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21 February 2024

Ukraine, Gaza, and the International Order

Faisal Devji

Introduction

The Cold War ended long ago, but our political categories and imaginations still exist in its shadow. We continue to think of international politics in terms of great power competition, for example, and often understand it as a struggle between unipolar and multipolar visions of world order. This is curious, since the end of the Cold War gave rise to powerful new ways of thinking about the international order. Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 bestseller, “The End of History and the Last Man,” for instance, envisioned the future of global politics as a mopping up operation by Western liberalism. And while it 1 was criticized for being triumphalist, his book also betrayed some anxiety about the fate of freedom in a world without real competition. Samuel Huntington’s equally popular 1996 book, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” on the other hand, foresaw the Cold War’s great power competition being replaced by conflicts over cultural and religious identity occurring within and between states in a kind of global civil war. 2 Whatever the merits and demerits of such visions, they had at least recognized the novelty of the post–Cold War situation and proposed ways in which the United States in particular should both understand and take command of it. And yet the Cold War continues to define our political imagination even when the kind of politics that actually defines the international system belies its concepts and prognostications. Given 3 Russia’s post Cold War reduced economic and political power, for instance, the United States and its Western allies did not see the Ukraine war either as a version of great–power competition or a struggle between unipolarity and multipolarity. Supporting Ukraine in what was meant to be a slam–dunk for a unipolar order, nevertheless, has turned into an intractable conflict even without great–power competition. Similarly, the war in Gaza has redirected Western attention to a region it had sought to set aside in order to focus on the immense economic growth of the so-called Indo–Pacific and therefore on China as a potential great power competitor there.

While the United States remains by far the most powerful country in the world, it no longer helms a unipolar order

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which could broaden into regional conflicts, do not represent distractions to the putatively more serious and long–term struggle between unipolarity and multipolarity in defining world order. They put the very idea of such a great power politics into question. While the United States remains by far the most powerful country in the world, it no longer helms a unipolar order despite the economic and military inferiority of its potential competitors. We have seen in the course of both these wars that curtailing the West’s political reach and diminishing, if not demolishing, its hegemony globally does not require great–power competition or multipolarity. And though such a vision of international politics might inform many states outside the West, it is not one that we can see being exercised in the wars that confront us today. On the contrary, it is the role of middle powers and regional politics that seems to determine conflict in the international system, leading to the latter’s transformation in the process.

The United States has been trying to maintain its unipolarity and stave off any threat of a multipolar order since the end of the Cold War. But instead of being confronted by the kind of threats it predicted and expected, it has since the beginning of the new centurybeen compelled to address entirely different ones. First there were the non–state threats of global militancy, with the rise of al-Qaeda and then, as a result of American intervention in the Middle East, of ISIS. These crises, which seemed to play out according to Huntington’s script, allowed the United States to solidify its unipolarity during the War on Terror. But this resulted neither in its hegemony nor even formal dominance of the international system. Indeed, the unilateral deployment of American power did more to dismantle this system than prop it up. Just when the world seemed to have become safe enough for the West to turn its attention to China, however, we had the war in Ukraine and then, just under two years later, in Gaza. The emerging global order, it appears, is being defined not by great power competition even in some distant future, but by quite different visions of international politics.

The emerging global order is being defined not by great power competition even in some distant future, but by quite different visions of international politics.

The crisis of global politics

In his address to the nation on October 19, President Biden brought together the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to illustrate America’s indispensable role in protecting the international order from threats like Russia and Hamas. It was a strange pairing. 4 Russia, after all, is a vast state with nuclear arms, while Hamas is a non–state organization operating in a small strip of land whose borders, energy, food, and water are controlled by Israel. Perhaps Biden was responding to critics who accused him of hypocrisy in condemning Russian attacks on civilians but not Israeli ones. Yet he was right in putting the two conflicts together, because in both cases the United States and its allies have opted for war rather than the diplomacy, negotiations, and ceasefires that are the only means of bringing about a peaceful resolution to conflict. These mustapparently wait until the enemy has been sufficiently degraded to accept the terms they prefer. But this strategy has failed in Ukraine and is unlikely to succeed for Israel.

The similarity of the West’s response to conflict in Eastern Europe and the Middle East suggests that it is not defined by the specificity of either case, but instead tells us something about the changing structure of American power more generally. In some ways, therefore, our arguments about Russian imperialism or Israeli settler colonialism, to say nothing of genocide, antisemitism or apartheid, are beside the point. Biden is 5 correct in seeing both conflicts as challenges to America’s hegemony and its global politics. Yet it is not the wars themselves that pose a threat to the unipolarity that has defined the international order since the end of the Cold War, but rather the unwillingness of many allied and even client states to go along with them. In Ukraine, invocations of World War Two and the Cold War on both sides failed to gain any traction in the world outside the West. There, it was the failure of the War on Terror in putting together a new international order that proved a more relevant and cautionary precedent dissuading countries from choosing sides in the war.

It is not the wars themselves that pose a threat to the unipolarity that has defined the international order since the end of the Cold War, but rather the unwillingness of many allied and even client states to go along with them.

While Western historical narratives about global conflict have been provincialized in this way, the rest of the world seems to offer no alternatives.Yet those refusing to align with the United States or Russia have managed to bring neutrality back to life as a fundamental principle of the international order, one pushed aside in the post Cold Warperiod and especially during the War on Terror. From NATO members like Turkey to countries like India that are friendly to the West, it is neutrality rather than pro–Russian sentiment that defines policy. For these states realize that Russia’s war is a regional one meant to place limits on America’s global politics. They also see that Russia is neither interested in nor capable of engaging in a global politics of its own that threatens them. It is only her immediate neighborhood that is at risk. Neutrality has thus allowed the Ukraine war to be geographically limited and regionalized against American intentions, while also permitting countries like Turkey to mediate between its protagonists.6

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