World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Analysis (Global Power Shift) 3030630374, 9783030630379

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Global Power Shift

Fulvio Attinà   Editor

World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Analysis

Global Power Shift Series Editor Xuewu Gu, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany Managing Editor Hendrik W. Ohnesorge, Center for Global Studies, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany Advisory Editors Luis Fernandes, Pontificia Universidade, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Canrong Jin, Renmin University of Beijing, Beijing, China Srikanth Kondapalli, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Dingli Shen, Fudan University, Shanghai, China Kazuhiko Togo, Kyoto Sanyo University, Tokyo, Japan Roberto Zoboli, Catholic University of Milan, Milano, Italy

Ample empirical evidence points to recent power shifts in multiple areas of international relations taking place between industrialized countries and emerging powers, as well as between states and non-state actors. However, there is a dearth of theoretical interpretation and synthesis of these findings, and a growing need for coherent approaches to understand and measure the transformation. The central issues to be addressed include theoretical questions and empirical puzzles: How can studies of global power shift and the rise of ‘emerging powers’ benefit from existing theories, and which alternative aspects and theoretical approaches might be suitable? How can the meanings, perceptions, dynamics, and consequences of global power shift be determined and assessed? This edited series will include highly innovative research on these topics. It aims to bring together scholars from all major world regions as well as different disciplines, including political science, economics and human geography. The overall aim is to discuss and possibly blend their different approaches and provide new frameworks for understanding global affairs and the governance of global power shifts. Selected volumes published in this series are indexed by the Web of Science.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10201

Fulvio Attinà Editor

World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Analysis

Editor Fulvio Attinà Department of Political and Social Sciences University of Catania Catania, Italy

ISSN 2198-7343 ISSN 2198-7351 (electronic) Global Power Shift ISBN 978-3-030-63037-9 ISBN 978-3-030-63038-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Two reasons stand for widening the knowledge about the impact of order transition on Europe and North America. The first one is the available knowledge about order transition. It is little and mostly overlooked. Order transition is not the preferred theme of political scientists today. Two perspectives on world order transition have been developed by international scientists, the world hegemony and the power transition perspective. Complexity theory, a newcomer in social sciences, appears to be the valuable partner of such family. These theories fit to explain the current order transition process and to supply consistent insights about the making of the new world order. The second reason is that the decreasing American leadership, the rising China’s power, and the inadequacy of the finance, the trade, and the security world policies have significant effects on the Atlantic area, but the researchers concerned with the study of the order transition process overlook the Atlantic area and focus on Asia and Africa to get a hint about the impact of the process. Tensions and pressure for change affect the long-time relations between the United States, Canada, and the European countries. The penetration of China into the politics and the economy of Europe is understudied by political scientists. The present book is also a call to the community of political scientists to look into the true process of world politics today. The analysis of perceptions and interpretive knowledge are only a part of the knowledge useful to understand politics, world trends, and the future of people and the humanity. The book seeks to strike a balance between the classical and the new approaches to meet the key themes of international politics today. Catania, Italy

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Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fulvio Attinà

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World Order Transition The World Order Lifecycle and World Power Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . Fulvio Attinà

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Friction, Competition, or Cooperation? Menu of Choice for the United States and China—A Power Transition Perspective . . . . . . Yi Feng

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A Fresh Outlook on Order-Disorder Transition: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Effie Charalampaki

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The Atlantic Area Donald Trump and NATO: Limitations on the Power of an Unpredictable President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Gorm Rye Olsen Transcending the Rift? Realism, Transatlantic Relations, and American Grand Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Mladen Lišanin Regional Security Orders and International Transformations: The Transatlantic Adaptation and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Ieva Karpaviˇci¯ut˙e Transition and Middle Power: Turkey’s Strategic Autonomy on the Atlantic Area Border with the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Alberto Gasparetto

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Undefended Borders in the Atlantic Area: The North American Security Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Miroslava Kulkova China’s Economic Presence in the Baltic States and Belarus: Economic Statecraft Amidst the Great Powers Competition . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Liudas Zdanavicius Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Fulvio Attinà

Editor and Contributors

About the Editor Fulvio Attinà is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations, and Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam at the University of Catania, Italy. Former Chair of the Italian Association of Political Science (SISP), he served also in the governing bodies of ECPR, ISA, and Italian ECSA. Visiting professor at universities in America, Asia, and Europe, he is the author of The Global Political System, Palgrave, 2011 (also published in Italian, Spanish, and Russian).

Contributors Fulvio Attinà Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy Effie Charalampaki Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Institute of International Relations, Athens, Greece Yi Feng Department of International Studies, Maldonado Institute for International Security and Global Leadership, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA Alberto Gasparetto Department of Political Science, University of Padua, Padua, Italy Ieva Karpaviˇciut˙ ¯ e Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania; General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania Miroslava Kulkova Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

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Mladen Lišanin Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, Serbia Gorm Rye Olsen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Liudas Zdanavicius General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy, Vilnius, Lithuania

Introduction Fulvio Attinà

Abstract The centrality of the Atlantic area in the post-world war system was the undisputed condition giving life to the new world order. But small knowledge has been provided to understand the current transition of world order and the impact of such transition on the Atlantic area. The first three chapters of the book provide knowledge about the first issue. The remaining chapters delve into the impact of order transition on the Atlantic area. By upgrading the world system analysis and theory and as well focusing on foreign policy and regional politics analysis, the book provides the appropriate means for explaining the crucial and complex current turn of world politics in the Atlantic area. Keywords Order transition · Transatlantic relations · Great powers · Security · China · Europe The leaders of the war coalition defeating the German and the Japanese army were the builders of the world order that is in progress till the present time. The conferences they convened in the mid-1940s clarified the values and principles of international politics they shared and created the institutions designed to produce policies towards the main problems of the world system. Basically, the institutions produced the essential rules and programmes for responding to the problems of finance stability, trade liberalization, and the security of the individual state from aggression. Thanks to such policies, the new world order entered into effect. It is worth remarking that the multilateral qualification applies to such institutions and policies, but the chief attribute of that order is the responsibility that the major world powers took upon themselves when they agreed to act as the guardians of the world policy-making institutions except for the world trade policy institution. The leaders of the warwinning coalition shared such a view because of the lesson learned from the First World War peace agreements. On the whole, the mix of hierarchy and multilateralism F. Attinà (B) Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, Via Vittorio Emanuele 49, 95131 Catania, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_1

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proved to be the wise choice for the rebuilding of the world order. The United Nations, the Bretton-Woods institutions, and the conference that produced the GATT laid down the security, finance, and trade policies that generated the new world order and gave to world politics a notable stability. The centrality of the Atlantic area in the post-world war system was the undisputed condition giving life to the new order. The American leaders did not isolate their own country as they had done after the First World War. The European countries that sided with the United States did not exit from the political centre of the world despite the war devastation they had suffered. Furthermore, the policies that the world policymaking institutions put on place assisted the Euro-Atlantic countries to recovery from the destructions of the war and as well to keep the centre of the world political system. A further notable aspect of the post-world war system was the growth in number of the sovereign states. It was the effect of the policy, shaped and implemented under the supervision of the United Nations, towards ending colonialism and building nation-states everywhere in the world. The de-colonization policy treated all of the colonial territories as if each one of them was a nation-state. In any case, the new countries entered immediately into the United Nations and were forced to keep as their own quality the nation-state form even though before the colonial age many of them were not nation-states or something similar to it but variously organized political entities, separated from one another. Furthermore, the economic interest of foreign companies and the political interest of foreign governments did not recede at all from interfering and intervening into the domestic affairs of the new states. Such circumstances generated violence, caused conflict and war, produced instability, turbulence and problems that even today plague large parts of Africa, the Middle East and some spots of Asia with reverberating effects on the Atlantic area. In the last decades of the past century, world experts drew attention to the decline of the American power. In the 2000s, world disorder and multipolarism became the catchwords of political science and the media to figure the transformation of world politics. What will follow the crisis of the trade and the finance world policy, what remains of the world order after the shrinking of the US power, and what will bring to the world the rising power of China are some of the questions stimulating the debate among experts and practitioners and the concern of the ordinary people as well. Over the years, the focus of expert analyses moved towards the relations between the major powers and how they will drive the world out of disorder. In explicit terms, how the world is going through order transition. In all societies, order is the necessary condition for reducing uncertainty and insecurity. For the sake of living in safe and predictable conditions, the members of each society are ready to give a share of their freedom of decision and action to the society they are part of, and to submit themselves to the laws and policies that give order to their society. More precisely, the society members submit to the authority of the institutions and actors that, inside the political system, produce laws and policies to solve collective problems. In the present discourse, political order is the overall outcome of the rules and policies made by the world institutions to respond to collective problems. Who set up the institutions of the world political

Introduction

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system? The easy answer is that the great powers principally do it. The rulers of these states share perceptions and preferences towards the values and institutions for making the policies towards collective problems. Also, they have the power resources to gain the engagement of other states on the policies they choose to set up order in world affairs. Conversely, in the event of missing great power agreement, order gives way to disorder in the world system. The scientists address the study of world order transition by using theory and method perspectives that are based on three different ontologies: the holistic or systemic one, the agent or individualistic one, and the structuration ontology that mixes aspects of both. According to the first one, what matters to understanding order transition is knowledge about the structure and process of the world political system and about the inputs of the economic, technological, geophysical, and cultural environment. According to the second ontology, order transition is explained by analysing the foreign policy aims, resources and capabilities of the major states, and then fitting together the data of such analysis. Last, according to the structuration school, since the system and the actors are mutually constitutive and determinative entities and the boundary conditions of both of them affect one another, the analysis of order transition has to address both the world order that shapes the political space of the international actions of the states, and the foreign policy of the states that care for their own interest and as well aim at modifying the structure of the world political system. The chapters of the present book make a case for the structuration perspective. The Authors did not come together to make a study promoting such perspective, but all shared the view that both the world order process and the interests and goals of the states are the co-determinants of the current world politics and of the politics and economy of the states of the Atlantic area. Focus on such geopolitical group of countries has been, indeed, a key motivation of the collective endeavour of producing research and publishing a collective book.1 Indeed, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are the regions that much call the attention of those concerned with order transition. The impact of, and the adaption to, such transition by the states of the Atlantic area, i.e. Europe and Northern America, are not the object of pervasive analysis by political scientists. Therefore, the analyses of the present book increase the small existing knowledge useful to understanding two related issues, the current transition of world order and the impact of such transition on the Atlantic area. The three chapters of Part I provide knowledge about the first issue. They present three perspectives on order transition in world politics that are developed from two political science theories, the world hegemony theory and the power transition theory, and from the complexity theory, a newcomer in social sciences. Such theories are the best fitted to explain order transition and to supply consistent, complementary data and insights on the process pushing for the making of the new world order. The diplomats and policymakers that created the post-world war order had in mind two problems to respond to as the primary task of the new policy-making 1 The

book chapters have been presented as conference papers and discussed at the ECPR General Conference in Wroclaw, Poland, September 2019.

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institutions: the problem of building sovereign and safe nation-states in every corner of the world and the problem of giving stability to and fuelling the growth of the national and world markets. In chapter “The World Order Lifecycle and World Power Competition”, the hegemony theory of world politics is the template used to analyse the lifecycle of that world order from the phase of the implementation of the three primary policies of so-called liberal internationalism, the trade, finance and security policy, to the de-legitimation and to the current phase preparing transition to the new order. The government of the hegemonic country, the United States, and the governments of the Western countries defended liberalism and as well the interest of their own countries. Though many states outside the Western coalition have interiorized liberal internationalism and have been socialized to the policies of the existing world order, de-legitimation of that order has been growing because especially the trade and the finance world policy were not apt to face the demands of individual states and to respond to problems of the whole system. The chapter, then, draws attention to the current process of order transition and, in particular, to the three world powers, the United States, China and Russia, that have different potentials to lead that process by proposing the revision of the existing order and by assembling many countries into the coalition capable of imposing the new order. The hegemonic theory of world politics assigns the task of building the next order to the great powers but the chapter concludes that the analysis of the current world politics does not find enough evidence to assert that the American world order has reached its final line and that the world is fully inside the coalition reconfiguration phase. In chapter “Friction, Competition, or Cooperation? Menu of Choice for the United States and China—A Power Transition Perspective”, Yi Feng utilizes the power transition theory to explore the implications of China’s rise to superpower status and to the role of challenger to US global leadership. China’s challenge success will take the world to a new political order. Such transition to new order could be peaceful or violent. The power transition theory is clear on what matters to foresee the whether and how of order transition. The key is knowledge about two variables, power parity and satisfaction with the status quo. If one assumes that China’s rise in economic, political, and military power is unstoppable, then the only key factor affecting the outcome of the Sino-US relations is satisfaction with status quo. If China and the United States embrace the same norms and rules, a power transition will be likely to take place peacefully. If not, the world will see much conflict in years to come. Yi Feng systematically analyses the power of the two countries and their satisfaction with the status quo. Not only that. The chapter compares the present power transition circumstances with analogous circumstances in past world systems. The comparative analysis of the world power conflict, however, does not give back decisive answers. Historical circumstances of power transition have been different in important aspects from one another and from the current one. However, they offer significant knowledge about the transition process. A significant assertion of the power transition theory is that the conflict between China and the United States is set on economic affairs. It is not set on territorial issues, the path towards violent conflict of past wars. Effie Charalampaki, drawing on complexity and chaos theory, conceptualizes the world order as a grand whole with a collage of complex adaptive systems (CAS).

Introduction

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In chapter “A Fresh Outlook on Order-Disorder Transition: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Perspective”, she purports the need for methods addressing ‘complexity’ as the agent of change also in world politics. Complexity is one of the greatest parameters in any effort to manage uncertainty at any level of the global system. Therefore, International Relations scientists have to take complexity theory and methods of analysis into deal with systemic shocks and to address the problems of order transition. Charalampki, then, invites IR scholars to reinvent the declining Liberal Order by creating adaptation mechanisms and complexity management schemes to deal with the problems of uncertainty and prediction. The Part II chapters delve into the impact of order transition on the Atlantic area. They focus on the existing tensions and the potentials for change that affect the longtime established relations between the United States on one side and the European countries and Canada on the other side. The penetration of China into the politics and the economy of Europe is the object of the case study of the relations between China and the Baltic states and Belarus. The Western coalition is the core of the American hegemony, and NATO is the hardcore of the Western coalition. That continues to be the official image of the transatlantic relations at the present time. In chapter “Donald Trump and NATO: Limitations on the Power of an Unpredictable President”, Gorm Rye Olsen analyses the Atlantic area in transition times by putting under scrutiny the President Trump’s relevant declarations and the position of the American foreign policy establishment towards the transatlantic relations. The American administration did not take any radical steps towards NATO despite the strong attacks on NATO and on the European partners during the Trump presidency. The analyst, then, has to explain why the United States did not conceive in the past and do not conceive today any world order transition that would separate the country from the most important group of countries of the Western coalition. Three domestic variables support such attitude. They are the national strategic culture, the domestic public opinion, and the state institutions that guide the American foreign policy together with the President. The strategic culture and the grand strategy of the United States of the past 70 years see NATO as indispensable for American national security. The public opinion opposes the view that NATO is ‘obsolete’. The State Department, the Pentagon, and the Congress have always blocked any President Trump’s attempt to undermine NATO and deviate from the ‘path dependency’ of the American foreign policy when it came to preserve the Atlantic Alliance. Such domestic roots contradict the position of the current president and indicate commitment to contribute to the transatlantic defence system. Briefly, the Americans have not changed their mind about who are the most important partners of the United States at the time of order transition. Transatlantic relations are not in danger, but instability is their characteristic feature. In chapter “Transcending the Rift? Realism, Transatlantic Relations, and American Grand Strategy”, realism is Mladen Lisanin’s perspective for understanding the American policy towards the Atlantic allies. Indeed, the United States is a clear example of great powers’ inclination to act in consonance with realism but at odds with realist policy prescriptions. The contemporary realist literature on strategy of restraint and offshore balancing drives the Author to exploring the developments

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of transatlantic relations in case the United States adopts a more restrained strategic posture. He argues that this might impact on order transition by revitalizing international institutions, most notably the UN and the OSCE, and as well the EU defence policy while mitigating the consequences of the incoming struggle for spheres of influence. Ieva Karpaviˇci¯ut˙e’s chapter addresses the adaptation of the Atlantic region to the ongoing transformation of world order. The Author warns that the regions are always in an adaptation process because of the interplay between regional institutions, collective identity and power dynamics within the region, and the external systemic transformations. Accordingly, the chapter overviews the past change of NATO, the core institution of the transatlantic area; it later observes the current Alliance doctrine, and last it looks into the challenges the Atlantic Alliance faces in the incoming security environment. Karpaviˇci¯ut˙e’s analysis results into concern for the ways to sustain the Allied cohesion and the credibility of NATO’s defence and deterrence in the process of order transition. The stress effect that order transition causes to the Atlantic area is well realized by looking at the foreign policy of the country that wants to profit the most from the window of opportunity that order transition offers to the governments of the Atlantic countries. This country is Turkey under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan. The country’s leader has a say in all the most important matters of all the next-door contexts. Alberto Gasparetto’s analysis demonstrates, in chapter “Regional Security Orders and International Transformations: The Transatlantic Adaptation and Change”, Erdogan’s ability to profit from the window of opportunity of current order transition to challenge existing partnerships and alliances, to use force when soft power strategies do not pay off, and most notably to raise the stakes also between the great powers and to reap the benefits of their rivalry. Miroslava Kuˇlková’s analysis explains features of the most stable and peaceful part of the Atlantic area, North America, where a security community developed and kept rather immutable over time, though sometimes troubled waters have made the Canada-United States relationship tense. In chapter “Transition and Middle Power: Turkey’s Strategic Autonomy on the Atlantic Area Border with the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa”, she remarks that recent events put to contrast the exceptionally peaceful relations between the United States and Canada, the members of one of the rare examples of a security community, the regional order where there is a dependable expectation of peaceful resolution of any conflicts. The North American security community, a not-so-often-researched case, is in many ways unique. Western Europe, instead, is the most researched case of security community but structurally different from the North American one. The aim of the chapter, however, is to show that the Atlantic area is the only world region where the transformation from rivals to friends occurred, and consequently there is a dependable expectation of the peaceful resolution of any conflicts the order transition process may bring into life. The Baltic states and Belarus serve as the good illustration of how some countries of the wider Atlantic area respond to the process of political and economic transformation of the world system. In chapter “Undefended Borders in the Atlantic

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Area: The North American Security Community”, Liudas Zdanavicius analyses how those states react to the Chinese economic expansion in the region. Observers are monitoring the still cautious position of the EU countries on the Belt and Road Initiatives. The position of the Non-EU countries on the Eastern side of the region, instead, is much more favourable to deepening economic relations with Beijing companies. But Zdanavicius’s analysis demonstrates that the Baltic states, despite publicly declared hopes on deeper economic cooperation with China, including the participation in 17 + 1 format, have just minor economic dependency on Beijing. He explains China’s economic expansion hardship in the Baltic states because of the comparatively good financial situation, and the presence of vast EU funding of strategic projects. Additionally, the interest of the decision makers in cooperation with China is low because of the strong security relations with the United States. Belarus, instead, is in a considerably more economically vulnerable position, has no access to benefits of EU membership, and heavily depends on Russia. Zdanavicius warns that Belarus is a case of how China can have a growing footprint in Europe by using the debt diplomacy and other influence tools that Beijing establishes with developing states in other parts of the world. In conclusion, the book invites to upgrading the world system analysis and theory and as well to focus on foreign policy and regional politics analysis as the appropriate means for explaining the crucial and complex current turn of world politics in the Atlantic area. Attention to the consequences of order transition on the Atlantic area is also the distinctive feature of the book since such topic is neglected topic in the nascent stream of articles and books about order transition. By dealing with such interrelated topics, the book purports the twofold argument that order matters as much as power in world politics, and that order and power transition at the world level spreads effects also in deeply aggregate regions such as the Atlantic region. Last, the book raises the question about whether and for how long order transition will go through the non-violent mode that it is going through at the present time. The chapters provide and debate knowledge about the persistence of such mode.

Fulvio Attinà is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations, and Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam at the University of Catania, Italy. Former Chair of the Italian Association of Political Science (SISP), he served also in the governing bodies of ECPR, ISA and Italian ECSA. Visiting professor at universities in America, Asia and Europe, he is the author of The Global Political System, Palgrave, 2011 (also published in Italian, Spanish, and Russian).

World Order Transition

The World Order Lifecycle and World Power Competition Fulvio Attinà

Abstract The world has passed through the initial phase of implementation of the primary policies of the American world order and the following phase of delegitimation of such policies, the trade, finance and security policy. Though many states have been socialized to the policies of the American hegemony, the delegitimation of the American order has been growing because especially the trade and finance world policies have not been apt to face the demands of individual states and to respond to the problems of the whole system. The world is now in the transition process that will run across the coalition reconfiguration and macro-decision phase. In the current transition, three world powers, the United States, China and Russia, have potentials to lead the process by proposing the revision of the existing order and by assembling countries into the coalition able to build the new order. Transition is an open process to go through and to observe carefully. The revisionism of the three world powers is confirmed by the analysis while they are still unable to assemble the demands of large groups of states and build the coalition of the next world order. Keywords Hegemonic order · Order life cycle · Leadership · Revisionism · Coalition power The political order of the present world was created by the coalition of the Western countries after the two world wars over the ruins of the Great Britain-led order. Its effectiveness and legitimacy have been declining during the last thirty years of the past century. Today, the world order is going through a period of transition that is characterized by conflict and a growing number of clashes between the world powers. Predictably, such order transition will go through two phases. In the first one, each world power will push ahead her preferred world order project and organize the coalition of the countries determined to bring such project into being. Transition will be completed after the second phase, the macro-decision phase in which two F. Attinà (B) Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, Via Vittorio Emanuele 49, 95131 Catania, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_2

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opposite coalitions will come to term with one another over the order project to put in place. The present chapter examines the development of the past phases of the American-led world order, analyses the current transition that involves both disputing the existing order and remaking the coalitions supporting and opposing the present world institutions and policies, and seeks to anticipate knowledge about the main aspects of the macro-decision phase. The first section of this chapter presents the theory and defines the chief concepts of the analysis. Section 2 details the major events and policies of the lifecycle of the American hegemony from 1945 till the present time. Section 3 turns to the analysis of the revisionism of the world powers, namely the United States, China, and Russia, and to the prediction of the capability they have of leading the coalition of countries that will take the world to the next order. Section 4 draws attention towards the not-so-close fourth phase, i.e. the world power conflict over setting up the next world order. The Conclusion section highlights the main policy and research tasks the present study brings to the consideration of practitioners and scientists.

1 Theory and Concepts The theory of the present analysis is the world hegemony theory, which is not a uniform set of assumptions and propositions but a family of approaches sharing the same explanatory perspective towards the empirical study of the world power and political authority. Clark (2009) distinguished two versions of this theory, the Hegemonic stability theory and the Gramsci’s hegemony theory, but the family of the hegemony theorists extends to specialists of other versions. Kindleberger (1981), the economic historian that developed the Hegemonic stability theory, argued that one state acts as the hegemon as it provides the public goods that instil the compliance of many states with the rules of order that serve the interests of the same hegemonic state. This state and the close allied countries gain the most from the hegemonic order, but such order is stable only if absolute gains are given to many states, the most important ones included. In the Gramsci’s version, instead, hegemony is the ability of one social group to exercise the function of political and moral direction in society (Gramsci 1971). In the world political system, the group of the actors that gets from the others the recognition of political leadership and exercises hegemony and political authority is made by those state governments and by the business actors that are in command of the most advanced economic sectors (Augelli and Murphy 1988). Some historians produced studies of past international hegemonies that do not fit precisely to the two versions outlined by Clark (see Dehio 1948/1988; Kennedy 1987; Watson 1992; Zack 2017). The political scientists that have produced notable analyses of world hegemonies have borrowed arguments and data from the Kindleberger’s and Gramsci’s approach and have developed their own perspective as well (see Danner and Martín 2019; Gilpin 1981; Ikenberry 2001; Modelski 1983, 1999; Thompson 2020). Recently, hegemony has turned into an object of interest of the constructivist school specialists (see MacKay 2019; Nexon and Neumann 2018).

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Political scientists explain the quality of the hegemon as the quality based on the control of the leading sectors of the world economy, the possession of the most advanced military and diplomatic capabilities, the resolute will to bear the cost of providing world public goods and as well to extend hegemony over time. Last but not least, the hegemon is the state able to build the coalition of states that overpowers the diplomatic and coercive power of all other coalitions. On such basis, because it allows to achieve order by simplifying social interactions, hegemony, every time the necessary conditions bring it into life, is the legitimate form of political authority of the world (see MacKay 2019; Voelsen and Schettler 2019). Next to sharing assertions over the attributes of the hegemon, the hegemony school scientists share the belief that the hegemonic order develops through a life process including the origin, growth, decline, and end phase. They agree on the progressive erosion of the hegemonic organization and on the end of an hegemony when conflict arises between the states that are favourable to maintain the existing order and the revisionist states that want to install a new set of values, principles, and institutions for replacing the existing world policies by new ones consonant with their own interests. Last, studying the world hegemonies of the past three (Gilpin 1981, 1988) and also five centuries (Modelski and Morgan 1985; Thompson 1988, 2020), scientists draw evidence of the long and extensive violence affecting all the states of the world at the time of the transition to the new hegemonic order. The occurrence of such regularity is under scrutiny today. Knowledge about the world politics of the past seventy years discloses the progress of institutional mechanisms and intergovernmental methods of peaceful management of world contentious issues. The growth of the United Nations and the plurality of groups of debate and coordination like the meetings of the leaders and the ministries of the G7 and G20 and the numerous UN-organized conferences are illustration of it. Such groups add to the present-day increased frequency of bilateral meetings and direct talks of the state leaders. The current conditions of the world system allow to argue that the next change of the world political order will be a progressive and gradual transition with no recourse to all-out war. Whether the next phase of world politics will be a time of large violence and war or the unprecedented non-violent reform of the world order and government, possibly made within the existing institutions of management of the world issues like the United Nations and other intergovernmental fora, is the object of the last sections of the present chapter. The objective of this section, on the other hand, is to define in general terms why the world is a political system in which legitimate authority has the form of hegemonic government, and why such authority and government progress over time from the high-capacity phase of making and implementating world policies to the phase of decline and to transition to a new cycle of world order. The general view is that the worldwide international system came into being by the confluence of international systems of all over the world into the ‘central’ system, namely the European state system (Attinà 2008). During such confluence process, the state was perceived as the only political space, and the state rulers responded to all the problems affecting society as if the problems could be insulated and solved within the state borders. In reality, the state has been increasingly facing problems that are rooted into a space wide than the state. Recently, Rosenboim

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(2019) remarked that about a century ago scientists and policy-makers signalled the insufficiency of state policies to overcome problems of a scale larger than the state scale. Since the second industrial revolution, for example, economic crises were issues overcoming the response capability of the single state. Such world-scale problems had to be faced with policies that had to be made at the proper political space, i.e. the world political space. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the number of world-scale problems has been growing. Problems such as environment pollution and climate change, transnational organized crime, epidemics, and mass migration are examples of the today’s problems of the world political space. Briefly, throughout the twentieth century the number of worldwide collective problems has been growing and as well the awareness of the need to respond to such problems by binding all the states to world policies has been rising. Mostly because of the growth of new technologies of industrial production, transport and communication, and—more important—because the policy-makers have realized the world size of problems that affect their own state, the world political system replaced the international system. In other terms, the system of political relations among states gave room to the system of actors, institutions, and rules directed at producing binding policies for the sake of responding to collective problems. The condition for making policies in a political space is the presence of the political system with its two fundamental elements, order and government institutions. This applies also to the world political system. Political order consists of the intangible objects, such as values, principles, and ideologies, that are shared by the system members. It underpins government, namely the set of institutions and agents that give political direction to the system by producing and implementing policies, and as well by looking over compliance by the system members. Sharing values, principles, and ideologies of political order promotes the sense of we-feeling of the system members (Callahan 2004) and provides legitimacy to those policies of the government institutions that are consistent with the order values and principles. Who leads the process bringing out political order and setting up the government of the world political system? The hegemony school scientists assert that only the most powerful coalition of states has the power to create shared political order and keep it working for long. Accordingly, attention has to be drawn to the great power that is able to put up the coalition of culture and interest capable of overtaking all other coalitions of states. Gilpin (1981, 1988) demonstrated that, from the seventeenth century to the present times, the first and the second British coalition and the American coalition fought three general wars (Thirty Years’ War, 1619–1648; Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte, 1792–1815; and the First and Second World War, 1914–1945) that started three different world order systems. Modelski and Morgan (1985) and Thompson (1988) analysed hegemony on a longer period of time and demonstrated that the change of order occurred five times in the past five centuries after the global war that picked up the most effective coalition of countries and its state leader (the Italian and Indian Ocean Wars, 1490s–1510s; the Dutch Independence War, 1580s–1600s; the Louis XIV Wars, 1680s–1710s; the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790s–19810s; and the World Wars I

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and II, 1910s–1940s). Modelski (2001, 2008) maintained as true also that the succession of world orders is evolutionary since it occurs within the long-term evolutionary process of the human society. Gilpin (1981), Modelski and Thompson (1996), and scholars like Chase-Dunn (1989), Cox (1987), and Wallerstein (1974) explained the position and role of the leading state of the dominant coalition by its power to develop the most advanced sectors of the world economy, its command of the military and diplomatic capabilities that are necessary to prevail in the world war, and the political will of its ruling class engaging the country in taking the post-world war order working for long. In particular, in the past five centuries, the hegemonic state had the command of the long-range transportation routes, was in control of the world trade of strategic goods and advanced products, and issued the currency most employed as international trade and investment currency and as reserve currency. These scholars remark also that the hegemon country and the dominant coalition rule on the world political system while local great powers organize international relations at the region level but within the conditions established by the hegemon country and the dominant coalition. The political discontinuity of the world regions has been signalled in the 1960s (Cantori and Spiegel 1970) and restated since then by IR scholars (see especially Buzan and Wæver 2003; Katzenstein 2005). Telò (2013, 2016) proposed to bridge the discontinuity by arguing for the current replacement of the declining American order by the multipolar order that arises from the interconnection of the world regions. The claimed multipolar world would be the effect of the progressive interconnection of the regional orders that are established by regional powers like China, Russia, India, Turkey, Iran, South Africa, Nigeria, not to speak of the regional order experiment that is promoted in Europe by Germany and France, and of the long-time US-led order of the American region. The regional orders are supplementing the vacuum of the global order—the argument goes—and will fix the bugs that the existing world policy-making institutions are unable to repair because of the vanishing leadership of the United States and Western coalition. Regional orders are interconnected by the norms and regimes that the chief international organizations diffuse all over the globe. Finally, since the regions share principles and values, and make rules and policies that are to a large extent complementary and compatible to one another, they will not fragment the world. The weakening American order gives room to a low enfranchise of some regions, but the thesis of the prevalence of the interconnected regional orders lacks strong foundations. Regional ties and duties, which are the condition of their power role, compel the rulers of the regional powers to place the values and interests of their region before the world ones. They have no incentive to abide by meaningful policies responding to world political, economic, and cultural values and principles. Hence, the hegemonic scholars are right in asserting the indivisibility of the world political order though they concede that it is complemented by some region-level discontinuity. They corroborate their assertion with the long-range history studies that demonstrate that the separated pre-modern international systems merged with one another in the late fifteenth century (Buzan and Little 2000; Dark 1998; McNeill 1963; Wallerstein 1974; Watson 1992). At that time, the unique world political order

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came into life. Scholars have demonstrated also that the confluence is tied to the co-evolutionary process of the economy, technology, and politics that has fuelled globalization and the worldwide trends of the present time (Frank 1998; Frank and Gills 1993; Modelski et al. 2008). Briefly, the long-range process that in the past five centuries formed the world political system that today encapsulates the international politics of geographically limited groups of states, the regions, lies on strong scientific evidence. The thesis of the multipolar world of interconnected regional orders, instead, does not support with empirical evidence the assertion that the regional powers will be able to amalgamate their allegiance to regional values giving birth to a consistent world order. Once instituted, the order and government of the world political system are not static and uncontested objects. They undergo change and as well turn themselves into objects of dispute and confrontation among states because of two related conditions. First, the hegemonic coalition is not in control of the constant transformation of the social, technological, and ideological environment of the world political system. Second and consequently, states adapt to such transformation by choosing new approaches towards the world order. In particular, the states that possess key capabilities will share preferences and strategies that turn them into revisionist political actors pushing for amending and subverting the existing order and government. Such mechanism of change is consistent with the process of change that produced the sequence of five hegemonies in the last five centuries, namely the hegemony of Portugal in the sixteenth century, Holland in the seventeenth century, Britain in the eighteenth century and again in the nineteenth century, and the United States since 1945. The following sections of the present chapter analyse the development of the last hegemony and the current stage of transition towards the new order. Such analysis uses the concept of lifecycle of the world order and distinguishes the implementation, de-legitimation, coalition reconfiguration, and macro-decision phase in agreement with Modelski’s (1996, 2001) model of the past five centuries of leadership of the world system. In the implementation phase, the hegemon and the dominant coalition create the chief institutions and produce the essential policies of the order project. In the de-legitimation phase, the world institutions and policies do not respond efficaciously to new rising problems. Consequently, the dissatisfied states question the existing rules and policies. In the coalition reconfiguration phase, order effectiveness continues to decrease. New agendas of collective problems and new policy projects are advanced by revisionist states. The most powerful of these states face the looming hegemonic power and push for the construction of the coalition that will oppose the decadent hegemonic coalition. In the macro-decision phase, the declining coalition and the coalition of all opposing states confront each other by means of hostile moves and actions. In past centuries, the last phase took the form of the world war, called also systemic, global, or general war. It was fought to gain the authority to reshape the world political order and government. Today, it is a matter of question whether this phase, which is expected to recur after the not yet fully formed coalition reconfiguration phase, will take the violent form it took in the past or the unknown form of the non-violent macro-decision.

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2 The Cycle of the (First) American Hegemony In the last three decades, IR scientists analysed the power of the United States and assessed its declining progress (Cronin 2001; Datt 2009; Ikenberry 2001, 2018; Nau 1990; Norrlof 2018; Nye 1990; Puchala 2005; Russett 1985; Skidmore 2005; Thompson 1990, 2006). Their views diverge on whether such decline is absolute or relative, irreversible or contingent but agree on downgrading the stature of the American hegemony since the 1970s from highly to moderately, to loosely effective stature. The present section analyses the key features of the first, second and third phase of the American hegemony aiming to building knowledge useful to foresee the nature of the fourth one, the macro-decision phase.

2.1 Implementation (Till the Very Early 1970s) The Western coalition governments considered two areas of problems as the main cause of the world wars and, in general, of the instability of the world political system, namely the unrestrained use of the armed force by the states and the uncontrolled economic and trade competition among the states. Accordingly, they created institutions tasked to produce policies towards responding primarily to such areas of problems. To contain violence, the world policy-making institutions had to give to all the states the certainty of living in safe conditions and as well put an end to colonialism by building sovereign and democratic nation-states in all the areas of the world. To give the chance of growth to the national markets and to advance the stability and openness of the world economy, the institutions had to spread everywhere the principles and means of free market, free trade, and capitalism. Such objectives were consistent with the values the Western governments had agreed on at the diplomatic conferences ending the world war and building the post-war world order such as the equal sovereignty of the states, the primacy of law and diplomacy, and the human and people rights, and as well the principles such as constitutionalism, democracy, national self-determination, and international cooperation and solidarity. In the 1941 Atlantic Declaration, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill made known “certain common principles” including the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity. On February 11, 1945, in Yalta, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin wrote “By this declaration we reaffirm our faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, our pledge in the Declaration by the United Nations and our determination to build in cooperation with other peace-loving nations world order, under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and general well-being of all mankind.” Last, Article 1 of the UN Charter consecrated the world order core values and principles claimed by the governments of the winning-war coalition.

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Soon, the Soviet Union leaders realized that the Western countries were in control of the new world political institutions—the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and the General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs (GATT, later WTO, World Trade Organization)—and decided to separate themselves from the economic and trade policies made by the institutions built by their former war allies. Indeed, the institutions and policies created by the American coalition were not compatible with the form of state, economy, and world organization the Moscow communist regime wanted to forward at home and export to the rest of the world. This gave origin to the Cold War events. In reality, the Moscow leaders were unable to form an effective coalition at the world level and to take the world to implementing their preferred order project. Consequently, the East-West divide and confrontation did not much affect the trajectory of the American world order and the policy-making of the world institutions. On the contrary, it has been argued that the East-West conflict had some strengthening effect on the American coalition and the United States role in this phase of the world political system. Beeson and Watson assert that the seemingly constraining geopolitical context of the Cold War actually gave an urgency, sense of purpose, and unifying rationale to American primacy that it might otherwise have lacked (see p. 394 in Beeson and Watson 2019). Building sovereign, national, democratic, and safe states in all the world space required two policies, the policy towards ending the colonial rule, and the policy towards impeding aggression and strengthening the security of each state and of the world system. The former policy was accomplished by enforcing the selfdetermination principle. But in many instances, it was an exterior accomplishment. The colonial powers had deposed all the pre-existing political institutions and, before retreating from the colonized territories, did not put in place new self-sustaining state institutions. Furthermore, contrary to the American and European view of the postwar world as the world of democratic nation-states, the nation was not the most diffused kind of self-imagined community in the world, not to say of the in-existence of the political culture consistent with the party and parliamentary democracy of the European tradition. The Western coalition policy towards the security of the states against armed aggression, instead, achieved the expected outcome. The Secretary General and the Security Council created the mechanism known as the peacekeeping mechanism to enforce the Chapter VII of the UN Charter, titled Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression. Such mechanism proved to be efficacious to providing the public good of security to all the states victim of the deadly aggression by another state and as well by domestic and separatist armed movements. Apart from few cases of state disappearance because of the voluntary division of territorial entities and of the very few cases of federal unification of independent states, no state has been killed by the armed aggression of another state (see pp. 215–219 in Attinà 2011a). In the event of failing self-defence, the assailed state has been rescued by the military mission organized or endorsed by the UN Security Council acting as the provider of last resort of the security public good. Building economic stability and growth, the second policy set of the American hegemonic order, was the remit of a few institutions, initially the IMF, WB, and

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GATT. These institutions had to produce and implement policies towards core matters of the world economy such as currency exchange, capital circulation, and free trade. The mission of the IMF and WB, the so-called Bretton Woods institutions, was to protect currency exchange stability, provide liquidity to facilitate trade and investment, and respond to financial imbalances threatening the world economy. The GATT mandate, instead, was to build free trade by negotiating world agreements for the reduction of tariffs and for the development of free trade mechanisms. Briefly, in the twenty years after World War II, the countries of the American coalition took the leadership and the burden of building the institutions that made and implemented the main world security and economic policies. To instate the world order, they proposed and advocated the drafting and approval of international treaties and conventions, and provided ideational, financial, organizational, and human resources to the new institutions. It is worth stressing that the Western countries forged multilateralism, the unprecedented way of making world policies through the equal participation of the states. In the early years of the American hegemony, the United States and the Western governments addressed the making of three multilateral policies, the trade, the financial, and the state security policy, but only the trade policy fitted entirely to the three requisites of the multilateral mode of policy-making, namely the prior selection of principles that are shared by all the participating states, the equal participation of all the states in deciding the policy rules in harmony with the selected principles, and the non-discrimination of the parties in the use of the mechanisms for applying the principles and implementing the policy. The remaining two policies did not match all the requisites of multilateralism. Decisions on trade policy are made with the equal participation of each GATT/WTO member. In the financial sector, instead, the decision power is weighed on the contributions of each member state to the IMF resources. In the state security policy, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have the power of vetoing the decision to activate the multilateral response to the aggression of a state by another state. The progress of multilateralism and of the three policies in the following phases is very much connected to the progress of the American hegemony.

