Let me first explain the main concepts that I will use in this lecture. These are the concepts of “transformation”, “international order”, and “unipolarity”, and in a broader sense – with regard to the alternatives to unipolarity – the terms bipolarity, multipolarity or non-polarity . Although they are used loosely, and in this use in public discourse they acquire various meanings – as well as lose clarity – many books have been written on each of these concepts. For those of us who are professionally involved in international relations, international order and foreign policies, these are fundamental concepts.
Actors – including states – often making mistakes in relation to their own self-proclaimed objectives. Sometimes, they act violently when they conclude that they cannot achieve their objectives in other ways.
DEJAN JOVIĆ, FOREIGN POLICY FORUM PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD
The term “transformation” is used here to describe the process of continuous changes that create new forms from the same material. It is the reshaping of something, with the awareness that perhaps those who reshape do not have a vision of the final of even desirable form at all, or that the vision they have is secondary to the need to react to the visions and actions of others, and to protect their own national interests. They do not expect matter itself to disappear, nor for us to abandon it as spent, unfashionable or unnecessary – for example, so that the international order disappears and is replaced by a permanent state of anarchy. It is a continuous dynamic interaction, in which – in this case – states participate, but also other actors: international security networks, international organizations, multinational corporations, international media, global trade processes, etc. There is no – and never will be – agreement among them about what they want to change and how. Ideas and interests, goals and manners in which individual actors want to transform the existing situation into something new constantly collide. Actors – including states – often making mistakes in relation to their own self-proclaimed objectives. Sometimes, they act violently when they conclude that they cannot achieve their objectives in other ways.
If transformation is more organized and planned, we talk about transition. The transition at least has a clear beginning, if not a clear end. It begins when the old order can no longer be maintained, and the new one cannot yet be established. Unlike transformation, which is continuous and rather unpredictable, transition is usually limited in duration. It lasts from the beginning of the end of the old order to the end of the beginning of the new. To be successful, it must involve the transfer of power from the hands of the old elites to the hands of the new ones. In order for this transfer to be organized and peaceful, non-violent, it is necessary to create a transition pact. Such a pact must be created by moderate forces of the old order and moderate forces of the new order. Their main task is to marginalize the extremists on both sides. Moderate politicians of the old order must be capable to prevent extreme (radical) politicians of the old order from using violence to prevent the transition of power. At the same time, the moderate politicians of the new ruling forces must be able to prevent the extremists (revolutionaries) in the new elite, in order to prevent revenge and bloodshed after the changes take place. Each bloodshed creates new, deep and permanent divisions, thus making it impossible to stabilize the new order.
The changes we see in contemporary international relations look more like transformation than transition. The outlines of the new world are not yet visible, but the prevailing belief is that the old one can no longer be sustained. Moreover, it seems that the situation will last a long time, that it will not end soon.
For example, writing in the magazine China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies last year on the transformation of the international order, Mehdi Sanaei concludes that a long interim period is ahead of us, in which the old order will be weakened but will continue to exist, and a new one will not be formed.
The last time there was a change in the character of the international order – and that was with the end of the Cold War – it was still more about transition than about transformation (in the sense in which I have described it here). The old, bipolar, order collapsed quickly, primarily due to the suicidal collapse of the Soviet Union and then the dissolution of its main instrument for maintaining power in Europe: the Warsaw Pact. The speed with which it happened caught many, including Western countries, by surprise. At one point, it even seemed that the West was worried about the consequences of the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe. The West was not ready for the end of the Cold War – so, for example, it did not act as expected in the new circumstances, by dissolving NATO and withdrawing from Europe. This, as we see today, was one of the reasons for the renewal of the idea of bipolarity in Europe, through opposition to NATO, primarily by Russia – admittedly not immediately, not during Yeltsin’s time, and not even at the very beginning of Putin’s rule in Russia, but only after the first serious crises of the liberal order, which was proclaimed with the thesis that liberalism and democracy “have no alternative” because even in the world of ideas it is not possible to even imagine a better, different world. That, it turned out, was an illusion. History has no end, and it never stops. The key moment of that transformation – from the order that Charles Krauthammer in 1990 called the “unipolar moment”, towards something new, post-unipolar – was Putin’s speech at the Munich conference in 2007.
