times been maintained through bitter rivalries on the global periphery).
The principles in both instances were similar: sovereignty, non-interference in the affairs of other countries, the right of self-determination, and even the foundational concepts of the humanistic doctrine of human rights.
In the period between the two world wars, the world was, to use a term very much in vogue today, “multipolar” much like the one envisioned by Vladimir Putin in his 2007 Munich speech, which marked a turning point in Russian foreign policy over the last 20 years.
After 1919, the order encompassed aggressive, defensive, and isolationist powers: some relied on force, others on bilateral agreements, and still others on maintaining distance from the epicentre of a potential conflict. Consequently, as the order gradually dissolved, large-scale clashes became inevitable.
After 1945, a completely different situation emerged: two blocs rapidly crystallised around two ideologically opposed superpowers. Each power established its own sphere of influence and articulated a set of clear, compelling principles and slogans.
The end of the Cold War swiftly transformed a black-and-white world into one of “fifty shades of grey,” as Inozemtsev notes. It became apparent that, in the era of globalisation, the doctrine of human rights, divorced from the framework of the nation-state, can be used with equal effectiveness to justify diametrically opposed ideas.
Examples include the perceived necessity of toppling an Islamist regime that enforces an “overly rigid” adherence to Muslim customs, versus the imposition of those same traditions (such as specific forms of dress) upon Muslim migrants in Europe, in the name of multiculturalism.
Meanwhile, the Western world has rapidly lost its ideological unity; while the Cold War era was characterised by “two Europes and one West,” the post-Cold War period has seen the emergence of “one Europe, but two Wests.”
According to the economist, the global spread of the market economy has served as a massive “smokescreen,” obscuring the profound differences in the political and social systems of the major players.
Amidst talk of globalisation and interdependence, the world is returning to a polycentric order, lacking a single hegemon, much like the world that existed in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In that era, wars generally required neither justification nor authorisation, much as they require none in the chaotic world of the 21st century.
The notion that individual powers – whether the United States, China, or Russia, are striving to dismantle the existing world order and replace it with a new one that better serves their own interests – does not seem particularly convincing.
Based on his observations, Inozemtsev envisions three scenarios that are likely to shape the world in which we will live. None of these scenarios involves the restoration of institutions like the UN, whose decline has become patently obvious.
The first is a state of “global chaos”, which is very likely to grow. Unilateral actions by major powers, occurring against a backdrop of profound uncertainty regarding many international norms, are creating a veritable “vortex of chaos”.
Even nations that initially opposed Israeli and US strikes against Iran are being drawn into this “coalition of the decisive”, and it remains unclear how various countries will respond to the issue of Taiwan.
The official position of Western countries is that Taiwan is part of China. Opposing its “reunification”, should it occur, would be far harder than opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but neither are they unwilling to accept it.
A distinct response to the growing chaos will likely be the “regionalisation of order”, an attempt to build institutions that ensure its maintenance within a relatively limited space.
The second scenario is that of the “fragmentation of order”. If order cannot be established on a global scale, an attempt can be made to create it within individual regions.
Existing structures can serve as a counterweight to chaos and as points of consolidation; currently, the European Union is the most advanced in this regard, having spent over half a century consolidating supranational norms across a single continent, though Central Asia is also moving decisively in a similar direction.
A third trend, noted by many experts, is the emergence of a “new bipolarity”, a restoration of a bipolar order, with the key difference that America’s adversary is now China.
The two powers possess distinct ideologies, conflicting geopolitical ambitions, and their own respective allies and satellites, much like the rivalry seen during the Cold War. At the same time, they remain deeply economically intertwined, which lowers the likelihood of a direct conflict.
For many nations, the singular roles played by the United States and China could serve as an effective mechanism for each superpower to manage its own allies, thereby reducing the potential for conflict among countries of the “second world”.
Against the backdrop of these scenarios, it is hard to place Russia, a wild card in the midst of universal chaos, much as it has been throughout both its distant and recent history.
It might be an “eternal” friend to China that keeps it on a short leash without fully addressing its needs, or it might be a “Eurasian” Russia that returns to a dystopian union with Europe, particularly if leaders or movements more “friendly” towards Moscow were to come to power.
The result would be a complex, hard-to-decipher formula: one Europe, two Wests, and two Easts.
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