2.2 De-Legitimation (from Early 1970s to Mid 2000s) In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the economic growth of the Western countries reached its high. Afterwards, turbulence hit the financial markets with consequences both on the wealth of the advanced countries and the stagnant economy of the new independent states. Economic problems had negative impact on the world politics and gave a turn to the legitimacy of the American hegemony. The French government, at the forefront of the Western countries, blamed on the economic and foreign policies of the US government the world market destabilization, the unbalanced flows of the inter-Atlantic trade, and the constraints imposed on the European foreign policies by the North Atlantic alliance.

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The military pacts that in the 1950s the United States had built in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific to respond to the expansion of the Soviet Union influence vanished following the domestic political change of some recently independent states. The protest against the world policies for benefiting the Western countries strengthened the Non-Aligned Countries Movement while the Group of the Seventy-seven mobilized the governments of the stagnant-economy countries against the unfair free trade policy and the lack of economic take-off prospect. The Group of the Seventyseven was born within the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, which was created in 1964 recognizing the need for adjusting international trade to the needs of the developing economies. The project of creating sovereign, national, and democratic states in the former colonies did not produce the expected outcome. On the opposite, in many cases it failed, brought problems and violence that undermined political and economic stability of large areas of the world. In Africa, in Asia, and also in Latin America, external interference in the domestic affairs of the states, especially in the economy, turned sovereignty into the fictitious attribute of many new independent states. Frequently, the state rulers were deprived of the authority and the means they needed to build the post-colonial state on strong foundations. In many instances, the political class of the new independent states was not up to the task of responding to the tremendous problems of leading the multi-ethnic state that was the legacy of the colonialist power. Briefly, economic problems, external interference, and the policy-maker inexperience or deliberate refusal to abide by democracy in running the domestic political institutions, which had been designed by the colonialist power on the European model and standards, caused the fall of many recent-born democracies and the rise of various forms of dictatorial regime and of human rights repression. The United States and the Western allies intervened directly and through the United Nations peacekeeping mechanism to restrain violence in the increasing number of international and civil conflicts that erupted since the 1970s especially in Africa. On the whole, the peacekeeping missions of the United Nations achieved the objective of containing violence and keeping the territorial integrity of the countries in the conflict area and by large in the whole world system. But, the number of the Non-UN peace operations started to grow as one of the symptoms of the rising world order de-legitimation. Such operations, sometimes lately endorsed by the UN Security Council, were organized by regional international organizations and by groups of like-minded states. Experts interpreted such phenomenon as the regionalization of peace operations in harmony with the UN Charter (Bellamy and Williams 2005). In reality, the Non-UN operations signalled the presence of some flaws in the multilateral security practice and the rise of minilateralism in responding to the world security problems (Attinà 2014). Generally, also in the present time, the countries deploying minilateral missions adapt to their own interest the security action that should serve first and foremost the collective interest of containing violence. Debate over improving the peace operation mechanism has been going on over the past decades while the most advanced, democratic states like the European Union states turned towards reducing their participation in the UN operations. They turned to be increasingly selective also in launching new minilateral operations (Attinà 2010,

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2011b; Bellamy and Williams 2009). Consequently, especially the large Asian countries, like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and China, gradually rose to the role of the largest providers of the military staff of the UN peace operations. The transformation of the UN peace operation staff and the rise of peacekeeping minilateralism have been growing steadily and keep going on also in the current phase of the world politics. Minilateralism hindered multilateralism also in economic matters. The governments of the finance powers did not fix the break of the Bretton Woods monetary policy that was sentenced by the American decision to end the dollar-gold convertibility in the early Seventies. Private investors and the digitalization of the financial transactions overpowered the state ability to rule over finance and also the driving power of the world financial institutions. The American dollar, however, was never removed from the role of main currency of the world finance and economic market. In the trade field, the GATT met with increasing resistance to the approval of the new accords on strategic products that were necessary to further world free trade. Gradually, the GATT was sided by trade regional blocs and minilateral agreements. The worsening state of the world economic policies continues in the successive phase we are living in. Economic crisis in 2007 and 2008 significantly impacted trust in finance and business circles, and raised concerns for reserve currencies, including the dollar while China increased the renminbi internationalization in order to reduce the dependency on the dollar and the trade transaction costs. The US government contributed to the declining legitimacy of the world policies. The domestic economic policy continued to burden the economies of foreign countries while, in foreign policy, the anti-communist and anti-Chinese stance in Asia and the anti-Palestinian policy in the Middle East caused troubles also to the allies of the United States. In the very early 1970s, the members of the European Community decided to harmonize the national foreign policies mostly to mark their dissonance from the American foreign policy. At the beginning of such world order phase, they released the “Declaration on European Identity” and symbolically claimed that the guiding principle of their foreign policy was not the Atlantic identity, but the European one. At the end of the phase, they launched the CSDP (Common defence and security policy) Operations that marked a resolute step into minilateral security. Their involvement in NATO and the Atlantic security costs continued to be limited contrary to the American wishes. In conclusion, the widening de-legitimation of the American leadership has been the outcome of the tremendous political and economic transformation of the world after the world war and as well of the inadequacy of the policy response of the world institutions that was affected by the US foreign policy. The end of the Bretton Woods monetary regime in the early 1970s signals the gap between the preference of the United States and of the rest of the world on how to solve collective problems by means of world public policies. Voeten (2004) has analysed 75 resolutions of the UN General Assembly and has documented that such gap widened considerably and at a constant rate between 1991 and 2001. From 1996, in particular, the United States rejected important international agreements—for example the Land Mine Convention, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, and the

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Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty—that were the product of large international conferences in line with the post-world war multilateralism. Such policy has been explained by the growing American preference for unilateralism that culminated in the Trump’s foreign policy but Voeten remarks (2004, p. 732) that such policy started in 1996 when the President Clinton approved the Helms-Burton Act. This Act penalized foreign companies trading with Cuba by extending the application of the embargo against the island. Briefly, the de-legitimation of the American order was a change of the world politics and was sided by the correspondent change of the foreign policy of the hegemonic country.

2.3 Coalition Reconfiguration (Since Mid 2000s) Transition from the de-legitimation to the coalition reconfiguration phase has been prepared by the demise of stable groups of countries such as the Soviet bloc, the fading of groups such as the Non-Alignment Movement, and the rising flexibility of the foreign policy of important countries like China and Russia. Consequently, important diplomatic repositioning took place. The G20 meetings were instituted; China joined the UN, IMF, and WTO. Russia accessed the WTO. Such change and the elasticity and volatility of the foreign policy of many states, that began in the previous phase, are the clear manifestation of the progress towards coalition reconfiguration, but such a progress is slow and far from the no-returning point. The game is in the plans of the major states, but their leaders continue to be hesitant about coalition diplomacy. The gap separating the United States and the European allies is widening though the United States is not firmly moving towards creating vital coalition ties with non-European countries of equal importance. Russia strives to build a front of like-minded countries sharing political goals but it is unable to turn the small group of new partners into a vital coalition. Russia’s new partners are mostly placed in the country’s near abroad though the Moscow leaders look for creating special relations with Central Asia, Africa, and the MENA countries and want to replicate with more states the relationship that have established with Syria. China’s skill to de-legitimize the United States has been widening thanks to the response of a number of governments of Africa and of Central and Southeast Asia to the China’s offer of investment capital at no political conditions. The China diplomacy of the COVID-19 crisis had important effects of the same nature also towards some European countries. In 2007 and 2008, the economic crisis impacted trust in finance and business circles and raised concerns for reserve currencies, including the dollar. The economy of all the Western countries was affected while China’s economy was almost unharmed. On the contrary, Beijing increased its pursuit of renminbin (RMB) internationalization acting as a world financial lender and helping Western states to face the severe financial crisis. In the past centuries, European powerful countries formed coalitions of interest and culture for the sake of building stable and predictable relations with countries they perceived as important to their own interest. They brought order to the world

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by sharing policies towards a few matters such as trade, the circulation of the ocean routes, and, after the Peace of Westphalia, the rights of the rulers on their own state. The question of today is whether new coalitions of culture and interest are in the making either to promote the reform of the world policies that have gone down decreasing effectiveness or to cause the subversion of the declining hegemonic order. Do revisionist states rely on building their own coalition as the essential mechanism for changing the existing order? Is that the belief also of the countries that, on the opposite, want to preserve the current world order and government? In the affirmative case, the next question is: Will the coalitions that advocate opposite world order programs go towards fighting world war, like in the past centuries, or will try the peaceful reform of the world order through negotiation as the never-experimented mechanism of order transition? Since the action of the states suited to playing as the leader of the coalition supporting new world order projects is crucial in the perspective of the present analysis, the next section explores the world powers’ revisionism and coalition potential that are relevant to understanding the present issue of the order transition.

3 Revisionism and Coalition Power Does one of the big powers of today, the United States, China, and Russia, have the will, resources and qualities to close the present order cycle and to become the leader of the next order cycle? Who of them is a revisionism-oriented player? What coalition power has each one of them? In politics, revisionism is the search for altering what has been decided and is in force. In world politics, the revisionist state wants to change, totally or partially, the policies, rules and institutions upon which the world system is established. The revisionist state criticizes the existing policies, does not stick to the decisions of the world policy-making institutions, and does its best to delegitimize the hegemon and the dominant coalition. The status quo state, instead, strives for preserving the existing order and policies. It accepts shared norms and policies and abides by the decisions of the world policy-making institutions that ensure the continuation of the hegemonic order and the supremacy of the dominant coalition. By pursuing the fading and de-legitimation of the existing values, principles, and policies, the revisionist state wants to take its own values to the rank of world order values and uses world politics to enhancing its own interests. The revisionist government strives also to raise the economic and financial power of the own state, enlarges the national armed force and cultivates diplomatic abilities to gain the friendship of the essential states. The more the revisionist government is determined to change the world rules and to struggle for success in the world power competition, the more it strives for building a coalition of countries disposed to fight against the existing hegemonic coalition because this is the condition for realizing the revisionist goals. The material power resources of the revisionist, aspirant-hegemonic state are the usual resources of the great powers, including the resources necessary to control

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the leading sectors of the world economy (Modelski and Thompson 1988, 1996). The non-material resources and intangible qualities, instead, are those that qualify the state as the leader of a large and vital coalition of states, namely the ideational and entrepreneurial qualities necessary to come up with efficacious and workable solutions to the problems of the partners. Such qualities consist also in proposing values and principles of order that fit to the culture and interest of the largest number of states and in shaping and supporting institutions to respond to the problems of the system. The following sub-sections succinctly examine the revisionism and coalition power of the United States, China, and Russia in the current context of order transition.

3.1 United States The end of World War II gave to the United States the occasion to build a tremendous coalition of culture and interest. Since then, the United States created military alliances, bilateral and trilateral diplomatic pacts, and special relationships with key countries of various geographical areas. Such groups of partners constitute the American coalition that matters in the world order though the groups of partners exhibit different cohesion rates. In the first phase of the hegemony cycle, the cohesion of the European group was high. It decreased in the successive phase. The cohesion of the Latin American group has been high but suffered the opposition of a small number of leftist regime states. The cohesion of the remaining groups has been generally low and volatile. Today, the overall cohesion of the American coalition is lower than it was in the past. The United States and the core members, namely the European countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, never rejected the principles and rules of the post-war international order. Today, they stay firm on the democracy, open society, economic liberalism, and free trade values. Generally, they reject revisionism and put their large resources, more than three-quarters of the global gross domestic product and of the military expenditure of the entire world, to supporting the status quo. Yet, the core countries of the Western coalition are shaken by economic and political problems. Crisis that repeatedly hit the world economy since the 1970s is now raising the nationalist and populist opinion of the citizens of the Western countries. Some governments tend to stress the cultural distance separating them from the other coalition members and to underrate interest sharing in economy, trade, and security issues. One can say that should the core countries of the Western coalition have to respond to the challenge of an emerging revisionist coalition, they would find it difficult to write again their shared project of the world order to contrast the project of the revisionist coalition. Except for the core countries, which are democracies, and countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines in the Asia-Pacific, Israel and Jordan in the Middle East, Morocco and Egypt in Mediterranean Africa, and many countries

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in Latin America, the attachment of the coalition governments and people to the coalition goals has been volatile. Therefore, the American Presidents had to count on various means and resources to convince the government and ruling class of those countries to abide to the policies promoted by the coalition. But, since the time of the de-legitimation phase, such coalition-rallying capability of the American Presidents has been decreasing. Even so, the difficulties of the United States and of the closer allies to keep unaltered the coalition ties do not impede the renewal of the American hegemony. Transition to the second American hegemony is possible. Devising a new project to attract countries against China and Russia could ease transition to the second American hegemony. Another option is co-opting China in a sort of co-leadership. Such option is examined in the next section. The US President, Donald Trump, chose to debilitate the China’s economy growth. He advanced revisionist goals in trade and played the American finance strength against the Chinese one. Multilateral trade agreements looked unfair to the Trump administration, favourable to bilateral and minilateral agreements based on costbenefit terms that are easier to run. This has been detrimental to WTO multilateral negotiations but in line with the policy preferred by a number of countries. The American Presidents supported free trade in the 1950s and 1960s because they had confidence in the competitive ascendancy of the US industry (Stokes 2018, p. 141). Accordingly, the United States is turning towards revisionism because they believe that something has to be changed to give to the United States the chance of keeping leadership in the world political system. Similarly, things go in the currency and finance sector. In the early 1970s, the American rejection of the gold-linked monetary policy was the beginning of the US retreat from so-called liberal internationalism. This was repeated in the 1980s by the President Reagan’s political economy that inspired the so-called Washington Consensus policy of the Bretton Woods institutions. The renewal of the American order can count on the huge economic and military power of the United States. The US economy has many pluses compared to the economy of China and of Russia. The dollar continues to be the strongest reserve and trade currency of the world. The American companies continue to be dominant in foreign direct investment. The US is the leader of key economic sectors like biotechnology and nanotechnology. The US economy has been attached to the old Fordist/assembly line/motor vehicle/petroleum paradigm throughout most of the twentieth century (Thompson 2006, p. 19) but has never lost advantage in higher education and research, the commercialization of new technologies, and enjoys as well the positive impact of the anti-monopoly tradition and of the change culture of the American society (Chase-Dunn and Lawrence 2011). The American army is much ahead of the China’s and the Russia’s in terms of lethality, technology, and force projection. The network of several hundred foreign military bases spreads the United States military power to all the world corners. The United States count on the record of the limited wars they fought to protect partner governments, and on the support given to the multilateral peace operations that preserved states hit by deadly aggression such as Kuwait in 1990, which was preserved under the United

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Nations umbrella from the Iraq aggression, and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, which was preserved under the umbrella of NATO from the Serbian and Croatian aggression (Khong 2013). This asset is very much taken into consideration by the coalition members that are worried for their own security. It is taken into consideration also by the non-coalition countries that are menaced by the foes of the United States.

3.2 China Since the first phase of the current world politics, the communist China leaders have been sharing the demand of the non-aligned and developing countries to restructure the world order and give to all the states equal voice in the world policy-making institutions. However, in the late 1980s, after the death of the communist China founder, Mao Tse-Tung, the country’s foreign policy changed enormously. The Beijing leaders adjusted own foreign policy to the policies of the world institutions in the belief that acting peacefully within the existing order rules was the best strategy for the country (Kastner and Saunders 2012; Weissmann 2015). China’s compliance with the UN policies witnesses the resolve to act inside the world order and avoid disrupting it for the time being. China is the second-largest contributor to the UN, the third to the WTO, and has raised the own capital level and voting weight in the IMF. Briefly, the Chinese leaders play the country’s economic power to raise the country weight in the policy-making world institutions and to take it to equal status with the United States (Feng 2013). This does not mean that China rules out revisionism in foreign policy. China looks for close relations with the states that wish to change the world order and policies they perceive as constraining their own sovereignty and programmes. Not surprisingly, such states advocate for the strict compliance with the Westphalian order and for no interference in the internal and foreign affairs of any independent country. Principles such as the forcible humanitarian intervention and Responsibility to Protect are ominous to Chinese leaders (Johnston 2003) and the leaders of like-minded countries. The admiration of many countries, especially developing ones, for the China’s policies improving the living standards of the people encourages China’s revisionism and shows that the authoritarian government as long as it delivers better life conditions is preferred by the non-Western people to the democratic one based on free election and party parliament that are the condition for receiving economic aid from the Western countries. Furthermore, as Xuejun (2018) remarks, the Chinese model of economy and society, which is based on the lack of a meaningful boundary between public and private ventures, gives to China competitive advantage on the Western coalition because it is close to the model of society and economy of many Asian and African countries. Such model of domestic order based on the principle of inviolable sovereignty, or ‘neo-Westphalianism’ (Barma et al. 2009, p. 590), could be one of the founding stones of the new world order coalition. In China and many Asian and African countries, the domestic political order is neither affected by principles like the rule of law and the liberal democracy nor by safeguards such as environment

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protection, consultation of civil society, and fiscal sustainability, which concern the governments of the Western countries when they provide development aid. Briefly, the “sovereignty plus development” model that China offers to countries in need of aid de-legitimizes the Western principles of order also at the domestic level. It subordinates democratic reforms to national economic growth, strengthens the power of the state, absorbs economic and intellectual elites into the government’s decision-making system, and weakens social forces (Xuejun 2018, pp. 68–73). China’s search for forefront status in the world government begins in the AsiaPacific region. Generally speaking, Asian governments prefer not to choose between China and the United States, but they come close to enter into political agreement with China because the China’s share of the trade of the Asian countries is growing much faster than the United States’ share. Beijing exercises influence over the neighbouring countries since it is a major driver of regional trade arrangements, using its continental-size market as a regional trade hub (Ross 2019, p. 303). China is the largest trading partner of four of the five Asia-Pacific allies of the United States, namely Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and Thailand. It is also the largest trading partner of most Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Lastly, it is the largest trading partner of all the Northeast Asian countries (including Japan, Republic of Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mongolia, and also Russia), and as well of other Asian countries such as Pakistan and India, and of Australia too. “The economic dependence of Asia-Pacific countries on China is now an indisputable fact” (Yang 2018, p. 231). Consequently, China has promoted the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank to sustain the Asian markets by finance resources and facilities. The second reservoir of China’s coalition power is Africa. China’s presence in Africa has been growing since the launch of FOCAC, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, in 2000. Chinese aid to Africa began in 1956 while foreign direct investment began to surge only at the turn of the millennium (Morgan and Zheng 2019). For the last ten years, China has been the sub-Saharan Africa’s top export and import market (Hodzi 2018, p. 5) contrasting the long-established influence of the West European countries in the continent and the Africa policy of the European Union (Hooijmaaijers 2018). China’s involvement in UN peacekeeping missions in Africa has been growing too. African rulers appreciate the Chinese approach free from political conditions such as institution building, legality construction, and democratic election, which are the principles of the Western intervention in conflict resolution (Xuejun 2018, p. 76). Last, China neglects interaction with civil society organizations and insists on security norms and principles, e.g. non-interference in the internal affairs, respect for other states’ sovereignty, and territorial integrity, that are the preferred means to resolving conflicts on the African continent (Hodzi 2018). Therefore, China’s contribution to conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction in Africa is likely to grow in the coming years and reduce the influence of the West in Africa’s security. Briefly, China’s emphasis on state sovereignty and non-intervention inflates the legitimacy crisis of the West in Africa and pushes forward the building of the anti-Western coalition.

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The China’s coalition power has been growing in the past ten years thanks to the ‘one belt one road’ project, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI. Investment in infrastructure and in trade facilitation is the main aspect of this programme that bolsters the flowing of industrial overproduction out of the country. BRI is implemented mostly by state-owned enterprises, and benefits from government procurement and subsidies. The initial BRI proposal to Central Asia countries in 2013 has been extended to Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and also to Latin America countries. The programme is implemented mostly by state-owned enterprises and by benefits from government procurement and subsidies. Nordin Astrid and Weissmann (2018) raise the question of whether the Chinese leaders pursue the country’s GDP growth or a new and better world order led by China. While BRI remains a capitalist undertaking, it could promote something that moves beyond and it is alternative to the US-led free market. Consequently, one can argue that BRI extends beyond economic interests. The promotion of trade, economic development, and transport links feeds political relations, the so-called fungibility of economic power. Briefly, the BRI appears as the primary instrument of the coalition power of China today. However, analysts warn that it is premature to worry about rising China. To Ross, for example, in the last years, the Chinese GDP dependence on the US market has been far greater than the US GDP dependence on the Chinese market. Consequently, China’s relative asymmetric vulnerability to US–China trade conflict challenges China’s ability to use coercive economic power to challenge US partnership with countries around the world (Ross 2019, p. 312). But to many, the American government is right in hardening the policy towards China by rising trade tariffs, putting new export regulations and restrictions on investment in the IT sector. Important coalition partners like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand share the American concern for the ability of the Chinese companies to control their own transport, education, healthcare, and energy infrastructure. Similarly, though some European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, and Italy pursue a positive approach towards working with China, the European Union institutions are worried for China’s expanding economic power. They work to develop foreign investment-screening instruments, and in 2018 proposed to all Asian countries the Strategy for Sustainable, comprehensive and rules-based connectivity. In conclusion, economy is key to China’s political power. Since the American hegemonic order is losing grip on ruling the world, China faces the dilemma on what is better for keeping on with the conditions that support the economic growth of China: Is the building of the coalition of the revisionist countries opposing the United States and the existing world institutions and policies better than supporting the present world order? As a matter of fact, at the present time, the Chinese leaders want to contain the decline of multilateralism and invoke to foster it again especially in the fora in which China enjoys institutional power such as the UN Security Council (Sohn 2012). Participation in and support of UN peace operations is a remarkable demonstration of such policy of the Chinese leaders as well as the engagement in reducing global warming and environmental pollution (Danner and Martín 2019, pp. 10–12).

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3.3 Russia A decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, succeeded in raising the national economy, stabilizing domestic politics, and restoring the world status of the country. Beginning in the early-2000, he enlarged the government agenda by launching what has been named assertive foreign policy. It included resetting strategic parity with the United States and promoting special relationship with selected foreign countries, especially neighbouring ones. Assertive foreign policy did not refrain from using coercive means and seizing pieces of the territory of countries as it occurred to Georgia and Ukraine. Putin’s goal is keeping Russia in the group of the big states, such as India, China, and Iran, that oppose the status and role of the Western coalition and claim the world should be ruled by multipolar governance. Accordingly, Putin’s primary objective is troubling the Western coalition by interfering with the NATO alliance strategy and by weakening the European Union as an economic and political bloc. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and, later, the invasion of Ukraine’s eastern provinces took the challenge to the European neighbours to the highest level of security threat. Projecting Russian power towards the Middle East and building partnerships with countries of Africa and Central Asia are also chief goals of Putin’s assertive policy. Intervention in Syria is the most important case. The control of the Middle Eastern country by giving military and economic support to the anti-Western leader of Syria gives to Russia notable influence in the region and, thereby, a role in world politics. Cooperation with Iran is further instance of the Putin’s assertive goal of expanding Russia’s influence and weakening the United States stance in the area. Russia condemned the United States withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and worked with the EU to keep this agreement going on. Though trade and economic cooperation with Iran is small, all the relations with the oil-producing countries of the Middle East and the Mediterranean are important to Moscow in order to play a role in the control of the world oil and energy prices. Central Asia is an area of high potential of the Russia’s coalition power. The Moscow leaders claim attachment to Greater Eurasia, but the East Asia and Pacific region are of secondary interest compared to Central Asia. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow has been active in building economic and security networks in Central Asia. In the 1990s, negotiation started to build two security networks and an economic integration process in the area. The two security networks entered into effect quite early. The Collective Security Treaty Organization, CSTO, was signed in 2002 to revitalize the Collective Security Treaty signed in 1992 by Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Shanghai Treaty Organization, SCO, was established in the mid-1990s to facilitate cooperation in security affairs, broadly defined, between China, Russia, and Central Asian countries. The negotiation to build economic integration in the area was completed in 2015 by giving life to the Eurasian Economic Union between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

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Last, Russia’s relations with the African governments are addressed to get political gains by developing economic and also military ventures. Trade between Russia and Africa is small but rising. Russia, instead, is one of the key providers of armaments to the African countries. The large troop contribution that Russia gives to UN peacekeeping missions in many African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sudan, South Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and Eritrea, is a way to gain the political confidence of the local population and as well to further the anti-Western attitude of the African governments. Briefly, Russia’s foreign policy is guided by status-seeking, i.e. by the ambition to be recognized as an indispensable actor of world politics (Schmitt 2019). Therefore, Putin’s assertive policy seems closer to the disruptive tactics of a spoiler actor rather than to the positive plan of the revisionist actor that aims at significantly delegitimizing the existing world order. Russia does not have the economic and political power to reshape the world order and government but is able to put under threat of military aggression the areas not far from her border that are in good relations with the Western countries. On occasion, Russia’s efforts at building its own coalition for a new world order consist in disrupting the politics of adversarial societies, gaining adherents among extremist parties, and supporting anti-liberal, authoritarian, regimes. Russia leaders play mostly as a game-changer against the Western coalition by creating situations in which the United States and the European countries find impossible to make any decisions without her participation. In conclusion, the revisionism and coalition power of the United States, China, and Russia is shortly appraised as it follows. The United States, still the most powerful state in charge of the delegitimized world order and resolute to keep its position, is aware of the need to act for restoring its role and the effectiveness of the order. Therefore, it qualifies as revisionist state though its revisionism aims at just amending the existing order rather than totally replacing it with something very much different from the present one. The United States continues to have many resource and skill advantages on China and Russia. Therefore, American policy-makers should have a clear and tough strategy to meet the objective of the second American hegemony. The rise of China’s world status has been made by a wise and cautious strategy that has exploited the opportunities offered by the existing institutions and policies. The Chinese leaders are aware of how the country has enhanced its status. Accordingly, at the moment they consider premature speeding up order transition by organizing the antagonist coalition because this will heighten world political strain, and cause harsh confrontation. Still, China is on alert, preparing a kind of protective revisionist response because the current de-legitimate world policies could produce conditions in the world economy that are unsustainable to China and as well political instability damaging China’s status ascendancy. Assertive Russia wants to be of the party of the potential hegemonic states. Yet, it is far behind the United States and China in economic power. This gives to Russia limited coalition power and few resources to build a performant revisionist strategy. Consequently, Russia’s is mostly reactive and opportunist revisionism.

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4 The Next Macro-Decision In past international politics, rival coalitions went to war to get the right to reform the world order. The hegemony school scientists have provided empirical evidence of the great powers’ race to world war to gain the world leadership. Today, order transition research addresses mainly the question of what material and political transformations are diverting the cycle of world politics from the track it travelled through in the past centuries. In the present social, technological, economic, and ideological environment of the world, violent confrontation appears as both an unappealing and improbable mechanism of order transition. Accordingly, the scientists of the hegemony school draw attention to the very transformation of politics and international relations that have been taking place in the contemporary world. From the study of the past 500 years of warfare, systemic leadership, and trade, Rasler and Thompson (2005) got evidence supporting the following interpretation: warfare does or can lead to systemic leadership. On turn, systemic leadership leads to expanded trade and diminished warfare that lasts till the de-legitimation of the world leader. But they remark that evidence exists also in support of the long-term transformation of the relation of the three variables towards generating a subsystem of the most powerful countries which makes the world system of today more pacific than the previous ones. On a different path, Linklater’s study (2010) of the civilization process of the international politics of the past centuries demonstrates the establishment of mechanisms and procedures that diminish the recourse to violence for solving international conflict of interest. Such civilization of interstate relations could impact on the mechanism of the fourth phase of the world hegemony cycle because the most powerful states are aware of the destructive effects of the nuclear weapons, and abstain from interrupting the nuclear peace that in the past seventy years prevented militarized competition between the great powers. Such conclusion matches the thesis of the obsolescence of major wars which maintains that the costs of extreme conflict will moderate global power competition and make the resort to violence between world powers not a practicable option (Mueller 1989). During the current world order cycle, a tremendous political process has promoted new institutional and intergovernmental methods and mechanisms of dialogue on contentious policy issues. The growth in number and activity of UN agencies and conferences and as well of groups of debate and coordination such as the G7/8 and G20 meetings of heads of government and ministries, and the increased frequency of bilateral meetings and direct talks of state leaders are forms of problem-solving and policy-making that could promote the reform of the world order and government by dialogue and negotiation rather than by violent confrontation. If the dominant and the defiant coalition and their leaders decide to run peaceful confrontation on the next world order, they will negotiate the order reform either within or outside the existing world institutions. In both instances, the reform will not affect remarkably the top body of the United Nations. It is hard to think about the significant reform of the Security Council. The prospective coalition leaders of the next cycle, the United States, China, and possibly Russia, are the permanent members

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of the Security Council. They will not allow to negotiate on the drastic change of the Council rules and to give away their so-called veto power. Some scholars argue for shaping the next world order by combining the values of the major coalitions and founding the world government on the co-leadership of the major world powers. Yan claims that the establishment of the American Chinese co-leadership is possible by combining the three values of the Western liberalism—equality, democracy, and freedom—with the three Chinese traditional values—benevolence, righteousness, and rites (2018, p. 10). Such composite will be the base of the order values of the next world government institutions. Yang (2018, p. 195) explains that ‘co-ruling’ requires two conditions to come into being. First, neither competitor has all the means to meet the indispensable needs of the other countries but each one has means to meet other countries’ needs that the other one does not have. Yang cites as an example the relations of China and the United States with many Asian countries. China provides economic resources and trade to the developing economy of those countries while the United States provide strategic cooperation and security protection. Second, both rivals perceive the catastrophic consequences of the world war and believe that such a war is not the strategic option they prefer. Should the incumbent hegemon and the rival state choose not to corule the world, Yang claims that they face the choice between fighting the world war to solve their confrontation over hegemonic transition and establishing a cold war relationship, as the United States and Soviet Union did, and rule on distinct geographical spheres of influence. Danner and Martin (2019), instead, demonstrates that exit from the American hegemony is possible through the Dutch global hegemonic model. They distinguish three kinds of hegemony and order transitions: the benevolent hegemonic leadership, exemplified by the transition from the British to the American hegemony; the coercive hegemonic domination, exemplified by the forcefully take-over of hegemony, exemplified by Napoleonic France between 1803 and 1815, by Wilhelmine Germany between 1890 and 1918, and by Imperial Japan, particularly between the late 1920s to its defeat in the Second World War in 1946; and the Dutch-style, order-conforming hegemonic governance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exemplified by the gradual exclusion of Portugal from trade in the Indies. Danner and Martin conclude that the current China’s ascendance to global hegemony is focused, like the Dutch one, on trade and financial concerns, without the interference of violent conflicts or impositions of political and ideological norms and values.

5 Concluding Remarks The post-world war order was created to face two big problems, namely the establishment of sovereign and safe nation-states in every corner of the world and the stability and growth of the national and world markets. In current IR literature, the values and principles of the policies towards these problems are known as the values and principles of liberal internationalism. The main values are equality, sovereignty rights, and

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the mutual respect of the states. The main principles are self-determination, rule of law, and free market. The governments of the United States, Canada, Australia, and of the West European countries put such values and principles, which belong mostly to the Western civilization, as the founding stones of the post-war order and government. They made such decision since these values and principles fit to the political and economic interests of the states of the Western coalition. In the following times, the Western countries defended these values and principles by encouraging the making and implementing of world policies that promoted the Western coalition interest. In reality, the policies of the world institutions, especially the economic ones, have not been always and firmly consistent with liberalism but advanced the interest of the Western countries. Briefly, the Western coalition did not serve liberal internationalism. On the contrary, liberal internationalism served the Western countries’ interest. While many states have interiorized liberal internationalism and have been socialized to the policies of the existing world order, some authors suggest that an alternative order, a World Without the West, is beginning to emerge in the areas of the developing countries because the largest and wealthiest developing countries have begun to preferentially connect with each other and reduce their relative exposure to the Western countries (Barma et al. 2009). The emergence of an alternative international order is not provoked by a single rising power and a waning hegemonic power, but by a set of states which do not intentionally join in a formal or informal coalition but intentionally gravitate towards a new set of patterns and rules of behaviour in international politics. In particular, Barma and co-authors demonstrate with economic trade data and voting data at the General Assembly that the major non-Western economies trade and coordinate at the United Nations with each other above and beyond what is expected given their level of development, geographic position, market size, domestic political institutions, and geopolitical and colonial ties (2009, pp. 581–586). Such coordination demonstrates the continuing influence of culture and economic cleavages in contemporary world politics. Coordination counts in international relations especially in times of turbulence, declining order, and weakening world policies. But transition to the new order and government of the world political system imposes on the states to share values, principles and institutions in order to respond to the current collective problems by effective policies. The hegemonic school has provided evidence, built by studying past world orders, of the dominance of a coalition of states under the leadership of one state as the condition for solving the main collective problems of the world system. Such coalition may come into being after a time of thick political coordination among countries that agree on producing public world politics to respond to collective problems. The challenge consists in responding to the current world problems by sharing the values, political principles and policy-making institutions that fit to responding to the problems of the twenty-first century. The world problems on agenda seventy-five years ago have been changing their essence during the past decades. Such change has been also the effect of the policies of the world institutions but these institutions and the hegemonic coalition have not been up to the goal of producing generalized economic growth and of fastening stability and democracy inside the states. Such goals are still high on the agenda of the world

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political system. Additionally, problems such as ecological degradation and climate change, cyberspace insecurity, increased human mobility and migration, adequate response to the diffusion of epidemics, and all the problems of the permeability of the state borders wave in the world political space and wait to enter in the policy-making pipeline of the world institutions. In such circumstances, enlarging the set of values and principles for making world policies is necessary to harmonize the expectations of the largest possible number of countries for responding to the collective problems of the twenty-first century. The hegemonic theory of world politics assigns such task, i.e. the making of the next order project, to the great powers. Yet, in the present circumstances, any hegemonic interpretation of the current world politics does not find enough evidence to assert that the American world order has reached its deadline and that the coalition reconfiguration is in progress.

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Modelski, G. (1983). Long cycles of world leadership. In W. R. Thompson (Ed.), Contending approaches to world system analysis (pp. 115–140). London: Sage. Modelski, G. (1996). Evolutionary paradigm for global politics. International Studies Quarterly, 40(3), 321–342. Modelski, G. (1999). From leadership to organization: The evolution of global politics. In V. Bornschier & C. Chase-Dunn (Eds.), The future of global conflict (pp. 11–39). London: Sage. Modelski, G. (2001). Evolutionary world politics: Problems of scope and method. In W. R. Thompson (Ed.), Evolutionary interpretations of world politics. London: Routledge. Modelski, G. (2008). Globalization as evolutionary process. In G. Modelski, T. Devezas, & W. R. Thompson (Eds.), Globalization as evolutionary process: Modeling global change (pp. 11–29). London: Routledge. Modelski, G., Devezas, T., & Thompson, W. R. (Eds.). (2008). Globalization as evolutionary process: Modeling global change. London: Routledge. Modelski, G., & Morgan, P. M. (1985). Understanding global wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39(3), 391–417. Modelski, G., & Thompson, W. R. (1988). Seapower in global politics 1494-1993. London: Macmillan. Modelski, G., & Thompson, W. R. (1996). Leading sectors and world powers: The coevolution of global economics and politics. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Morgan, P., & Zheng, Y. (2019). Tracing the legacy: China’s historical aid and contemporary investment in Africa. International Studies Quarterly, 63, 558–573. Mueller, J. (1989). Retreat from doomsday: The obsolescence of major war. New York: Basic Books. Nau, H. R. (1990). The Myth of America’s decline: Leading the world economy into the 1990s. New York: Oxford University Press. Nexon, D. H., & Neumann, I. B. (2018). Hegemonic-order theory: A field-theoretic account. European Journal of International Relations, 24(3), 662–686. Nordin Astrid, H. M., & Weissmann, M. (2018). Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order. International Affairs, 94(2), 231–249. Norrlof, C. (2018). Hegemony and inequality: Trump and the liberal playbook. International Affairs, 94(1), 63–88. Nye, J. S. (1990). Bound to lead: The changing nature of American power. New York: Basic Books. Puchala, D. (2005). World hegemony and the United Nations. International Studies Review, 7, 571–584. Rasler, K., & Thompson, W. R. (2005). War, trade, and the mediation of systemic leadership. Journal of Peace Research, 3, 251–269. Rosenboim, O. (2019). State, power and global order. International Relations, 33(2), 229–245. Ross, R. S. (2019). On the fungibility of economic power: China’s economic rise and the East Asian security order. European Journal of International Relations, 25(1), 302–327. Russett, B. (1985). The mysterious case of vanishing hegemony: Or, is Mark Twain really dead?. International Organization, 39(2), 207–231. Schmitt, O. (2019). How to challenge an international order: Russian diplomatic practices in multilateral security organisations. European Journal of International Relations, 1–25. Skidmore, D. (2005). Understanding the unilateralism turn in U.S. foreign policy. Foreign Policy Analysis, 1(2), 207–228. Sohn, I. (2012). After renaissance: China’s multilateral offensive in the developing world. European Journal of International Relations, 18(1), 77–101. Stokes, D. (2018). Trump, American hegemony and the future of the liberal international order. International Affairs, 94(1), 133–150. Telò, M. (Ed.). (2013). Globalisation, multilateralism, Europe: Towards a better global governance? Farnham: Ashgate. Telò, M. (Ed.). (2016). European Union and new regionalism: Competing regionalism and global governance in a post-hegemonic era. London: Routledge. Thompson, W. R. (1988). On global wars. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

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Thompson, W. R. (1990). Long waves, technological innovation, and relative decline. International Organization, 44(2), 201–234. Thompson, W. R. (2006). Systemic leadership, evolutionary processes, and international relations theory: The unipolarity question. International Studies Review, 8, 1–22. Thompson, W. R. (2020). Power concentration in world politics: The Political economy of systemic leadership, growth, and conflict. Cham: Springer. Voelsen, D., & Schettler, L. V. (2019). International political authority: On the meaning and scope of justified hierarchy in international relations. International Relations, 33(4), 540–562. Voeten, E. (2004). Resisting the lonely superpower: Responses of states in the United Nations to U.S. dominance. The Journal of Politics, 66(3), 729–754. Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world system. New York: Academic Press. Watson, A. (1992). The evolution of international society. London: Routledge. Weissmann, M. (2015). Chinese foreign policy in a global perspective: A responsible reformer “striving for achievement”. Journal of China and International Relations, 3(1), 151–166. Yan, X. (2018). Chinese values vs. liberalism: What ideology will shape the international normative order? The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 11, 1–22. Yang, Y. (2018), Escape both the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and the ‘Churchill Trap’: Finding a third type of great power relations under the bipolar system. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 11, 193–235. Xuejun, W. (2018). Developmental peace: Understanding China’s Africa policy in peace and security. In A. Chris et al. (Eds.), China and Africa (pp. 67–82). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Zack, A. (2017). Hegemonic war and grand strategy: Ludwig Dehio, world history and the American future. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Fulvio Attinà is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations, and Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam at the University of Catania, Italy. Former Chair of the Italian Association of Political Science (SISP), he served also in the governing bodies of ECPR, ISA and Italian ECSA. Visiting professor at universities in America, Asia and Europe, he is the author of The Global Political System, Palgrave, 2011 (also published in Italian, Spanish, and Russian).