Unfortunately, the unexpected and rapid transition that occurred in 1989 also created a moment of chaos and anarchy, in which Southeastern Europe, or the Balkans, suffered particularly. In it, not only did Yugoslavia collapse, as well as its main multinational republics (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia), but the new global hegemon hesitated to perform the role that was assigned to it – the role of a guarantor of security and stability. Many paid for this hesitation with their lives in the period from 1991 to 1995, and later – until 1999. An unexpected and unprepared transition, therefore, can leave deep and tragic consequences. This is a lesson that we should have learned from the past situation – so that it does not happen again. The consequences of the collapsing of the old international order are not the same for all countries. On the peripheries, at the points of contact of previous spheres of interest and spheres of power, there are greater risks of creating a gap through which countries can sink into violence and instability. For these countries, it is especially important that the transition is done in an orderly manner, in order to establish a new order that could ensure peace when the states cannot or do not want to.
I also mentioned the concept of “international order”. That order is never as solid or as stable as the domestic political order, simply because there is no world state. Realists in international relations even hesitate to use it, speaking rather about the international arena – not about the order. And indeed, even in the bipolar system of the Cold War, there were also third powers, as well as zones where bipolarism was not present. Bipolarism was not as solid and solid as described in the theory. The existence of the Third World, the functioning of a group of non-aligned and neutral countries (even in Europe), the existence of non-aligned states, or of rogue states, those that pursued their own ideological and religious projects (e.g., through the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979) – all of these were manifestations of a departure from bipolarity. And even while it lasted, conflicts arose within alliances dominated by the hegemon, such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Even in the era of the “unipolar moment,” there was no perfect unipolarism or hegemony of just one power—the United States. By using the word “moment” to describe the new state of affairs, realists essentially acknowledged that unipolarity would not last forever. A unipolar power always invites (or provoke) others to resist and unite to establish equilibrium by forming a counter-power. The rise of anti-Americanism in the world in the 2000s, whether by Russia or China, or by Islamic movements and similar anti-Western attempts—shows that opposition to the world hegemon cannot be stopped. Although the United States was the most powerful in its and world history during that period, the strongest unipolarity existed during that period in Europe, where the European Union became a powerful unipolar hegemon, preventing all alternatives.
This leads me to define the term “polarity”. What are the poles in international relations? Poles are forms of organization of international relations shaped by great powers that establish their order, promoting not only their values as the only ones to be protected, but also creating institutions, rules and customs, conventions and other forms of international law, which become obligatory for all those included in their “pole”. Poles are forms of organizing both hard and soft and smart power. They are institutions of territorial control, and forms of connecting similar countries in order to become more powerful in the international arena. Only great powers can organize the poles. However, not all great powers try to organize the poles, or even organizations such as pacts and alliances around them. Some countries consider alliances and pacts unnecessary or even harmful to their national interests. They prefer to act unilaterally, alone – or, when they need allies, through ad hoc, temporary and unstructured coalitions (for example: “coalitions of the willing”) to act in a specific case, that is, in a specific military or political action. Great powers are powerful because can decide for themselves when alliances are beneficial and when they are harmful. They sometimes find that grand strategies are also sometimes limiting. As Henry Kissinger once said – America is not powerful because it has a grand strategy, but because it has great power. It may decide for itself when and what it will ignore and tolerate – and what it will not. It has the ability to intervene when it wants to and not to intervene when it deems it more convenient.
Today, we live in an era of intense transformation of the international order, which looks more like non-order or even disorder – chaos without rules, in a era of marginalization of existing alliances and customs, rather than the institutionalization of a strategy or even a vision of the future order. This is exactly what creates uncertainty and insecurity, in which small countries that have neither the ability nor the ambition to shape the international order themselves often do not find their way, and in which they feel unprotected and threatened. They try to get out of the chaos, so as not to suffer the negative consequences of the transformation, but at the same time they ask themselves – what will the future order look like, who will decisively shape it and how to adapt to the future order? They ask themselves first of all: will the new order be a new unipolarism, or bipolarism or multipolarism or a non-polar order?
