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History is riddled with too many instances of turmoil unnecessarily caused by, for example, global leaders blinking in a contestation among themselves, or out of sheer ignorance of key historical lessons. Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler could conquer continental Europe because existing powers (in the famous European balance-of-power system) were too weak or distracted (Great Britain, for example, carried an increasing imperial burden to lay all its eggs on European developments). Russia, Germany, Japan and Italy became world powers briefly, in that order, during the 19th and 20th centuries because of the same power vacuum (under, respectively, Tsar Alexander I's armies occupying Paris in 1814 that the Soviet Union could never manage much later, Otto von Bismarck dictating peace to Adolphe Thiers of France in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in 1871, Emperor Meiji with both China during 1894-5 and Russia during 1904-5, and Benito Mussolini's New Roman Empire in the 1930s). Between the two world wars, Great Britain could not, and the United States would not, pick up the leadership mantle, resulting in both a devastating depression and the world's most extensive war.
The Soviet collapse from the late 1980s left us with too many illusions we still have not dusted off. One was the Kantian belief that the decline and death of communism automatically meant surging democracy the world over (encapsulated in President George H.W. Bush's "New World Order" dictum). Since democracies do not fight each other, theoretically we stood as close to eliminating war in the 1990s as ever. Francis Fukuyama's brilliant mind even predicted an "end of history" since, without war, there would be little else newsworthy. Another was the "Siamese twins" fallacy: if there was democracy, its twin, that is, a market economy, would soon follow. That it did, but only in the 1990s, before petering out. A third was that, now the United States was a "superpower," the world's first and only, it could not combat or quash other fountains of disruption alone, so it was pointless for any other country to pursue an arms race with it.
As everyone knows, the 21st Century buried all those hopes, beginning with 9/11 and dramatically exposing new sources of threats that no preparations had even been made against. When terrorism slowly bred fortress-mindedness across many parts of the world, particularly along the Atlantic shores, democracy received a fatal blow, but those after-effects will haunt us for much of the rest of this century: too many gooks and goons have been swept into power on the fair name of democracy for us to do nothing but wince (Rodrigo Duterte, Nicolas Maduro, and Vladimir Putin; then there is military intervention in Thailand; and so forth). Then came the Great Recession (2008-11), smashing the bastions of a free market economy, and particularly ravishing the service sector (including finance, investment, real estate, the bond market, and thereby the trade markets). We are still reeling from them, and no escape route is in sight: some countries will be overcome, others will barely hand on, and those that glow will do so but briefly, meaning that net growth is not to be expected soon enough.
Do these destabilising dynamics predict conflict, and if they do, can some counterforce rescue the international system in the way the Congress of Vienna did in 1815, the Berlin Concert of Europe did in 1878, the Paris Peace Conferences did during 1919-20, and both the atomic bomb and U.S. troops did with World War II? The realistic answers to those questions are "yes" and "no," respectively. Welcome to an age that will give "ambiguity" a new glow.
Evident most robustly in the South China Sea spar, China is challenging the only viable leader, the United States, in the old-fashioned way: usurping real estate unilaterally, breeding the Quadrilateral Security Partnership between the United States, Australia, India, and Japan in retaliation, and inviting the opportunist Vladimir Putin's Russia to also brazenly choose the Chinese side. All these while holding on to the U.S., Japanese and Australian markets, in order of size, as bastions of its growth. Other spoilsports also find their juices flowing. Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, which is the country most threatened by China's aggressive behaviour in the adjacent sea, and thereby the country most likely to benefit the most from U.S. support, decided instead to inflame relations with President Barack Obama's United States by fanning flames with China. Though he claimed talking with "God" on his October 2016 return-trip from Japan, his vigilantes continue marauding the country irreligiously, a practice that might not be reined in when his time will be over (and that it will be over, there is no doubt, soon, at that). These exemplify how slippery a world we now live in, with so many untutored leaders.
Born after World War II, and therefore without a Cold War mindset, Obama typifies one type of U.S. leaders, like Bill Clinton, most vulnerable to those aforementioned 1990s illusions. He campaigned against war in 2008, and to the very last year of his tenure, has been most reluctant to go to any battlefield. That was enough to get him scarred, in Syria, Ukraine, and now the South China Sea. There seems to be no way that a U.S. president can push a peace platform, like he sought, let alone win a Nobel Peace Prize, like he did, against the institutions of war, not just what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called, in January 1961, the military-industrial complex, but also a public mindset so used to masochistic displays. There seems to be no way a "cat" (global player) can even go to sleep (retreat from the fortresses) in her own den (the global stage) with so many mice (free riding or spoiled countries) just waiting to nibble away her meal (resources/claims).
If this is how the script was previously written, remember the grand finale each time has been with the forces of decency, that is peace in 1815, self-determination in 1919, democracy/capitalism in 1945, as well as the Kantian "mother of all dreams" of cosmopolitan law prevailing in the 1990s. So will it be at the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century: like Obama, too many people have been born in times of peace, or with hopes of peace even in battle-scarred countries, and with too much at stake, to drift too far too long from the mainstream. Dictators and spoilsports will come, but when they go, little will be left to gracefully remember them by. Those that have the right intentions, but faced foul weather might find a more welcoming future shadow, although this might still fall short of the more institutionalised peace, of roughly half a century, after World War II. Decency will come, but unfortunately, only in spurts, never to stay for good.
After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States took over global stewardship in their different ways; and though tensions piled high, even involving brinkmanship (Cuban missile crisis, 1962), proxy wars (Vietnam (1954-74), and encouraging "friendly" dictators, they never reached the attrition level of the previous half-century. Unfortunately, no robust country can (or will) take up the leadership mantle currently: many believe they have the right formula to do so, but none can claim ample followers to demonstrate that. The result has been a world broken up into rival pockets: the "fat cats" (Obama's term applied to big business corporations, but used here for "great powers") remain as strident with each other as the opportunist countries play one off against another to reap benefits. Such a wheel has been spinning for too long to immediately or easily stop. Without a peace dividend snowballing in equal measure, chances of brinkmanship with mediocre leaders keep getting better.
Where does that leave us all? Clearly, a circumscription of sorts is underway, at the individual level, but at every other level leading up to the state and global (more goods will be wanted, for example, but a push-button will get them for us rather than us visiting our previously favourite stores/malls); circumscription narrows relations (meaning that though we will continue to explore the "unknown" in our open-ended way, only the "known" will receive more time, attention, and resources, like Russia is doing with East European countries, Great Britain with Europe, and the European Union with the rest of the world); and closeting will boost conspiracies (fed by the WikiLeaks type of newspaper leaks, or agitators distorting historical tendencies, like a Donald Trump or Duerte). Too many of them at too local levels may shift attention, time and resources from the state level, but that will only energise spoilsports to step in and reap the harvests of an international leadership vacuum. As we brace ourselves for more Trumps, it pays to also keep space for more Trudeaus, that is, a person who promotes unification, diversification, inclusiveness, and cheerfulness the way Justin has been doing in Canada since last year (a multicultural cabinet, for example), and Pierre did throughout the late-1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s (instituting the multicultural act, initiating environmental controls, and weakening the Atlantic Alliance by balancing relations with China and other hostile countries).
Dr. Imtiaz A. Hussain is Professor & Head of the newly-built Department of Global Studies & Governance at Independent University, Bangladesh.
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