Friction, Competition, or Cooperation? Menu of Choice for the United States and China—A Power Transition Perspective Yi Feng

Abstract This chapter analyzes the relations between the United States and China in the twenty-first century in the context of power transition theory. The theory predicts violent or peaceful transitions of global leadership based on two factors: power parity/predominance and status quo satisfaction/dissatisfaction. In light of the theory, the chapter systematically examines the power distribution between the United States and China as well as their institutional similarities or dissimilarities and areas of potential conflict and cooperation. Keywords Power transition · Global leadership · GDP · Forecasting

1 Introduction In conjunction with China’s ascent, various arguments have been made about the consequences of a powerful China. This chapter utilizes power transition theory as a template to explore the implications of China’s reemergence as a superpower. Historically, global leadership has been made and unmade peacefully or violently. When Spain superseded Portugal as a super sea power in the sixteenth century, they negotiated to divide their self-claimed respective territories overseas, instead of waging a war. When the Netherlands seized world leadership from Spain in the seventeenth century, the transition experienced much bloodshed in protracted warfare. Similarly,

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the European Consortium for Political Research at Wroclaw, Poland, September 4–7, 2019. The author wishes to thank Jacek Kugler, Ronald Tammen, Patrick James, Birol Ye¸silada, and Ernie Maldonado for their comments and suggestions. The author is indebted to Fulvio Attinà, Daniela Irrera, Mladen Lis˘anin, and other panel participants for discussions. The author also thanks Jingjing An and Zhijun Gao for updating the data used in this chapter. Y. Feng (B) Department of International Studies, Maldonado Institute for International Security and Global Leadership, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_3

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Great Britain grabbed the helm from the Netherlands in the subsequent century after a series of major wars between the two countries. The last leadership transition occurred in a peaceful manner when the United Kingdom handed over world supremacy to the United States after the Second World War. With its rise in economic prowess, China has been recognized as a challenger to the United States’ current global leadership. If there is a transition, will this one be pacific or violent? The relations between the United States and China, currently the two largest economies, probably will be the most important global subject in the twenty-first century. This chapter aims at analyzing and predicting this relationship using the theoretical framework of power transition theory developed during the last 70 years by generations of international studies scholars (e.g., Organski 1958, 1968; Organski and Kugler 1980; Kugler and Organski 1986; Tammen 2008; Tammen, Kugler and Lemki 2018; Ye¸silada et al. 2018). This theory will inform the discussion on the following two questions: Is China on a trajectory to replace the United States as a superpower? Will the interactions between the United States and China spell conflict or encourage cooperation worldwide? There are two components in power transition theory that make a major conflict likely: power parity and dissatisfaction with status quo. Only when these two conditions are both satisfied, the incumbent leader and the upcoming challenger will be likely to find them in war. If one assumes that China’s rise in economic, political, and military power is unstoppable, then the only other key factor affecting the outcome of the Sino-US relations is satisfaction or dissatisfaction with status quo. If the two countries embrace the same norms and rules, a power transition will probably take place peacefully. If not, the world will wait to see much conflict in the decades to come. This chapter systematically analyzes the power distribution of the two countries as well as their common interest or lack of that as a way to measure satisfaction with status quo. The next section dissects power transition theory. Section 3 examines and predicts power distribution between the United States and China. Section 4 reviews the sources of conflict between the two countries looking into political, social, and economic dimensions that define national interests. Section 5 provides concluding remarks taking a glimpse of the future relations between the two nations.

2 Power Transition: A Theoretical Perspective First, power transition theory pertains to the relations of major powers, particularly between the world’s most powerful country and its main challenger. A.F.K. Organski created power transition theory in World Politics (Organski 1958) and further elaborated it in the 1968 edition of the book.1 1 Since

Organski (1958), Organski and his associates have been building upon this original work up to today, while other scholars have also contributed to the same topic with new nuances and applications, for example, see Gilpin (1988), Attinà (2011), and Allison (2017).

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The core assumption of power transition theory emphasizes a fundamental structure of international relations, in which exists the most powerful nation as the world’s leader, under whom lie “great powers” that are less powerful than the leader but are more powerful than the rest which can be characterized as “middle powers,” “small powers,” and “colonies” in the order of their respective power rankings. The leader takes it upon itself to make the rule for countries, prescribe the norm for the world, and create order out of anarchy of the international system. The rule or order of the international system is called the “status quo” in the terminology of power transition theory. As the creator of the rules and norms for the international system, the dominant nation or leader is supposed to be satisfied with the status quo. Among the rest of the countries, some are “satisfied with” the status quo and some are “dissatisfied” with it. The leader enjoys a substantive support among the great powers, as most of them are satisfied with the international order decreed or constructed by the leader. Among the great powers, more nations are satisfied with the status quo than those not. The former, as beneficiaries of the status quo, are allies or friends with the dominant nation. The latter, more often than not, emerges a dissatisfied upcoming challenger to the dominant nation. According to the theory, moving down the hierarchy, fewer and fewer nations are satisfied with the status quo, with the colonies almost monolithically against the status quo, as they are victims in the international system. Such dissatisfaction with, or opposition to, the status quo among the lower-ranked nations would not matter, as by definition, they are far less powerful than the leaders and great powers and are in no position to challenge effectively the status quo to their favor. As long as this hierarchical structure remains stable, the power preponderance of the dominant country will prevail over any challenge from other countries including those among the “great powers,” as the leader not only boasts the unparalleled power, but also the support of the nations among the great powers that are satisfied with the status quo. The usefulness of the power transition theory lies in its dynamic nature. Given the hierarchy of international relations, some nation among the great powers dissatisfied with the status quo desires to alter the status to maximize its own interest; it has not only the incentive, but also the capacity, to develop itself, typically, through differentiable growth in economic development, technology, and resources to such degree that it becomes a real challenge to the dominant nation and the status quo. From this scenario, the main conclusion of power transition theory emerges: When there is power preponderance, there is peace; when there is power parity, there is the danger of war or other types of major conflict. Ultimately, only when power parity and conflict over status quo jointly occur, the likelihood of war is likely to rise to a level of serious concern. Figure 1 summarizes four scenarios with different combinations of power and satisfaction with the status quo. Peace is most likely to be preserved when all other nations are dominated by the leader in terms of power. The relatively weak opposition has no interest in fighting the leader, even if it is dissatisfied with the status quo, and if it fights, it will certainly lose the confrontation with enormous damages to itself. It is not capable of, or interested in, starting a war on the dominant nation to change the status quo. The chance of

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Y. Feng Status quo satisfaction

Status quo dissatisfaction

Power preponderance

Peace

Low Conflict, if any

Power parity

Low Conflict, if any

War

Fig. 1 Power, satisfaction, peace, and conflict

major conflict therefore remains low when the challenger is weak relative to the leader, though the former may have opposing demands and clashing desires against the dominant nation (upper right corner in Fig. 1). Similarly, enjoying the status quo, even when nations are relatively equal in power, they will not have much interest in going to war against each other. The cost of war exceeds the benefit from the change in the status quo with which they are already happy, and there is no rationality in fight a costly war for nothing to be gained (lower left corner). The most peaceful zone is when the potential challenger is weak and is satisfied with the status quo. To the “challenger,” there is neither interest nor capacity in fighting against the dominant nation (upper left corner). The most perilous area is when the challenger and leader disagree on the status quo and when they are relatively equal in power. The challenger is now capable of demanding a change in the status quo that the leader has created, and the leader will resist and reject these demands, as concessions by the leader will spell the beginning of dismantlement of the international order that it leads with authority, until now (lower right corner). Under power transition theory, it is the challenger that initiates the war, making the dominant nation a defender for the status quo against the challenging nation. Organski (1958) argues that when the challenger is gaining power on the leader, it will subsequently start a transition war on the leader. The underlying assumption seems that the challenger is risk acceptant while the leader is risk averse. Organski and Kugler (1980) test the hypothesis on the initiation of the transition war and find that the challenger would not attack the leader until it has surpassed the leader in power. An intriguing question is why the dominant nation does not conduct a pre-emptive elimination of the challenger when the latter is relatively weak or in other words, why should the dominant nation allow itself to be weakened and destroyed by not taking earlier action getting rid of the opponent when it can. Tammen et al. (2018) give two reasons. First, the challenger nation, once destroyed, will be reborn to the great via the phoenix factor and would be surely opposed to the status quo even more. Second, it is difficult for the dominant nation to ascertain the level of the challenger’s dissatisfaction with the status quo, and given this uncertainty, the dominant nation would be cautious about initiation of pre-emptive war. “It makes more sense for the dominant nation to work on improving the challenger’s evaluation of the status quo rather than attempting to destroy it” (Tammen et al. 2018, p. 34). A recent development in power transition theory is on the dynamic nature of the status quo. Originally, status quo, as stated earlier, was created or adopted by the

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dominant nation and was assumed to be fixed under the dominant nation. Ye¸silada et al. (2018) change the static nature of status quo to an “evolving status quo,” incorporating possibilities that the “status quo” may grow incongruent with the dominant nation’s best interest. Unlike the concept of status quo before in the power transition literature that maintains a tautology between the status quo and the dominant nation, this time, a dichotomy exists; the dominant nation, just like the challenging nation, may be satisfied with the status quo or may be dissatisfied with the status quo. Such nuances are critical in adding to the possible outcomes in conflict or peace given power distribution and satisfaction with status quo. Under this theoretical innovation, in the case of power parity, major conflict is like to conflagrate when the dominant nation and the challenging nation are both dissatisfied with the status quo. The status quo is assumed to have evolved when the best interest of the dominant nation cannot be served by the status quo it has established before. In other words, the status quo is no longer congruent with the best interest of the dominant nation. At the same time, the status quo neither serves the best interest of the challenger. This is the recipe for major conflict. “The reason is that dissatisfied nations face limited power constraints and are only restrained by the degree supporting the status quo. In the absence of a regionally dominant country supporting the status quo, competition among two or more contenders is the rule to resolve disputes among parties that vie for control of the region” (Ye¸silada et al. 2018, p. 26). The second scenario is characterized by the satisfaction of the dominant nation and the dissatisfaction of the challenging nation with the status quo. Unlike the original power transition theory stressing the intersection of power parity and dissatisfaction with the status quo as the zone of great danger for war, this time, war and peace may both ensue. War happens when the “risk-prone” challenging nation initiates the war to change the status quo (the original argument), but peace may also prevail if “the dissatisfied challenger is persuaded to accept an evolving status quo that is then jointly adopted at parity leading to peace” (Ye¸silada et al. 2018, p. 27). The latter scenario is consistent with that of Kugler and Organski (1986) who argue that the dominant nation would not start a preventive war on the challenger but would use the strategy of persuading the challenger to accept modified status quo. The third scenario is that the dominant and challenging nations are both satisfied with the status quo. The outcome will be a peaceful transition. “This is the rare condition that leads to institutionalized alliances, free trade zones, and ultimately to a deeper integration” (Ye¸silada et al. 2018, p. 27). The transition of global leadership from Portugal to Spain and from the United Kingdom to the United States seems to fall in this category. There are two remaining issues to be addressed in this most recent development of power transition theory. First, when both the dominant nation and the challenger are dissatisfied with the status quo, there exists an incentive for both of them to collaborate in changing the status quo to their favor, and given that, we should find a decrease in the probability of war between themselves, rather than an increase in likelihood of confrontation between the two most powerful nations. When shared interest between them dominates their differences, the two most powerful nations

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in the world do not have to fight against each other, as the mutual benefit from collaboration outweighs the cost of fighting against each other, particularly under the condition of power parity. Why should they fight to incur huge losses, whereas they can jointly maximize their best interest in the change of the status quo through partnership and cooperation? Their mutual dissatisfaction with status quo provides a reason for them to collaborate, rather than fighting against each other. The other issue is that the recent development of power transition theory leaves out the scenario of an unsatisfied dominant nation versus a satisfied challenger. Conceivably, a challenger may benefit more from the status quo than the leader. The degree of the dominant nation’s dissatisfaction with the status quo intensifies when it finds that the same status quo benefits the challenger far more than itself to a degree that the rise of the challenger has become a real threat. One example is the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a product of Western liberalism, WTO replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994, which was established in 1948 after the Second World War and was dedicated to international economic cooperation embodied by the Bretton Woods institutions known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The United States, along with its Western allies, played a leadership role in shaping the agenda of GATT and WTO. China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) only on December 11, 2001, after a lengthy process of negotiations demanding that China makes changes in its economic structure including tariff reductions and market openness. Since China joined WTO, it tremendously benefitted from the multilateralism in international economy and remained very satisfied with the status quo under WTO. At the same time, the United States grew increasingly dissatisfied with WTO. President Obama took the leadership to create the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a new status quo to counterbalance WTO, and President Trump took a more direct measure by raising the issue of the United States leaving WTO, reorienting from multilateralism under WTO to bilateralism under the United States’ initiative. In this example, we find the dominant nation, viz. the United States, dissatisfied with the status quo and a challenger, namely China, very happy with the status quo. The discourse of power transition theory has yet to address the scenario in which a challenger benefits from the status quo such that it grows to challenge the leader which, weakened by the status quo, desires to exit from it or effect a change of it.

3 Power: Parity or Preponderance? In order to assess the relevancy of China in the context of power transition, I will first concentrate on China’s rise in power in comparison with that of the United States, leaving satisfaction with status quo to the next section. Power as a concept in power transition theory refers to the aggregate power of the country, instead of power adjusted by population, for example, per capita national income. The measure of power is the aggregate economic size, for example, Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Organski (1958) defines aggregate power as Economic Productivity per

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Capita x Population, with “economic productivity” measured by Gross National Product (GNP). The national power therefore was proxied through Gross National Product (GNP), with population canceled out of the equation. Later, after the development of the concept and measurement of political capacity, sometimes, power in the power transition studies takes the form of Political Capacity x GNP (Organski and Kugler 1980). This measure gives an emphasis to the political capacity of the national government to extract and allocate domestic resources represented in GDP. As power transition theory specifically defines power as aggregate national productive power, rather than using a concept of an intangible quality such as influence or security, we will focus on the aggregate measure of the economy. Our start in examining the power of the two countries, the United States and China, is through a comparison of the size of their economies. Below I use the data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to explore the trajectory of China’s and the United States’ productive power in the context of power transition theory. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) database contains selected macroeconomic data series embedded in the statistical appendix of the World Economic Outlook Report, which presents the IMF staff’s analysis and projections of economic developments at the global level, in major country groups, and for many individual countries (IMF 2019). Instead of GNP, IMF along with the World Bank and others report Gross Domestic Product (GDP). From the IMF database, I extract the following two series for the United States and China: (1) GDP based on purchase power parity (PPP), which uses international dollars, and (2) GDP based on exchange rate using the current year and the US dollars. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook data series start in the year 1980 and end in the year 2024 with the data for the years between 2019 and 2024 based on projections (April 2019).2 Using purchasing-power-parity-based GDP, we find that China has surpassed the United States already. The transition year is 2013. Around 2004 or 2005, the growth rate of China’s GDP (based on PPP) accelerated, and since then, it increased rapidly from 2005 to 2019. During this period of time, the average annual growth rate of China’s GDP (PPP) is 11.2%, while that of the United States is 3.8%. The range of growth rates for China is from 7.9 to 17.3% and that for the United States is from −1.8 to 6.7%. The projection by IMF for the years beyond 2018 shows an even enlarged growth differential in GDP (PPP) between China and the United States. In terms of purchasing power parity, China has already become the largest economy in the world (Fig. 2). While purchasing power parity takes into consideration the living costs in the countries, it does not reflect well the financial transactions across the countries when trade and investment are concerned; it also faces methodological issues in terms of availability and comparability of the individual goods across different countries as well as sampling issues in survey methodology. By comparison, the data on GDP

2 https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/index.aspx.

2019.

Retrieved on July 24,

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Fig. 2 Gross Domestic Product Purchasing Power Parity Based

Fig. 3 Gross Domestic Product Current Prices

measured by exchange rates are easily available, reflect the total production of the country, and apply to international financial transactions.3 Figure 3 compares GDP of the United States and GDP of China using current prices and exchange rates. Based on this measure of the size of the economy, we find 3 See

Cullen (2007) for comparisons of PPP and Market Rate GDP.

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Fig. 4 Gross Domestic Product Current Prices

the United States’ economic power far ahead of that of China, and this trend will likely maintain itself for quite a few years to come. In some detailed analysis, similarly to Fig. 2, China’s growth rate of GDP based on exchange rates displays a takeoff around 2004–2005, while the United States GDP nosed down in 2008. From 2004 to 2018, the average annual growth rate of China’s GDP was 15.0% with a range from zero to 28.9%, while that of the United States was 3.78% with a range of −1.79–6.73%. The simulation by IMF beyond 2019 indicates a trend of China’s GDP narrowing the gap with the United States’ GDP. Based on both the actual data and simulation by IMF, I extend the data series to 2044, another twenty years after the last year of IMF’s simulation. The forecasting methodology is the stepwise autoregressive estimation that combines time trend regression with an autoregressive model to select the lags to use for the autoregressive process.4 In Fig. 4, China’s GDP (exchange rates) exceeds that of the United States in the year 2042. The forecasting method in the above makes use of the entire available data series, including the simulation data by IMF (2019–2024). Two issues may ensue. First, as we have seen in Figs. 2 and 3, China’s GDP took a leap starting in 2004. The use of the entire data since 1980 underestimates the momentum in the beginning of the 2000s. Second, the simulation of the simulation by IMF may add to complexity and compromise accuracy. To address these two problems, I use the actual growth rates of China’s and the United States’ GDP during the period of 2008–2018 to generate the forecast until 2030. Figure 5 shows the results. Using the growth rates of the last

4 See

“The Forecast Procedure,” SAS/ETS User Guide, Version 6, Second Edition, Raleigh, NC 1993: The SAS Institute, pp. 421–470.

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Fig. 5 Gross Domestic Product Current Prices

ten years, China’s GDP passes that of the United States in 2024, almost twenty years earlier than Fig. 4 projects. There has been an observation that China’s growth rates have dropped significantly in recent years and China’s economy has entered a stage of “new normal” with a growth rate between 6 and 7%. Figure 5 uses the conservative assumption of a growth rate of 6% for China to generate the forecast series, and for the United States, the benchmark growth rate is 3.39%, the actual average growth rate for the United States GDP from 2009 to 2018. These assumptions, 6% for China’s GDP and 3.39% for the United States GDP, are used to forecast the data beyond 2018. By this method, China’s GDP will pass the United States’ GDP in the year 2035, about seven years slower than Fig. 5 and ten years faster than Fig. 4 (Fig. 6). The above comparisons of national aggregate power in the context of power transition theory are based on the size of the economy of the country; it has not taken into consideration the effective use of the economic strength. Governments in various countries have different political abilities to extract and allocate resources for national priorities. Here arises the concept of political capacity. “To approach political capacity, then, one must estimate the ability of a political system to mobilize the resources within the polity…. Political capacity is used to shrink or expand the original base of power” (Organski and Kugler 1980, p. 191). To further this concept, Organski and Kugler (1980) develop a measure of political extraction based on a government’s capacity to collect taxes. The measure is a ratio of actual tax revenue to expected tax revenue, with the latter as the predicted outcome based on economic factors such as the components and characteristics of an economy, excluding political factors. If the government collects more taxes than predicted on the basis of the economic conditions, the government is supposed to have a higher level of political extractive capacity; if the ratio is less than one, the government is considered to be

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Fig. 6 Gross Domestic Product Current Prices

a “weak” government lacking in political extractive power, as it fails to collect the amount of taxes predicted by its economy. The relative political extraction (RPE) data have been developed for all countries for which macroeconomic data are available with the latest update ending in 2015. Figure 7 shows the relative political extraction data. It can be seen that the levels of relative political extraction for the United States were much higher than China for

Fig. 7 Relative Political Capacity (by Political Extraction)

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Fig. 8 Gross Domestic Product Adjusted by Political Capacity (Current Prices)

most of the years in the last century. The trend was reversed beginning the twentyfirst century and peaked around 2013 for China. For the United States, the lowest level of REP was found after the financial crisis of 2008, and since then, it started to rise in 2012. To adjust GDP with relative political extraction, I use the forecasting method discussed earlier to generate the RPE data for China and the United States in order to match the IMF data on GDP for the years 2016–2024.5 Then, following Organski and Kugler (1980), I multiply the IMF GDP data with RPE data for the United States and China. This method reflects the “shrinkage” or “expansion” of the aggregate economic power through political capacity of the government. Figure 8 displays the result. When weighted by relative political extraction, China’s GDP will exceed that of the United States very soon, in 2021. Next, Fig. 9 summarizes the above findings by using the ratios of China’s GDP to the United States’ GDP. The reference line for the vertical axis is at one, indicating perfect parity between the two countries’ GDP. All five measures of GDP were displayed in one graph for the two countries. Based on different measures, China’s GDP will pass the United States’ GDP in 2021 (RPE adjusted GDP), 2024 (with prediction for 2019 onward based on the growth rates of 2009–2018), 2035 (with prediction for 2019 onward based on a growth rate of 6% for China and of 3.39% for the United States), and 2042 (with the stepwise autoregressive estimation in combination with time trend on the entire time series for 2024 onward). With all 5 While

we do not have actual data for political extraction for China after 2015, by observations, China’s political capacity has been strengthened with the new leadership that started in 2013. One example is the anti-corruption campaign that has sent many high-ranking corrupted officials to jail. .

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Fig. 9 Gross Domestic Product Ratio China vs. United states

the estimates in consideration, for the twenty years between now and the end of the 2040s, the world will increasingly feel the pulses of the co-movements of the two countries reaching and crossing parity in aggregate national power. It should be mentioned that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) may not capture well the dynamics of a rising power. In the case of China, GDP may significantly underestimate the momentum and levels of China’s economic power. Some key activities, such as the manufacturing power, research and development, and technological breakthroughs, and industrial innovations, including artificial intelligence, new sustainable energy products, computation and robotics, and other components of a scientific revolution, are important means for a country to leap to the next level of industrialization and, therefore, power status. In the same spirit, Freeman (2019) writes, “So, whether stated at nominal exchange rates or in purchasing power parity (PPP), comparisons of gross economic indicators between China and America are mostly beside the point. It is far more relevant that Chinese industrial production, now a fourth of the entire world’s, is over one-and-a-half times that of the United States – more than America, Germany, and South Korea combined. And it matters that the Chinese workforce involved in so-called ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) work is also already one-fourth of the world’s, eight times larger than America’s and growing more than three times faster” (Freeman 2019).6 To reflect China’s endeavors to upgrade technology and advance innovation, Fig. 10 examines the trend of China’s filings under the Patent Cooperation Treaty

6 Chas Freeman, “The Sino-American Split and its Consequences,” The Foreign Policy Association’s

Centennial Lecture Series, June 13, 2019.

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Fig. 10 Patent Cooporation Treaty Filings 1990–2019

(PCT).7 During the period of time of 1990 through 2019, in three decades, Chinese PCT filings increased from zero to pass Germany in 2013, Japan in 2017, and finally, the United States in 2019. For the first time, China has become the leader of the PCT filings with 58,990 cases, followed by the United States (57,840), Japan (52,660), and Germany (19,353) in 2019. In Fig. 10, it is found that the number of US patents reached a peak in 2013, and since then, it plateaued. It is of no coincidence that the number of US PCT filings experienced two declines, one started in the year 2001 and ended in 2003, and the other ran through the period of 2008 to 2010. In both cases, the US economy suffered from serious contractions. Such evidence indicates that innovations respond to business cycles. In the Chinese experience, its innovations as proxied by PCT files demonstrate a pattern of acceleration, with noticeable increases in an upward trajectory in 2004, 2009, and 2015. Such spurs, along with sustained momentum, allow China’s PCT filings to take a convex trend, i.e., increasing at an increasing rate. By contrast, the growth rate of United States PCT filings was negative in some recent years 2015, 2016, and 2018.8 Natural resources have been important for the status of a superpower. Historically, a country deficient in natural resources could use forces to gain access to them in other countries, subjugating the latter into colonies. Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Japan offer some historical examples. Since the 1960s, with the independence of many colonies in Africa and somewhere else, the notion or institution of militarily invading a nation and turning it into a colony so as to exploit its natural resources has become a historical anachronism and has fallen out of fashion. In this context, the possessions of abundant natural resources have become a necessary condition for a hegemon or a qualified contender for world leadership. The United States has been the only world leader so far that has been endowed with vast natural resources on its own territory rather than having to rely on colonies 7 For

the source of the data, please see the Appendix. For the sources of all other data related to China and the United States in this chapter, also refer to the Appendix. 8 It should be mentioned that PCT filings do not indicated the quality or monetized value of a patent.

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to amass them like what was done by its predecessors (e.g., Roman Empire, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain). The United States has a land area of 9,147,420 square kilometers, making it the fourth largest country by territory in the world, following Russia, Canada, and China. Of its land, 16.64% is arable. The United States abounds in petroleum as well as coal, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphates, uranium, bauxite, gold, iron, mercury, nickel, potash, silver, tungsten, zinc, natural gas, and timber. Like the United States, China also possesses a large territory, with a land area of 9,388,210 square meters. Its land is less usable for farming than that of the United States; only 12.66% of the Chinese land is arable. Similar to the United States, China is endowed with rich natural resources. In terms of reserves, it is the world’s first in coal, tungsten, antimony, titanium, vanadium, zinc, magnesite, mercury, molybdenum, fluorite, barite, tin, talcum, stone, and graphite; it is the second in pyrite. Its rare earth reserve is the largest in the world. China also controls 85% of the world’s capacity to process rare earth ores into material that manufacturers can use. From 2014 to 2017, about 80% of rare earth that the United States imported came from China.9 In terms of military power, China is far behind the United States in both quantitative and qualitative measures. Except the number of the military personnel, the United States military is superior to that of China. According to the data gathered by Stockholm’s Peace Research Institute, the United States’ military spending stood at $649 billion in 2018, compared to China’s at $250 billion for the same year. In terms of ratio to its respective GDP, the United States’ military spending is 3.16% and China’s is 1.87%. Considering that the United States’ economic base is larger than China, the former’s military spending is much larger than that of China in both the absolute and relative terms. In the year 2018, the United States deployed 1750 warheads, compared to zero by China. Nuclear arsenal embodies the ultimate deterrent power. The United States has 6450 nuclear warheads, while China has 280. Not only the United States has larger military weaponry, but also possesses experience in war or war-like setting. Only in terms of the size of the military personnel, China is ahead of the United States, with 2.70 million for China and 1.36 million for the United States in the year 2017 (see the Appendix for the sources of the data of this and the next section). The use of GDP as a measure of national power needs to be conditioned by innovations and technology on the one hand and the military capacity on the other. With this caveat, it can be concluded, based on the GDP data, the most conventional measure of aggregate national economic power, that China is on track to catch up with the United States, and in this process, China is likely to strengthen itself in some key areas of the next scientific and industrial revolution. In terms of power transition theory, the area of power parity is being crossed. Would this entail a serious conflict between the world’s leader and the next up-and-coming superpower? Given 9 Reuters, Business News, June 27, 2019, “U.S. dependence on China’s rare earth: Trade war vulnera-

bility” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-rareearth-explainer/us-dependence-onchinas-rare-earth-trade-war-vulnerability-idUSKCN1TS3AQ.

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the conditions for conflict under power transition theory, we need to examine the other variable in the equation: satisfaction with status quo.

4 Interest: Convergence or Divergence? One central feature of power transition theory is about satisfaction with status quo, with the latter defined as the predominant norms, values, and order in the international system set by the leader of the world. In that sense, there is almost a tautology between the leader and the status quo. Attinà (2011) points out that “The world has a political system because states and other actors have created institutions which produce policies and rules to deal with problems….The global system also possesses a governmental structure through which its political authority is exercised” (Attinà 2011, p. xiii). In the context of this characterization of the world’s political system, it is the hegemon that makes decisions on the “policies and rules” for others to follow. We also find that in the recent development of the theory, status quo can evolve and the relative change in the status quo may go against the interest of the dominant nation that has set the original status quo. Also, the dominant nation may withdraw its support for the status quo when it finds the current international system does not serve its best interest. Taking this innovation as a starting point, then satisfaction with the status quo has lost some predictive power for power transition theory, as the challenger’s satisfaction with status quo this time may not be the same as satisfaction with the dominant nation. Similarly, the dominant nation’s dissatisfaction with the status quo may not be the same as the dominant nation’s dissatisfaction with the challenger. To cut through this ambiguity, the coalescence of the interest of the dominant nation and the interest of the challenger becomes a useful concept. Consistent with both the early argument of power transition theory and the recent development of the theory about the status quo, if the interests of the dominant nation and of its challenger are congruent or consistent, then the conflict between them will diminish, as the one that happened between the United Kingdom and the United States. Though the United States surpassed the United Kingdom toward the end of the nineteenth century in manufacturing productivity, its global leadership position formed only after the end of the Second World War and solidified in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In this entire process, there was no major conflict between the United States and the United Kingdom, as they shared fundamental interests. The micro-foundations for interests take many forms; religions, ideologies, cultures, political institutions, and economic structures can all contribute to the value system of a country. At one point of time, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the value systems of the world seemed to converge, and if this trend had continued, then the world would have moved toward the only one form of governance: liberal democracy. The Western alliance under the US leadership prevailed over the foe of the decades, the Soviet bloc, in the late 1980s, leading to the euphoria over the advent of the ultimate historical end of civilization in Western liberalism that the United

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States and Western Europe embodied. This sentiment, symbolic with Fukuyama’s work titled with a rhetorical question “The End of History?” (Fukuyama 1989), was however short-lived. The most important underlying assumption at that time was that the former and current communist countries would all gear toward liberal order and would all become Western-style democracies. Against such evaluation, the course of action of one country stood against the “end of history”: China. Despite China’s enormous success in economic reforms, its political system remains fundamentally unchanged during the thirty years since the declaration by Fukuyama (1989) about the universalization of liberalism and democracy. In retrospective, the West has underestimated China economically and at the same time has overestimated China politically. These two deviations—underestimates of China’s economic reforms and overestimates of China’s political reforms—have been responsible for many wrong predictions about China. In this section, we first focus on the non-economic dimensions as the potential sources of the conflict between the two nations. The earlier misconception of China’s political reform ignored some fundamental differences in the basic elements in China’s and the United States’ political, cultural, and social institutions. First, the two countries have very different political systems. The United States directly elects its CEOs at the levels of national (technically through the Electoral College), states, and local governments and directly elects legislators at national, state, and local levels. China directly elects CEOs at the levels of villages (cun) and townships (xiang), as well as legislators at the county level; it elects indirectly CEOs and legislators at higher levels. The United States has seen alternation in the governing party in office between two major parties, while one dominant party has been ruling China since 1949. The United States, less than three hundred years old, considers itself the creator of a new kind of political system, an engineer of political innovation, and a proponent of American exceptionalism, while China takes pride in being rooted in 5000 years of continuous civilization. Second, similar to its more diverse political system, the United States has a more variegated composition of its people.10 Among its 329.25 million people (2019), 60.4% are White, 18.3% Hispanic, 13.4% African Americans, 5.9%% Asian, 0.2% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 1.3% American Indian, and 2.7% two or more races (2018). In contrast, China’s ethnic composition gears toward monolith. Based on the most recently available data, it has 1.395 billion people (2018), about 91.46% of whom are Han, and the remaining 8.45% comprised China’s 55 other ethnic groups (2015), such as Zhuang (16.93 million), Manchu (10.39 million), Hui (10.59 million), and Miao (9.43 million) (2010). Religion constitutes one main dimension reflecting cultures. In the United States, upwards of 76% of its population belong to some religion (2018). About 22% participate in religious services weekly. Among its population, 35% declare themselves Protestant, 10% Christians, 22% Catholic, 2% Jewish, 2% Mormon, 5% in other religions, and 20% profess no religion (2018). In contrast, 73.65% of the Chinese 10 The sources of the data to help identify these micro-foundations of the preferences are provided in the Appendix.

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are non-religious, 15.87% are believers in Buddhism, 2.53% in Christianity (2.19%, Protestants and 0.34%, Catholics), 0.85% in Taoism, 0.45% in Muslims, and fewer than 5.94% in other religions (2014). Politically, ethnically, and religiously, the United States and China are very different. Shared mental modeling would predict very different practices between the two nations, from business negotiations to military campaigns, from social gatherings to civil customs, all of which adds to possibilities of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of each other, increasing uncertainties and ambiguities in their relations, as well as leaving room for conflict over values and norms. Economically, the two countries will find themselves increasingly competitors. While the following discussion may seem to repeat the economic dimension covered in the last section, it points to the fact that a major source of conflict between the two nations lies in the rule-making of the distribution of economic benefits between them. Not too long ago, the US-China relations were dominated by economic complementarity and interdependence which drove their political and security relations (Feng 2013). This mechanism has experienced increasing frictions due to the changes in the relative economic power between the two countries. With China moving into the higher end of the value chain and upgrading its technology, the uncertainty of the bilateral relations intensifies. The United States is currently the largest economy by exchange rate-based GDP (2019), the second-largest exporter and the largest importer (2018), while China is the world’s second-largest economy by exchange rate-based GDP (2019), the largest exporter and second-largest importer (2018). The United States and China share the top place for the market and production of automobiles, with China in the number one position followed by the United States in both categories (2017). China ranks the first in both expressways and waterways, while the United States takes the second and fifth places, respectively. The United States attracts more FDI than other countries with an inward stock of $7.465 trillion, while China ranks Number 4 as FDI recipient with an inward stock of $1.628 trillion, excluding Hong Kong’s inward FDI stock of 1.997 trillion (2018). The United States’ public debt is 82.3% of its GDP, while China’s stands at 47.8% of its GDP. China is also the largest foreign reserve holder in 2018, while the United States is number 18th. The United States ranks number two in Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) filings, with 57,840 in 2019, following China’s 58,990 in the same year. Domestic investment is a major driver of economic growth. While China’s investment share in GDP has more fluctuations over the years than does the United States’ investment share in GDP, the former has a much higher ratio than the latter. Figure 11 indicates the trend of the investment ratio of the United States and China (the data are from International Monetary Dataset 2019). China’s investment ratio peaked in 2011 with investment standing at 48% of its GDP; in that year, the United States’ ratio is 19.1%. Since 2011, China’s investment ratio has been gradually declining, with 44.2% in 2018. The United States’ investment ratio bottomed in 2009 with 17.8%, due to the financial meltdown of 2008–2009 and gradually crawled back to 21.1% in 2018. In terms of dollar amounts, China injected $5.93 trillion worth of investment into its economy in 2018, while the United States

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Fig. 11 Investment as a percentage of GDP

invested $4.33 trillion. In that year, China’s GDP ($13.407 trillion) was 65.4% of that of the United States ($20.494 trillion), but the former’s investment was 1.37 times that of the United States. In neoclassical economic theory, a poor country grows faster than a rich country, keeping other factors constant. With an even larger investment, China’s economic growth receives a further boost. Domestic investment has a source in national savings. Figure 12 displays the trends in national savings for the two countries.