There is no agreement on these issues either in the political or academic sphere. As written in the already mentioned Sanaei’s article, one of the possibilities is a return to unipolarism, in which the American power would continue to be decisive and enormous. William Kindred Winecoff thus – in an article published in 2020 in the European Journal of International Relations – claims that the idea of the “lost hegemony” of the USA is actually a myth. He explains this thesis by the fact that the military, media, financial and political power of the USA and the West in general is still unquestionably large and sufficient to shape the behavior of all other actors. Other authors, such as Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth (in an article in Foreign Affairs (2016)) dispute the idea that China will overtake the US in any of these respects. China, moreover, shows no desire to form its own alliances or impose its own values on others in the world. Russia – particularly with its war against Ukraine – has weakened its position to the point where it is much harder to be a friend of Russia today than it was before 2014 or even before 2022. It has remained a “ spoiler” power “, capable of disturbing or disrupting the US and the West, but not of establishing its own alternative order.
This assessment, however, is not shared by some of the leading theorists of international order, such as the (now deceased) Kenneth Waltz and Zbignew Brzezinski, or John Ikenberry. They do see the rise of alternative powers, however, pointing to the global rise of China, as well as India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia, which are becoming powerful regional powers. There is also Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others – which behave quite independently. Turkey is a particularly interesting case – a country that is in NATO and often behaves differently from the USA in issues that are important to it, such as Syria or Iran. Let’s remember Ahmet Davutoglu and his book “Strategic Depth”, in which he promotes Turkey as a regional power that should stop being a pendant of the USA and must become the most influential country in the so-called Afro-Eurasia. In such countries, turning to oneself has the function of raising one’s status. This is possible only by forming the so-called megaregions, regions that an aspiring great power forms with the desire to influence them. And then, of course, there is the European Union, which today realizes that it will have to further emancipate itself from the US: either because it wants to or because the US is moving away from it. I will say more about this later in this lecture.
Some of these authors claim that a new bipolar world is being created – where China rises above the others and everyone associates with it. The rest are weak, quarreling with each other or even at war. Those who are convinced of a bipolar future of the world talk about the division into West and the Rest, and indicate that the real winner of the wars in Ukraine and Iran will be – China, or – in a broader sense – Asia and Africa. They announce that the 21st century will become the century of the East, with Russia not belonging to the East but located between the West and the East.
Those who enter wars weaken their position – because it is easier to start a war than to end it. Unfinished wars are exhausting, while aggressive wars call into question the reputation and moral standing of those who start them. Perhaps more can indeed be achieved by banks than by tanks. Great powers sometimes fall into the “imperial trap,” not knowing when to stop. They often overestimate their own power. They act more like offensive rather than defensive realists – they deal with issues that can have negative consequences for their power. Therefore, says Cliff Kupchan, director of the Institute for Eurasian Studies, China will rise to the level of power that the United States has, partly because the power of the United States will weaken, as will the position of Russia. China’s policy of “peaceful rise,” if it remains peaceful, will promote and upgrade it to the other pole of the new world order. If this happens, if Chinese technology continues to advance in the way it has in recent decades, if the liberal-democratic framework and its global dominance continue to be questioned – China will be able to ask the question: who, in fact, won in 1989: the West or the East? Capitalism or communism? Perhaps it is indeed too early to make a final judgment on this.
But there are also reasons to be cautious in assessing China’s growth. Its growth is slowing, and China itself shows no great desire to extend its power to the entire world. Regardless of the connections through the Belt and Road, China rejects universalist ideas and intentions, and is also wary of becoming hated, which is always the fate of the world’s largest power. It is better to be Pepsi Cola than Coca Cola, because Coca Cola is a symbol of Western capitalist domination, so all the hatred of others is concentrated against it – while no one touches Pepsi Cola. Sometimes more can be achieved in the shadows than in the position of global leader.
