A World In Disarray

These are actions and policies instituted in a challenging international relationship that are designed to reduce tensions and instill greater confidence between would-be adversaries. They help lower the likelihood of incidents becoming military confrontations and spiraling out of control. Examples of CBMs are hotlines and countries notifying each other in advance of military exercises.

Like the Treaty of Westphalia, this was a gathering of European powers designed to establish relations between countries after an all-consuming period of war. In this case, it came after the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815; Napoleon returned one last time while the Congress was meeting and was defeated by a coalition of forces). The Congress met in Austria, hosted by the influential diplomat Klemens von Metternich. It redrew borders and set in place the balance of power that remained for much of the 19th century.

Haass describes international relations using two terms as defined by academic Hedley Bull of Australia. One is “international society,” which is the state of affairs that exists between nations when they adhere to common rules and policy, working together with some level of agreement about what is expected from each in relation to the others.

Another term from Hedley Bull, the “international system” is basically the reality of what exists in terms of relations between countries. It’s not a result of policy or any formal agreements, but rather comes about organically: Nations naturally interact with each other, and that interaction creates a de facto system.

The author uses this term often throughout the book to characterize the behavior of nations, calling it a crucial part of the idea of order in the world. It refers to the agreement between nations about the rules by which international relations are conducted, in terms of both objectives and methods for achieving them. Haass uses the words “principles” and “process,” respectively, to refer to these two aspects of legitimacy.

Haass explains that two main kinds of order existed after World War II, the balance of power created by the Cold War and the liberal democratic order. The latter had multiple dimensions, including economic, political, and strategic. Trade and economic development were at the heart of it, the idea being that trade would foster ties between nations that worked to maintain stability in the world. Such connections would lead countries to create peaceful solutions to conflicts. Economic development was also thought to influence political systems, as countries would elect more democratic systems over communist ones. Even after the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the liberal democratic order continued.

This is a foreign policy strategy that links cooperation in one aspect of relations to cooperation in another. For example, economic policy might be connected to human rights issues. This was an approach used by the United States toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but Haass believes it should not be used today regarding relations with China. Instead, he argues, areas of cooperation should be nurtured and expanded even though other areas of profound disagreement may exist.

This was a kind of doctrine during the Cold War that referred to the ability of both the United States and the Soviet Union to destroy each other with nuclear weapons. Because they both possessed a formidable stockpile and the weapons were so devastating, a sort of standoff existed. MAD acted as a deterrent because neither side dared to attempt any risky action that might draw a nuclear response.

This is the defense alliance between North American countries and (originally) Western European countries that was created in the wake of World War II and formalized in 1949. A key aspect of the Cold War, NATO was formed largely to protect member states from attack by the Soviet Union and the states under its control (members of the Warsaw Pact). After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, membership in NATO expanded to other nations in Europe, even those that had formerly been part of the Warsaw Pact.

This is when one state intervenes militarily in another state to prevent an imminent military threat by the latter. This is seen as acceptable if the intervening state has legitimate proof that the threat is imminent. This wording was often misapplied to the Iraq War in 2003, which the author explains was actually a preventive intervention because the threat Iraq posed to the United States was not imminent.

This type of intervention is when a state takes military action against another intended to prevent a “gathering” threat. Haass defines this as a threat that may materialize in the future but is not imminent. When the United States attacked Iraq in 2003, for example, the threat was seen to be Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons—something that was not imminent. Unlike preemptive intervention, this kind of action is not deemed acceptable in foreign relations: Too many governments see “gathering threats” in too many places, and acting on them would lead to indiscriminate interference in other countries’ affairs.

The R2P doctrine stems from a government attacking its own people or failing to protect them from another entity’s attack. International relations have long been predicated only on what one state does that affects others, with the notion that domestic affairs are its own business. Situations arising in the late 20th century, however, presented a challenge to this approach. An example was the genocide that took place during the Rwandan Civil War in the 1990s, when the Hutu population in control of the government turned on the minority Tutsi population and began murdering them. In response to such incidents, the United Nations declared in 2005 that countries have a “responsibility to protect” their people. Implicit in this doctrine was the idea that the international community could intervene to enforce it.

This idea moves the long-standing concept of sovereignty a step further. Traditionally, sovereignty has meant the rights attached to nationhood. In today’s world, however, Haass believes that sovereignty involves a nation’s obligations to the international community and has coined this term to refer to it. To be clear, this involves relations between governments and is different from the idea of a government’s “responsibility,” which consists of its obligations toward its own people. It applies to all nations, not just great powers.

This is a well-known term named for the Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the fifth century BCE. He wrote about how the rise of the upstart city-state Athens against the established and powerful Sparta led to the Peloponnesian War. The “trap” referred to in the name stands for the difficulty of avoiding this pattern: A newer power on the world scene is often taken as a threat by one or more older powers, which can easily result in military conflict. Such was the case at the turn of the 20th century, when a rising Germany clashed with Great Britain (and others), culminating in World War I. Today, experts see the danger of China and the United States repeating this pattern.

This was the treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and serves as the starting point for the author’s discussion of world order. It brought to a close a contentious period of turmoil in Europe in which states constantly fought to influence what happened within each other’s borders (based on both religious beliefs and political concerns). The treaty established what Haass calls the “classical view of order” (23), in which nations left internal affairs to each other and sought only to coordinate foreign policy through peaceful means. That is, the notion of sovereignty became absolute, with each country respecting others’ borders.

This was a defense alliance between the Soviet Union and nations in its sphere of influence, often called the Eastern bloc countries. These included Poland, East Germany, Romania, and Hungary, among others. This was seen as the counterpart to NATO, each side protecting its members from any aggression by the opposing side. It was signed and enacted in 1955 and dissolved in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union.