Fig. 12 National savings as a percentage of GDP

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There is almost perfect co-movement between investment and savings. China’s savings as a percentage of GDP reached the zenith in 2008 with 52.3%, and the United States’ national savings fell to its nadir at 13.9% in 2009 following the financial breakdown in 2008 (the data are from International Monetary Dataset 2019). In 2018, China’s national savings ratio to GDP stood at 44.59% contrasting 19.0% for the United States, or 2.3 times higher. The data indicate that the Chinese save more and consequently invest more than the Americans do. Finally, some socioeconomic indicators show that China is catching up with the United States. For instance, China’s life expectancy, which reflects quality of life, climbed to 76.4 in 2017, about two years behind that of the United States (78.5). The United States’ urbanization is about 82.3% and that of China is about 59.2%. In this area, China has great potentials for its economic growth based on internally driven mechanisms compared to externally driven factors such as trade and FDI. By means of urbanization, China can still maintain and propel its economic momentum forward. Chinese population is aging, with a fertility rate at 1.63, far below the replacement rate of about 2.1. In contrast, the fertility rate of the United States is 1.77. The labor force in China will suffer from shortage, compared to that of the United States, particularly considering the fact that the United States has a far more liberal immigration history and practice than China. This demographic challenge facing China is similar to that facing Japan. To overcome this challenge, predictably, China will move away from labor-intensive production to technology-intensive production. Because of this transition in technology upgrading, the relationship between China and the United States will find themselves increasingly in more competition than cooperation. In earlier years of China’s economic reforms, labor-intensive products were the mainstay of China’s exports, and FDI flew to China seeking low-cost workers. Now, China started to increase its exports of high-technology products in communications, transportation, aerospace, automobiles, green energy, etc. where the United States and other developed countries have held advantage, until now. Unless the world’s demand augments, the increase of China’s supplies in the high-tech market means a decline in the market share of the United States. Perceptively, the rise of the Chinese economy may spell a downward pressure on the quality of life for the United States. The other area of the economic dimension resulting in more competition than cooperation is energy consumption. In 2018, China consumed 3164 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), while the United States consumed 2258 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe). These numbers have important implications about the SinoUS relationships. First, on the supply side, China’s enormous demand for energy drives up the energy prices worldwide, though the United States’ oil industry benefits from the increase in price. Second, on the side of private consumption, high energy use reflects changes in the lifestyle of the Chinese. Such changes are evident in China every day, with more people driving cars, traveling for pleasure, using airconditioning, etc. This transition to a mass consumption society puts an upward pressure on the prices of energy products worldwide, leading to a higher cost in consumption as well. However, China’s private consumption is only 39.4% of GDP, compared to the United States at 68.8% (2018).

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Predictably, China’s private consumption will continue to increase, which will result in the increase of the prices of the products in the world. In the past, the economic relations between the United States and China have been complementary. On the supply side, the United States occupied the higher end of value chain (e.g., Boeing, Apple, and Microsoft). On the demand side, the public of the United States consumed lower priced consumer goods from China. The complementarity in the Sino-US economic relations has been eroded. Now China is moving into the higher end of the value chain in world production and is entering the initial stage of a mass consumption society. It would not be too far-fetched to say that China is increasingly becoming America economically and commercially, if not ideologically or politically. International cooperation is based on specialization and exchanges. A country is supposed to specialize in the production of the goods it can produce most efficiently and exchange them with other countries for the goods it does not produce efficiently. Similarly, it has been argued that a country should produce the goods that use its most abundant resources intensively and exchange them with other countries for other goods. Between China and the United States, one is labor-abundant and the other capital-abundant. If China produces labor-intensive products and exchanges them with the United States for capital-intensive products, the relationship between the United States and China would be far more harmonious than now. When countries become similar in production and consumption, the foundation for cooperation becomes weaker and potentials for conflict become larger, keeping all other factors constant. As discussed in the last section, the latest development in power transition theory mentions only three out of the four possible scenarios of satisfaction between the leader and the challenger regarding the status quo. The scenario left out is the one in which the leader is not satisfied with the status quo but the challenger is. Initially, the leader set up the norms, rules, and procedures of the international system. The other nations followed the leader in their implementation. Overtime, the status quo with norms, rules, and procedures might benefit the rise of a challenger or fail to promote the overall interest of the leader. When the cost dominates the benefit for the leader to maintain and practice the status quo, the leader will be dissatisfied and will try to change the rules and procedures. In the earlier years of China’s economic reforms, through the promotion of its exports and of inward FDI, China utilized the international trade and financial system to maintain robust economic growth. China has been a beneficiary of the liberal economic system that the United States has helped create. One example is the World Trade Organization (WTO), which has given China an opportunity to access the world’s market. Both the United States and China have gained from WTO, though China may have gained much more than the United States, relatively speaking. President Obama’s effort to launch Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and President Trump’s abandoning of multilateralism in favor of bilateralism reflect the dilemma of the

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relative gain and absolute gain between countries.11 Concerns toward the relative gain can come from many contextual factors including politics, economics, cultures, sociology, etc. The earlier discussions of the landscape of the political systems, followed by economic relations and social structures, help illuminate the foundations of concerns toward the relative gain between the leader and the challenger. At the same time, at the subnational level, the forces of globalization—international trade, investment, and labor migration—create domestic winners and losers. Domestic and national politics is underscored by who loses and who gains in globalization. Foreign policy and international relations depend on domestic interplay between winners and losers of globalization within the country. The losers in the US economy due to globalization such as automobile and steelworkers will impose pressures on the government or seek political representatives to improve their economic situations. To sum, differences in the political systems and cultural values, along with China’s competition in high-tech capacity and military strength, as well as the resultant increase in China’s influence in the world elevate the relative gains concerns of the United States toward China. The domestic opposition within the United States against globalization will also accentuate the urgency of preserving the leadership of the United States.

11 The perspective of relative and absolute gains is a useful concept to explore the sources of conflict or the divergence of interest between the United States and China. The concept has become the watershed between realism and liberalism. Grieco (1988) proposes a simple formula to identify the influence on foreign policy of relative and absolute gains: U = V −k(W − V) In this formula, V is the absolute gain to the home country, and W is the absolute gain to the other country. The variable that differentiates the outlook is k, which is the home country’s concerns for the relative gain, W − V; the larger value of k indicates a more negative position taken by the home country toward the other country. If the international transactions produce positive values to both, then V and W are both larger than zero, but W − V can be positive, negative, or zero. If k is zero, then the relative gain W − V would not matter to the nation’s decision-maker, regardless of what W − V (positive, negative, or zero) is. What is important would be just the absolute gain to the country in the transaction with the other country. However, when k is larger than zero, then the relative gain starts to matter. As long as k is larger than zero, then k(W − V) will be larger than zero given that W − V is larger than zero (reflecting the other country gaining more), and this relative gain is to be deducted from the absolute gain and will enter the calculus of the optimal national foreign policy. The net value in transactions decreases for the home country as doing business with the other country will make the home country vulnerable. Conceivably, if W − V is large enough with a positive k or k is large enough with a positive W − V, k (W − V) can be larger than W, leading to the decision not to have any transactions with the other country, keeping other factors constant. There are other possibilities. W − V may be negative. The home country gains more from the transactions than the other country. If the home country holds a negative opinion of the other country, doing business with the other country still makes sense, as it enlarges the power distance of between the two in favor of the home country.

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5 Down the Road: Cooperation or Conflict? According to power transition theory, when the challenger’s power reaches 80% of the power of the hegemon, the power transition phase starts. Currently, though China’s GDP (exchange rate) is technically below that range, it is close. It will be of importance to predict what kind of transition it will be in the future, if there is one. Will it be the kind of transition between the Netherlands and Great Britain or the kind of transition between the United Kingdom and the United States? Historically, bloody transitions took long time to accomplish. The one between Spain and the Netherland was sealed after almost one hundred years of conflict between the two. The one between the Netherlands and Great Britain occurred after four major wars across two centuries. The peaceful transitions were completed in relative shorter time. Between Portugal and Spain, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1499, five years after Columbus returned from America, laying a legal foundation for a peaceful transition of maritime leadership. Between the United States and the United Kingdom, a peaceful leadership transition was swiftly completed with the victory of the Allies over the Axis at the end of the Second World War. Peaceful transitions emphasize partnership. Violent transitions have the premise in “the winner taking all.” The current relations between the United States and China are characterized by neither ideological nor territorial conflict as the one between the United States and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the relations between them are far less harmonious than the one between Portugal and Spain that shared the same religion, culture, and, at one point of time, the same king or the one between the United States and the United Kingdom that shared largely the same world outlook and language. The transition, if there is, between the United States and China will be far more complex than the previous transitions. It will be interspersed with conflict and cooperation, more simultaneously than sequentially. The common ground between them is economic collaboration for mutual benefit. The source of conflict, however, is also economically oriented, rather than territorially or politically based. Globalization has intertwined the two largest economies, with an epitome in the Apple smartphone where the technology of the United States and the manpower of China join hands. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, China has intensified its effort to climbing up the world’s technological ladder. China’s centrally planned industrial campaign “Made in China 2025” has started. China will not follow the classic economic theory of comparative advantage, but will endeavor to rewrite its comparative advantage from labor-intensive products to technologically intensive products and will project onto the world its accumulated physical capital, technology, and knowledge that have accrued in the four decades of effective changes of the economy. China’s economic ambition and capacity, mutually feeding on each other, will directly challenge the world leadership of the United States. The United States and China found themselves reaching some milestone compromise in a trade war between the largest and the second-largest economy prior to the outbreak of Covid-19. The pandemic has shifted the focus from trade disputes

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to other issues underscoring global leadership. However, the long-run relationship between the two countries is to be fundamentally defined by technology, with the United States trying to maintain its technological superiority and China attempting to closing in on the United States, narrowing its technological inferiority. Trade war between them is only a façade of the technological contest between the two. In the recent years, China launched the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), enlarging its international economic scope through outward FDI, contracts, and trade across the world. Officially announced in 2013 and focusing on infrastructure construction and trade relations across continents. BRI is not within the status quo, but creates a new set of rules and norms centered on China. The rationale of the BRI is based on not only mutual economic benefits, but also political coordination as well as social and cultural inclusion. As an emerging status quo, BRI will face many challenges. Feng et al. (2020) argue that the main obstacle to a successful implementation of the BRI blueprint lies in the heterogeneity of the political and economic systems of the participating countries in BRI. It is a long way for the new status quo to take roots. In a different perspective from power transition theory, the constructivist approach in international relations theory (Wendt 2010) posits that interest and identity are constructed in the process of international interactions. If common interest between the United States and China is strong enough to overcome their strategic competition, then their identity to each other may change from the negative side to the positive side and the relative gain will diminish in the face of the absolute gain. Furthermore, national interest is subject to formulation and reformulation. Whether interest and identity related to the Sino-US relations will evolve to produce conflict or engender cooperation will largely depend on their economic relations. Some global factors, such as the climate changes, surges of terrorism, or the current worldwide campaigns against Covid-19, may evoke cooperation; without incentives for cooperation, the danger of power transition conflict looms substantively large ahead.

Appendix: US and China Comparison—Data Sources

Country

Year

Variable

Sources

China

2019

Population

United States Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/pop clock/

China

2018

Population

China statistical yearbook

United States

2019

Population

United States Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/pop clock/

Ethnic dimension

(continued)

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(continued) Country

Year

Variable

Sources

China

2015

Ethnic group

2015年全国1%人口抽样调查 主要数据公报 http://www. stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201604/ t20160420_1346151.html

China

2010

Ethnic group

The sixth census in 2010, China statistical yearbook

United States

2018

Ethnic group

United States Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/quickf acts/fact/table/US/RHI225218

China

2014

Religion

China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2014

United States

2018

Religion

Gallup https://news.gallup. com/poll/1690/religion.aspx

China/United States

2018

Largest economy

World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/age nda/2018/04/the-worlds-big gest-economies-in-2018/

China/United States

2017

Largest exporter

World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/age nda/2018/06/these-are-the-wor lds-biggest-exporters

China/United States

2017

Largest importer

World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/age nda/2018/07/these-are-the-wor lds-biggest-importers

China/United States

2018

FDI stock inward

UNCTAD World Investment Report 2019

China/United States

2018

FDI inflows

UNCTAD World Investment Report 2019

China/United States

2018

Foreign exchange reserves World Bank (IMF) excluding gold

China/United States

2018

Auto producer

Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles http://www. oica.net/category/productionstatistics/2018-statistics/

China/United States

2017

Auto market

Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles http://www. oica.net/category/sales-statis tics/

China

2017

Expressway

Wikipedia & 2018 年交通运 输行业发展统计公报

Religious dimension

Economic dimension

(continued)

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(continued) Country

Year

Variable

Sources

United States

2017

Expressway

Wikipedia & Public Road Length-2017 Miles By Functional System https:// www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinf ormation/statistics/2017/hm2 0.cfm

China/United States

2011/2012

Waterways

The World Factbook https:// www.cia.gov/library/publicati ons/the-world-factbook/fields/ 386rank.html

China/United States

2017

Net public debt as % GDP The World Factbook https:// www.cia.gov/library/publicati ons/the-world-factbook/rankor der/2186rank.html

China/United States

2019

PCT filing

Patent Cooperation Treaty Yearly Review 2019 (The World Intellectual Property Organization) United States 56,142; China 53,345

Social economic dimension China/United States

2017

Life expectancy

World Bank

China/United States

2017

Fertility rate

World Bank

China/United States

2018

Urban population

World Bank

China/United States

2018

Private consumption

CEIC data https://www.cei cdata.com/en/indicator/china/ private-consumption--of-nom inal-gdp (China) https://www. ceicdata.com/en/indicator/uni ted-states/private-consum ption--of-nominal-gdp (United States)

China/United States

2017

Gross saving

World Bank

China/United States

2018

Energy consumption

Global Energy Statistical Yearbook 2019

China/United States

2018

GDP current$

World Bank

China/United States

2018

GDP PPP based (constant 2011 international $)

World Bank

Natural resources dimension China/United States

2018

Total land area

World Bank

China/United States

2016

Arable land

World Bank

China/United States

2017

Total natural resources rents (% of GDP)

World Bank

China/United States

2017

Coal rents (% of GDP)

World Bank (continued)

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(continued) Country

Year

Variable

Sources

China/United States

2018

Military expenditure (current USD)

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

China/United States

2018

Military expenditure (% of Stockholm International Peace GDP) Research Institute

China/United States

2017

Armed forces personnel, total

World Bank

China/United States

2018

Nuclear weapon

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Military dimension

References Allison, G. (2017). Destined for war: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Attinà, F. (2011). The global political system (A. Groom, Trans.). Cham: Palgrave. Grieco, J. (1988). Anarchy and the limits of cooperation: A realist critique of the newest liberal institutionalism. International Organization, 42, 485–507. Cullen, T. (2007).PPP versus the market: Which weight matters? Finance and Development, 44(1). International Monetary Fund. Feng, Y. (2013). Global power transitions and their implications for the 21st century. Pacific Focus, 27(4), 170–189. Feng, Y., Gao, Z., & Yang, Z. (2020). Asia: China’s campaign to become a new world leader. In R. Tammen & J. Kugler (Eds.), Regional politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. Freeman, C. (2019). “The Sino-American Split and Its Consequences.” In The Centennial Lectures Series, Foreign Policy Association. June 13, 2019. Fukuyama, F. (1989). The end of history? The National Interest, 16, 3–18. Gilpin, R. (1988). The theory of Hegemonic War. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18(4), 591–613. International Monetary Fund. (2019). World economic outlook database. https://www.imf.org/ext ernal/pubs/ft/weo/2020/01/weodata/index.aspx. Kugler J., & Organski, A. F. K. (1986). The power transition: A retrospective and prospective evaluation. In M. Midlarsky (Ed.), Handbook of war studies. Crows Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Organski, A. F. K. (1958). World politics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Organski, A. F. K. (1968). World politics (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Organski, A. F. K., & Kugler, J. (1980). The war ledger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Tammen, R. (2008). The Organski legacy: A fifty-year research program. International Interactions, 34(4), 314–332. Tammen, R., Kugler, J., & Lemke, D. (2018). Foundations of power transition theory. In W. R. Thompson (Ed.), The Oxford encyclopedia of empirical international relations theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wendt, A. (2010). Anarchy is what states make of it: The social construction of power politics. In A. Hulsemeyer (Ed.), International political economy: A reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Ye¸silada, B., Kugler, J., Genna, G., & Tanrikulu, O. G. (2018). Global Power Transition and the Future of the European Union. New York: Routledge.

Yi Feng is the Luther Lee Jr. Memorial Professor in the Department of International Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His research focuses on international political and economic development. His works on regional development deal with political and economic issues in Latin America, Pacific Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

A Fresh Outlook on Order-Disorder Transition: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Perspective Effie Charalampaki

Abstract A methodological framework is analyzed for conceptualizing regions and regional orders, such as the Liberal Order, as complex adaptive systems (CAS), envisioning the global order as a “grand whole” with a collage of complex adaptive subwholes. Drawing on complexity and chaos theory, this conceptualization of regional systems assists researchers to devise models for managing complexity, turbulence, and uncertainty in world affairs and creating conditions that foster greater interdependence and interconnectedness between different regional systems, which ultimately encourages multi-level cooperation and multilateralism and creates resilient governance structures. The quest for “order out of chaos” must involve methods for addressing “complexity” as an agent of change: complexity is a blessing and a curse, it is one of the greatest parameters in any effort to manage uncertainty at any level of the global system. Complexity expands the conceptual and methodological frameworks of IR Theory to diffuse policies intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally to deal with tipping points and systemic shocks and to address problems of a transnational nature. The chapter concludes that the reinvention of the Liberal Order must involve an agenda of “wholism” in order to create adaptation mechanisms and complexity management schemes to deal with the problems of uncertainty and prediction. Keywords Complex systems · Chaos theory · Regions · Prediction · Globalization · Transnationalism

1 Introduction The order I found was the order of disorder. —William Saroyan1

1 Saroyan,

W. (1953). The bicycle Ryder in Beverly hills (1st ed.). London: Faber & Faber.

E. Charalampaki (B) Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies, Institute of International Relations, Athens, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_4

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The decline of the Liberal Order and a world that operates at the edge of chaos create new challenges for the West. Many scholars and practitioners have elaborated repeatedly on the need to redefine and “reinvent” the Liberal Order in order to redirect the relationship of the transatlantic partners toward a more cooperative and non-competitive Western order and a “naturally” interactive symbiosis of complementary “wholes” that, despite the fact that are highly interconnected and interdependent, maintain their autonomy and are more than the sum of their parts. This task became mandatory during the tumultuous years of the Trump administration when the survival of the transatlantic partnership with its institutions and the relevance of the Liberal Order on the world stage were continuously at stake. The continuous “Mars-Venus” interplay in the transatlantic partnership has taken its toll on the West. The rise of emergent orders, such as the Chinese, and of complex, trans-regional cooperation, such as the European Union (EU)—Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bilateral foreign relations, the EU-Japan partnerships and others, create organized complexity and, what James Rosenau (1984) called, “cascading interdependence” in the global habitat that the transatlantic partners are called to sustain and manage with other shareholders. The global order could be envisioned as a “grand whole” with a collage of “sub-wholes” or “sub-orders” which contain many macro, meso, and micro parts that interconnect cross-systemically, creating tension points at the points of their bifurcations. At these points, change occurs in the qualitative behavior of a system/order, which may lead to loss of stability in the system and/or to the emergence of new organizational structures in the global order. The conceptualization of entities in the global order as “sub-wholes” that are “open,” “complex” systems with the capability to adapt and self-organize informs theory and research to produce models of coordinated, sustainable, multi-agent governance structures, that assist international organizations (IOs), such as the EU, and international institutions to become more robust and resilient especially in times of unilateral and isolationist policies that foster regional and global uncertainty. This enhances multilateralism among many different agents obviously, a “social-choice mechanism” (Young 1992, p. 179) “that generates among members, what Keohane (1986) has called, expectations of ‘diffused reciprocity’ that yields a rough equivalence of benefits in the aggregate and over time” (Ruggie 1992, p. 571). Purposeful self-organization of agents in order to coordinate and cooperate is one of the best control mechanisms to foster multi-level order in a turbulent global environment and mitigate uncertainty. This chapter presents a methodological approach for conceptualizing regional complexes in a manner that could produce more resilient and cooperative systems. These systemic “sub-wholes” can be of meso- or macro-hierarchy: the international system with its many sub-systems; regional systems (meso), such as the Near and Middle East; orders such as the Liberal Order and the Chinese order (macro), that contain a sea of agents of different hierarchies that cross-connect and cross-interact; alliances such as the Atlantic Alliance (macro); and international organizations (IOs) (macro), such as the EU, the ASEAN and so forth. In addition, a category of macro structures acquire the character of sub-macro wholes, such as nation-states, given the fact that regardless their size, power and capabilities, they diffuse their agency in the global order via their participation in and affiliation with

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grand, multiscale meso and macro structures such as worlds regions, regional organizations, international institutions, transnational financial constructs and elaborate normative, cultural and security orders. All kinds of macros and mesos accommodate an abundance of micro agents that have very complex transmission networks which connect transnationally, affect topologies with elaborate bifurcations, and structure the grander meso and macrostructures of the global order, such as world regions. For the purpose of this chapter, the discussion revolves mainly around the micro and macro problematique and regions are treated as meso-macro structures. In this world of ambivalence, a new modus vivendi and modus operandi could stem from interdisciplinary propositions about theory and methodology in International Relations (IR) in order to inform primarily policymakers to actualize sustainable structures of multilateralism that assist the systems and sub-systems of the global order, regardless their level, to weather turbulence, instability and uncertainty, even when they have to operate under out-of-equilibrium conditions.

1.1 Prelude The Liberal Order is in a phase transition for a very long time now and in dire need of foundational and institutional “management” and “control” in order to create “order out of chaos.” Koenig concludes: “The overall environment is dependent on the transactions that take place within the system that comprise its environment. When the interventionist control is engaged, those who guide the intervention are well-warned to consider not only how their decisions affect the system on which they focus, but also the other systems with which the system of their attention interacts” (Koenig 2012, p. 18). When you rearrange or change variables in a system, the result may be chaos because you require many variables to behave in nonlinear ways, amplifying their behaviors at every stage of their development via positive feedback, which suggests that the amplification value is increased to such a degree that it increases nonlinearity and complexity in the system (Koenig 2012, p. 19). This process has become the norm in the Liberal Order and other orders that are on an evolutionary path, such as the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) that will effectuate a robust, multicausal sub-order in the global order eventually. When, however, the evolutionary path of social structures is consistently chosen over other paths by employing mechanisms for risk management and strategic foresight of tipping points, that foster uncertainty, it can become the path of less resistance for increasing your value as an entity and as a partner; for attracting others to share and benefit from your value; for adapting to change without losing your robustness as a system; for learning to be effective in phases of prolonged turbulence; and for revamping yourself and making yourself relevant and attractive against competitors and challengers. This can become a control mechanism for the transatlantic partnership to manage and evolve the value of the Liberal Order by managing and controlling the intra-, inter-, and trans-regional interdependence and cooperation in the internal organs of the Liberal Order, and between the Liberal Order and other emergent orders that

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would like to cooperate with the Western partners or challenge Liberal Order’s leadership and agency in the world, such as the emergent Chinese order. The USA is no longer the “center” of the world stage. A growing number of interactions and transactions do not pass through the USA today, even though they are still connected to the USA in direct and indirect ways. The West must care about these networks of connections because they can determine the survival of the transatlantic partnership. What all these networks of state and non-state actors are planning to do at a future time must deeply concern the transatlantic partners because information becomes a power resource that increases complexity as this structural systemic parameter that can stabilize or destabilize the global order. Zbigniew Brzezinski, as a strategist, was continuously preoccupied with how to make America and the Euroatlantic community stable systems with resilient partnerships across borders, even if this would mean the engagement of traditional foes such as Russia. In The Choice (Brzezinski 2005), he wonders characteristically: What is the most effective formula for a meaningful, if still asymmetrical, security partnership between America and the emerging but far from politically united Europe? Moreover, how deeply can Russia be absorbed into the Euroatlantic community and how can it help to stabilize Eurasia? How can America maintain an equilibrium among an increasing powerful China, a Japan that is dependent on the United States but is poised for a rapid takeoff as a military power, an unstable Korean Peninsula that is becoming nationalistically restless, and an internationally ambitious India? Finally, can the expanding scope of European stability, driven by the enlarging Euroatlantic community and Russia’s potential inclusion in it, eventually be linked to Far Eastern security issues? Responses to these questions may determine whether a more coherent framework for coping with the new global disorder is feasible. (Brzezinski 2005, pp. 88–89)

What has changed since 2005? The space-time continuum seems to have been completely unaffected regarding geopolitical tensions for the last sixteen years: the same geopolitical conundrums that preoccupied theorists and strategists sixteen years ago preoccupy theorists and strategists in the year 2021. The only major and decisive change for the stability of the global order is that the USA does not represent the core of global political and economic stability anymore, and therefore, the USA, and as a result the EU, are not the sole equilibrium centers of the world order. The world order has evolved to a multi-equilibrium world disorder that seeks a way to stabilize within a perpetual oscillation between order-disorder, while experiencing an exponential increase in the complexity of structural systemic tensions that have become embedded predicates, forming the constituents of positive feedback loops that produce turbulence in the global system. Regions, hence, are extremely important tools for identifying the tension points in the global structure where turbulence and nonlinear relations increase chaotic behaviors, causing tipping points that remind us of the utility of non-locality for managing our localities and vice versa. The system is a central concept in social and geopolitical analysis but it demands new structural parameters for its analysis. Therborn remarks: “How far multidimensional network analysis will take us will depend crucially on how multidimensionality is handled and how the virtually unlimited variability of relations between actors’ networks and social systems is grasped” (Therborn 2000, p. 274). A new method is required for the

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examination and strategic foresight of “the power of relationships to see how they might influence resources, activities, and plans. Some relationships matter more than others, either because we value them more, or they have a greater ability to influence how our value is perceived by others” (Koenig 2012, p. 22). Multilateralism, these days, seems to have become a “luxurious” necessity in a global disorder that tries to operate and balance in an extraordinary phase transition of order-disorder- emergent orders due to systemic shocks, tipping points and the occasional manifestation of a butterfly effect (such as COVID-19). These systemic shocks and tipping points come in the form of international crises, regional militarized conflicts, terrorist attacks, environmental and natural disasters or financial crises among others. Moreover, disorder is fostered by unilateral administrative actions that disrupt the institutional and normative flows of partnerships and alliances, such as the unilateral withdrawal from international agreements and institutions by one of the transatlantic partners. Unilateralism and isolationism disrupt transatlantic cooperation, international institutions’ good practices and sustainability, and deregulate Liberal Order’s effectiveness in the international system. A “butterfly effect” is selfreinforcing change that can become uncontrollably chaotic if the right control mechanisms are not in place to help systems to operate in out-of-equilibrium conditions. A “tipping point” is defined as “small changes in a variable that dramatically affect the state of the system at some time in the future. A tip does not imply that the state of the system undergoes some large change immediately” (Lamberson and Page 2012, p. 178). Again, control and adaptation mechanisms are required to manage risk and mitigate uncertainty. In social systems, a tipping point causes thresholds in behaviors that “depend on the network of behaviors in the system” (Lamberson and Page 2012, p. 178). Often, it is observed that in similar situations there is different behavior by various actors—this is very important for identifying causation in order-disorder processes in social sciences. When tipping points are measured, uncertainty over outcomes is measured to determine the threshold behavior in systems or institutions that make them tip toward disorder. Tipping points, direct or contextual, identify the “causal link” between the system and its structure and the system and its environment changes in some variables in the system cause changes, major changes many times with unintended consequences, in the whole system (Lamberson and Page 2012, p. 178). Robustness and resilience in order-disorder processes, obviously, could be enhanced if tipping points are predicted and measured, and this point is very important for the robustness of international institutions that raise the value of the Liberal Order to attract partners and allies and project transatlantic leadership across regions. Young emphasizes that “the effectiveness of international institutions is a function of the robustness of the social-choice mechanisms they employ” (Young 1992, p. 178). So, an international institution or regime is “robust” “to the extent that its socialchoice mechanism can withstand perturbations or disruptive occurrences arising in conjunction with the activities it governs. Robustness, in this sense, is akin to the idea of stability in equilibrium models” (Young 1992, p. 179). The robustness of IOs is a matter of great complexity. The political ataxia and economic uncertainty inside the EU are examples of how asymmetries in the distribution of power and the “capacity

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of governments to implement” (Young 1992, pp. 183–185) EU institutions’ provisions affect EU’s effectiveness as a global actor but also as an ally in the Atlantic sphere. Multilateralism is, hence, what John Ruggie called “the appropriate generalized principle of conduct” (Ruggie 1992, p. 572) that acts as this “social-choice mechanism” among many different agents that need to be coordinated to cooperate, and that may save a sub-order or a sub-system from reaching threshold behaviors that may cause it to tip toward disorder. Cooperation could also be regarded as a process that could produce contextual tipping points with substantial consequences for continuity and change at the micro, meso and macro levels. Tipping points are important because they change our view of our microcosm at the local level and make us aware of how regional and global changes impact our perceptions about the world as a whole. Our presence and agency in this transnational environment are ultimately a presence and agency in multiple, parallel realities that ascribe to every individual multiple identities. In governance structures, such as those of the EU, it is what can make a regional organization a global actor with substantial power to effect change, which demands substantial degrees of internal conscious self-organization. “In the end, how all of these external and internal entities perceive our value is in large part driven by how they perceive the risk of investing in us, partnering with us, contributing to us, giving us credit, or allowing us to do our work” (Koenig 2012, p. 81). In this sense, “uncertainty” could also provide windows of opportunities for multilateralism and the emergence of new organizations with new networks for the transmission of information and the diffusion of cooperation as a control mechanism of global ataxia. The systemic transition can give prominence to a process of “emergence,” meaning the formation of collective behaviors and the birth of new institutions and organizations characterized by high complexity and potentially unpredictably randomness, which is what generates uncertainty in the global environment. Systemic order-disorder transitions require adaptation and complexity management mechanisms, evolutionary cooperation schemes and strategic foresight to make the adjustment periods as constructive as possible, meaning as “emergent” as possible. Any type of governance must employ tools that “understand the deepest foundations of governance along the domesticforeign frontier…How, then, to update our worldview so that it can more fully and accurately account for a global scene in which the dynamics of governance are undergoing profound transformations?” (Rosenau 1997, p. 29). Global disorder means that the world is not static and that its nature lies in patterns. Maintaining Liberal Order’s “flow” is a complex task for the West in this day and age that demands out-of-the-box methods. Our present state of affairs is an out-ofthe-box world and the COVID-19 case is a testimony to the fact. Complex problems demand complex solutions. But from the problem/phenomenon to its solution, a method—a scheme—must intervene to pave the way for its analysis, examination, modeling and possible forecasting to address not only the “whats” but also the “whys” and “hows” that lead to “ifs” of “processes.” Traditional IR theories exhibit limitations to bridge the micro-macro divide. Multilateralism demands a micro-macro problematique because it is essential for the examination of causation processes domestically and internationally, that can produce better public administration and

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foreign policy. I argue that multilateralism and cooperation require a “wholistic” approach due to the transnational character of world affairs today. This approach could embrace the science of “complexity.” When IR Theory embraces an out-ofthe-box epistemology that addresses ontological changes under a new, interdisciplinary light, policy process frameworks for a multidimensional world with complex entities, that face complex challenges and produce chaotic behaviors, will be the product of purposeful “open system” governance that enhances systemic robustness and resilience. Patterned disorder needs institutionalized regulatory mechanisms so as to pass from a state of entropy to a state of purposeful “self-organization” that attracts and employs the networking of state and non-state actors in cooperative structures which balance and regulate different micro‚ meso, and macro parts of the global domain. Regional systems, with their agency as “global actors,” should be regarded an integral part of the rulemaking regulatory processes of the global disorder. This chapter presents a methodological approach for conceptualizing regions and regional orders, such as the Liberal Order, as complex adaptive systems (CAS), envisioning the global order as a “grand whole” with a collage of complex adaptive subwholes. Drawing on complexity and chaos theory, this conceptualization of regional systems assists researchers to devise models for managing complexity, turbulence, and uncertainty in world affairs and creating conditions that foster greater interdependence and interconnectedness between different regional systems, which ultimately encourages multi-level cooperation and multilateralism and creates resilient governance structures. The quest for “order out of chaos” must involve methods for addressing “complexity” as an agent of change: complexity is a blessing and a curse, it is one of the greatest parameters in any effort to manage uncertainty at any level of the global system. Complexity expands the conceptual and methodological frameworks of IR Theory to diffuse policies intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally to deal with tipping points and systemic shocks and to address problems of a transnational nature. The chapter concludes that the reinvention of the Liberal Order must involve an agenda of “wholism” in order to create adaptation mechanisms and complexity management schemes to deal with the problems of uncertainty and prediction. Many scholars have elaborated on the need for the West to redefine its purpose and “reinvent” the Liberal Order. The core of the Liberal Order is the transatlantic partnership that is in a state of flux in an effort to cope with internal and external turbulence and the rise of powers that create their own regional, potentially hegemonic, orders that challenge the institutional and normative foundations of the Liberal Order in various ways. A change of paradigm, thus, is necessary to guide policy.

2 The Need for New Conceptual Frameworks in International Relations The prevalent crisis of liberal internationalism is so acute (Biancardi 2003) that theorists are trying to revamp the theoretical and methodological tools at their disposal in

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order to invent new levels of analysis that will help them to understand, and predict if possible, those processes and dynamics that travail the “chaotic” nature of a “complex” global (dis)order. It is evident that the forces of globalization have created a dense web of interdependence among different actors at the different levels of the global order; a web that cannot be analyzed adequately anymore using traditional tools, such as the prevalent systemic level of analysis or even the traditional agentbased approaches, without any amalgamation of approaches and methods. If new methodological tools are to be used at all, they must aim at a “theoretical synthesis,” combining different tools and different approaches from an interdisciplinary pool in an effort to create as a “holistic” theoretical framework as possible with the parsimony to analyze micro- and macro-interconnections and dynamics despite their nuances. “…Such worldview should recast the relevance of territoriality, highlight the porosity of boundaries, treat the temporal dimensions of governance as no less significant than the spatial dimensions, recognize that networking organizations have become as important as hierarchical ones, and posit shifts of authority to sub-national, transnational, and nongovernmental levels as normal” (Rosenau 1997, p. 29). In the past, such attempts have been made by various theoretical approaches in an effort to address problems stemming from regionalism and its relation to other concepts and constructs such as security, power, cooperation, culture, ideational interpretations of a functionalist agenda and institutionalism among others, with characteristic example the neofunctionalist approaches on which European integration was based. Despite the fact that the field enjoys a constellation of “liberalpluralist assumptions about cordial relations between states and non-state actors for the promotion of commerce [and of regional and international security], these early perspectives were subordinated to the analysis of what ‘states’ did in the pursuit of their so-called ‘interests,’ as well as the consequences of state-society relations for supranational and intergovernmental regional organizations” (Soderbaum 2011, p. 10). With the rise of institutionalism, neorealist and neoliberal institutionalists “share the idea of an anarchical system in which states are largely rational and unitary actors, but ‘institutions matter’ because of the benefits that they provide (especially in the procurement of public goods or the avoidance of negative externalities from interdependence)” (Soderbaum 2011, p. 10). Rationalist, “outside-in” approaches to the international system presuppose that regional and international cooperation is the product of a hegemon’s agency or of an alliance formation (Soderbaum 2011, p. 10) with the distribution of power, interests, and the criterion of sovereignty becoming structural parameters of a cooperation process that assumes as basic unit of analysis in the global order sovereign entities with their interactions. This leads inevitably to conflict with other cooperative formations inside the global order in the quest for power and hegemony (Soderbaum 2011, p. 10; Gilpin 1987). If the analysis turns to “identity-based” conceptions of the “fault lines” of the global order, Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (Huntington 1996), for instance, linked regionalism to culture and religion and the agency this entails into the world order—clearly a reductionist analysis that puts the USA center stage and falls under the epistemology of political realism. Methodologically, it fails to appreciate a multi-centric world system that may hide multiple, “emergent” equilibria, and the

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decline of the West these days is a prominent example, even though, Huntington’s primary intention was to address the parameter of uncertainty in world order and especially for the West after the Cold War. This approach dominated conflict analysis discussions for several years, informing foreign policy processes for the superpower and its allies without, however, contributing to informing constructively an agenda of conflict resolution and multilateralist that bridges the gap between different regions as representations of civilizational and cultural “wholes.” Huntington’s “argument has proved to be an abiding statement about globalization and the hopes and fears that it conveys” (Hanes 2018, p. 54). Complexity is not a superficial affair despite the fact that it possesses structuralist qualities. Stressing a constructivist approach to security and foreign policy, on the other hand, Barry Buzan and Ole Weaver introduced the “Regional Security Complex Theory” (RSCT), providing a framework at the time for “enabling current developments to be linked to both Cold War and pre-Cold War patterns in the international system, containing a model of regional security that enables us to analyze and up to a point anticipate and explain developments within any region” (Buzan and Waever 2003, p. 40). Even though RSCT addresses the multilevel nature of the global system with its subsystems and actors, it fails to address fully the parameter of “complexity” as a systemic quality of any order and especially of an emergent disorder that exhibits properties of “chaos” as the main property of complex systems. Buzan and Waever (2003) did not present a “wholistic” methodological tool in reality for developing models that have the power to “predict” those conditions that upset continuity and foster change for agents and structures as “regional wholes” inside the world order. RSCT may generate “predictive scenarios” based on a range of possible conditions for a security region by specifying which options are relevant under which conditions, but it fails ultimately to address the problem of “uncontrollable change” in an era of high globalism that “involves spatially extensive networks of interdependence” (Keohane and Nye 2001, p. 229). According to Keohane and Nye: “Globalism is a state of the world involving networks of interdependence at multi-continental distances, linked through flows and influences of capital and goods, information and ideas, people and force, as well as environmentally and biologically relevant substances” (Keohane and Nye 2001, p. 229). Huntington, even though he assumes a Machiavellian approach to public interest, argues that the role of historical legacies and culture [just like class and ideology] can be overcome in the quest for development when “the capacity of a people to establish and maintain large, complex, but flexible organizational forms becomes a moral need” that encourages the rise of organizational skills that ultimately foster political stability in the global order (Huntington 1968). “The absence of associations, this low level of organizational development, is characteristic of societies whose politics are confused and chaotic” (Huntington 1968, p. 31). Huntington provides an explanation of how the Liberal Order regulates the international system in a systematic manner via the institutionalization that international institutions implement since the Liberal Order cultivates “the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability” (Huntington 1968, p. 12). “The level of institutionalization of any system can be defined and measured by the adaptability, complexity, autonomy and

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coherence of its organizations and procedures” (Huntington 1968, p. 12). The Liberal Order, therefore, can use the actorness of “regions” inside international institutions, when they organize in the form of “sub-wholes with many parts,” just like “complex” mechanical or biological systems, to allocate political, economic, cultural, diplomatic power to institutionalize its flow in the global order. This is something that the EU and the transatlantic system are doing already in order to assist entities inside and outside the West to “stabilize” when the forces of change are pervasive. When the tendencies of turbulence push structures toward a far-from-equilibrium state, that involve high dynamism and chaotic interactions inside a global environment that evolves more and more horizontally, the survival of the Liberal Order and the regulation of the global order depend on “functional adaptability, not functional specificity, as a true measure of a highly developed,” “open” system (Huntington 1968, p. 15). This is a problem that constructivists have tried to address in an effort to bridge rational choice approaches to postmodernist views about an agent-centered worldview of the international system. Ultimately, they have become normative interpreters of a worldview that still places the nation-state, as identity-based agent this time, at the center of theory and practice—Alexander Wendt states it clearly: “Anarchy is what states make of it” (Wendt 1992, pp. 391–425; Wendt 1999). Constructivism attempts to address the normative nature of the processes and interactions that create indeed this complex web of networked politics especially at the regional (meso level) and the macro levels (Kratochwill 1989), but it fails to intellectualize in an adequate epistemological manner a theoretical conception that addresses the problems of “change” and “prediction” in IR and how this affects wholes and their parts in the global order. Alexander Wendt tried to ameliorate epistemological shortcomings with the application of quantum physics to social ontology (Wendt 2015). Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Seybert also attempted to revamp epistemological gaps regarding “process” (how) by introducing the concept of “protean power” that “results from the improvisations and innovations of agile actors and processes of the actualization of potentialities in an effort to cope with uncertainty” (Seybert and Katzenstein 2018, p. 6). They have broadened, this way, the discussion on the dynamics of processes that evolve from the relation of “control power” and “protean power” to uncertainty and complexity in world affairs and have “acknowledged the existence and explanatory potential of power dynamics operating under conditions of uncertainty” in an effort to produce a “richer explication of unexpected change in world politics” (Seybert and Katzenstein 2018, p. 9). World Systems Theory adopts a macro-stance toward system effects and social change by recognizing the global order as the primary unit of analysis. But similar to Marxism (as well as to its neo-Marxist Dependency Theory influences)—that stresses the primacy of material forces over ideational structures, reducing this way the analysis to systemic processes that involve a historical materialist method to study the centrality of nation-states in the international system from the point of view of solely a “class structure” level of analysis, with “class stratification” becoming the primary concern in relation to social conflict—the focus remains essentially on the “advanced,” capitalist, “core” nation-state as the primary agent of interdependence processes in the various levels of the global order. The nation-state remains the

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primary representative of power relations to diffuse change into the semi-periphery (meso level) and the periphery via property relations, economic preponderance and exploitation of labor and resources. Immanuel Wallerstein, thus, focuses ultimately on the complexities of power in relation to the economic superstructure with a “core -semi-periphery- periphery” methodology that disregards the effects of positive and negative feedback loops that condense or amplify change in wholes and their parts in the world system (Wallerstein 2000).2 Wallerstein, following Max Weber, cultivated seeds of a systemic theory of indeterminacy that attempts to “assert the infinity of the social world and its entropic character in particulars. This model of the world system does bring together disparate and unconnected autonomous structures” in its effort to redefine capitalism, in this case, in terms of “the forms of appearance of capitalism” (Aronowitz 1981, p. 520). Despite the initial shortcomings in the deterministic nature of World Systems Theory, Wallerstein speaks about an “epistemological revolution” in social sciences in his later work (Lemert 2016, p. 181). World Systems Theory ignored initially the impact of cultural structuration and the role of unforeseen externalities (shocks, tipping points, international crises) in the core of its three tiers as they manifest in the time-space continuum, and how these externalities may foster trajectories of multitier agent interactions that penetrate simultaneously the borders of each tier in multiple, multifaceted ways, revealing their porosity ultimately. These processes of porosity in the global order must not be ignored for they reveal the structure of networked politics, the non-centrality of the nation-state in a “chaotic” world order of transnational actorness, and the ongoing oscillations of systems and networks inside the pervasive forces of a highly interconnected and interdependent globalized world. Questions arise inevitably about a number of issues: about systems’ capacity for autonomy, especially at the macro level; about centralization and decentralization tendencies in and between regions and especially in nation-states; about the rearrangement of authority complexes across micro and macro parts of a system (such as the EU); how the decay of international institutionalism and the reorganization of international institutions upset stability thresholds regionally and globally and the functional adaptability of the Liberal Order; and how disruptions in institutionalized multilateralism [the institutionalization of multilateralism comes with recombinations in the global order, than the prevalent reductionist view of an “allpowerful” interstate system] force the structures of micro- and macro-cooperation to self-organize around parameters of disorder, that may actually act as stabilization points inside an open, global space with numerous, multi-faceted networks. These networks have the same need for sustainability as their parent network but different process requirements for economic, environmental, and social sustainability. They have, perhaps, different cultural strata, different evolutionary trajectories and different interests, depending always on their micro, meso, and macro 2 Even

though Immanuel Wallerstein provides a spatial theory of core-periphery, his initial theory disregards the workings of cultural and ideational structuration in his “core-semi peripheryperiphery” model as well as the impact of external events in internal and external relations and agent interactions that exist in his macro-mapping of the global capitalist system that serves as his main level of analysis, using the nation-state as its primary actor.