That is why some authors believe that the new world will be more multipolar or even non-polar than unipolar or bipolar. Stephen Walt is of the opinion that the global hegemony of the West has never been as strong as it is thought. Also, potential rivals of the West have no interest in connecting with China and placing themselves under its influence. In the modern world, there are strong networks in which powerful non-state actors participate. Contemporary security today is more connected with participation in these international networks than in classical international organizations or through the control of the international order. The role of international organizations is weakening, so it seems as if there is no order. However, states can no longer fight for their goals, but must rely on these “safety nets”. Even the US is no longer able to maintain its previous alliances, it acts unilaterally and without coordination, choosing illogical partners – which sometimes play a leading role in this sponsor-client relationship (for example Israel, and in Europe, Hungary). Alliances are changing, increasingly based not only on “common values” but also on pragmatic economic and other interests (as in the new EU – India relations). Alliances “fail” at key moments – for example, when Iran was attacked… (Except for North Korea, which militarily helped Russia in the war with Ukraine); or in the matter of helping Venezuela or tomorrow maybe Cuba. America creates new partnerships (Board of Peace, instead of NATO), undermining the existing ones because they still limit its unilateral power. Strategic thinking has also weakened: in the case of Russia in relation to Ukraine, where the policy of “by banks , not by tanks” is abandoned – and in the case of the USA, in which the power of rational structures that create strategies (of the State Department , the intelligence sector) has been reduced – and they have been greatly weakened internally by the autocratic politics that characterizes the second term of Donald Trump.
In this context, proponents of the thesis that the new world will be non-polar point to the experiment developed by the European Union. The highest degree of structuring, the highest rules, and even the highest ideological cohesion, economic cooperation and legal regulations are currently being developed within it. It is neither a state nor a classic empire, although it also has features that states previously had and those that historically belonged to empires. It has managed to take over numerous functions of statehood, such as money, European borders with third countries, common policies to reduce the differences between rich and poor member states, and even a common higher education system and labor market. The structure of the European Union is far stronger than the structure of the global order, and at the same time, aggressive policies of the struggle for power through wars and attacks on other countries have been avoided.
At one time – in the mid-1990s – Anthony Giddens saw precisely in the European Union model the core for the transformation of the entire international order, believing that it must include global elections and global taxes. He looked at NATO as the future army of the democratized United Nations, believing that the UN General Assembly should be divided into two houses – the lower one, which will represent the citizens of the world (as the European Parliament represents the citizens of the EU) and the senate, in which the states will be represented. Later developments, with de-globalization and re-sovereignization , distanced us from that ideal and that vision. But the crisis in which we are now raises the question of an alternative.
The EU continues to be the most solid actor, despite its limited reach to the countries of the European continent. It has nevertheless managed to: a) stop further decline after Brexit ; b) maintain the institutions it developed on the basis of a liberal concept (ERASMUS, Schengen, Euro); c) maintain a high degree of unity on the issue of Ukraine, as well as on the issue of “strategic autonomy” in relation to the USA; while at the same time successfully avoiding torpedoing individual countries that disagree with the majority – through the opt-out policy , and d) preserve peace on a continent over which wars are being waged.
In a world of weakening international organizations and agreements, the EU acts as a very solid system – both ideologically and geopolitically. It has gained clear “Others” (enemies) – which nevertheless somewhat homogenizes the Self , the identity of Europe as the guardian of liberal values and peace, democracy and procedural rules. The resilience of the EU and its solidarity with its member states are all the more impressive when one considers the new situation – with two major wars in its immediate neighbourhood, and the democratic character of the government in the member states, which however always leaves some room for change and thus for the disruption of the unity of the Union. The EU is currently successfully fighting against the nationalism of its members, and against pro-Russian and pro-American (pro- Trumpist ) forces that have not managed – for now – to take control of any member state, regardless of partial successes in some. There is greater fragmentation within the US than within the EU. In Russia, fragmentation is prevented by force and firm control over the entire society.
