An unravelling world order

The real purpose of the world order established primarily by the US-led West in the aftermath of World War II, behind the facade of the maintenance of international peace and security and high-sounding slogans of international economic cooperation and promotion of human rights, was to perpetuate the Western global domination under the leadership of the US.

This word order is now unravelling, in large part because of the body blows delivered to it by the Western countries themselves and the potent challenge posed by China’s dramatic rise.

The UN was established in 1945 with the ostensible purpose of strengthening international peace and security. However, the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security lay with the Security Council where no decision could be taken without the approval of its five permanent members. Three of those permanent members were Western countries including the US, UK, and France. Thus, the overwhelming power in the Security Council lay with the US-led West.

The UN General Assembly by and large was reduced to the status of a debating society with no powers to enforce its decisions in the domain of international peace and security. In short, whereas the maintenance of international peace and security was projected as the main moral purpose of the UN, the pursuit of this goal was closely circumscribed by the dictates of great power politics, particularly the interests of the US-led West.

During the cold war, there were several examples when the Western countries violated the principles of the UN Charter through overt and covert means whenever their national interests demanded. In 1953, the government of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown through a covert CIA operation in violation of the UN principle of avoiding interference in the internal affairs of states. In 1956, following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Egypt, Britain, France and Israel invaded it to take control of the Suez Canal in a blatant violation of Egyptian sovereignty.

After Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, there were several failed CIA-supported attempts to overthrow his government. In 1973, a CIA-aided coup led by General Pinochet overthrew the government of President Allende. There were several other instances of American involvement in regime-change operations in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East during the cold-war era.

The unipolar moment after the end of the cold war, during which the US reigned supreme at the global level, encouraged it to undertake overt and covert operations in different parts of the world which violated the principles of the UN Charter. The most blatant example was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.

In addition, in many cases the policies of the US and its Western allies in pursuit of their narrow national interests weakened peace and security at regional and global levels, thereby robbing the UN of its real moral purpose. The Western countries’ support of Israel in its aggressive policies against the Palestinians and their attempts to maintain their stranglehold on the energy resources of the Middle East need to be seen in this context.

The World Bank and IMF were established after World War II to promote international cooperation in economic and financial fields. But the dominant voting power of the Western countries in these institutions enabled them to use them for promoting their own interests and exercise excessive influence over policies of the developing countries in economic and financial fields. No major decision in these bodies can be taken without the support of the Western powers. It is not without reason that through a gentlemen’s agreement the president of the World Bank is always an American and the managing director of the IMF is always a European, and the headquarters of both are in Washington, DC.

A group of distinguished scholars including Stephen G Brooks, G John Ikenberry, and William C Wohlforth in an article in the Foreign Affairs issue of January-February 2013 recognised that “today’s rules and institutions came about under its (the US) auspices and largely reflect its interests, and so they are in fact tailor-made for soft balancing by the United States itself.” They further pointed out that the US has used its global domination “to structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular economic interests”. Therefore, according to them, the US likes the current structure of the IMF. Further, the US political domination helps keep the dollar in place as the world’s preferred reserve currency providing an enormous advantage to the US.

Since the existing global political and economic order is heavily tilted in favour of the US and other Western powers, it is inevitable that as China’s economic, technological and military power grows, it will seek to modify the rules of the existing world order to make them more even-handed and provide a fair opportunity for the accommodation of China’s interests.

On the other hand, since these rules were laid down precisely to give an advantage to the US-led West, it is likely to resist the Chinese attempts to modify them. The developments in the South China Sea reflect this tussle for power and influence between the two sides. The Western opposition to the BRI, the huge Chinese initiative for reconstruction and development in Eurasia and Africa, is again rooted in this global contest.

The world order established in the aftermath of World War II is, thus, unravelling because of two main reasons. It is increasingly seen as having lost its main moral purpose of promoting international peace and security, international economic cooperation, and human rights. Instead, it is seen as a tool in the hands of the Western countries to be used in pursuit of their narrow national interests. Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections and his MAGA policies espousing triumph of nationalism over multilateralism, power politics over international morality, transactionalism over ideology, and restrictive trade policies over a liberal trade regime have strengthened such apprehensions.

Second, as explained above China’s dramatic economic and military rise over the past four decades has posed a potent challenge to the existing world order. If China’s rise continues at the fast pace witnessed in the past, it inevitably will lead to drastic changes in the prevailing world order to reflect the new strategic realities. However, since the US-led West is determined to resist such changes, the transformation of the world order will be a gradual process spread over several decades.

Pakistan’s policymakers must study the changes in the offing affecting the world order and their implications for Pakistan’s security and economic well-being. A politically stable and economically self-reliant Pakistan on the path of rapid economic progress is an inescapable necessity in coming to grips with the challenges and uncertainties of the emerging inhospitable and anarchic international environment.

Strengthening Pakistan’s strategic and economic relationship with China and a well-crafted regional policy should be the leitmotif of our foreign policy while maintaining friendly relations generally with the rest of the world.

The writer is a retired ambassador and author of ‘Pakistan and a World in Disorder – A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century’. He can be reached at: javid.husain@gmail.com