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level and the degree of complexity involved in their interactions with the nature of other elements from different systems. The Liberal Order and the transatlantic sphere could be envisioned as sub-wholes of the global order, both of which are sustained by the symbiosis, connections and cooperation of many disparate-in-nature, (dis)organized micro and macro parts that constantly self-organize into new formations. These processes presuppose a certain degree of order or structured disorder, what James Rosenau called “patterned chaos” (Rosenau 1988). In this study, the problem of “wholism” in IR is addressed by proposing the conceptual reconstruction of the global order as a dynamic, complex, nonlinear whole that contains interdependent and interconnected complex systems of various levels as its sub-wholes. The problem of uncertainty in this nonlinear, chaotic environment is addressed by treating complexity as the main structural parameter of the global order. Nonlinearity assists to understand how globalization forces disrupt the continuity-change continuum and collapse the time-space continuum, which is what causes uncertainty and potentially chaotic behaviors, demanding risk management techniques, strategic foresight (prediction) and strategic planning. “One of the most acute ideas in epistemological revolutions is that transformational TimeSpace undermines both eternal TimeSpace and episodic, geopolitical TimeSpace because a crucial tenet of transformational TimeSpace is an inversion of the degree of importance attributed to certainty and stability” (Lemert 2016, p. 182). With this assumption, the groundwork is laid in IR systems theory to depart from the usual and comfortable pathways of a “state-centric world” (Rosenau 1990, p. 40) and consider the global structure as a “grand complex whole” that contains many complex, multi-agent, dynamic systems. Rosenau expressed this intuition in his Turbulence Theory when he analyzed the global order as a combination of a “statecentric world,” that contains the agency of sovereign actors, and a “multi-centric world” (Rosenau 1990, pp. 40 and 246–247), that assumes the agency of non-state actors to change, stabilize, or destabilize an interdependent “state-centric world,” increasing, this way, uncertainty for both the “state-centric” and the “multi-centric” worlds of the world order (Rosenau 1988). James Rosenau, with his Turbulence Theory, revolutionized the debate about the “centrality” and the “a priori” ubiquitous agency of the nation-state in the global order. Turbulence Theory allows non-state actors to manifest their undoubted and profound agency when the structural, relational and orientational parameters of world politics “are engulfed in turbulence” (Rosenau 1990, p. 119), bridging the gaps in multilevel systems analysis. In the end, both Wallerstein and Rosenau embraced the merits of complexity science toward a more holistic approach regarding the connections and interactions found in systems analysis that has to be multidimensional and treat entities, like regions, and non-state actors as autonomous shareholders in networked politics (Wallerstein 1996). When the parameter of complexity is treated as the main structural parameter of global systems and processes, this task becomes easier and can inform theory and practice.

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3 The Limitations of Current IR Systems Theories to Bridge the Micro-Macro Divide The discussion leads to the methodological problems with the traditional “-isms” and “neo- isms” in IR that preclude novelty in systems theory and do not allow for the potential of “prediction.” Prediction could guide practice toward policies of strategic management, coordination, and control of a variety of actors that need to cooperate, especially in times when tipping points hit systems and their subsystems. Predictive schemes are vital in order to address the problem of the micromacro divide because the macro depends on lower hierarchies and especially on the micro for its stability (Kleinberg et al. 2015, p. 492). By solving prediction and causation problems, the researcher adderesses the puzzle of how much microagents affect the stability of macro-structures and how policy from macro-hierarchies affect micro-foundations. This is extremely important for a “viable” Liberal Order because it can guide transatlantic partners’ policies domestically and internationally to apply “common task frameworks” since their many agents and institutions have to coordinate and cooperate constantly in overlapping governance structures, such as NATO and many economic partnerships. In this study, the problem of prediction is focused on how “inherent features of the underlying system can impact predictability, such as nonlinearity, stochasticity, interdependency of units and multiplicity of scales, types and interactions all of which contribute to system complexity, which may in turn limit predictability” (Watts et al. 2018). Regions provide an excellent tool because of their richness in features and multi-level, interconnected variables. Moreover, the analysis on prediction is focused on how systemic regularity is impacted by a rare event and a tipping point, such as a butterfly effect. Regions are very often the basins of a “strange attractor” of a butterfly effect in the global landscape. The field is in dire need of interdisciplinary visualizations of how to bridge the micro-macro divide if it really wishes to address the problem of “change” both in the discipline of IR, that has become stagnant inside a pool of linear, reductionist thinking, and in the predominant paradigm of how modus operandi and modus vivendi are supposed to be conducted in world affairs. In a world where the high tides of uncertainty cannot be abated but need to be prognosticated, changing the paradigm allows for “realistic” calculations of the prospects for a more stable and sustainable, peaceful—even if it sounds utopian, world (dis)order especially during times of uncontrollable turbulence. In addition, changing the paradigm allows for implementing peace processes that are in accord with conscious economic governance structures. More holistic approaches to security can become realizable this way that take into consideration intangible or hidden social, cultural, ideational, linguistic, and other variables, that are usually examined in conflict resolution processes, with less resistance by authority structures and other national and transnational elites that tend to embrace the neorealist and neoliberal paradigms. The paradigm proposed in this study hides the potential of amplifying the illiberal aspects of liberalism—one of Liberal Order’s insecurities which is fed by the discord in the internal transatlantic organs and which creates additional turbulence

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especially when the USA withdraws from multilateral structures and “tips” toward unilateralism (Charalampaki 2021).3 The Liberal Order needs to be more “inclusive.” This cannot be done without taking into consideration the micro and its profound role in the stability and evolution of the macro because the micro reveals “causations” in processes and patterns that usually characterize the macro. The Liberal Order could also be conceptualized as a multidimensional, complex sub-whole of a very complex global disorder that connects with different sub-wholes of the global habitat in a collapsed time-space continuum. A non-inclusive Liberal Order could not adapt eventually to a “fragmegrative” world order with such powerful decentralizing tendencies (Rosenau 2003).4 Managing the centralization-decentralization dynamics has become a tedious task all by itself that challenges the ability of the Liberal Order to remain relevant and inclusive in order to compete with other emergent orders, such as the BRI (Charalampaki 2021). Bridging the micro-macro divide will assist transatlantic policy to become fairer inside and outside the transatlantic partnership since a great deficit of the Liberal Order is its inability to promote “fairness” in a highly interconnected world. In this non-static, fluctuating environment of continuous dynamism, that produces uncontrollable flows of change in all structures and challenges the continuity of their status quo,5 the most valuable ability is in reality the ability to own, transfer, allocate, and manipulate the energy of information across micro- and macro-networks with swiftness and coordination. The energy of “power” falls constantly into entropy that manifests with regional power vacuums that break down the channels of communication and cooperation—a trend that tends to become the norm in transatlantic relations. Information is superior to power because it is a key power resource. Information is crucial in order to create collaborative networks to inform adaptation mechanisms and to manage complexity. When complexity is managed, a certain degree of randomness that creates chaotic interactions, processes, and behaviors can be controlled and prediction may become possible to inform policy and manage tipping points more effectively. The COVID-19 case is an excellent example of how “prediction” is crucial for strategic planning that needs to manage micro- and macro-network interactions simultaneously in a transnational environment where state sovereignty does not possess all capabilities to manage uncertainty and risk anymore. The nation-state, therefore, does not have the absolute power to contain localized or non-localized phenomena that may produce a “butterfly effect” with unintended consequences for both the local and the global landscapes. James Rosenau described extensively

3 It

is a forthcoming publication. Distant proximities: Dynamics beyond globalization (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), “fragmegration” suggests “the pervasive interaction between fragmenting and integrating dynamics unfolding at every level of community…It captures in a single word the large degree to which these rhythms consist of localizing, decentralizing or fragmenting dynamics that are interactively and causally linked to globalizing, centralizing and integrating dynamics” (Rosenau 2003, p. 11). 5 The Westphalian model, for example, is a status quo model that seeks to perpetuate the paradigm of “business-as-usual” in the global order. 4 In

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the dynamics of interdependence of domestic and international governance structures that try to regulate every single area of human activity in, what he called, “an emergent epoch” that cultivates complex webs of “governance along the domesticinternational frontier in a turbulent world” (Rosenau 1997). Systemology based on the ontology of the “whole” and the epistemology of organized, evolutionary complexity seeks to address the ethical implications of especially the “neo-isms” that tend to ignore processes that spring from the agency and characteristics of the micro level agents that make up social systems—i.e., individuals as leaders, citizens, bureaucrats, businessmen, educators, organized members of ethnic groups and of an informed civil society. Micro-agents are unquestionably the sources of the greatest randomness and unpredictability in the dynamics that force macro systems to tip toward disorder due to their capacity to possess, diffuse, and manipulate all kinds of information that other hierarchies have difficulty to acquire. Information feeds systems with emergent inputs via continuous feedback loops, which eventually increases the degrees of complexity. Uncontrollable, high levels of complexity force systems’ equilibriums to tip toward instability—they are the heralds of high risks. An order can manage any kind of complexity with organized leadership that is informed by an adaptive learning capacity, a capacity that is missing from the transatlantic partnership as a whole. Rosenau notes that “change is rooted in the integrative and fragmentative dynamics in world affairs to a large extent, in other words, our view of human capacities and other openness to change, along with any evidence in support of one or another perspective” (Rosenau 2008, p. 15) has an epistemological and ethical obligation to examine the “fragmentative” processes that affect especially the micro agents of the global order, causing pervasive “crises of citizenship” (Rosenau 2008, p. 40) with broader transformative effects for the macro structures especially those that exhibit high degrees of interdependence and interconnectedness. Due to the fact that the “adaptive learning” capacity of individuals is fast, fluid and flexible so that “questions of authority, legitimacy and loyalty” (Rosenau 1990, p. 238) are addressed in a “wholistic” manner at the micro level first, the adaptive capacity of larger sub-wholes that contain these micro agents and operate with their networked interactions becomes faster, more flexible and more efficient equally. Controlling, therefore, the adaptive capacity of the micro allows for controlling the adaptive capacity of the macro and reinforces robustness and resilience in structures as “wholes.” A systemic approach that allows for “wholistic” appreciations of the interactions, processes, and behaviors inside this fluctuating global landscape is possible when it conceptualizes a “space” in this chaorder for the micro, meso and macro levels to be able to meet and possibly converge into one multidimensional level. This is essential for creating systemic adaptation mechanisms, modeling and simulating micromacro interactions, and predicting behaviors that push systems toward evolutionary complexity via a period of randomness that can result in structured, deterministic disorder if complexity levels are kept relatively low. Evolutionary complexity presupposes emergence which presupposes internal and external self-organization. For this to happen, the parameter of complexity must be measured. Complexity, thus, acquires a structural quality that not only does it support wholes and sub-wholes but it also

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feeds their capacity of emergence. When these processes are analyzed and modeled under the prism of complexity science that allows the scientist to use the micro to understand and “rearrange” the macro, control mechanisms to manage tipping points, the forces of change and crises by unanticipated systemic shocks are not only possible, but also effective. An embedded sub-whole in a deterministic order has serious limitations to make predictions, but bridging the micro-macro divide may allow for emergence within deterministic schemes. What matters in the end is not the landscape but the processes within the landscape that determine its future states and, most importantly, the processes that pass information over large distances. The problem is that we do not know how to use or produce this kind of processes to pass information when the micro entangles with the macro instantly or near instantly with a butterfly effect. If we become able to model this entanglement and understand it, we will be able to “predict” when systems tip and enter a transition phase, in other words, when “the edge of chaos” manifests as a “state space” between order and disorder. “The advent of internet, global television and a wide range of other technological innovations that deepen the world’s interdependence and complexity has made it possible for a single person to initiate micro-macro sequences” (Rosenau 2003, p. 31). “The prime focus must be on how unintentional micro inputs interact with macro collectivities and thereby get embedded in distant proximities” (Rosenau 2003, p. 30). This has profound transformative consequences in intra-, inter- and trans-regional channels of interactions regarding cooperation and conflict; it plays a great role in matters of war and peace regionally and internationally; and it can affect the viability of international institutions. As a result, it has consequences for the effectiveness of multilateralism and Liberal Order’s capacity to produce and sustain multilateralism inside its own structures since the majority of international institutions are children of the Liberal Order. The capacity of the agents of the Liberal Order to diffuse multilateralism to the global order, with the transatlantic partnership being the primary medium for this process, can also be transformed by policies that bridge the micromacro divide in a way that takes into consideration the actorness of also “meso” structures between the micro and the macro as “fixators” of the adaptation process that must be performed “wholistic” in order to be effective, i.e., from the micro to the meso to the macro and vice versa. This realization must be at the core of any adaptation mechanisms that the Liberal Order can use for its own survivability and for affecting change in an unceasingly emergent “structured disorder” as the new norm in a very complex global environment in a way that its normative and institutional regimes remain updated and relevant. The transatlantic partners should capitalize on positive and negative feedback loops from the micro to the macro in order to stabilize systems and help them to evolve while aiding them to adapt and allowing them to be controlled at the same time. For this to happen, however, the introduction of leverage points between the micro, the meso and the macro levels of the global disorder must be employed: regions with their “meso” status can play the role of “leverage points” to stabilize the global environment if they are approached as “global actors.” The structure is not more

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important than the process or the process more important than the structure ontologically and epistemologically, meaning the examination of the “whole” involves a holistic approach to structure, interaction, process. The paradigm of “wholism” requires the bridging of the micro-macro divide. The micro feeds the evolution of the macro which fosters local and global bifurcations the examination and modeling of which can track changes when transformations occur either in the local stability properties of regional equilibria or in invariant sets of the global structure when they collide with each other. This process forces internal and external equilibria that sustain the stability of entities that operate and interact inside this multilevel state where all levels converge to tip or to act as leverage points, depending always on the quality and degree of complexity that manifests by their collisions that instigate oscillatory behavior. This level-convergence landscape can also operate as phase transition landscape where “at-the-edge-of-chaos” phenomena and behaviors manifest that stimulate the disorder processes. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to specify the nature of these “invariant variable sets” that may also be “invariant phenomena” in the global order, categorize them according to data sets, and model their behavior, connections, and interactions at “the edge of chaos” before [initial conditions] and after [dependence on initial conditions: consecutive future states that manifest characteristics of initial conditions but they are not the same] their interactions with micro- and macro-agents that instigate turbulent phenomena. This process is necessary in order to develop a scheme for measuring transformations that disrupt the continuity-change parameter, that could provide predictions about risks, preferences and behaviors locally and globally in order to inform cross-governance strategic planning. Regions as a meso-macro “microcosm” of the global whole require a “wholistic,” multi-level analysis because they contain combinations of multi-sublevel agents. They can become an extremely useful tool in modeling processes of micro- and macro-phenomena and behaviors especially when strategic foresight in relation to tipping points is desirable. Regions constitute a “device” for reducing the level of grand macro-analysis, i.e., of the global whole, to a lower hierarchy with flexible to manipulate and/or to combine variables, as they constitute sub-wholes with numerous interconnected and interdependent micro and macro-parts, with many of them being autonomous and independent at the same time—nation-states, for example. Conditions of disorder in the macro oblige the micro to self-organize, resulting in new forms of structure and organization automatically and a new reality that demands adaptation to ensure survival. Wholism and the CAS approach allow for a framework that escapes the conceptual jails of anarchy as a necessary parameter of survival and as the traditional baseline nature of international system. The framework proposed in this study views the global system as a complex web of multiple oscillators attached to the global order structure, hence, they remain interdependent and interconnected inevitably as parts of the same grand whole. Oscillators always employ sensitive amplifiers whose outputs are fed back to the input in phase, creating regenerative and sustainable signals. Amplifiers can be small signal amplifiers and power amplifiers. Micro-agents, thus, are essential in the process of evolution of higher hierarchical levels. Evolution must be based on mechanisms that convert threats to opportunities

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for self-organization to ensure survival and robustness in systems. Micro-agents are the most important agents of complexity yet the most neglected in systemic analyses. Micro-agents constitute the “small amplifier” units that convert small inputs into larger outputs in all systemic levels. A region can act, thus, as a power amplifier in the global structure by converting the power and complexity it generates as an organism of its own into leverage points that assist the global whole to adjust its multiple equilibria in an effort to diffuse stability across structures. A region’s power and complexity are drawn from the power, entropy, and complexity that its sub-macros with their micro-agents generate. Equilibria are also found inside regional and international organizations: they are reinforced when regional dynamic, complex systems self-organize critically so that alliances, partnerships, new institutions and organizations, bilateral relations and cross-regional cooperation emerge. Institutionalized equilibria are extremely important in periods of disorder because they foster multilateralism to aggregate interests, tackle common problems and threats and address issues of a global and regional governance agendas. Regions are the “fixator” muscles of global order’s body. When regions are approached methodologically under this prism, theory and practice about the adaptability and survivability skills of the Liberal Order depart from the usual warrants of traditional -isms and neo-isms and acquire the jailbreak worldview of a “wholistic” approach. This may allow IR to also “tip” toward changing the prevalent paradigm that fosters an unsustainable, turbulent world.

4 How to Change the Paradigm IR theory is responsible for addressing the “what,” “why,” and “how” of phenomena, interactions, processes, and behaviors that make systems and their agents to choose rationally to “tip” toward orderly and purposeful organization in times of continuity, which results in structures of cooperation. In times of change locally and/or globally, systems “tip” toward structured disorder, which also results in cooperation via chosen or forced self-organization pathways to ensure survival under challenging conditions of uncertainty. Systems and their parts, as well as networks of systems with their parts collectively, can “tip” toward chaos that is still patterned, which results in an out-of-equilibrium, scale-free chaorder with complex webs of nondeterministic behaviors, especially when the degree of randomness produced by a butterfly effect (such as a pandemic) is allowed to become uncontrollably high. In order to change the paradigm to be able to model nonlinear phenomena and produce strategic foresight for policy, the global order should be treated as a “grand whole” so as to “predict” and manage unancticipated crises, tipping points, and processes and behaviors during and after a butterfly effect. IR theory must address the epistemological parameters of traditional-isms and neo-isms in such an interdisciplinary manner that new ontologies are welcomed to manifest new realities. This will also guide theory and practice to reinvent the Liberal Order to become more inclusive, fair, adaptive, resilient, effective, flexible and robust endogenously and exogenously to endure

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change and to be an agent of change in its environment. The primary vehicle for reinforcing these qualities in its structures is the capability to consolidate and sustain multilateral networks of cooperation in and around its periphery with the capacity to diffuse liberal-order flows into other sub-wholes of the global order, especially when transatlantic cooperation breaks down. Intra-, inter-, and trans-regionalism have a great role to play here so that the agency of regions becomes paramount and is purposefully channeled as a “leverage point” that ensures Liberal Order’s viability when the USA withdraws from multilateral fora or when local and nonlocal tipping points create difficult to manage challenges for the transatlantic partners. The three traditional parameters that must be regarded under another light are: Anarchy: Anarchy presupposes “unilateralism” and “hegemony” as the invariable constants of a self-perpetuating state-centric order that is structured as a “society of states” which hides, indeed, seeds of embedded cosmopolitanism (Bull 1977). This state-centric environment operates under a veil of “complex balance of power” (Bull 1977, p. 108), and it regulates its affairs by what Thomas Hobbes called the “state of nature” (Hobbes 1981).6 Under this model, power remains the a priori structural systemic parameter that defines the global environment and regulates process in the global order. From the days of Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and even Hedley Bull (liberal realism) until now, the world has evolved to contain a multitude of variables of different natures. Humanity uses robotic vehicles to explore other planets; internet takes care of people’s business every single day; and artificial intelligence (AI) is used to shop, schedule appointments, set alarms and drive vehicles. Empiricism in the age of globalism, hence, dictates otherwise: the transnational world order of the twenty-first century is arguably a “complex” and “chaotic” disorder. It is not “anarchic.” Anarchy assumes, according to Kenneth Waltz, that all “units are functionally similar and tend to remain so” (Waltz 1986, p. 323). Ultimately, neorealism “misses, as the hegemonic stream of realism indicated, that units in the system could rise and fall in response to a variety of causes, including those of domestic nature” (Wieclawski 2020, p. 112). The “anarchic” approach to the global order takes a priori the Westphalian model. Uncertainty and complexity demand that nothing can be taken “a priori.” With a multitude of sans-sovereignty actors structuring parts of those patterns and diffusing power in and out states and regions, the agency of nation-states becomes part of a grander, complex scheme that is not defined merely by the international system. The Westphalian model presupposes that the world is “fixed” and “static” in the time-space continuum and, therefore, there is no “natural” capacity for change, emergence and evolution in the global order because of its statist ontology; while the “self-organization” principle is assumed to be the “natural” right and an inherent 6 Hobbes rejects Aristotle’s view of men as naturally human beings and uses “the natural condition of

mankind” or “warre as is of every man against every man” as the main parameter of an international system comprised of self-interested egoists that use violence in order to survive; in the same way Niccolo Machiavelli conceptualizes diplomacy and power in his oeuvres as the foundations of an “anarchical” international society without a higher authority than the nation-state with the power to regulate state behavior regarding matters of security, peace and war. See Book I of Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, 1981).

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property of “only” nation-states, i.e., of only macro-sovereign actors. But is this true in this day and age? If it is, how could political scientists explain, for example, the decisive role of non-state intra-elite competition in matters of war, peace and alliance formation in inter- and trans-regional security governance structures where multinationals shape governments’ preferences [energy security is a great example]? Turchin and Nefedov demonstrate how long-term oscillation processes in the global order, what they call “secular cycles,” define nation-states’ capacity for expansion or their failure to survive the turbulence, which clearly shows that the sovereign macro is subject to non-sovereign forces with agency and power, and to structural systemic parameters beyond those that sustain the traditional Westphalian construct. Power is not the “absolute” structural systemic parameter in the global (dis)order. The survival of sovereign macros depends on an “adaptation” capacity that is not always ensured or satisfied by power preponderance (Turchin and Nefedov 2009; Korotayev et al. 2015). The undoubted transnational character of present-day world system reveals that it hides structural parameters that define both structure and process without opposing the structural parameter of power necessarily (Milner 1991). These parameters are interdependence and complexity that expose the underlying universal constant of the global order: non-separability. “Interdependence does not imply that power is unimportant…Interdependence means that the actors are linked…Emphasizing interdependence draws attention to issues emphasizing communication and information” (Millner 1991, pp. 83–84). Information feeds feedback loops from the micro to the macro that can stabilize an order or fertilize processes of disorder, depending on their positive or negative nature, creating what Keohane and Nye (2001) called “complex interdependence” or what Thomas Schelling (1990) called “strategic interdependence” (Milner 1991). The COVID-19 case demonstrates that nation-states are not only affected by tipping points and butterfly effects, regardless how much power and capabilities they may possess , but also they are not suitable exclusively and wellequipped to deal with anomalies anymore. The value of multilateralism, international institutions and regional organizations, as also leverage points, becomes obvious in times of crises and turbulence. Moreover, “the emergence of certain forms of regionalism and of global democracy can be treated as transformational, and thus cannot be conceptually accommodated within the Westphalian framework” (Falk 2002, p. 327). If IR theory would like to accommodate the agency of regions as global, dynamic, multi-agent actors in this age of ambivalence, if IR theory would like to “change the paradigm” of an unsustainable world order, it could continue to treat anarchy as a cardinal organizational category in the field, but it must acknowledge that power is not the only, primary or absolute structural parameter simply because the international system is part of a bigger whole, that of the global order. The post-Westphalian model might be a neo-Westphalian, cosmopolitan, “fragmegrative,” globalization-from-above, or globalization-from-below model among other propositions. Hopefully, not a global empire model; perhaps, a dystopian version of Aldous Huxley’s “brave-new-world” model (Huxley 1932) or a H. G. Wells’s “modern-utopian” model (Wells 1905). But, one thing is for sure: it must be a model that consciously and strategically accommodates simultaneously order

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and disorder processes, and it must be a model that can explain, analyze, calculate, and predict the structural parameter of complexity in the global order from the micro to the macro and vice versa in a “wholistic” manner. This need for a “unifying” theory/methodology in the field will become more obvious in the future when it will struggle to accommodate the agency of AI in global affairs and the role of possible extra-planetary structures, such as space colonies; as well as activities, such as deep-space exploration [China’s space program is already moving toward this direction], that will require a conceptual framework for the agency of “distant regions” which will have a great impact on the structure and operability of the world order of our planet. The underlying motif of non-separability will become very clear then. Complexity (organized, raw, effective, chaotic), thus, must be treated as a primary structural systemic parameter superior to power: not an “anarchic” global system, hence, but a “complex organismic” global system. Reductionism: The “anarchy” approach precludes “wholistic” systemic analysis of the order-disorder processes and interactions because the main level of analysis remains the international system that, as Hoffmann notes, “is mistaken to be a sort of monster with an implacable will of its own” inside which “participants are dominated by the system in such a way that their moves are either mere responses to its dictates or exercises in irrelevance or self-defeat when they go against the system’s logic” (Hoffman 1968, p. 18). The global system is of transnational character today with many interconnected and interdependent parts, many of which are sans-sovereignty but very powerful, nevertheless, to instigate profound changes inside and outside nation-states. Jervis remarks that IR theory’s usual suspects, neo-isms, “deny consistent and powerful connections between the characteristics of the units and the dominant international outcomes and stress the continuity of international politics as long as structure remains the same” (Jervis 1997, p. 102). Jervis also argues that IR theory remains inductive in many instances, especially when it “looks to the system for both the dependent and independent variables” (Jervis 1997, p. 98) in order to distinguish the forms and causes of stability in the global system [David Singer’s Correlates of War Project is an example]. Or, it tends to treat the system either as the dependent or the independent variable, that precludes the examination of interconnectedness which plays a grand role in “tracing the impact of any change even after the fact, let alone predict it ahead of time, making the system complex and hard to control” (Jervis 1997, pp. 98–103). According to Jervis, “in a system, the fates of the units and their relations with others are strongly influenced by interactions at other places and at earlier periods of time [sensitive dependence on initial conditions]…Interconnections are highlighted when a system is disturbed by the introduction of a new element” (Jervis 1997, pp. 17–18), meaning the emergence process creates inevitably the need for adaptation that may not always take place under conditions of disorder. Interconnections, accordingly, reveal “paths to unanticipated consequences” [butterfly effect, tipping points]. They also reveal where the leverage points are in a system or what parts could act as leverage points and the degree of robustness of a system since “breakage or overload at one point” rarely destroys the entire system (Jervis 1997, pp. 18–19). Connections, hence, are important to the stability of equilibria of micros, mesos

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and macros because “some arrangements of connections will make a system resistant to change while others can facilitate instability…Most obviously, the parts may be locked together so that one change literally requires, prohibits, or constraints others” (Jervis 1997, pp. 20–23). When the systems under investigation are social, economic, political, military, or ecological systems, in an effort to trace and predict uncertainty in the global order, it is obvious that “the kinds of interconnections believed to be present strongly influence policy preferences” (Jervis 1997, p. 24) about risk management, multilateralism and control mechanisms to deal with uncertainty. Even when interconnections may not seem present, it is certain that systems and sub-systems are parts of a grander scheme with underlying connections that almost always hide emergent properties. This also reveals certain degrees of interdependence especially when the system falls into an out-of-equilibrium phase and may depend on exogenous equilibria to normalize the disorder state. The present globalized world system is characterized by “unique spatio-temporal and organizational attributes; that is, the extensivity, intensity, velocity and impact of global flows, alongside distinctive patterns of institutionalization, modes of contestation, stratification and reproduction” (Held and McGrew 2000, p. 1). These processes indicate that there are substantial challenges to the Westphalian model of systemic analysis, and sovereignty must adapt to the presence of “overlapping networks and constellations of power which cut across territorial and political boundaries” (Held and McGrew 2000, p. 1). Held remarks: While complex global processes, from the financial to the ecological, connect the fate of communities to each other across the world, global governance capacity is under pressure. Problem-solving capacities at the global and regional level are weak because of a number of structural difficulties, which compound the problems of generating and implementing urgent policy with respect to global goods and bads. These difficulties are rooted in the post-war settlement and the subsequent development of the multilateral order itself. The problems faced by international agencies and organizations stem from many sources, including the tension between universal values and state sovereignty built into them from their beginning. (Held 2009, p. 543)

These are the structural problems that the Liberal Order and the transatlantic partners face in their efforts to manage and adapt to a polycentic, poly-equilibrium, multi-agent world disorder with a multitude of sans-sovereignty shareholders that define the processes in a “transnational” system. This continuously evolving global order must be theorized under the prism of “wholism” so that the focus remains both on “causation” (micro) and on “process-patterns” (macro) that foster emergentism. The functional threshold power of sub-wholes and their systems demands the utilization of highest average power to sustain turbulence and capitalize on complexity as a constant unifying parameter in the global landscape even if its degree and character change, which is crucial to adjusting multiple regional equilibria when tipping points hit one or more localized receivers, diffusing turbulence flows via multiple transmitters to other regional receivers and to the global landscape. Complexity, hence, is superior to power as a structural parameter for the sustainability of systems and sub-systems which means that anarchy is subjected to other forces that define the global “whole,” part of which is also the international system. If we put the idea of

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“anarchy” under the microscope, we realize immediately that it presupposes by itself that there is substantial “information” that is being transmitted between sovereign actors, therefore, it accepts that information flows are directed from macros to their micro components and vice versa since no sovereign macro can survive without the purposeful control, organization and cooperation of its micro components. The deliberate and organized cooperation of sovereign actors with a multitude of non-state actors to aggregate national interests and the agency of international institutions that is based on the power of information, as it is being passed from states and their components to other states and alliances and their components, being their primary members, indicates that the most “powerful” structural parameter of the international system is not power, but the processes by which information is diffused, centralizing (localizing) and decentralizing (globalizing) the loci of power and authority. This leads eventually to define anew the ontology of systems in the “emergent epoch,”7 which, in its turn, reveals that the “reductionist lore that maintains that properties and behavior of systems as a whole are completely determined by the states and properties of their parts (ontic claim) or are explainable in terms of the states and properties of their parts (epistemic claim)” (Bishop 2011, p. 127) may not serve theory and practice for emergent realities inside a continuously evolving global order that passes through prolonged, profound and not always anticipated phases of structured disorder which may result in regional chaos. Chaotic behaviors first manifest after a butterfly effect, a tipping point and/or a crisis that is not mitigated effectively immediately when its regional strange attractor diffuses trajectories of this chaotic behavior inside the landscape of the global order at a state of time that is a “transition phase” that could be called, borrowing from natural sciences, “the edge of chaos.” This is the point when a leverage point and a control mechanism must intervene in order to maintain the state phase of “structured disorder” before it collapses to a “chaotic order” of uncontrollable randomness and complexity that will be extremely difficult to manage. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”—the whole is not the sum of its parts (Aristotle 350 B.C.E., pp. 8–10). Do we really want to “change the paradigm?” If we do, we need to adhere to new methods of viewing systems and their analysis, meaning understanding the causation mechanisms at play that make things happen because this reveals: (a) the degree of operation of each structural systemic parameter and its kind (e.g., complexity has different kinds that manifest according to causation links and the same goes for power and interdependence); (b) the perceived property of the reality where this operation is supposed to take place (linear or non-linear) and a probe into hidden variables to determine the agency of the observer (theorist or practitioner); (c) the potential for emergence and the degree or lack thereof of resilience and robustness in a system, which translates into the potential for control and adaptation mechanisms in order to foster order out of disorder/chaos or apply a self-regulating scheme; (d) the art of capacity planning, meaning which predictive trends can be harvested to devise control mechanisms to weather uncertainty and 7 This

is a term coined by James N. Rosenau as a defining moment in time-space continuum to which Turbulence Theory can be applied.