The aggressive policies of the US and Russia weaken their power – because they have so far been unsuccessful or only partially successful in their implementation. Without the use of nuclear weapons, they do not have the advantage that exists on paper, which stems from the status of nuclear powers. Will this encourage them to use this – ultimate – “argument”, so as not to look like a “paper tiger”? At the same time, the soft power as well as the moral power of these two powers has significantly weakened. They have lost some former allies or potential allies. It is difficult to be a friend of a country that launches offensive wars. Even in countries where public opinion has a great understanding for the US (e.g. in Albania) or for Russia (e.g. in Serbia) – these countries remain oriented towards EU membership: more so now than before the wars in Ukraine and Iran began. The countries of the Western Balkans today understand the West much more as the European Union than the US – although they are institutionally more connected to the US (through NATO membership, without EU membership), while they are still economically strongly connected to the EU. The geopolitical orientation of their foreign policies places them firmly in Europe, and the possible disintegration of NATO (through the American withdrawal) would further distance them from the USA. The countries of the Western Balkans fear Trump’s unpredictability – and they rely more on European countries (eg France and Germany) and China (eg Serbia) than on the USA for armaments. The EU sees these new trends, so it starts talking about enlargement again – towards which, however, it is still more hesitant than it should be. Countries such as Albania and Serbia – very different in terms of their foreign policy orientations and goals – make additional concessions by proposing to enter the EU even if it means that they will not have all the rights of the members, for example by renouncing the right of veto as well as the right to vote within the Union, at least in the first moment after entering the Union. This shows how much they still care about becoming part of Europe.
When it comes to creating a multipolar world, this option is the most likely, but there are problems here too. Countries that could be actors in such a world as some mini-superpowers are trying to step back from the stage, and some (like Iran) are being attacked. They do not feel safe. They have very different goals and positions. Within each region that they could possibly control (and must, if the world becomes multipolar with more regional hegemons) there is resistance to their new role, and there are proxy countries backed by one of the major superpowers. Until the major wars fought by the major superpowers end, there will be no stability needed to encourage the mini-superpowers to take on their new roles. Countries that want to step back, that pursue a policy of subterfuge – cannot become major actors in international politics.
What is the position of small and medium-sized countries in all this? By small countries we mean those with less than 40 million inhabitants and without a sponsor among any of the great powers. The European Union is an association of such countries – which, for historical reasons and the current limited power they have – have decided to unite in a relatively solid structure in order to achieve their main national interests, among which security is in the first place. The EU is an anti-war project, created on the understanding that the European continent was the scene of the largest wars in the 20th century, and that totalitarian, anti-democratic and authoritarian ideologies and policies developed there, which were defeated – either in World War II or later, with the end of the Cold War (1989). Even those countries that were and are large in European terms and medium-sized in global circumstances – have experienced dramatic defeats, losses of territories and colonies, stigmatization and external restrictions on sovereignty. They therefore correctly concluded that absolute sovereignty of such countries is neither possible nor desirable. They formed their benevolent democratic “empire” in order to become – through the European Union – globally significant countries. If they want to remain so, they must preserve and develop, strengthen and popularize, the European Union.
After 1989, the European Union became the political and economic hegemon of the European continent. It enabled the “rehabilitation” of previously defeated countries, as well as the consolidation of those that gained independence after 1990. It decided to do this by combining a liberally driven domestic policy and a realistically driven idea of realizing one’s own interests. An integral part of this is the policy of intervening in the candidate countries so that they become constructive actors in the Union as a whole. The process of Europeanization and expansion of the Union to the countries of the immediate eastern neighborhood was in accordance with the liberal policy of “democratic peace” and the concept of “liberal interventionism”. Today, this liberal interventionism faces the ” illiberal “, “anti-democratic” interventionism of the great powers neighboring Europe (or even semi-connected with it ): the USA and Russia. Although both of these countries played a crucial role (along with the United Kingdom) in liberating Europe from fascism and Nazism, today they have rejected the policy of friendship with the European Union and represent a threat to it. They have thus called into question both the concepts of Euro-Atlanticism and Eurasianism. While Europe has always had a skeptical attitude towards Russia, it has had illusions towards the US from which it is now freeing itself, primarily through Macron’s policy of “strategic autonomy”. This policy is today pursued under the unspoken but omnipresent slogan “Europe for Europeans”.
