Nagy: What 'rules-based' international order?
One of the major tenets of current U.S. foreign policy is to preserve the “Rules Based” international order in the face of our global competitor China’s efforts to replace it. Supposedly this “order” is maintained through the major multinational institutions established by the winners of WWII – the U.S., England, Russia, France, and China - who then ended up as the permanent members of the newly created United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The United Nations (UN) and its composite agencies are tasked with maintaining global peace and security, protecting human rights, providing humanitarian aid, and supporting global development. Other key organizations created after WWII include the World Health Organization (WHO), charged with preventing and responding to health emergencies, and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, tasked with promoting economic development and financial stability. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995 and charged with enforcing global trading rules to promote rising global living standards, creating jobs, and preventing unfair trade practices. The great majority of nations belong to these organizations. For example, there are 164 nations in the WTO representing 98% of global trade.
How is all that working out? I thought about this when I heard our ambassador to the UN, for whom I have the greatest admiration given what she must deal with, applaud the UNSC decision to accept Kenya’s offer to send forces to help end Haiti’s long suffering from gang violence. She called the decision “historic” and said the mission “speaks to the UN's ability to galvanize collective action.” Sorry, but this effort is a "day late and a dollar short!" The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, with the UN not lifting a finger to help. Only when Kenya, an African country, stepped forward voluntarily – because no Western hemisphere nation was willing to help – was any action taken. And how about other major recent crises: did the “rules-based international order” solve any of them? Consider just a few: the decades-long conflict in the Eastern Congo; Serbia vs Kosovo; the Northern Ethiopian war; the Sudan conflict; various coups in Africa; Myanmar’s brutality; Somalia’s decades-long anarchy; and, in recent days, Azerbaijan violently expelling 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh; etc. etc. Then there is Russia’s continuous aggression over several decades – in Georgia, in Crimea, and most recently, its attack on Ukraine, in total contempt of the UN’s foundational principles.
The most egregious case is China; the world’s supreme bully and hypocrite, which talks about following international rules but breaks them all. China took advantage of a weak and slow-moving WTO to destroy industries in the US and put millions of Americans out of work, along with stealing US trade secrets and subsidizing its own industries and exports, all while blaming the US for “imperialism.” Politically, China threatens its neighbors in the South China Sea by declaring its own borders, ignoring international court rulings, fortifying islands, and sending its navy against nations fishing in their own waters. And, of course, it threatens to conquer Taiwan by force. All with impunity and zero consequences.
The institutions created to uphold a “rules-based” international order have atrophied and failed. They were supposed to produce results. Instead, they have become process-focused and excel at holding meetings and conferences at expensive venues, delivering speeches, issuing anodyne statements and powerless resolutions, and producing voluminous reports. No wonder taxpayers are disgusted.
So where do we go from here? There are limited options, especially realistic ones. The least difficult course is to follow our current policy and go on pretending that there is a “rules based” international order which we must defend from China’s ambitions to first dominate it, and eventually replace it with its own version. This would involve the US putting greater effort and resources into influencing these institutions, maybe adding more members to the UNSC, and revising some of the operating rules for organizations like the WTO. A much more difficult solution would be to admit that the current global institutions, created to enforce international norms, are broken and dysfunctional and need to be replaced. Since all permanent UNSC members would have to agree, this approach may be impossible.
What I believe most likely will happen is that we (collectively) continue to pretend that the current broken system is working but fail to prevent or address global crises. This will lead to exactly the type of system China and Russia want, and which resembles the world that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In such a world, the major powers (US, China, Russia) could act with impunity, especially in their regions. Middle powers such as the EU, Brazil, India, Turkey, Iran, etc. would dominate their neighborhoods. Smaller and developing nations would be at the mercy of the more powerful. There would be no rules, except for the influence and constraints the major powers would exert on each other and the rest of the world. Such a world would, as did the world of the early 1900s, eventually end in a major conflagration. WWI rearranged the global order then; a global conflict today would be exponentially worse. As Yogi Berra said: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Rules do matter, but they must be enforced.
Ambassador Tibor Nagy was most recently Assistant Secretary of State for Africa after serving as Texas Tech’s Vice Provost for International Affairs and a 30-year career as a US Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter @TiborPNagyJr
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Nagy: What 'rules-based' international order?