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transform threats to opportunities for self-organization, especially after a butterfly effect (such as a pandemic or a natural disaster); and, as a result, for emergence which ensures the survival of the system even under out-of-equilibrium conditions. An IR systemologist must also keep in mind: “There are three main categories of relations: Theories/laws to other theories/laws, properties to other properties and wholes to parts” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1756). This allows for considering both the epistemology and the ontology of the global order under the prism of a grand whole with many sub-wholes, such as the Liberal Order and regions, that contain many micro- and macro-parts always in synergy. With this approach, regions and regional constructs such as the Liberal Order escape the conceptual barriers of the “international system” and acquire a special ontology as sub-wholes of a grander whole with the power of agency to bring change even when their sub-macro parts, such as nation-states, refuse to cooperate and coordinate their preferences, that may result in various forms of conflict and fragmented multilateralism. If any systemologist follows this path to reveal and understand causation in the grander scheme of global affairs, he or she can act as a “magician à la carte” and inform policy preferences by re-designing old systems or designing new models for greater adaptive quality, robustness and resilience. “Over the past decades, the old reductionist approaches were reaching a dead end, and even some of the hard-core physical scientists were getting fed up with mathematical abstractions that ignored the real complexities of the world” (Waldrop 1992, p. 61). Forms of disorder are inherent in all systems and structures, disorder, or chaos can grow out of incredible simplicity which means that “even very simple equations can produce results that are surprising and essentially unpredictable” (Waldrop 1992, p. 329): this is the essence of chaos theory. The structural parameter of complexity, thus, revolutionizes our conceptual cognition to contemplate the merits of “contextual emergence” in the context of “wholism” in order to investigate the role of the law of non-separability in systemic evolutionary processes that foster stability, of which cooperation is an integral part one way or another—there cannot be evolution without synergy. “The properties and behaviors of a system at a particular level (including its laws) offer necessary but not sufficient conditions for the properties and behaviors at a higher level” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1757). This realization is the foundation of what chaos theorists encounter constantly: “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” which if modeled properly hides the promise of prediction. Transcending, therefore, the linear paradigm and switching our ontological worldview to embrace an alternative worldview that “validates intuitions many emergentists have that some form of ‘holism’ plays an important causal role in complex systems that is missed by reductionist analyses” (Bishop 2011, p. 129) obliges IR theory to welcome and embrace the age of turbulence and chaos as an opportunity for changing the prevalent, linear paradigm; a “wholistic” change that could manifest a fairer and more sustainable, peaceful, collaborative, inclusive Liberal Order and global order. Both Liberal and global orders must not lose their dynamism and their potential for emergence as the product of “downward causation” which recognizes the relationship between causal

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equilibrium relations and teleological events (especially for the micro level) (Bertanlaffy 1932), which is necessary for non-zero-sum processes that bridge the micromacro divide. Non-zero-sum processes contain inherently the potential of cooperation because communication enables complexity. Not a reductionist approach, thus, but a “wholistic” approach to global order. Determinism: Throughout history, many philosophers have preoccupied themselves with “the principle of sufficient reason” which postulates that for every event or proposition, if this event or proposition is true, then there is a sufficient explanation for why this event or proposition is true. This is the essence of determinism in general terms that the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others has produced. This concept defines theory in its effort to deal with questions of causation and predictability in the spatiotemporal continuum. The theoretical propositions in this chapter depart from the usual pathways of linear causality that defines determinism in terms of: A influences B, but B does not influence A, therefore, A causes B, meaning cause precedes effect and effect can be traced back to one cause. My research attempts to introduce an interdisciplinary theoretical model for understanding causation and the problem of predictability in global affairs under a prism of non-linearity that may hide deterministic chaotic behaviors, but the causeeffect relationship is not exclusively defined by a deterministic rationale that clearly relegates free will. By relegating free will in the agency of global actors, especially with the rise of the global civil society and an array of non-state actors, the scientist or the practitioner relegates the potential for creativity and novelty as well as for spontaneity in the micro and macro levels of the global order; spontaneity assumes a degree of unpredictability and indeterminism. “The fact that neither experimental nor real world choice behavior is completely deterministic has led several researchers to study the properties of ‘stochastic’ or ‘randomized’ choice functions, i.e. choice functions which specify not a single choice but rather the probabilities or frequencies of choosing each of the available alternatives” (Machina 1985, p. 575). This means that there may not exist a direct relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable. “Linearity involves two propositions: 1) Changes in system output are proportional to changes input… 2) System outputs corresponding to the sum of two inputs are equal to the sum of the outputs arising from the individual inputs” (Beyerchen 1989, p. 30). Linearities in a system presuppose that there are not robust interconnections among its parts. “Non-linearities permit small differences in system state to be amplified into large differences in subsequent system trajectory. This is sensitivity to initial conditions” (Hooker 2011, p. 25). Stochastic models could be particularly useful in examining randomly determined processes in IR. In today’s transnational environment, processes and interactions are determined by multiple, multilevel interactions among many micro- and macrovariables of different natures that cause eventually systems with their sub-systems and their networks to connect by competing, colliding or cooperating with each other, changing accordingly their equilibria in order to adjust to evolving organizational conditions of emergent super-orders after a period of structured disorder. This organization takes place extensively in the form of inter- and trans-regional superorders that constitute parts of the global whole. These systemic interactions hide an

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element of unpredictability due to their numerous variables that produce behaviors analogous to conditions of independence, interdependence, and interconnectedness depending on the degrees of power, complexity, randomness, and hierarchy that are present or fostered into the systems by endogenous and exogenous events. A butterfly effect presupposes that small changes at the local level produce large consequences at a higher macro level that can be regional; inter- or trans-regional, taking, thus, an international and global character, affecting the global order as one “whole.” Butterfly effects and tipping points cause “a system to be poised near the threshold of changing either attractor basin within the same landscape or changing landscape, so that a small disturbance is amplified to produce a larger change” (Hooker 2011, p. 25). Under certain conditions, motion in this strange attractor landscape becomes chaotic because “it occurs at random…Measures of chaotic system states show statistical distributions with ‘fat tails,’ that is, with events that wouldbe rare and lie far out from the mean were the processes fully random now showing up much more often; this is to be expected since the trajectories remain confined to the strange attractor, reflecting their internal interdependencies” (Hooker 2011, p. 25). These phenomena hide possibly the manifestation of “chaos” in the global order. “Systems manifesting sensitivity to initial conditions present the problem that small uncertainties in initial conditions (including errors) may be amplified into large subsequent uncertainties in system location and trajectories. That is, system predictability is limited by knowledge of initial conditions” (Hooker 2011, p. 25). This proposition of chaos theory is extremely important when IR theorists use structural systemic parameters in the context of “wholism” to examine and foresee uncertainty, departing from the usual reductionist paths, for it allows to use regions and their connections in the context of inter- and trans-regional cooperation as those special “basin attractors” in the landscape of the global order where small disturbances can be distinguished and manipulated during modeling processes to calculate the effective and organized complexity inside the micro-macro nexus (Charalampaki 2019). A developed scheme of this nature can model micro- and macro-actors, state and non-state, a process that has the potential not only to “predict” how future states of a patterned disorder/chaotic order will unfold, but also to “control” the conditions that foster it (Charalampaki 2019). Determinist systems, therefore, can exhibit behaviors that are not possible to predict. In an effort to exorcize the Laplacean demon8 of scientific determinism that prevents theory from escaping the conceptual jails of prediction, we need to visualize “future states” of wholes and sub-wholes as “open states” that can be created and influenced by a creativity that is fostered by continuously evolving interactions of their agents and the networks they formulate under parameters of organized complexity in order to aggregate interests and preferences, without dismissing, however, entirely the doctrine of historicism, as Karl Popper proposed in his critique of scientific determinism. Both Popper and Rosenau, after all, embarked on a quest 8 For more information, please read Pierre Simon De Laplace, A philosophical essay on probabilities

(1902), trans. Frederick Wilson Truscott and Frederick Lincoln Emory (Whitefish, MT: Kissinger Publishing, 2010).

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to create philosophical and theoretical conceptions that defend human freedom and human agency’s power and complexity in the spatiotemporal continuum,9 with human nature being arguably the most unpredictable agent of randomness and, therefore, of turbulence, complexity and chaos in global affairs. I will employ fragments of Popperian anti-determinism to instruct the novice or the ambitious who is willing to undertake the tedious task of “prediction” in the context of “wholism” below. I will clarify, hence, that my theoretical conception is influenced by the “Free Will Theorem” (Conway and Kochen 2009), appreciating, at the same time, Popper’s proposition that teleological historicism cannot explain the course of human systems in accordance with universal laws exactly because of the profound connection of human nature to randomness, complexity, and creativity. In this regard, “free will” implies that there is a causal relationship between systems and their agents’ choices of the settings and their states of affairs without them being determined by past history. This is because the agents of systems and sub-systems are continuously making their own decisions (regardless of the nature of gains, absolute or relative) and, as a result, future predictions become almost impossible for the simple reason that those agent decisions have not been born yet [President Trump as a possible “agent of chaos,” for instance, that fosters chaos in the Liberal Order, is a great example of these processes in transatlantic cooperation]. These decisions have the power to create perturbations of “fragmegrative” cooperation inside local and regional systems, especially when they are responses to the unanticipated consequences of a butterfly effect [such as a pandemic] or a tipping point the creates perturbations of uncertainty locally and globally [the ammonium nitrate accident that took place at the Beirut port on August 4th, 2020, pressuring the Lebanese government to step down a week later is a good example]. This rationale is particularly important for modeling purposes because it postulates that when the observer applies a property into the landscape of a system to affect small changes, this property is automatically picked up and applied endogenously by the agents of the system in their structures and networks, and this immediately can become the basis of a control mechanism based on either one, or a combination, of the structural parameters of complexity, power, interdependence in systems and sub-systems of the world order in order to stabilize them when they reach a threshold and are ready to tip to out-of-equilibrium conditions—actually, this is how patterned disorder processes are born. This “free will,” therefore, to choose what measurements to take when experimenting with a system or applying modeling techniques to it will result in measurements, observations and emergent states of that system that cannot be determined by any previous measurement, observation and/or state of this system. But since “states” are defined by the contact and interaction of multi-level and multi-ordered functionally organizational sub-orders or disorders in the world order, the observer/experimenter cannot apply or manipulate a parameter of a subwhole without affecting the global whole because even small changes in structural 9I

refer you to Karl Popper’s oeuvres: The open society and its enemies: Vol. I The age of Plato (1945) and The poverty of historicism (1957) and James N. Rosenau’s final book People count! Networked individuals in global politics (2008).

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parameters affect conditions of multi-agent cooperation or conflict in the landscape of the global order. In this sense, free choice informs which particular phenomena to be investigated. What better way to model conditions of uncertainty in the global order than employing the agency of regions as sub-wholes of the global order? At this point, I would like to clarify that historicism cannot be dismissed entirely in the study of complex social systems and especially when these systems are regions that act as “global actors” or “fixators” in the global order with the task to “leverage” inter- and trans-regional institutionalization of micro- and macro-elements. Human systems employ a variety of inseparable and possibly hidden variables and parameters that may not be structural systemic parameters as those employed for the global macro, but they are equally important in the quest for those hidden variables (that may also constitute leverage points) that can be employed in complexityperturbation management techniques—adaptation and control mechanisms to stabilize systems and sub-systems; in addition, they are vital in peace processes that have a regional character. For instance, autonomy, hierarchy, and culture have a path dependency trajectory that is clearly influenced by the historical past of previous states of social micro and macro levels and their evolution in the time-space continuum. Cultural dynamics, in particular, religious identity, ethnic discourses, and the collective memory/consciousness of a group of people can be considered as inseparable or hidden variables, depending on the methodology employed, that allow for control of choices and preferences collectively as a domestic or regional complexity management mechanism. They can become substantial leverage points in the quest for adaptation mechanisms to weather local and regional turbulence. Accordingly, an ideological worldview as a foundation for policy that the transatlantic partners could adopt to guide domestic and international governance is free will over determinism.

4.1 Prediction: The Medusa of All Science Concluding this section and drawing on Popper’s criticism of scientific determinism, I will give a very basic toolbox (due to space constraint) for exploring propositions on predictive schemes with an eye toward super-indeterminism that is not developed in this chapter but deserves mention because it hides the seeds of the underlying constant of an organismic global order: the constant of nonseparability. Nonseparability is sustained by the structural parameter of complexity, and it is the primary essence of a ceaselessly evolving global order. (1) Karl Popper instructs: “Derive certain now unknown explanations or predictions from theories now accepted or later accepted, in conjunction with initial conditions (which may be as yet unknown)” (Popper 2000, p. 64). In the case of IR, predictions might come obviously from models that take into consideration the historical past: data collection and analysis is the ultimate tool of historicism and that is why it cannot be completely disregarded when systemology is preoccupied with non-mechanistic systems. In addition, models are

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devised and employed constantly to measure and explane behavior, processes, connections and interactions stemming from: human needs, such as the need for security; complex economic regimes; cooperation; conflict; cultural transmissions at different levels of social organization, such as polities under different systems of governance; the internal dynamics of civil societies; the complexity of supranational organizations; alliances; international institutions; the global civil society as a dynamic, autonomous entity in the global order; and so forth. The end-goal, nevertheless, must be strategies of “self-organization” which is indeed a natural mechanism of survival and adaptation in systems of human organization. Organization and information flows produce different kinds and degrees of complexity because they are held and shared by different agents. In structured networks with high levels of purposeful organization, the leading cause of high degrees of complexity, that produces extreme randomness and chaotic conditions, may be a tipping point or a butterfly effect that is not managed and controlled effectively “at the early stages of its manifestation”—this seems to have become the norm in today’s global disorder. These elaborate networks that combine micro with macro sub-networks are formulated primarily intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally, connecting every single point on the global structure with multi-agent, dynamic, complex webs that constantly bifurcate. Bifurcations denote qualitative changes in dynamics, changes in an equilibrium’s stability, or changes in the number of equilibria. These bifurcations can produce critical equilibria that initiate or reinforce the processes of instability. The stability of equilibrium is decided only by nonlinearities in the environment that are produced by multi-agent, multi-network connections and interactions and are acute in times of high uncertainty. Prediction of critical or post-critical behavior of a system with multi-agent networks may be possible when the values of the parameter(s) are measured for which a bifurcation of an actual equilibrium takes place. A crucial parameter that must be measured is complexity due to the high levels of interactions between micro- and macro-networks inside larger regional networks. This is only possible with actual nonlinear systems and systems with “open” complex networks that are conceptualized and mapped under an interdisciplinary light. Harms notes: “One way to extend the domain of a theory is by analogy, and this is what memetics attempts to do. The other way to proceed is to examine the conceptual requirements of the theory one wishes to apply, which in this case is the more productive approach” (Harms 2011, p. 170). Evolutionary Game Theory, for example, has moved toward this direction by exploring the importance of selection (environmental interaction) and variation (additive causes) (Harms 2011, p. 170). The varieties of complex dynamic systems and chaotic interactions that arguably exist in the global system today produce a pressing need for prognostication in global affairs to inform various interdependent and multi-agent governance structures so as to produce effective governance. Because of that, IR methodology should consider two hypotheses, expanding the conceptual frameworks in an interdisciplinary manner: “1) If the system(s) [under examination] is

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governed by genuinely stochastic [i.e., patterns of random probability distribution], indeterministic laws (or by no laws at all), i.e., its apparent randomness is in fact ‘real’ randomness. 2) If the system is governed by underlying deterministic laws, but it is chaotic” (Hoefer 2016). In other words, randomness, that is the mother of uncertainty, “arises from genuine stochasticity, or rather from deterministic chaos” (Hoefer 2016). “A deterministic chaotic system has two salient features: (a) the evolution of the system over a long time period effectively mimics a random or stochastic process –it lacks predictability or computability in some appropriate sense, (i.e., randomness); (b) two systems with nearly identical initial states will have radically divergent future developments, within a finite (and typically short) time span (i.e., sensitive dependence on initial conditions)” (Hoefer 2016). The second hypothesis mirrors IR’s quest for correlations between regional systems or global orders in an effort to produce governance structures that contain many micro- and macro-variables, state and non-state, that have to coordinate and cooperate with each other in order for policy to be successful. Examining, hence, the micro-variables of macro structures and their connections and interactions endogenously and exogenously in the structure of a system or a sub-order becomes a mandatory task for any predictive scheme. An example: modeling the behaviors of the USA and Europe, as members of the transatlantic order, that many times cannot converge also falls under this hypothesis since their relationship demands prognostication to produce long-term policy that ensures the adaptive capacity of the Liberal Order and ultimately the relevance of the West in a chaotic environment with many emergent orders that other powers manifest. Even though, some chaos theorists argue that only the second hypothesis defines a “chaotic system” (Batterman 1993), both hypotheses are useful in the IR context if any modeling with an eye toward prediction is to take place, and this is because “any cause of frequency shift can be represented in some version of the ‘replicator’ dynamics, and as such those dynamics apply to any population regardless of whether its members are replicators in any sense at all” (Harms 2011, p. 170). Evolutionary models of cultural information transfer have rendered almost all regions of the world today, regardless their cultural tradition, on the same cultural evolutionary path, mainly because of the technological advancements in communications that connect populations across the globe instantly. This means that, even though, culture still matters as an agent of social change, the majority of populations of the planet dance to the beat of a common globalized drum that they cannot avoid no matter how much they try to. As a result, every citizen in every nation assumes automatically a cosmopolitan identity inevitably—every citizen becomes a global citizen. In this regard, modeling the elements of a region or the inter- or trans-regional multi-agent interactions, that can become extremely complex or even chaotic after a tipping point or a butterfly effect, could produce very useful information for predicting behavior thresholds and

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how regional constructs could behave collectively in out-of-equilibrium conditions. A control and/or adaptation mechanism before the behavior threshold hits is very important, especially if the controller wants to maintain continuity. (2) In social, political, economic, and geopolitical systems, the state of a system under examination cannot be predicted “from within.” Drawing again on Popper’s instructions, the system may be predictable “from without” by observers who can predict actions, interactions, reactions, connections, behaviors and how certain events and phenomena cause systems and sub-systems to tip, “provided they neither interfere appreciably” with the system or its elements (Harms 2011, p. 63) unless the observer wants to control or manage it/them. The fine-tuning of any structural parameter, such as complexity, produces changes that will diffuse into the micro- and macro-parts of the system and it will provide a predictive model that may not be representative of the actual underlying reality at play in the system, that if left undisturbed to take its course, this underlying reality will produce completely different future states of the same system. These future states cannot be fully predicted either because of randomness, fostered mainly by micro agents, that may manifest an unexpected tipping point or a butterfly effect with unintended consequences from the local to the global. The goal must be, therefore, to predict endogenous and exogenous tipping points, mainly contextual (i.e., changes in the environment). Endogenous and exogenous tipping points can be intentionally “constructed” and “guided” by a controller in an effort to transform, manage, and control the system under focus. This has great value for informing policy and multi-level governance in order to transform uncertainty and risks into opportunities for cooperation. This process takes place at the edge of chaos, this phase transition between order and patterned disorder. “A system acting as a whole may produce collective effects that are not reducible to a summation of the trajectories and sub-elements composing the system. However, there are serious open questions about this approach. For instance, what could be the physical source of such indeterminism and what is the appropriate interpretation of the probabilistic distributions?” (Bishop 2011, p. 124; Petrosky and Prigogine 1997). (3) Research the system for loss of “linear superposition” “that leads to possible rapid growth in finite uncertainties in the measurement of initial states” (Bishop 2011, p. 117)—this is crucial for prediction especially when the system experiences a butterfly effect. When nonlinearities are present, the degrees of uncertainty rise, and systems tend to be dynamic and complex, exhibiting sensitive dependence to initial conditions: “even the slightest change in the environment of a system can have a significant effect on the system’s behavior” (Bishop 2011, p. 115). In this case, “the distinction between system and environment breaks down” (Bishop 2011, p. 117). Which brings the discussion to a very important juncture: causation. When a system is treated as complex and not simple, additional forms of causation arise. Therefore, “understanding if a process is deterministic or not often depends upon understanding the underlying causal mechanism(s)” (Bishop 2011, p. 117). If complexity is treated as a structural

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parameter of the global order that enhances processes of emergence and selforganization, the need to expand the ontological conceptions of IR is becoming apparent: causation acquires a multi-level character, bottom-up and top-down, for the simple reason that wholes constrain their sub-wholes that constrain their micro- and macro-parts in their turn. Macro structures of the global order today, such as the nation-state or the Liberal Order, cannot refute the constraints the forces of globalization and other transnational phenomena have imposed on them. Sovereignty, and, as a result, anarchy are the primary Iphigenias on the modern altar of “post-internationalism,” to use another term coined by James Rosenau (1988). The universality of the global networked model is indisputable. There is not an “anarchic” global order in the twenty-first century in the traditional neorealist and neoliberal terms. There is an underlying, interrelated global network of constraints on dynamics that seek absolute autonomy. For instance, global financial markets, with a multitude of non-state agents such as banks and multinational corporations, can become one of the main causes of instability and disorder in the structural functionality of states and supranational organizations such as the EU. There is clearly a single, connected global structure and the concept of “anarchy” is not substantial to define it anymore. “Complexity provides a conceptual framework for theories that can accommodate both causes working from below and from above the system under study. Within a system, emergence connects causes at lower level of analysis with effects at higher levels of aggregation” (Harrison and Singer 2006, p. 34). “How does the environment affect the behavior of systems?” (Harrison and Singer 2006, p. 35). In other words, how could theory bridge the domestic-national-regional- cross-regional-international-transnational levels as sub-systemic levels of the global system to inform policy that fosters evolution and interdependence as parameters of a sustainable, cooperative global order that exploits national and regional differences as catalysts for constructive change in the context of transnationalism? Transnationalism denotes that there must be “something in common,” a common ground, for all systemic levels of the global (dis)order, from the micro to the macro, that connects them to each other as levels of a grander whole. If the goal is a more cooperative and peaceful world system, a goal that must stem from “changing the paradigm” in international studies, there must be created those leverage points in the structure of the global order that can work cross-systemically so as to intervene immediately, preferably in a multilateral fashion that is encouraged by the complex interdependence that transnationalism generates, when representatives of any systemic level of the global order begin to operate at the edge of chaos. This approach can also be applied to any sub-system when it is experiencing turbulence that creates states of disorder in its internal organs, with the Liberal Order being a premium candidate for a case study under this light. The breakdown in international structures of multilateralism is more than often the result of transatlantic discord and of futile attempts by the USA, an emotional attachment to old glories, to materialize its unrealistic expectations of a twenty-first-century unipolar moment in a world disorder that has moved past this stage a long time ago. The world has

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moved on and it does not revolve around the USA anymore. The world, today, is obliged to adjust multiple equilibria continuously and simultaneously, with the majority of those equilibria existing outside the Western (dis)order. These multiple equilibria manifest, in their turn, trajectories of dynamic social systems in an attractor that can be a phase state of a fixed point, such as a local point in a regional order that produces a butterfly effect with larger, global consequences. Or, it can manifest as a limit torus, that can be applied to the transatlantic partnership and other alliances, as well as to international institutions, to produce mechanisms of “perturbation management” to enhance structural robustness. The dynamic systems at the basins of those attractors have the power to produce emergent (dis)orders as they produce trajectories that oscillate in the global environment. A “strange attractor” (Ruelle and Takens 1971), in particular, that produces chaotic dynamics relies on sensitive dependence on initial conditions which produce multiple states that are not the same as the states of initial conditions, and that is why there is an argument in this analysis in favor of “free will” versus determinism. Regions, sub-orders of the global order (such as the Liberal Order), IOs (such as the EU) and international institutions, when theorized as global actors/global sub-wholes and/or leverage points in the landscape of the global disorder, can play an emphatic role in predicting uncertainties if they are modeled under this light. This is because uncertainties, that may lead to global chaos, signify the basins of “strange attractors” that produce the trajectories of a butterfly effect cross-systemically in the global structure. These basins are, for the most part, systems within regions. These trajectories are produced or amplified by the structural forces of different kinds of complexity and power. The micro, hence, reveals the causes for uncertainty in the macro that requires self-organization to adapt to conditions of structured disorder/patterned chaos that could be deterministic. “A basic strategy for the scientific description of any system, physical or otherwise, is to specify its state and the properties associated with that state, and then introduce their evolution in terms of dynamical laws. This strategy presupposes that the boundary of a system can be defined with respect to its environment” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1753). The goal, thus, must be a theoretical framework that guides policy to enable emergentism at the higher levels of the global (dis)order by enabling first and foremost the emergence of novelty in the properties of the lower levels (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1754). Bishop and Atmanspacher argue that “properties at a higher level of description are often related to properties at another level” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1755). The methodology proposed in this analysis takes an anti-reductionist stance in the search for whether holism could be or could not be an ontological and epistemological endeavor that IR researchers could delve into in their quest for “changing the paradigm,” especially when multi-level, multi-agent orderdisorder nuances must be considered. The primary tenet of an anti-reductionist stance is, as mentioned above, “the whole is not the sum of its parts/the whole is more than the sum of its parts.”

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In this regard, drawing on the research of the aforementioned physicists, I propose “contextual emergence” as an alternative so as to deal with the problem of causation in IR when “contingent contextual conditions are required in addition to the lower-level description for the rigorous derivation of higher-level properties” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1757) in order to map and model regional orders that contain many tangible and intangible/hidden variables that produce conditions of uncertainty, disrupting the continuity-change continuum and collapsing the time-space continuum when they organize to connect and interact formally and informally. Drawing again on the research of the aforementioned physicists, I propose “supervenience” as an alternative when “the description of properties at a particular level of description offers sufficient but not necessary conditions to derive the description of properties at a higher-level, when a lower-level description offers multiple realizations of a particular property at a higher level” (Bishop and Atmanspacher 2006, p. 1757). The discussion, therefore, leads to conclude that prediction may become possible when a process is developed (i.e., “how”) to sufficiently identify what bottom-up and top-down causations at work, because of control hierarchies, operate simultaneously in dynamic social systems when they exhibit sensitive dependence to initial conditions. And that is why historicism cannot be entirely disregarded in any stance against determinism when these dynamic systems are human, social systems. “If processes of self- organization are temporally extended, they may manifest powerful dependencies of later organization on earlier organization. That is, they may manifest powerful historicities” (Bickhard 2011, p. 97). Finally, I strongly stress Bishop’s remark that “systems as a whole have causal power in virtue of the causal power of their constituents” (Bishop 2011, p. 117); and I add that the causal power of a whole is not the same, when measured, as the causal power of their constituents. This remark is essential when regions/regional orders are theorized as “global actors” or “fixators.” (4) Instructions (2) and (3) inform the most important instruction for escaping the usual conceptual jails of IR theory: “We cannot eliminate the uncertainty in the epistemic states given some unknown ontic state of the target system” (Bishop 2011, p. 117). In order to make any prediction, some sort of theory of knowledge must be engaged obviously, which automatically signifies that the theorist/scientist is “entangled” with the system and its agents, therefore, prediction is eventually the product of a process “from within” the system, which is clearly a deterministic approach. Instruction (2), however, dictates that prediction “from within” is not possible when a non-deterministic philosophical attitude has been decided and a non-deterministic scheme is employed. This rationale leads the discussion eventually to conclude that prediction is not possible “from within” or “from without” a system. This hurdle can be overcome by choosing a model that bridges the micro-macro divide during the modeling process of agents and interactions, and especially at a point in time when a tipping point or a butterfly effect obliges micro- and macro-elements inevitably to dance at the edge of chaos. The goal is to prevent a sub-whole of the global order to reach threshold equilibrium conditions, signifying that the process of instability has begun, that

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may cause the sub-whole to collapse with consequences for other neighboring sub-wholes, if we are modeling regional systems, for example, The same goes if we are modeling state and non-state actors in the Atlantic security governance structures, for example, to measure the degree of performance based on the input-output size. Modeling toward this direction allows for measuring the structural parameters of effective complexity, i.e., the amount of non-random information in the system (Gell-Mann and Lloyd 1996; Lloyd 1988), and the structural triad, as proposed by Anatol Rapoport (1966), of organized complexity, and/or organized simplicity (Rapoport and Horvath 1959) and/or chaotic complexity that give important information about the vastness of interconnections that social systems form microscopically and macroscopically, employing different kinds of tangible and intangible equilibria in their effort to stabilize under conditions of multiple emergent orders. At this point, a control mechanism could again stabilize the system or render it purposefully under chaotic conditions. These interconnections adjust inevitably to the structural parameter of interdependence in the global order so that when one or more systems are modeled together, isomorphic categories can be derived from the one-to-one connections and interactions they form as wholes, sub-wholes or networks of sub-wholes so that when identical multi-agent, structural patterns are observed, prediction may become possible. Change can come, and can be more effectively institutionalized, when it comes from bottom-up in social complex systems, which clearly shows the importance of the micro for problematizing higher levels. All these problems could be addressed in a comprehensive manner when the ontology of “wholism” is adopted for the global (dis)order, while the micromacro divide is problematized following an interdisciplinary epistemology that draws also on the systemology of natural sciences. The measurement and study of complexity poses an epistemic challenge that demands a close link between epistemology and ontology in all scientific fields. “In complexity, environment affects system behavior in two ways: 1) It constrains what is possible and ‘selects’ behaviors that are most appropriate within current institutional arrangements; 2) Perceptions of environment influence agents’ internal models. And there may be interaction among both processes” (Harrison and Singer 2006, p. 35). Bridging the micro-macro divide by considering the existing and emergent ontologies of the global order under a new light will allow IR to develop predictive models for risk management that assist the world to evade the trap of static orders, embracing the paradigm of structured, emergent disorders, without, however, losing a sense of continuity that creates a veil of security. “Probabilities are as much an ontologically fundamental element of the macroscopic world as they are of the microscopic” (Harrison and Singer 2006, p. 124). The visualization and conceptualization of emergence is a predictive undertaking by itself. This can inform ultimately Liberal Order’s ontology to acquire a polyarchic character that extends outside its Western premises with liberal oscillations that fine-tune the forces of the different kinds of complexity in other sub-orders of the world (dis)order. “How one approaches these complex

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and varied logics will depend very heavily on the purpose of the enquiry and on how theory is being used” (Hurrell 2005, p. 41). IR could “change the paradigm” by recruiting forward-looking ontological and epistemological tools that respect the historicity of IR as a field of study but open new avenues for an exciting, emergent epistemology that does not view history, social processes, and geopolitical phenomena as linear. IR, as a field of study, needs a new direction in order to inform policy: this direction must problematize ontologies with the study of nonlinear, dynamic complex systems that I present below.

5 Beyond the Usual Suspects of IR: The Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Approach 5.1 Regional Complexes and Sub-orders: “Open” Islands of Micro-Macro Connections In the preface of his book Peace In Parts: Integration And Conflict In Regional Organization (1971), Joseph Nye, drawing on Emmanuel Kant, shares an important intuition: “International peace is not an absolute value…those who want internal peace can find it in the graveyard…But, if peace is not an absolute value, it is nonetheless a widely shared one and an important point from which to evaluate the performance of regional organization” (Nye 1971, p. ix). And he continues in the first chapter of this book: “Have international regional organizations created ‘islands of peace’ in world politics? Have they ‘encapsulated’ conflicts and prevented them from becoming intertwined with insolvable global conflicts? (Etzioni 1964). Will they do so in the future?” (Nye 1971, p. 3). The purpose of this chapter is to ultimately examine how the “emergence” of new methods for considering ontologies in IR—such as regions and sub-orders that can function as organismic global actors with wholistic agency to affect change and foster multilateralism in global affairs as well as the epistemology these new methods entail, could inform theory and practice to devise schemes for exploiting the nature of “fragmegrative” cooperation and interdependence in a multi-level manner. The materialization of a global order that is not afraid to function as a disorder that draws on the properties and processes of embedded ataxia and randomness feeds a creativity that springs emergent forms of order. This assures an evolutionary path for the Liberal Order to embrace an exciting future. Parts of this future, since the unknown entails great degrees of uncertainty inevitably, can be designed to be anything policy wants them to be, with a multi-level, strategic design which constructs models for handling and managing great complexity. This is in itself a “non-deterministic” attitude that the transatlantic partners could adopt because it allows for “free will” to determine the causes of future designs. As a result, the owners of institutionalized “free will” can be held morally responsible for their decisions, choices and actions and address the democratic deficit of the West in domestic and foreign policies. This

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indeterministic attitude must be at the core of a Liberal Order that knows how to operate at the edge of chaos and instructs other regional orders how to do so as well. A Liberal Order with this attitude can yield a world order that has more fairness and sustainability because it promotes accountability and transparency both of which generate questions about the ethics of globalization and global governance processes; questions that have to be addressed if the West wants to “change the paradigm” and increase the value and sustainability of the Liberal Order and its institutions. In other words, it is time for America and Europe to see the glass as already broken, but still with the exciting possibility to be half full, a task that entails great degrees of imagination and novelty that the transatlantic partnership lacks today. That is, the goal should be how to create control and adaptation policy based on regional “leverage points” in the global disorder that produce more cooperation and multilateralism between its parts. Regional organization and the institutionalization of integration can be great tools toward this direction. Tallberg et al. found that “norm commitment” and “norm recognition” foster robustness in IOs (Tallberg et al. 2020, p. 3). Today, the emergence of IOs is facilitated via complex processes intra-, inter-, and trans-regionally that involve the negotiations, coordination, and cooperation of a multitude of microand macro-agents that operate inside-out the nation state. Tallberg et al. concluded that “IOs look to their external environment for legitimate standards, privileging the internal conditions of IOs with a particular focus on how democratic memberships and institutional rules facilitate norm entrepreneurship” (Tallberg et al. 2020, p. 13). Regional organization, therefore, especially this form that transcends actual regional boundaries is a leverage point for diffusing liberal democracy’s standards across the world and enhancing Liberal Order’s value. Peace must be a conscious, multi-shareholder endeavor from bottom-up and top-down, from within and without. Regions and sub-orders of the global (dis)order still have a very important role to play in the evolution of multilateralism and the diffusion of liberal norms and shared visions of peace. Regionalism has become an extremely complex phenomenon in world politics of continuous emergence and self-organization all by itself. The New Regionalist Approach denotes great degrees of “social cohesiveness (ethnicity, race, language, religion, culture, history, consciousness of a common heritage), economic cohesiveness (trade patterns, economic complementarity), political cohesiveness (regime type, ideology) and organizational cohesiveness (existence of formal regional institutions)” (Hurrell 2005, p. 333). Regionalization “refers to the growth of societal integration within a region and to the often undirected processes of social and economic interactions” (Hurrell 2005, p. 334). In addition, regionalization “involves increasing flows of people, the development of multiple channels and complex social networks by which ideas, political attitudes and ways of thinking spread from one area to another, and the creation of a transnational regional civil society” (Hurrell 2005, p. 334). What is the value of “regions” for international cooperation in a turbulent world that is more and more defined by cross-regional organized complexity? This analysis views regions as dynamic, complex adaptive systems, as sub-wholes of the global whole, that demand processes of adaptation micro-regionally and macroregionally which can become self-regulatory mechanisms, like in ecosystems, so as to stabilize their internal tension points and the global environment simultaneously.

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Regions and regional organizations generate dynamic, nonlinear, complex processes and interactions inside-out their systems and a high degree of complex cross-regional interdependence among many micro and macro parts, state and non-state, such as the EU. Regions, moreover, are amplifiers of the turbulence that is generated in the global order by other actors, but they can also constitute the basins of “strange attractors” when anomalies or a butterfly effect manifest in the world, or when a tipping point produces cross-systemic shifts on the continuity-change spectrum. For this reason, regions and regional orders with their IOs “are often conceptualized in terms of ‘complexes,’ ‘flows,’ ‘networks,’ or ‘mosaics’” (Hurrell 2005, p. 334). Global interactions and processes become more and more complex, chaotic possibly, with substantial degrees of institutionalized integration that emerges crossregionally. These regional sub-orders are comprised of many different variables that do not necessarily belong to the same region or neighboring regions. Regions, today, are ultimately super-organisms that demand the power of imaginative visualizations that escape strict geographic boundaries. This alone shows the high degrees of complexity that are found inside regions and are fostered by regions in the global environment, regardless their actual physical, normative, cultural, or institutional structure. A region, today, does not need to have a global hegemon in order to be considered a “global actor” with enough power to affect change in IR, and this is exactly what challenges the viability of the Liberal Order. “A region implies more than just close physical proximity among the constituent states” (Mansfield and Milner 1999, p. 591). “Peter J. Katzenstein maintains that regional geographic designations are not ‘real,’ ‘natural’ or ‘essential.’ They are socially constructed and politically contested and, thus, open to change” (Katzenstein 1997; Mansfield and Milner 1999, p. 591) a definition that coincides with the definition of CAS. This denotes the importance of variation (environmental interaction) and selection (additive causes) in evolutionary processes of “regional” integration and cooperation that transcend the actual geographic locations since shared political, economic, cultural, and linguistic bonds are not necessary for constructing “regional” organizational and cooperative formulas, as many scholars have analyzed. This also becomes a common ground for multilateralism and international security. Micro- and macro-organization “has been defined by demographic, economic, and political factors that are not simply area bound” (Katzenstein 2005, p. xi) because of “processes that transcend space and compress time,” the definition that Peter Katzenstein attributes to “globalization” (Katzenstein 2005, p. 13). These processes are aided by the formation of intra-, inter-, and trans-regional institutions that harvest turbulence and uncertainty locally, regionally and transnationally to create opportunities for bringing together many micro and macro elements that belong to different regional orders. The elaborate, complex networks of various forms of micro- and macro-regionness oblige any researcher to acknowledge that regionalism is not alliance formation ultimately, as many neorealists propose (Walt 1987), but a mechanism of “structural interdependence” to “restrict the free exercise of hegemonic power through the creation of regional institutions” (Hurrell 1995, p. 342). For this reason, regionalism must be conceptualized as arrangements across and between sub-wholes within a grander whole. Soderbaum argues that “the links between micro-regionalism and

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macro-regionalism are simply underexplored from an ‘empirical’ point of view. The neglect is also a theoretical and conceptual problem that is poorly explained by the traditional theories that dominate the research field” (Soderbaum 2005, p. 88). Soderbaum explores macro-regions (world regions) “as large territorial units or subsystems, between the ‘state’ and the ‘global’ level,” such as Europe or the EU, and micro-regions as spaces that “exist between the ‘state’ and the ‘global’ (municipal) level and are either sub-national or cross-border” (Soderbaum 2005, p. 87). His analysis makes an important point: all types of regional complexes “can be created from ‘above’ or from ‘below,’ and sometimes the state has more autonomy from social forces and, at other times, the global market penetrates more deeply than in others” (Soderbaum 2005, p. 88). This is also how causation is examined in CAS. Regions, thus, can provide important measurements and intuitions about turbulence and complexity in the global environment and can become leverage tools for policy to mitigate uncertainty especially when a butterfly effect manifests. So, how could regions produce order? In other words, how could regions, as “global actors,” decrease uncertainty and unpredictability and increase stability in the global disorder? Regions act as those nonlinear feedbacks that operate “in a state poised at the edge of instability,” manifesting behaviors that are “paradoxically both stable and unstable at the same time: there is instability in the sense that specific behavior in inherently unpredictable over the long term” (Stacey 1995, p. 482). But, in the midst of instability, “there is stability in the sense that there is qualitative structure to that behavior and also short-term outcomes are predictable” (Stacey 1995, p. 482)—this idea is important for strategic management. Regions operate at the edge of chaos, being endowed with the complex task of adjusting the equilibria of the world, which is ultimately what creates turbulence and chaotic behaviors. The CAS approach comes to bridge the gaps that Buzan and Waever (2003) as well as Katzenstein (2005) left with their constructivist approaches to regional actorness. Buzan and Waever considered regions as internally interdependent but mutually exclusive security complexes (Buzan and Waever 2003). Katzenstein concentrated on regional actorness in the “periphery”—Europe and Asia—of a unipolar “core”— the American imperium—not escaping ultimately the traps of anarchy, reductionism, and determinism that have plagued IR’s imagination for so long (Katzenstein 2005). Uncertainty not only does it exist in the local and global environments, but it is also a wedge in the scientific processes of IR—a problem that clearly demands an expansion of methodological tools for the scientific study of global affairs. For instance, the democratic peace model, that informs transatlantic partners’ foreign policy frameworks, produces uncertainty in the global order. Democratic peace theory may demand enriched computational models for the prediction of interstate conflict and the complex relationship between complex interdependence, democracy and conflict, or the effects of trade on conflict (Goenner 2004), since emergent multi-agent networks, that can be found in trade structures, conflict governance and post-conflict processes, affect positively and negatively the stability equilibria of several interconnected regional systems and organizations. The CAS approach informs the ontological and epistemological discussions in IR and proposes a methodology for bridging the micro-macro divide; an approach that has great value for simulating with models

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the connections, interactions, and behaviors of micro- and macro-autonomous yet interdependent variables in order to assess their effects on a system as a whole. This ultimately informs more effective governance.