In this context, the objectives of the European Union should remain as follows: 1) preserving peace on the European continent; 2) maintaining existing and developing new European Union institutions, which includes more efficient decision-making, probably through the rejection of the principle of unanimity, which gives too much power to potential veto actors, some of whom could perhaps become proxy actors for one of the external great powers; 3) strengthening self-defense security networks within the EU – which also means abandoning the idea of interventionism outside the Union, even when it is “humanitarian” or “liberal”; 4) strengthening the economic power of the Union through pragmatic connections with economies that are strengthening – e.g. India and China, and the Gulf countries; 5) preserving and strengthening the democratic character of all European Union countries, through more active resistance to attempts at de-democratization, so that Europe becomes – if necessary – a “fortress of democratic values”; and 6) increasing and strategically developing “soft power”, i.e. the attractiveness of the European model of governance, which would make it a potential role model for others. Europe can and must cooperate with all those who are oriented towards peace, who fear world wars, and especially with those who develop similar models of governance, based on respect for and expansion of human rights, human security, and thetimeless values of the Enlightenment, which are today under threat.
Multipolarity suits the European Union better than unipolarity and bipolarity, because within that framework it can remain – or perhaps: become – a significant global actor, which must be one of its goals. Europe’s attractiveness to others – whether on the European continent or beyond – lies precisely in the fact that the EU is today the only major global actor that is unquestionably democratic. It can build on this to become even more attractive to everyone outside it.
When it comes to the Western Balkans, it is important that both the EU and the countries in the region understand and accept that they are part of Europe. The term Western Balkans was coined in 1997, but from the very beginning the Western Balkans was not conceived as a permanent but rather a temporary region. It was conceived as a waiting room for membership in the European Union, not as a waiting room for Godot who would never come. These countries are economically, security-wise and politically dependent on the European Union, which should stop hesitating about their admission to membership. They have waited too long, and in that waiting they have become less democratic, more authoritarian, less developed, more corrupt, less European and more confused, while some have even flirted with other actors, such as Russia, China and the USA. These countries must become members of the European Union as soon as possible, no matter how far removed they are from the standards required for membership today compared to 20 years ago. An opportunity was missed then, but it must not be missed today. The risks of their remaining outside the Union are far greater than the risks of their admission to the Union. The Western Balkans were like a tent, a temporary shelter after the devastating earthquake they experienced with the collapse of the previous global order (1989). The tent is welcome as a temporary but not a permanent solution. If they remain outside the Union, their resistance to Europe will increase, their frustration with non-acceptance and misunderstanding will grow – which will benefit Europe’s opponents, not Europe. Only within the Union can they develop as European countries, democratic, peace-oriented and cooperative, ready to contribute to the overall security of the European continent.
Croatia is today a good example of integration into the European Union. However, this integration must also be reflected in its policy towards the enlargement of the Union to the countries of the Western Balkans. A strong and integral European Union is in its interest, even when it seems that for this purpose it must give up some of its specific interests towards a particular country in its immediate neighbourhood. An ox should not be killed for a kilo of meat – and therefore, the interests of the European Union should not be endangered for the sake of an ethnically driven foreign policy through threats of a veto or identity- or historically inspired conditions for membership for these countries. It is logical that every country, including Croatia, takes into account its specific interests. However, there is no greater interest for a small country in Europe than strengthening the European Union. And when it comes to these specific interests, they will be better protected and implemented if the hard borders between the Union and other countries are removed – borders that Croatia maintains today, and which divide even the Croatian citizens, a significant part of whom live outside the European Union. Even from the position of selfish nationalism, which is not weak in Croatia, the entry of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia would be in the interest of Croatia itself.
The world is in turmoil today – and parts of it are at war. It is difficult to say with certainty what it will be like after these wars, after the uncertainty and insecurity that we all feel today. But that does not mean that we do not need to have a vision that distinguishes the desirable from the undesirable, the acceptable from the dangerous, and the useful from the harmful. Evading these questions – the questions of a vision of the future world – sometimes seems like the best option. In foreign policy theory, this option is called quetism. But: what is the point of states that want to be invisible and that do not want to participate in shaping the world? Those who do not want to participate cannot later complain that a world they did not want was created.