5.2 Three Preconditions for Transitioning from “Simple” Systems to “Complex” Systems The analysis so far has emphasized that one of the main problems for predicting uncertainty is that no knowledge up to a given point will allow us to predict the bifurcations (changes) and trajectories produced after this point. As randomness increases in systems and their networks, nonlinearity increases in the connections of their agents, their interactions, their behaviors, and the randomness this behavior instigates. Behavior, connections, and interactions in multi-agent models could provide measurements and strategic intuition about future phase states of systems and their sub-systems that have entered a chaotic phase. Acquiring a non-reductionist approach allows for considering the problem of locality-nonlocality in IR, or what James Rosenau called “exploring governance along the domestic-foreign frontier,” that can inform multi-level policy especially when a tipping point or a butterfly effect manifests that clearly connects the local to the regional to the global and vice versa. “Local realism means that two different objects have only limited correlations: events undergone by one object cannot be correlated to another beyond a certain degree” (Ilan 2019, p. 4). In social organization, however, a “quantum mechanics” approach is more appropriate: “correlations between distant particles exist, violating local realism” because of physical and other parameters that exist in the environment, “such as the constraint by inequalities,” so it is “possible to correlate particles that are distant from each other” (Ilan 2019). By measuring one or a cluster of them, “it is possible to learn something about another one or another cluster without observing it/them directly” (Ilan 2019). Randomness, despite the fact that it is the mother of uncertainty, is very important for improving modeling schemes. However, in order to befriend chaos and harness complexity, this modeling has to respect certain premises in order to approach the reality of global affairs under a novel light that is very useful for the deconstruction of an undoubtedly complex disorder. Many phenomena, as it was emphasized before, cannot be “understood from underlying deterministic models alone” (Ilan 2019, p. 1). Many systems actually feed off increased randomness in their environments, which is a characteristic and a result of chaos but also of uncontrollably high degrees of raw complexity, because their “outputs cannot be determined even if their internal structure and response history are known” (Ilan 2019). A way to solve this problem is by altering both the ontology and epistemology of the “system” to satisfy three preconditions that allow the researcher to conceptualize systems from “simple” to “complex,” perhaps in a transcendental manner that, drawing on Emmanuel Kant’s rationale, postulates the collective intuition of a globalized world: time, space, and causality cannot exist independently

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from each other. Indeed, the pervasive forces of globalization, the continuous digitization of all functions in our world and emergent technologies have rendered time, space, and causality “open” concepts in need for “open” methodologies. This is a key requirement for conceptualizing in a “nonlinear” manner James Rosenau’s suggestion of a “fragmegrative,” “turbulent,” global (dis)order—i.e., for conceptualizing the centralizing and decentralizing tendencies “along the domestic-foreign frontier” that transform multi-agent systems from “simple” to “complex” with analogous effects for our perceptions in IR. This is very important for producing “open” governance with analogous results, which is crucial for sustaining the relevance of the Liberal Order in a multi-equilibrium world. These three preconditions for transitioning from “simple” systems to “complex” systems are: (1) In the analysis, the system is treated as a “whole” with many interconnected and interdependent parts, that can be sub-systems, sub-networks, sub-orders that contain complex, multivariate distributions. Systemic agents maintain substantial degrees of independence and autonomy despite their interdependence and interconnectedness. The a priori premise that guides a desire for exploration into the world of complexity and chaos must be always embedded in the Aristotelian axiom: the whole is not the sum of its parts—the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Both Jervis and Earnest note that “the formation of nonlinear cause-effect relationships and recursive endogeneity in these systems” produce “emergent” phenomena that are defined as “systemic properties or behaviors that are different from those of the parts” (Jervis 1997, p. 6; Earnest 2015, p. 32). Changes in one part in complex systems produce changes to another part of the system or an interconnected system. In the quest for “wholism” in governance, the global order, thus, is treated as a global “whole” that contains many interdependent and interconnected but also independent, extremely complex “sub- wholes” with considerable power to act as agents of change in global affairs. Regions are excellent candidates for being problematized as complex adaptive “sub-wholes” of the “global whole” because they contain a sea of state and non-state actors, micro- and macro-agents that produce extremely complex networks with chaotic interactions that cause constant changes in the areas where they bifurcate. The CAS approach assists the examination of regions and regional orders as autonomous but interdependent organisms that exhibit threshold behavior. Envisioning the world order as a grand whole with a collage of interconnected CAS may solve important epistemological and methodological issues in international studies. (2) In the analysis, the system and its sub-systems cannot be considered or treated as “simple.” “A system is a portion [or “construct”] within defined boundaries, outside of which lies an environment” (Harrison 2006, p. 2). In social sciences, systems can be of various natures without actual geographical, tangible, physical boundaries. A “simple” system is when “the units and their relations are relatively fixed, permitting reasonable prediction of future system states” (Harrison 2006, p. 2). Simple systems may be complicated, but are not “complex,” meaning

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that “each of their parts has specific role in the system, and the actions of all the parts are centrally coordinated toward a collective outcome…problems and solutions are illustrated clearly, defining the characteristics of each part and the range of relations between them in exhaustive detail” (Harrison 2006, pp. 2–3). Simple systems “are static and tend to equilibrium” (Harrison 2006, p. 4); they tend to be “closed” systems which means that they are not very conducive to exchanging energy with other systems, and they can be “decomposed down to their parts, meaning they are nothing more than their parts and their defined relationships” (Harrison 2006, p. 4). This is a reductionist approach that inhibits strategic foresight. (3) Drawing on one of the founders of analytic psychology, G. E. Moore, I also set the following precondition: “the nature and reality of objects of perception” (Moore 1905–1906) has to be problematized in the context of causal interpretations that transcend general linear reality. In this quest, “the nature and reality of objects of perception” could embrace the network model of reality that allows for nonlinearity to thrive. Further research should be done on how social causation provides reasons for explaining processes, behaviors and the emergence of phenomena in a “wholistic” manner by also bridging the divide between “different perceptions about the nature of reality.” Research should mainly reinforce models for examining bottom-up causation that betrays the importance of the micro for constructing and regulating the equilibria of higher levels and how the micro (citizens/individuals) is affected by the policy implemented by other hierarchies. Rosenau argues that “conceptions of global order and large-scale governance normally treat macro collectivities and institutions as the bases for whatever form the order may take” (Rosenau 1992, p. 273). Kisser, in addition, argues: “One of the most interesting omissions in the political science literature is any discussion of the recruitment or selection of agents” (Kisser 1999, p. 156). Given that a single individual has the power to create uncontrollable randomness/change in their environment—individuals can instigate a butterfly effect— how to “develop mechanisms for coordinating policies cross-regionally and crossorganizationally in particular issue-areas, and determining what sorts of activities become the objects of multi-level coordination efforts and why” (Thomson 1992, p. 196) must be based on governance regulations that must take into account micro foundations extensively. “Causality attaches to the conduct of individuals” (Rosenau 1992, p. 276), therefore, the dynamism of threshold behaviors that cause tipping points that, in their turn, destabilize the equilibrium of systems and organizations, can be traced and measured so as to predict systemic behavior that makes a system tip. This is of particular importance for regional economic and security organizations, such as NATO, as well as for international institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), in order to develop strategic foresight for crisis, risk and conflict management in a world disorder where the state, i.e., the sub-macro, is not the primary actor anymore. Sub-systemic coherence is important to create order out of disorder. How, thus, citizens, leaders, bureaucrats, scientists, states, organizations, international institutions, transnational economic forces and orders, with their normative

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nuances that ultimately inform their agency in world diplomacy (such as the Liberal Order or the Chinese Order), “perceive” the world, their own agency in it, and “others” they need to interact with in it is fundamental to envisioning an “open,” polyarchic global order with “open” systems, a worldview that allows for more multilateralism and cooperation. The CAS approach is a “humanistic” approach that informs governance that focuses on promoting sustainable environments, as it obliges the researcher to investigate thoroughly bottom-up causation. The micro-macro problem is very important for cause-effect processes because it generates two questions: “1) Ontologically, what is the origin or nature of social phenomena and how do they emerge from the actions of individuals in particular contexts of action? 2) Epistemologically, how is it that we can come to know about social [complex] phenomena?” (Goldspink and Kay 2004, p. 598; Walleczek and Grossing 2016). Complexity theory allows for the examination of how the resilience and adaptation of meso- and macro-systems are influenced when micro agents are brought together and are coordinated to cooperate. The third precondition entails a considerable degree of mental aptitude to problematize how different perceptions about reality and the nature of ontologies in IR connect “nonlocally” with each other to provide causal interpretations of not only the material world, but also of the social world in a manner, as also Alexander Wendt had investigated that is permeated by, what David Bohm assumed in his famous 1952 paper, a fine web of “hidden variables” (Wendt 2015; Bohm 1952). This exercise demands considerable intuition and imagination for obvious reasons. Governance that demands the cooperation of many agents, as is the case in the transatlantic alliance, when is informed under this light has a lot of promise to produce more peaceful, sub-systemically coherent and cooperative environments even when differences in interests, perceptions, norms and ideology appear to be insurmountable at times.

5.3 The Nature and Properties of CAS So what is a CAS? Why is it so important to conceptualize ontologies in IR with these properties? The CAS approach allows modelers to visualize multi-level, multiagent networks of complex social and geopolitical systems with their organizations in processes of order-disorder-emergent orders and devise schemes, mainly computational, for measuring the parameters of complexity (effective), nonlinearity and randomness in order to intervene in the systems with a control or adaptation mechanism that encourages equilibrium-stabilization processes that foster resilience. “Complex systems have somehow acquired the ability to bring order and chaos into a special kind of balance. This balance point, often called the edge of chaos, is were the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence either” (Waldrop 1992, p. 12). CAS are “open” and “adaptive” systems. “Open systems interact with their environment…and their behavioral dynamics cannot be explained solely in terms of their internal logics, but rather, depend upon a specification of their relationships with their environment” (Wright

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2015, p. 59) which requires examination of the causation that regulates their selforganization and adaptive qualities endogenously and exogenously. Open systems allow theory to “play” on the locality-nonlocality matrix and devise a method for conceptualizing micros and macros as parts of a grander whole. The idea of “open” systems informs IR to consider two important consequences for the organization of entities of different natures: (1) “The laws of organization of the living are not laws of equilibrium, but rather of disequilibrium, recovered or compensated, stabilized dynamics” (Morin 2008, p. 11). (2) “The intelligibility of the system has to be found, not only in the system itself, but also in its relationship with the environment, and this relationship is not simple dependence: it is constitutive of the system” (Morin 2008, p. 11). In other words, the order out of chaos “that emerges in an open system’s interaction with its environment is subject to fluctuation” (Morin 2008, p. xxxv). This essentially means that the contextual emergence of a new order, that is always more complex than the one of initial conditions, is reached when increased complexity creates enough fluctuations that a bifurcation point is reached that causes an open system, because it is “open” to its environment, to move toward several directions, self-organizing in the process, “after a period of turbulence” (Morin 2008, p. xxxvi). When systems contain substantial nonlinearity, they can produce “a wide range of behaviors” (Goldspink and Kay 2004, p. 606). A key contribution of the CAS approach “is that it has expanded our capacity to distinguish classes of behavior characteristic of nonlinear systems and provided insights into the micro conditions associated with the emergence of those cases of behavior” (Goldspink and Kay 2004, p. 606). This brings the discussion to the most important quality of CAS that stems from their quality of being “open”: their adaptive nature. CAS have the power to indicate both bottom-up and top-down causation from the micromacro connections in their internal structures so that they self-organize critically, not allowing, this way, their energy to fall into entropy when they enter out-ofequilibrium phases that are necessary for their evolution. “Far from equilibrium processes can exhibit self-organization, in which pattern emerges as an intrinsic result of underlying processes” (Bickhard 2011, p. 93). Disorder and chaos are almost always patterned. “Some systems self-organize in ways that result in making contributions to their own far-from-equilibrium stability –they contribute to their own maintenance, hence, are (partly) ‘self-maintaining’” (Bickhard 2011, p. 93). Threshold conditions may generate critical organization that enhances robustness in a system. “Still more complex systems can vary their activities in accordance with changes in their environment, or in their relationships with their environment, so that the condition of being self-maintaining is itself maintained: they remain recursively self -maintained” (Bickhard 2011, p. 93). In this sense, CAS allows the researcher to detect relationships and interactions with the environment “that support overall self-maintenance” with a process that is based on “open system far-from-equilibrium process” that enhances the property of “autonomy,” in the sense that the system “is able to exploit the environment in the service of both self-maintenance” and “the stability of the far-from-equilibrium process organization” (Bickhard 2011, p. 93). CAS are adaptive in that “they do not passively adapt to events the way a rock might roll around in an earthquake. They actively try to turn whatever happens to

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their advantage” (Waldrop 1992, p. 11). Axelrod states: “The main alternative to the assumption of rational choice is some form of adaptive behavior…The consequences of adaptive processes are often very hard to deduce when there are many interacting agents following rules that have nonlinear effects” (Axelrod 2006, p. 139). In this regard, the CAS approach allows for examining and measuring the adaptive capacity of micro-elements inside macro-structures in systems that do not operate always with “bounded rationality.” As Axelrod (2006) remarks, the utility of the CAS approach is exposed in modeling schemes of complex regional, institutional and transnational networks that involve many state and non-state variables that can be simulated, taking into consideration both adaptive and rational agents. For governance structures of IOs, such as the EU, and inter- and trans-regional organizations this poses a great tool for finding those fundamental fluctuations that produce processes that can help systems and sub-systems to operate at the edge of chaos with normalcy and creativity in order to produce emergent phenomena and new orders that expand cooperation via the generation of higher levels of complexity and randomness in the environment. Despite of all complexity, this becomes ultimately a service to simplicity. A final note: further research into CAS must demystify questions about identity and individuation in relation to their environments and to internal hierarchies (Bishop 2011, p. 115)—this is of great importance for developing ultimately a theoretical approach for “regions” as “global actors:” are they distinct from their environment eventually and can various hierarchies intra- inter- and trans-regionally be individuated from each other? And how does that affect power and interdependence intrainter- and trans-regionally? This is perhaps a metaphysical, meta-theoretical argument about boundaries, individuation, wholism, the properties of the processes, and the nature of perceived reality that has great importance for conflict resolution and peace processes and cannot be fully developed in this space. The closing sentence will come, paradoxically from a realist, as an admission on my part that both classical realism and the methodological approach presented in this chapter treat causation as a means to access unobservable phenomena in IR. Samuel Huntington, perhaps unconsciously, takes ultimately a deeply “wholistic” approach that serves the “emergent” neo-post-internationalism of the twenty-first century: An organization that has adapted itself to changes in its environment and has survived one or more changes in its principle functions is more highly institutionalized than one that has not. Functional adaptability is the true measure of a highly developed organization… Institutionalization makes the organization more than simply an instrument to achieve certain purposes…Instead, the leaders and members come to value it for its own sake and it develops a life of its own quite apart from the specific functions it may perform at any given time. The organization triumphs over its function. (Huntington 1968, p. 15)

6 Conclusion: Ordo Ab Chao The preceding discussion proposes essentially to treat complexity as the “balancer” of a multi-level, multi-agent global order that co-exists with the structural parameter of power, but it may supervene upon it as a catalyst for change and a predictor

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of randomness that fosters uncertainty. “Supervenience is an asymmetric relationship of non-causal dependency between a lower-order ‘supervening’ structure, in which once all the properties of the base are fixed then so are the properties of the structure” (Wendt 2015, p. 250). Supervenience defends epistemological emergence “within an individualist ontology which can be seen if we consider its implications for change” (Wendt 2015, p. 251). Complexity becomes this structural parameter that permeates and connects all systemic levels in metaphysical ways and acts as a counter-proposition to structural realist conceptions of the global order that propose the “balance of power” as the regulating alternator of anarchy in the international system (Mearsheimer 2010). The quest for “wholism” in IR is ultimately a quest for “wholism” in many different but interconnected fields of study that inform the scientific study of global affairs. Held grasped mentally this pressing need for “wholism” in social sciences when he wrote: “For too long the concerns of political theory, political economy, international relations and international law have been kept separate, with persistently disappointing outcomes…At issue is thinking the nature, form and content of democratic politics in the face of the complex intermeshing of local, national, regional and global relations and processes” (Held 1995, p. ix). The quest for “wholism” is ultimately a quest for democracy, pluralism, fairness, sustainability, human rights, multilateralism, and peace in the global disorder. A quest that becomes mandatory for the West in times of anomalies, such as the Trump Presidency or the COVID-19 case, inside and outside the Liberal Order, so as to ensure that processes of order-disorder-emergent orders safeguard liberal democracy’s values and international institutions. The future must be viewed always as “emergent,” especially by policymakers—an approach that presupposes that “emergent events are characterized by sensitive dependencies on initial conditions in combination with evolving boundary conditions” (Wieclawski 2020, p. 4). In this quest for making sense of the order-disorder-emergent orders processes, IR’s conceptual frameworks must account for ontologies that support the paradigm of “wholism”: “the rise of global macroscopic order from local microscopic randomness” with bottom-up and top-down relational causal flows that “are implicated in the formation of an emergent macroscopic structure” (Wieclawski 2020, p. 4). This relational causality indicates “vastly different levels in the hierarchy of organization are actively interconnecting without exclusive priority of one level over another” (Wieclawski 2020, p. 4). Throughout the chapter, there is extensive reference to the expressions butterfly effect and at the edge of chaos. It is time to deconstruct briefly these expressions that are borrowed from chaos theory because this will justify one of the main arguments of this chapter: the pressing need to expand the nature of ontologies in IR and, as a result, their epistemological and, perhaps, their metaphysical approaches. Modern-day IR theory, and especially this stream of IR theory that is preoccupied with processes of order-disorder-emergentism in order to inform policy, must always have an eye on the future which will consist of ontologies that may have not manifested in our present reality yet—complex networks of AI, for instance, that will have considerable power of agency in human affairs in the future and may command the route that many governance structures must take in a coordinated manner. This is an extremely important point for establishing new theories that inform policy processes that seek

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more peaceful regional orders. The demand for adaptation and control becomes higher as the degrees of complexity, randomness and uncertainty rise dangerously in global systems because this is ultimately what fosters disorder processes that disrupt continuity. “Crucially, in-principle unpredictability, as well as uncontrollability, of individual microscopic events must be ensured by any kind of non-orthodox theory which claims success in reproducing the predictions that are yielded by orthodox theory” (Wieclawski 2020, p. 4). Conceptualizing traditional ontologies in the IR as CAS entails considerable risk for traditional apologists for business-as-usual. Thus, a brief deconstruction of main concepts used in this analysis may be helpful at this point. One of the main problems for security and other governance structures today is how to manage, control, transform potentially and exploit the phenomenon of “turbulence” that seems to be endemic from the global order to regional orders to local communities and vice versa. The concept of “butterfly effect,” as developed by Edward Lorenz, illustrates this notion: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” (Lorenz 1972). As Lorenz explains: “If a single flap could lead to a tornado that would not otherwise have formed, it could equally well prevent a tornado that would otherwise have formed,” noting that “a single flap would have no more effect on the weather than any flap of any other butterfly’s wings, not to mention the activities of other species, including our own” (Lorenz 1995, pp. 14–15). What the ideas of “butterfly effect” and “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” propose essentially is that small changes in one system/order may have large consequences for the same system/order in the future, or for another system/order at the same time or in the future. These consequences, that transcend the time-space continuum, connect the micro to the macro and vice versa (the local to the global and vice versa) in multiple dynamic processes. They oblige a system to self-organize and inevitably evolve in order to survive external and internal instability caused by shocks and/or tipping points that force systems with their parts to enter into “phase transition” conditions, which, in their turn, enable entities to pass from order to structured disorder and eventually to emergent orders: an order out of chaos. Adaptation and control, in order to have any results, must happen when a system is on phase transition between order and disorder before it reaches a threshold. “Sensitive dependence on initial conditions” implies “more than a mere increase in the difference between two states as each evolves with time” (Lorenz 1995, p. 9). “Initial conditions need not be the ones that existed when a system was created. Often they are the conditions at the beginning of an experiment or a computation, but they also may be the ones at the beginning of any stretch of time that interests an investigator” (Lorenz 1995, p. 9). Sensitive dependence on initial conditions essentially means that while a system(s) or order is in phase transition from order to disorder to emergence, it will produce “phase states” that can be researched and examined ontologically and epistemologically, without meaning that the two approaches’ evaluations will coincide in the end. These states will “bear no more resemblance than two states chosen at random from a long sequence” (Lorenz 1995, p. 8). The examination of the phase states that systems appear to produce during their mapping is crucial to prediction. The importance of conceptualizing and eventually mapping

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potential phase states of systems, sub-systems with their agents, their connections and the processes they generate via this approach “enables the description of a series of phenomena from the field of dynamics, i.e., the field of physics” (Oestreicher 2007, p. 278) concerning the effect of structural parameters of the global order, such as complexity and power, on the behavior of entities in the various levels of the global order, and how their ontology and interactions change when disruptions in the continuity of time and space occur due to random, unforeseen phenomena and unintended consequences—a trend that seems to have become the norm these days. Dynamical models of the global and regional disorders could become a domain of research with the CAS approach that produces measurable changes in the structural parameters of the global systems. For these measurements to be as much accurate as possible to inform policy, which is an act of “prediction” ultimately, systems in IR must be theorized and problematized as nonlinear, dynamic “complex adaptive systems” otherwise, the processes that foster global disorder and emergence of new sub-orders and new global processes are treated as “linear”; a false assumption under conditions of uncertainty that yields false measurements and misinforms policy. Throughout the chapter, there has also been a continuous reference to the need for adaptation and control mechanisms that cannot be presented in this publication obviously. But in defense of my propositions, I must clarify that adaptation and control should be the result of complexity management with a multi-level process that entails multi-agent coordination and the transatlantic partners have a great role to play toward this direction, which, of course, presupposes deepening and expanding the structures of multilateralism locally, regionally and transnationally and ensuring the survival and adaptation of international institutions. The representatives of the Western order have the difficult and ethical task to envision, first of all, “what kind” of global order they desire. The exciting part is that they can actually envision “what kind” of global disorder they would like to anticipate in times of uncertainty. So devising “leverage mechanisms” in the global order to foresee and anticipate turbulence is a pressing task that, in this day and age, must employ considerable creativity and imagination. Innovative, forward-looking theory and methodology can aid these processes. This vision for new orders must also create, simultaneously, structured disorders: it has to entail principles of “adaptive governance” that designs resilient structures even when they tip to out-of-equilibrium thresholds—and not fixed structures like the Westphalian model with its foster child, the anarchical model—in order to enable change and emergence both bottom-up and top-down because this is how causation takes place in a highly transnational environment. Actually, this is “realism:” the capacity to view the modern global system as it is and not as a neorealist would like it to be—the old glories of the nation-state are long gone. The forces of globalization foster greater interdependence and interconnectedness indeed, but they also “destroy the adaptive capacity both regionally and locally” (Olsson et al. 2006, p. 16). Managing the “fragmegrative” forces of globalization results eventually in managing the centralizing/decentralizing, integrative/disintegrative forces that produce disorder, as James Rosenau would note (Rosenau 2003). Preparing for change and high complexity is possible when “persistent, embedded leadership across scales locally and regionally” (Rosenau 2003) is present that builds knowledge

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and transforms individuals, nation-states, international institutions, regional organizations, such as the EU and NATO, and eventually whole regions to those “adaptive learners,” that James Rosenau had envisioned in his Turbulence Theory, that can later command self-regulatory techniques in systems and sub-orders that employ processes of emergent networking that coordinates multi-level solutions to produce integrated, cross-organizational political action (Rosenau 2003, p. 9). Olsson et al. note that “adaptive governance,” ultimately, “occurs in three phases: (1) Systems are generally prepared for the changes that are about to occur. (2) A plan for a transition to a new social [political, geopolitical, ecological] context for system management must be in place. (3) A process for building the resilience of the new direction” (Olsson et al. 2006, p. 3) must be strategically planned preemptively, employing prognostication techniques if possible. So, what “order” for an adaptive Liberal Order? Drawing on Science, Order and Creativity (Bohm and Peat 1987), I propose an order “in between and beyond.” A Liberal Order that acts as a “fixator,” a leverage point, in the global order to mitigate uncertainty and help other regional sub-orders to weather turbulence. But also, a Liberal Order that reaches out to other orders, encompassing different orders together as global actors and making other regional orders shareholders in a common vision for a more sustainable future for the world as a whole. I close this chapter with this note from a genius who created the foundations of modern statistical science, Sir Ronald Fisher, as it captures the essence of my research: An indeterministic world, then, is one in which the human qualities of aspiration, planning and foresight, are rationally possible and may be advantageous, and in which we can recognize the primitive precursors of these qualities, not as an epiphenomenon, but as having a real part to play in the survival or death of the organisms that evince them. Biologically it might be said that purposive action by the organism as a whole is the crowning stage of an evolutionary process by which relatively large masses of living matter have come to achieve that cooperation of parts and unity of structure which we call individuality. For, on a statistical view of causation, spontaneity or creative causation is at its highest only when perfect unity is achieved (Fisher 1934, p. 108). Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Fulvio Attina for his collaboration, his help, and his friendship so as to make my participation in this book possible. Without his support, my participation in this book would not have been possible, so I am extremely grateful to him and the opportunity he offered to me so generously. I would also like to thank Niko Chtouris (Springer Nature) for his collaboration. I am very grateful to the Institute of International Relations Athens, its distinguished scholars and wonderful administrative staff and, in particular, to Dr. Harry Papasotiriou, for their continuous support and collaboration. Finally, I thank my parents and my friends for their love and support during difficult times.

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Effie Charalampaki is the founder and chair of the International Relations Theory Working Group at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies of the Institute of International Relations Athens (IIRA). She worked as research assistant to Dr. Sara McLaughlin Mitchell at the ICOW (Issue Correlates of War) Project. In 2016, she joined the IIRA EU-NATO Research Program and in 2018, the IIRA East Asia Research Program.

The Atlantic Area

Donald Trump and NATO: Limitations on the Power of an Unpredictable President Gorm Rye Olsen

Abstract The election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States meant that the American people for the first time in 70 years elected a president who was against transatlantic cooperation including the cooperation on security within the framework of NATO. During his first 30 months in office, Donald Trump kept a remarkable number of the foreign policy promises he issued during the election campaign in 2016. It is surprising that the president did not take drastic steps toward the American commitment to NATO. The chapter asks why there was this disconnect between words and deeds when it came to transatlantic cooperation on security. It is the argument of the chapter that a number of domestic circumstances contribute to explaining the puzzling lack of coherent action by Donald Trump when it comes to NATO. The combination of three domestic variables, the crucial position of NATO within American strategic culture, a favorable public opinion and clear signals from Congress, has been capable of restraining the impact of an impulsive and unpredictable president. It explains why the United States remains in the NATO in spite of Donald Trump’s heavy attacks on the European partners. Keywords Foreign policy analysis · Defense spending · “America First” · Strategic culture · US Congress

1 Introduction The election in November 2016 of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States heralded the beginning of a severe straining of America’s relations with many countries around the world. “For the first time in 70 years, the American people have elected a president who disparages the policies, ideas and institutions at the heart of postwar US foreign policy”, it was stated by Walter Russel Mead (Mead 2017: 2). John Ikenberry claimed “for the first time since the 1930s, the United States has elected a president who is actively hostile to liberal internationalism” that G. R. Olsen (B) Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_5

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has been organized around economic openness, multilateral institutions and security cooperation with Western Europe as a key partner (Ikenberry 2018: 7ff). Trump’s highly critical attitudes toward NATO, toward the European Union and toward a number of European governments were unmistakable during the presidential election campaign. “I think NATO is obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union”, Donald Trump declared in March 2016 (Benitez 2019: 183). After becoming president, Trump maintained his critical attitudes toward NATO and in particular toward the European members of NATO criticizing them for not paying “their bills” (Benitez 2019: 188). After more than two years in office, the American President still threatened to leave NATO. The threats were presented in closed meetings and at NATO Summits. At a number of public rallies, Trump confirmed that he had issued threats about leaving NATO. He did so in April 2018 in Charleston, West Virginia. The message was repeated on June 5, 2018, in Great Falls, Montana, and again in September 2018 in Billings, Montana, where Donald Trump openly acknowledged that he had threatened to leave NATO (Benitez 2019: 194, 188ff). A number of his close associates and observers in Washington confirmed that President Trump was serious about pulling the United States out of NATO (Barnes and Cooper 2019; Embury-Dennis 2019; Borger 2018). In addition to the strong public criticism of the European NATO members, the European Union was a special object of the president’s anger and criticism. In the summer of 2018, the president described the European Union as a “foe” of the United States because of “what they do to us within trade” (CBS July 2018). “Nobody treats us much worse than the European Union…..they take advantage of us on trade”, Trump stated in a 60 min interview on CBS in late 2018 (Benitez 2019: 194). By mid-2018, after less than 18 months in the White House, Susan B. Glasser concluded that Trump and his administration were “breaking down American foreign policy” (Glasser 2018: 4). Cat Contiguglia found that Donald Trump was actually “redesigning” the foreign policy of the United States (Contiguglia 2018). On the face of it, it seems as if Donald Trump had been able to “break down” the transatlantic relationship, one of the core pillars of the so-called liberal international order founded on multilateralism, alliances and free trade (Ikenberry 2018). In spite of his persistent criticism of the European NATO members for not paying their bills and in spite of the trade war launched by the United States against the European Union, the American President had not pulled out of NATO and he had not stepped up the trade war with the European Union as of mid-2019. Considering Donald Trump had kept a remarkable number of his foreign policy promises issued during the election campaign, it is surprising that he did not take drastic steps toward NATO. The president kept one of his most controversial promises when he withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. He also kept his promise when he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. The same applies for the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the launch of a trade war against China. However, there was an obvious disconnect between what the president said and declared in public and his actual deeds when it came to NATO and to the American membership of the defense alliance.

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The present chapter’s obvious question is why was there this disconnect between words and deeds when it came to NATO? When it was about NATO and about transatlantic security cooperation not much changed during the first two-and-a-half years of Donald Trump’s presidency. It is the argument of the chapter that a number of domestic circumstances contribute to explaining the puzzling lack of coherent action by Donald Trump when it came to NATO. First, the strategic culture and thereby the grand strategy of the United States were so heavily embedded with the thinking of the past 70 years that NATO is indispensable for American national security. Second, public opinion simply did not share the president’s view on NATO being “obsolete”, rather to the contrary. Third, in spite of a striking weakening of core domestic government institutions involved in foreign policy-making like the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress, these institutions apparently managed to block potential radical steps by the president when it came to NATO. In brief, it is the argument that the three domestic variables were capable of restraining the impact of an impulsive and unpredictable President Trump. Apparently “path dependency” prevailed in American foreign policy when it came to NATO. The puzzle does not imply that nothing changed in the relationship between the United States and Europe and the European Union during Trump’s first 30 months in office. Is it quite remarkable that most European NATO members increased their defense budgets (NATO 2019)? On the other hand, a lot of mistrust and loss of American credibility in international affairs developed due to the erratic and often unpredictable behavior of the president. The increasing mistrust toward the Trump administration among the European partners was promoted by the American abandonment of the Paris Agreement on climate and by the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal. However, no doubt the loss of international credibility was also the result of the personal behavior of the president (Yarhi-Milo 2018; Bialik 2018; Cohen 2019: 142ff.). The chapter is structured as follows: In the next section, the theoretical framework is briefly presented emphasizing the presentation of the four variables that come from neo-classical realism stressing the framework is considered a model. The dependent variable, the Trump administration’s policy toward NATO, is introduced followed by an overview of the perceptions of the most important foreign policy decision-makers with a brief reference to the inspiration from the Jacksonian tradition in American foreign policy. The first explanatory variable is presented under the headline “strategic culture”. The second variable, “state-society relations”, is briefly surveyed with emphasis on US public opinion on NATO. Finally, the variable “domestic government institutions” is analyzed with a special focus on the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and Congress.

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2 The Theoretical Framework The puzzle and the argument of the chapter address a classical foreign policy issue. Foreign policy is defined as “the sum of official external relations conducted by an independent actor – but usually exclusively a state in international relations” (Hill 2016: 4). The chapter applies a neo-classical realist framework supplemented with inspiration from reflections found in the FPA frameworks presented by Christopher Hill and Chris Alden & Amnon Aran (Ripsman et al. 2016; Hill 2016; Alden and Aran 2017). “Neo-classical realism is, in essence, a theory of foreign policy in that it explains how states construct policy responses to international circumstances”, it is argued by Ripsman et al. (2016: 81). The neo-classical realist-cum-FPA framework is considered a “model” implying that the framework points at the supposedly most important variables, concretely a number of intervening variables and the independent variable. However, each individual variable does not necessarily produce explanations per se. Therefore, the chapter formulates explanatory hypotheses linked to each of the intervening variables applied in the following analysis. The hypotheses are used to focus the sub-analyses that individually and together produce possible explanations to the question raised by the chapter. The chapter aims at explaining why, in spite of the strong attacks on NATO and on the European NAO partners during the first two-and-a-half years of Donald Trump’s presidency, the Trump administration did not take any radical steps toward NATO. Neo-classical realism contributes with tools for the analysis as the framework explicitly turns the attention to the actions, interests and motives of core foreign policy decision-makers, in this case the president, the secretary of state, secretary of defense, the national security advisor, etc. The American policy toward NATO is the dependent variable to be explained by means of independent and intermediate variables. The theoretical framework applied here maintains that the international systemic conditions are filtered via four intervening variables (Ripsman et al. 2016: 58–79; Rose 1998: 157ff). Phrased differently, the international systemic factors are the independent variable. The domestic circumstances are the intervening variables assumed to contribute to explaining why and not least how Donald Trump was able to launch the many surprising initiatives during his first two-and-a-half years in office, but also why he was not successful in promoting radical policy initiatives toward NATO. The intervening variables are “images and perceptions of core foreign policy decision-makers”, “strategic culture”, “state-society relations” and “domestic institutional arrangements” (Ripsman et al. 2016: 59ff). It is important to emphasize that the framework is pluralist in its orientation implying that the state or the government is not considered a single and coherent actor capable of pursuing a clear-cut national interest in a rational manner (Hill 2016: 7–9). The pluralist position implies that actual foreign policy behavior may not only be incoherent and inconsistent. It may even be irrational (Ripsman et al. 2016; Hill 2016: 12–17).

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3 The Dependent Variable: The Trump Administration’s Policy Toward NATO Leaving aside the declarations of Donald Trump, the dependent variable to be explained is the American policy toward NATO and toward transatlantic security. A number of concrete government initiatives seem to indicate a continued American commitment to the transatlantic security arrangement and thus contradict the highly critical position of the president. A number of important government documents also indicate a continued American commitment to contribute to the transatlantic defense system. Pentagon’s defense budget request for the 2018/2019 financial year asked for a further increase of the European Deterrence Initiative by 1.7 million US$ to a total of 6.5 million US$ to fund increased rotational presence of US forces on NATO’s Eastern flank to reassure the allies against Russian aggression (Schreer 2019: 13). US military services were preparing for how to fight a major conflict on the European continent and in the Atlantic. In late 2018, US forces led the Exercise “Trident Juncture” taking place in and around Norway involving more than 50.000 allied troops. It was described as NATO’s largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War focused on the defense of Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea (Schreer 2019: 13). Finally, in September 2018, the US military decided to increase its presence with additional 1500 troops in Europe by 2020. The United States also deployed new field artillery headquarters, a short-range air defense battalion, two multiple-launch rocket systems and other support units (Schreer 2019: 13). While the president continued criticizing NATO and the European members, two key security and defense documents issued by the Trump administration were explicit about Russia being the most serious threat for the transatlantic security. The 2017 National Security Strategy called Russia a “revisionist power” and stated that the United States remained “firmly committed to our European allies” and to “Article V of the Washington Treaty” (White House 2017: 25, 48). Similarly, the 2018 US National Defense Strategy identified Russia as a strategic competitor and vowed to “fortify” NATO. The 2018 Defense Strategy stressed that “a strong and free Europe” bound by agreed principles of democracy, national sovereignty and commitment to Article 5 in the NATO treaty was “vital to our security” (NDS 2018: 9).

4 Perceptions of Core Foreign Policy Decision-Makers The section scrutinizes the perceptions and beliefs of the American foreign policy executive after the first 30 months of Donald Trump’s presidency. The scrutiny is based on the assumption or the hypothesis that the beliefs and perceptions of the foreign policy executive are important or maybe even crucial for understanding why the Trump administration launched so many sudden and unexpected foreign policy initiatives, in particular in relation to transatlantic security cooperation.

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As a start, the perceptions of Donald Trump are assumed the most important for the study here. However, the perceptions of the two secretaries of state, i.e., Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, are also highly relevant together with perceptions of the national security advisors in particular John Bolton for understanding the statements made and policy initiatives launched by the Trump administration. As of mid-2019, there was no permanent secretary of defense which was the situation after James Mattis resigned from the post in December 2018 (Cooper 2018). No doubt, the perceptions of James Mattis during his time as Pentagon chief were highly relevant for understanding the lack of implementation of the president’s threats against NATO. Donald Trump’s worldview is inspired by the Jacksonian tradition that is one of four distinct but yet complementary traditions of American foreign policy (Mead 1999/2000, 2017). First, the Jacksonian foreign policy tradition is characterized by having a strong focus on domestic affairs holding on to populist values like deep mistrust in the political elite and the establishment. It follows from the distrust in the elite that Jacksonians are highly skeptical toward the American foreign policy pursued during the past 70 years where NATO was a crucial component. Second, the Jacksonian tradition attaches much importance to the protection of national honor and reputation. Third, when finally American military power is mobilized, the Jacksonian public opinion becomes predisposed to very bloody warfare, and it tends to seek “total victory”. In absence of a direct threat to American national security, Jacksonians are inclined to advocate “humble” foreign policy leading them to be very much against the “crusading” interventionism of liberals who are inspired by another of the American foreign policy traditions, the Wilsonian (Clarke and Ricketts 2017: 368–370; Mead 1999/2000). Based on a more or less strong and consistent inspiration from Andrew Jackson’s foreign policy thinking, the Trumpian worldview can be boiled down to cover three elements. First, the incumbent president dislikes America’s military alliances, including NATO, that he considers harmful and a direct and existential threat to the United States. According to this perception, allies tie down and exploit the United States with their free trade deals, military cooperation and their unending expectations of preferential treatment. Second, Donald Trump firmly believes that the global economy is unfair to the United States, and third, he has an innate sympathy for “authoritarian strongmen” (Friedman 2018; Brands 2017–2018: 16ff). The combination of the abovementioned Jacksonian values and Donald Trump’s personal ideas leads Michael Clarke and Anthony Ricketts to argue that Donald Trump as president was coherent in following the foreign policy pledges he made on the campaign trail during 2016. He consistently focused on disconnecting America from the post-World War II international order that Trump believed had “ripped off” the American people. The president was consistent and coherent in adopting a strategy of unilateralism stressing notions like “national honor” and “reputation” as integrated elements in his “America First” campaign. One of the core examples of the coherent unilateralist leanings of Donald Trump was his unwillingness to endorse Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Likewise, the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement illustrated a surprising coherence between declarations made during the campaign in 2016 and policy initiatives implemented by the Trump administration and by the

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president himself (Clarke and Ricketts 2017: 373ff). The inclination toward pursuing a unilateralist foreign policy was coherently linked to the perception that alliances including military alliances do the United States no good whereas keeping allies and adversaries permanently off-balance benefits the United States (Brands 2017–2018: 16–18). A senior official summarized the Trump Doctrine into a simple statement: “No friends, no enemies” (Goldberg 2018). During the spring of 2018, Donald Trump recruited a new secretary of state and a new national security advisor. The move was widely described as the president was gathering people that would not contradict him or his worldview (personal interview with former State Department employee, Denver, May 4, 2018). The new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was described as a “staunch conservative” and a person loyal to the president’s line on every policy issue from intelligence matters to the question of Russian interference in the 2016 election (Berman 2018). The appointment of the foreign policy hard-liner John Bolton to the job as national security advisor stressed the significance of political appointments based on strong ideological attitudes and statements. “Appointing a hardline figure like Bolton signals that Trump is ready to embrace a much more aggressive and volatile foreign policy”, it was argued by Steven Feldstein (Feldstein 2018). In line with Jacksonian foreign policy thinking, John Bolton had previously shown himself as a foreign policy hawk with a penchant for unilateralism (Hill 2018: 2). His worldview was characterized by a deep mistrust in diplomacy to settle disputes. He was convinced that force and coercion were preferable to advance US interests and that force alone would ensure continued American dominance in the international system (Feldstein 2018). Bolton was a strong believer in unilateralism, and he was known as a long-standing critic of multilateral institutions like the United Nations and of multilateralism in general (USGLC 2018). Finally, the then-Defense Secretary General James Mattis was described as far more pragmatic and non-ideological compared with Pompeo and Bolton. Both Republicans and Democrats liked him and considered Mattis a stabilizing force in the administration and the president “appears to love Mattis” (Berman 2018: 6). On the other hand, it was highly disturbing to Mattis and to officials in the Pentagon that the president continued to call into question the value of the NATO alliance and the possibility that the United States might withdraw from the transatlantic alliance (Mitchell 2018). The defense secretary remained at his post until late 2018 when James Mattis decided to resign in protest. The reason given was disagreement with the president on several issues including the withdrawal of US troops from Syria and his constant rejection of international alliances and his rejection that international cooperation involved mutual obligations (Cooper 2018). Summing up, the analysis in this section was built on the assumption that the perceptions of the core decision-makers in American foreign policy have an impact on actual policy-making and policy implementation. There is no doubt that three out of the four most important policy- and decision-makers were strongly inspired by the foreign policy philosophy of Andrew Jackson. The only one falling outside this pattern was former Defense Secretary James Mattis. The strong skepticism toward

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multilateral arrangements and alliances seems to explain a number of highly controversial policy steps taken by the Trump administration. It was most obvious in relation to the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal and the TPP. However, the perceptions cannot explain why Donald Trump did not pull out the United States from NATO that would be in agreement with a number of the president’s statements and in line with the thinking of Andrew Jackson.

5 Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy The second intervening variable in the neo-classical framework and the first explanatory variable in the paper are the “strategic culture” that refers to “deeply embedded conceptions and notions of national security”. Like the concept “grand strategy”, both concepts build on a strong historical component. They are highly path dependent and do not just change overnight (Silove 2018: 31–32). The strategic culture as well as the grand strategy is supposed to shape the strategic understanding of political leaders and also shape their understanding of the value of alliances. It also shapes the perceptions and understanding of societal elites in general and of the general public. The so-called swamp heavily criticized by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign was among the strongest proponents of maintaining the foreign policy priorities embedded in the American strategic culture and grand strategy. The “swamp” referred to the bipartisan class of former officials, media commentators, opinion writers, university employees and think tank employees who worried incessantly about the “collapse of the American security order” (Samuels 2016: 7). Historically, this bi-partisan national security elite in Washington exposed hawkish posturing that tended to drag the United States into too many messes abroad (Glasser 2018: 2; Walt 2018: 12). During the first two-and-a-half years with Donald Trump in the White House, there were clear signs that the presidency sought to marginalize this influential group of foreign policy experts. Nevertheless, many members of the “swamp” continued to be active in the public debate on foreign policy issues, and as such, they probably continued to exert some influence on the foreign policy debate. At least, the activist foreign policy leaning of the “swamp” did find considerable responsiveness in the figures presented in the report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (Smeltz et al. 2017, 2019). The strategic culture is supposed to constrain the behavior of the government and not least its freedom of action (Ripsman et al. 2016: 67). The crucial elements in the national security policy are difficult to alter, and therefore, it is not surprising that “fundamental security commitments have proven hard to change, even amid shocks” (Porter 2018: 9, 11). In this section, it is the hypothesis that the American strategic culture and the grand strategy of the country contain deeply embedded conceptions of NATO being vital to American national security. Therefore, it was very difficult indeed for the Trump administration to change America’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance.

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For the past 70 years, the American grand strategy built on four interlocking components that have influenced the making of American foreign policy (Porter 2018). The first component was that the United States had to be militarily preponderant. The second was that the United States had to reassure and contain its allies, for example, in NATO. Third, Washington sought to integrate other states into USdesigned institutions like NATO, the UN and the free markets system under the auspices of the WTO. Finally, the United States sought to inhibit the spread of nuclear weapons (Porter 2018: 9). As a start, Donald Trump’s idea of “America First” reflected a radically different vision for the United States in international affairs. As far as the first component in the grand strategy was concerned that the United States has to be militarily preponderant, not much changed during the first two-and-a-half years of Trump’s presidency. Rather to the contrary, as Trump promoted significant increases in the administration’s defense budget (Posen 2018: 24ff) which was basically in agreement with Jacksonian foreign policy thinking. According to Barry Posen, the bottom line was that “the US military commitments remain strong and the allies are adding just enough to their own defense plans to placate the president. In other words, it is business as usual” (Posen 2018: 23). The most serious attack on the elements that characterized American foreign policy during the past 70 or so years was no doubt about the second component “reassuring and containing allies”. Trump repeatedly questioned the American commitment to Article 5 in the NATO treaty, and he constantly attacked the European NATO member states (Palacio 2018). The attacks led Kori Schake to conclude that the value of alliances and thereby the value of NATO seemed much “clearer to the Defense Department than to the White House” (Schake 2018). In spite of the Trump administration maintained a strong pressure on the European NATO partners, the United States did not withdraw from the alliance which may be interpreted as an indication of how, in this case, the second component in the grand strategy constrained the behavior of Donald Trump. As to the third component about integrating other states into international institutions, this element goes directly against the unilateralist leanings of the president as well as against core Jacksonian priorities dismissing multilateral commitments embedded in international cooperation. President Trump was therefore acting coherently when he pulled out the United States of several multilateral agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The highly critical attitudes toward the United Nations and the friends and allies in the European Union were also consistent with the promises of the president and with his personal conviction. Obviously, the highly critical public attacks on NATO likewise were in agreement with the president’s personal views and with the reflections found in Jacksonian thinking. Finally, concerning the inclination to inhibit the spread to nuclear weapons, the policies toward North Korea and toward Iran were in total agreement with the strategic thinking and the grand strategy that characterized American foreign policy after World War II. It is open to interpretation whether Trump’s initiatives toward North Korea and Iran were rational or sensible, but officially, they aimed at inhibiting

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the development of nuclear weapons. The American withdrawal from the Iran deal in May 2018 is particularly interesting for the analysis here because it involved the European Union and France, the UK and Germany as co-signatories to the agreement. Not only did Donald Trump withdraw the United States from the agreement, but also the president threatened his European partners to follow the United States out of the agreement. In case the European powers did not follow the United States and imposed sanctions on the government in Teheran, European private companies would be denied access to the lucrative American market (Geranmayeh et al. 2019). Summing up, it was the hypothesis or the assumption that the strong position of the NATO alliance within the American strategic culture constrained the inclination of Donald Trump to make a radical policy step against NATO. Accepting that the grand strategy of the United States was built on four interlocking components, the analysis showed that the Trump administration maintained two and abolished two of these components. Maintaining the first priority about keeping America militarily preponderant was no surprise as it was fully in line with the Jacksonian foreign policy philosophy. It was more surprising that Trump, at least partly and in spite of his constant critique of NATO, adhered to the doctrine of “reassuring and containing allies” in particular NATO. Avoiding taking direct action against NATO was still more striking because a number of Donald Trump’s other foreign policy initiatives went directly against component three about promoting multilateral cooperation and also partly against component four. It could indicate that NATO and the NATO membership had and maintained a special status within American strategic culture and thinking about national security.

6 State-Society Relations A key element in state-society relations is the degree of harmony in society and thus the degree of polarization between government and society and also the degree of polarization within the population. Since the late 1970s, there has been a steady increase in the polarization of the American society. It was a consequence of the highly different visions for the future of America between the liberals who were against the Vietnam War, for the civil rights movement and in favor the sexual revolution. The liberal vision implied fundamental socioeconomic changes of the American society. The opposing vision was conservative and aimed blocking or braking these movements and potential changes (Carothers 2019). The two different visions resulted in a split of the American population and led to a heightened level of partisan polarization. The severe polarization reflected deep disagreements among Democrats and Republicans pointing toward a situation where individuals increasingly identify against rather than with political parties (Webster 2018: 127ff; Carothers 2019: 65ff). The American population is so deeply polarized leading to lower levels of social trust and cooperation and also higher levels of anger and conflict (Carothers 2019: 84f; 66ff). The development in the United States is in many respects unique as far as the polarization started in the society, and only

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at a much later stage, the politicians and the political system began to adopt the polarizing rhetoric and policy positions (Carothers 2019). The polarization increased during Barack Obama’s presidency, but Donald Trump has purposefully amplified it (Carothers 2019: 76). The degree of polarization is supposed to have consequences for the level of political and popular support of the general foreign policy objectives that are contained in the strategic culture of the United States (Ripsman et al. 2016: 71). Thomas Carothers maintains that polarization has intensified to a point where it is a major factor behind the institutional gridlock, the degradation of checks and balances and the lack of public trust in the political establishment (Carothers 2019: 66ff). The consequences of the legislative gridlock have been a lack of necessary reforms. Along with the institutional gridlock, the norms of compromise and constraint have been severely weakened in the Congress (Carothers 2019: 75). Concretely, the hypothesis linked to state-society relations states that polarization is so intense that it is impossible to reach political agreement on a big step like withdrawing the United States from NATO. State-society relations in the United States are not only characterized by increased polarization. Since the mid-1960s, there has been a remarkable decline in public trust in the US government (Rohac et al. 2018: 4, 6). Fifty years ago, close to 75% of the population trusted the federal government. The figure dropped below 25% in 2016, and during the first year of the Trump administration, the decline continued (Rohac et al. 2018: 4). It suggested that many Americans including followers of Trump did not trust the people that had shaped American foreign policy for many years, and they were highly skeptical about the global engagements of previous governments (Mead 2017: 6). Nevertheless, recent surveys of “American public opinion and US foreign policy” published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (Schmeltz et al. 2018, 2019) indicated that a significant percentage of the American public was in support of an active role of the United States in world affairs. Concretely in 2018 and 2019, around 70 percent were in favor of a strong American engagement in world affairs whereas around 30 percent found that the United States should stay out. As much as 75% were in favor of the American commitment to NATO and supported US military alliances with other countries (Schmeltz et al. 2018: 4, 2019: 16). Asked directly if NATO was “essential to US security”, in 2017 65 percent stated NATO was essential. In 2019, the figures had risen to 73 percent of the Americans finding NATO essential. Thus, the figures were rising during years where NATO had been among the favorite targets of criticism of Donald Trump (Schmeltz et al. 2018: 13). On the other hand, a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center showed increasing differences between Democrats and Republicans in their views on NATO indicating growing polarization within foreign policy, too. The report pointed out that less than 50% of the Republicans were in favor of NATO (Fagan 2018). Summing up, in spite of the severe polarization of the American society, public opinion surprisingly was in agreement that NATO was essential to American national security even though it has to be recognized there were differences between Republican and Democratic voters in that respect. It suggests that public opinion on NATO

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could represent a restraint on Donald Trump’s ambitions to reduce the commitment to the transatlantic security alliance. It pointed toward the same conclusion that the disagreements between Democrats and Republicans were so deep, and it would be impossible to push through and implement a far-reaching decision like withdrawing the United States from NATO. In brief, the severe political polarization and the corresponding gridlock of decision-making suggest that a decision about withdrawing from NATO was if not unthinkable, then at least extremely difficult.

7 Domestic Government Institutions Domestic government institutions are considered important intervening variables (Ripsman et al. 2016: 75ff) because they not only participate in making foreign policy decisions. The institutions are crucial for implementing the decisions taken. By giving up the assumption that states and governments are coherent and rational actors, the theoretical framework introduces the possibility that different government institutions may pursue their own specific interests and goals in foreign policy. Christopher Hill suggests bringing in the classical theory of “bureaucratic politics” in order to add explanatory power to the idea that domestic government institutions are important (Hill 2016: 102–109). Because the notion bureaucratic politics implies that individual government departments may pursue their institutional interests, the concept contributes to stress that decision-making in governments may be both irrational and inconsistent (Hill 2016: 102). The hypothesis related to the domestic American government institutions states that both the Pentagon and the State Department pursued institutional interests that were embedded in the strategic culture of the country. As mentioned, the American strategic culture considered NATO and multilateral cooperation as core tools for maintaining American national security. Specifically, the Pentagon and the State Department are assumed to defend and strive to maintain the American commitment to NATO. The government institutions are together with the White House, Congress, the Treasury, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA and the National Security Council the major institutional actors in American foreign policy-making (Lowi et al. 2014: 470–475). The following analysis only focuses on the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and Congress. It leaves out the White House that was addressed in the section on “perceptions of core foreign policy decision-makers”. Starting with the State Department, it is the hypothesis that it tied to maintain close relations to friends and allies including maintaining US membership of the NATO alliance. The Trump administration’s lack of respect for “soft power” like diplomacy meant that the inbuilt skepticism of Jacksonians toward a big and permanent foreign policy bureaucracy in Washington came under severe attack when the Trump administration came into power (Taylor 2019; Hamilton 2017: 3–4).

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Donald Trump’s first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made dramatic cuts in the number of employees leading to significant reductions in the number of experienced and insightful experts and advisors (Farrow 2018: 257ff; Corrigan et al. 2018). Data from the American Foreign Service Association showed that 60% of the State Department’s highest-ranking career officers quit during Trumps’ first year. Fewer than half of all top-level positions that need confirmation by the Senate were filled by April 2018. Vital posts as ambassadors in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and South Africa were not filled. It led observers to conclude that the State Department was “dysfunctional” and “brought to the brink of ruin by Trump in equal parts” (Beauchamp 2018; Farrow 2018: 295ff). The appointment in March 2018 of Mike Pompeo to secretary of state did nothing to change the situation for the State Department (Gramer 2018b). In addition to the reduction in the number of staff, Pompeo oversaw a so-called Trumpification of the State Department implying cracking down on civil servants suspected of leaking information or stating political views in opposition to the White House. It created a “culture of fear”, and in June 2018, the State Department was described as “just so battered” by a former State Department official (Tracy 2018b). Accepting this is a correct description, it implies that it was very difficult for the department to pursue the traditional foreign policy goals of the United States as well as the new ones. It also implies that the State Department faced difficulties in maintaining the traditional close ties with the allies in NATO. The civil servants in the Department were at best, caught in a difficult position between the White House and their institutional inclination to continue cooperating closely with the NATO partners and defend the alliance. The Pentagon can be assumed to be highly interested in as much funding as possible as it would contribute to strengthening the fighting power of the American armed forces. Unlike the State Department, the Defense Department received increasing funding during the first years of the Trump administration. The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act authorized 717 billion US$ in defense spending. Unlike the president’s relationship with the State Department, Donald Trump explicitly backed the armed forces promising to support them as much as possible (Ward 2018). On the other hand, the personal behavior of the president complicated the relationship with the military and the president and the military were in disagreement on a number of issues (Ward 2018). It was the case with the establishment of a space force, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the value of the transatlantic military alliance and on Trump’s wish to have a military parade in Washington (Mitchell 2018). The disagreements apparently led John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to squeeze Jim Mattis out of all important policy decisions (Seligman 2018). By mid-2018, “Mattis and his Pentagon seem increasingly out of the loop on important national security decisions….” (Ward 2018). In spite of this type of disagreements within the Trump administration, James Mattis appears to have had significant influence on the analyses and the content in the “2018 National Defense Strategy” that was published in January 2018. The strategy establish it was in the interest of the United States to have a “strong and free Europe” bound by agreed principles and a commitment to Article 5 in the NATO treaty that

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was “vital to our security” (NDS 2018: 9). That Mattis had a strong hand behind the Defense Strategy recognizing the value of NATO in particular was clearly emphasized by the defense secretary’s personal presentation to the public of the strategy at the “School of Advanced International Studies” (SAIS) that strongly indicated “this is his strategy” (Karlin 2018). In that context, it is important to note that the Defense Strategy stressed that the United States expected the European NATO partners to adapt to the new security challenges to “remain relevant”. This particular statement in the Defense Strategy explicitly repeated one of Donald Trump’s strong criticisms of the European partners namely that they had to pay their bill and increase their defense and modernization spending to remain relevant to the United States (Karlin 2018: 9). The content in the 2018 National Defense Strategy suggests the Pentagon, and in particular, the then-Defense Secretary James Mattis had so much leverage within the government that it prevented the president to follow his instinct. The White House did not withdraw the United States from the NATO alliance and neither did the president reduce the American commitment to the alliance during his first 30 months in office. On the other hand, Donald Trump’s erratic and unorthodox behavior meant the Defense Department was squeezed in many important decision-making processes in spite of the president’s priority of the defense forces. Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s priority of continuity and of commitment to the NATO alliance was clearly stressed when the acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper in June 2019 on the second day of his new job flew to Brussels to attend a conference at the NATO headquarter. Esper allegedly was expected to serve as “as a bulwark to the president’s untethered tweets and to disrupt the NATO alliance” (Gibbons-Neff 2019). When John Bolton was appointed national security advisor in April 2018, he overhauled the NSC staff replacing a number of staffers with his own people. “It is Bolton’s NSC, he owns that thing body and soul”, it was argued (Gray 2018). It is the hypothesis on the National Security Council that it embodied the core tenants of the Jacksonian and Trump thinking on foreign policy. Therefore, it is the specific hypothesis that the NSC would work in favor of the United States withdrawing from NATO. The appointment of loyalists to the NSC was interpreted as if “Bolton (was) concentrating his power….He is certainly making himself incredibly powerful by eliminating other power centers that historically existed at the NSC” (Tracy 2018a). According to William Burns in a recent book on American Diplomacy, the NSC has grown in size and influence during the last three decades. The NSC has tended to give priority to rapid military solutions instead of seeking solutions to problems and challenges. The continued strengthening of the National Security Council has led to a “militarization of US diplomacy centered in the White House”, it is stated (Suri 2019: 6). In spite of the strengthening of the NSC and in spite of the supposedly strong influence of John Bolton, the NSC was not successful in pushing an agenda on American withdrawal from NATO. The undramatic firing in September 2019 of John Bolton National Security Advisor suggests that maybe Bolton was not as influential as assumed including influential on issues related to NATO. Moreover, the highly personalized model of power used by Donald Trump does not indicate that

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the president necessarily would listen to advice from Bolton. It would depend on the concrete circumstances and the impulses of the president at any given point in time (Hurlburt 2019). The balance between the White House and Congress has changed significantly in recent years. The balance tended to favor the presidents where the typical situation was that Congress reacted to initiatives of the president rather than launching their own foreign policy agenda (Lindsay 2018: 150–152, 145ff; Lowi et al. 2014: 168ff). However, Trump’s constant attacks on NATO and his threats of withdrawing from the defense alliance led or inspired Congress to react to the president. In January 2019, the House of Representatives passed a bill warning Trump against pulling the United States out of NATO. In a bipartisan 357-22 vote, the House sent the Senate the NATO Support Act which would prohibit the use of federal funds to withdraw from the alliance (Gould 2019a). In July 2018, the Senate approved a nonbinding motion of support for NATO to prevent any US president from withdrawing from the NATO alliance without congressional support. The 97-2 vote reflected the broad concerns on Capitol Hill over Trump’s ambivalence about the defense alliance and his commitment to it (Barret 2018). The new defense bill for 2019–2020, among other things, aimed at making it tougher for President Trump to pull the United States out of NATO. The adoption of the bill sent a strong sign of bipartisan support for the alliance. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) stated “this bill says if the president unilaterally tries to pull out, no funds can be expended to remove troops for a year. That gives Congress the opportunity to debate and overturn a decision if we think it is unwise” (Gould 2019b). Finally, it has to be noted that a large delegation of Republicans and Democrats visited the 2019 Munich Security Conference and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to assure the European allies of the support for NATO in Congress. These political signals lead Benjamin Schreer to conclude “it is highly doubtful that the Trump administration would pick a major fight with the US Congress over NATO’s future” (Schreer 2019: 13). Summing up, it was the hypothesis in this section that the State Department and the Pentagon pursued their institutional interest in maintaining the American commitment to NATO. However, both institutions were severely weakened during the Trump administration’s first 30 months, though for different reasons. Donald Trump’s impulsive approach to politics and to decision-making not only sidelined the Pentagon, but also sidelined the National Security Council and John Bolton. In brief, a convincing explanation to why Donald Trump did not withdraw from NATO and from the commitments to the defense alliance was the strong signals sent by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both Houses stated that NATO was crucial to American national security. Viewed within the framework of the domestic government institutions, both Houses in Congress were the ultimate bulwarks against a potential decision by Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from the alliance.

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8 Conclusion During the first 30 months in power, the American President Donald Trump had fulfilled a remarkable number of his foreign policy promises. It was puzzling that Donald Trump had not withdrawn the United States from NATO in the face of his numerous and harsh criticisms of the defense alliance and in particular his criticism of the European NATO partners. The paper therefore asked why there was this disconnect between words and deeds when it came to the American membership of NATO. Applying a neo-classical analytical framework, the paper concludes that a number of variables can contribute to answering the question. The analysis indicated that the strong position of the NATO alliance within the American strategic culture constrained the inclination of the president to withdraw from NATO. Second, the paper found that in recent years, the public opinion was constantly in strong support of continued American membership of the NATO alliance even though there were differences in the opinion between Democrats and Republicans. The bottom line was that no less than 73% supported US NATO membership putting a strong, indirect pressure on the Trump administration not to withdraw from the defense alliance. Third, a number of domestic government institutions were assumed to be rather strongly in favor of continued American membership of the alliance. It was the case for the weakened State Department as well as for the sidelined Pentagon and the National Security Council. However and most importantly in Congress, both the House of Representative and the Senate were in favor of continued American membership of the NATO alliance. Both Houses adopted bi-partisan bills stressing this. In sum, the analysis pointed toward an explanation to why the United States did not withdraw from NATO consisting of several elements. It pointed to the crucial position of NATO within the strategic culture. The analysis also suggested that a favorable public opinion in combination with clear signals from Congress to Donald Trump to remain in NATO contributes to explain why the president did not follow his instincts and withdrew from the alliance during his first 30 months in office. The prominent position of public opinion and of Congress may, in this context, indicate the viability of American democracy, in spite of the high degree of polarization in the country.

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Gorm Rye Olsen Professor in global politics at the Institute for Social Science and Business, University of Roskilde, Denmark. He has written widely on European Union-Africa relations, and EU security politics. Recently, he has published on transatlantic relations and on the foreign policy of the United States. He has published these themes in a range of international journals such as European Security, International Politics, Third World Quarterly and Journal of European Integration.

Transcending the Rift? Realism, Transatlantic Relations, and American Grand Strategy Mladen Lišanin

Abstract Realism has earned many friends and foes by being focused on international relations as they really are, and not as they ought to be. However, confronted with failures of the US in aspiring to steer international system of the post-Cold War era, it has become increasingly normative and, in spite of all the theoretical disputes among its main proponents, seems to speak almost with one voice in this regard: advocating the grand strategy of restraint, or offshore balancing, for America. Great powers tend to act in ways entirely conceivable from the theoretical point of view of realism, while at the same time being, paradoxically, at odds with realist policy prescriptions. American long-pursued grand strategy of primacy, or deep engagement, is a vivid example. Strongly embracing Layne’s proposition that structural and neoclassical versions of realism are not only far from incompatible, but necessarily employed together if one is to properly understand great powers’ grand strategies; and drawing from contemporary realist literature on strategy of restraint and offshore balancing (from Waltz and Posen, to Mearsheimer and Walt, to Ashford and Porter), the author explores possible developments of transatlantic relations in case the US adopts a more restrained strategic posture. It is argued that this might be an unexpected incentive to revitalize international institutions, most notably the UN and the OSCE, as well as defense component of the EU, in order to restore great power confidence, thus mitigating the consequences of the incoming struggle for spheres of influence. Keywords Europe (Central and Eastern) · European Union · Foreign policy · International relations · NATO · US · Realism · POTUS

M. Lišanin (B) Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_6

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1 Introduction: Restraint in Contemporary US Strategic Thought The US has consistently pursued a grand strategic posture of primacy, or liberal hegemony, ever since the end of the Cold War—with mixed results, to say the least (Walt 2018; Mearsheimer 2018, 2019; Jervis 2020; Unger 2012; Sestanovich 2014; Rosato and Schuessler 2011; Porter 2018a). According to Friedman and Thrall, “grand strategies are theories about how states should secure themselves. Strategy is logic for choices among options; it prioritizes resources. Strategy is ‘grand’ when it aims to guide other state security choices” (Thrall and Friedman 2018; Brands 2014). International issues and crises that have accumulated over the first two decades of the twenty-first century (particularly in waves of 2001, 2003, 2008, and 2014–2016) reinvigorated the ongoing debate about appropriateness and possible transformations of US grand strategy. In the process, realist school of international relations, notorious for its aspiration to observe international politics as it as, rather than as it ought to be, has nonetheless become increasingly normative and, with a couple of notable exceptions, seems to speak almost with one voice: advocating the adoption of grand strategy of restraint (or its kin, offshore balancing) for the US. Realism has long studied international behavior of states, especially great powers, and various school and strains of the realist paradigm have offered diverse explanations in this regard—all the while maintaining the common “hard core” of the research program.1 It claimed to identify patterns of state behavior which were in accordance with realist theoretical predictions, but not necessarily with realist policy prescriptions (Mearsheimer 2014). That is why, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, and mostly due to anticipated global turbulences caused by the invasion of Iraq of 2003, IR realists have actively engaged in US grand strategic debates (Layne 2009). Grand strategy of primacy had failed, they believed, and the pursuit of “extraregional hegemony” (Layne 2006) induced disturbances in the international system while effectively hampering US national interests. According to Mearsheimer, there are currently four main grand strategic alternatives: isolationism, offshore balancing, selective engagement, and global domination (supporters of global domination being divided between liberal imperialism and neoconservatism) (Mearsheimer 2010). Strategy of offshore balancing, and its, strategy of restraint, are—generally speaking—favorite

1 According

to Randall Schweller, the “hard core of the realist school of thought consists of the following propositions: (1) humans do not face one another primarily as individuals but as members of groups that command their loyalty; (2) international affairs take place in a state of anarchy; (3) power is the fundamental feature of international politics, it is the currency of international politics required to secure any national goal, whether world mastery or simply to be left alone; (4) the nature of international interaction is essentially conflictual; (5) humankind cannot transcend conflict through the progressive power of reason to discover a science of peace; (6) politics are not a function of ethics, morality is the product of power; (7) necessity and reason of state trump morality and ethics when these values conflict” (Schweller 2003: 74–75).

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strategic options for most realists.2 The main notion of such a strategic posture is that “sound US foreign policy requires restraint against the many temptations to use force that great power affords” (Thrall and Friedman 2018: 6) Key assumptions that this approach rests upon are: benign take on danger, or the notion that US inhabits an extremely favorable security environment in the post-Cold War world; optimism about the stability of balances of power; objection to the idea that US military actions have net positive economic effects; rejection of the need to be an actual hegemon in order to sustain the liberal international institutions; avoiding endeavors to shape foreign nations and pursue humanitarian military interventions; general skepticism about net benefits of US military endeavors (Thrall and Friedman 2018: 6–7). As Thrall and Friedman rightly notice, restraint is “deeply informed by structural realism, especially its defensive variant,” but it shares an important trait with classical liberalism as well, as it pertains to “general skepticism about unchecked power, war, and ambitious efforts to control the course of international relations” (Thrall and Friedman 2018: 8).

2 Transatlantic Relations in US Post-Cold War Strategic Posture Transatlantic relations have historically been somewhat less stable than they are usually conceived. European fears of American abandonment and American demands that Europe takes a larger defense burden upon itself, main transatlantic issues since the election of Donald Trump, have been reemerging ever since the end of World War II. As early as 1951, Dwight D. Eisenhower, assuming the position of the first NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), famously proclaimed that “if in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed” (Carroll and Schroeder 1994). In 2019, US troops are still in Europe and do not seem to be going anywhere; if anything, aside of NATO, further deployments seem highly possible on a bilateral basis—as the “Fort Trump” concept for Poland testifies. “Perhaps the deepest danger we face is that, as with all great achievements, nostalgia for the patterns of action that were appropriate when America was predominant and Europe impotent may become an obstacle to the creativity needed to deal with an entirely new situation. Those Americans who deserve the greatest credit for promoting the recovery of Europe and forging existing Atlantic ties are finding it most

2 See

Mearsheimer and Walt (2016) and Posen (2014). Grand strategy of offshore balancing is mostly similar to restraint, with a slight difference of being more proactive in its efforts to prevent the emergence of regional hegemons in regions of interest to the US. They are both, in a relatively derogatory manner, labeled as “isolationism” or “retrenchment” by the proponents of strategic primacy, cf. Brooks et al. (2012), Brands (2015), Mitchell and Grygiel (2016), or Schake (2018).

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difficult to adjust to conditions in which American leadership is no longer unquestioned.” These words, which could have easily been written in 2018, are actually a part of Kissinger’s (1965) book which labels the transatlantic alliance as “troubled” (Kissinger 1965: 5–6). Elsewhere, Mark Gilbert has described the US and its principal European partners as “resentful allies” (Gilbert 2015). Crisis has occurred— Euromissiles, for example—and memories of such episodes are occasionally evoked today, but US military presence in Europe remained a constant throughout the Cold War, diminishing significantly only after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Kristol 2011: 204–213). It proceeded into the “unipolar moment” as well—Eisenhower probably would not have believed that the US would still have tens of thousands of troops permanently deployed in Europe in 2019 (most notably in Germany, Italy, the UK, and Spain). Some of the problems with transatlantic relations originating from the Cold War era also persisted into the post-Cold War period (Chollet and Goldgeier 2009). Some were considered largely resolved (such as the German question and the Russian threat). The heyday of “liberal international order” was emerging and US-steered hegemonic stability (induced “by invitation,” as Berenskoetter and Quinn suggest) that has sustained its economic and security foundations over the preceding decades seemed unchallenged (Berenskoetter and Quinn 2012; Wyatt-Walter 1996). Despite encompassing largely the same member states, and somewhat staining the overall optimism kick-started by the West’s victory in the Cold War, differences in perceived strategic interests of European powers and US superpower began to emerge as soon as the Yugoslav crisis escalated. At its onset, in the summer of 1991, foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jacques Poos, famously declared that “This is the hour of Europe— not the hour of the Americans. . . . If one problem can be solved by the Europeans, it is the Yugoslav problem. This is a European country and it is not up to the Americans. It is not up to anyone else” (Glaurdi´c 2011: 1). The “hour of Europe” in the former Yugoslavia was soon to become a decade of America, culminating with the Kosovo war in 1999 and eventual ousting of Slobodan Miloševi´c in Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2000. The newly institutionalized foreign and security policy of the European Union under the Maastricht agreement showed its limitations vis a vis Yugoslavia at the same time the George H. W. Bush administration was being replaced by a more activist Clinton administration in the US. Thus began the newest round of EU/NATO tensions which, in various iterations, have persisted to this day. Authors nostalgic for former liberal, rules-based world order, occasionally frame their concerns about the Trump presidency by downplaying decades-long rifts in transatlantic relations. When, in the spring of 1973 in his infamous speech on the “Year of Europe,” Henry Kissinger argued that European leaders were “underestimating the unity that made peace possible and the effort required to maintain it,” while “not contributing a fair share of the common defense,” it was clear that the transatlantic allies are, in Mark Gilbert’s words, quite resentful (Gilbert 2015: 209–210). As a bloc with “purely regional interests,” the European Community was, according to Kissinger, supposed to leave the “big stuff” to Washington (Gilbert 2015: 210). Crises, obviously, persisted into the post-Cold War era, with the US traditionally demanding that Europe step up with respect to defense capabilities, only to protest at

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the hints of it actually happening. Conducting its strategy of deep engagement, the US regularly used NATO as an institutional vehicle to advance its own perceived security interests. This is why most post-Cold War attempts at achieving the proper transatlantic defense balance consisted of formal and informal arrangements to settle actual or potential rifts between the EU and NATO: the 1996 Berlin Agreement sanctioned European Security and Defense Identity within NATO; 1997 Amsterdam Treaty transferring the Petersberg tasks to the EU structures; 1999 NATO summit in Washington was a basis for the 2002 Berlin Plus agreement, leading toward the comprehensive framework for EU-NATO relations subsequently. Madeleine Albright’s famous “Three Ds” article in the Financial Times in 1998 was supposed to address the same issue: possible tensions between the EU and NATO capabilities and policies: As Europeans look at the best way to organize their foreign and security policy cooperation, the key is to make sure that any institutional change is consistent with basic principles that have served the Atlantic partnership well for 50 years. This means avoiding what I would call the three Ds: decoupling, duplication, and discrimination. First, we want to avoid decoupling: NATO is the expression of the indispensable transatlantic link. It should remain an organization of sovereign allies, where European decision-making is not unhooked from broader alliance decision-making. Second, we want to avoid duplication: Defense resources are too scarce for allies to conduct force planning, operate command structures, and make procurement decisions twice – once at NATO and once more at the EU. And third, we want to avoid any discrimination against NATO members who are not EU members. (Rutten 2001: 11).

From a realist point of view, one of the obvious flaws of these arrangements was the failure to recognize that capabilities in question (and focus has almost always been on capabilities, not interests—another mistake) are, first and foremost, national. Only as such could they have been deployed within a NATO, EU, UN, or whatever other international mission. Some of these issues became more obvious at the eve of Iraq invasion, with intra-European rift branded by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “Old Europe vs. New Europe” (Menon 2006). That is why Schwartz is essentially right when he states that “Trump’s own poor knowledge of history should not excuse the amnesia of his critics, especially when they forget the frequent and bitter crises that have faced the NATO alliance, most recently in the clashes between the Bush administration and French and German leaders over the US invasion of Iraq” (Schwartz 2019: 111; see also Herbert et al. 2019: 210–212). Trump’s seeming reluctance to sustain America’s overwhelming worldwide engagement has been attacked by primacists as an isolationist move and praised by some of the restrainers as a further step toward grand strategy of restraint— already emerging, in the rudimentary form, during the Obama administration. But are American calls for strategic restraint, as espoused not only by parts of Trump administration but also a growing number of academics, policy practitioners, and think tanks, fundamentally different than previous historical episodes when it comes to transatlantic relations? In order to understand the current turmoil in America’s strategic thinking, we need to look beyond structural changes of the international system, and engage state-level variables as well (Layne 2006: 10–11; Porter 2018b).

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Only then can we successfully delve into the intricacies of contemporary transatlantic relations.

3 The Trump Card: Crisis or Opportunity? Donald Trump hit the nerve of most supporters of transatlantic security cooperation by declaring NATO “obsolete” even before becoming the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee (Hains 2016; Brands 2018; Sloan 2018). He maintained this position as president-elect, but modified it once in office, proclaiming in April 2017 that NATO is “no longer obsolete” (BBC 2017a, 2017b). He did, however, keep his transactional approach to foreign policy, including strategic issues, and put the focus on NATO allies’ defense spending in the context of 2% threshold. His reflections on Germany and Poland have been quite indicative of this approach: As Poland is among the countries that do allocate more than 2% of GDP for defense purposes, it is viewed as a trustworthy ally and an honest partner—this includes announcements of additional troop deployment to this country, as well as ideas of strengthened bilateral defense ties that would incorporate a permanent US base on Polish territory (“Fort Trump”). At the same time, Germany, due to its failure to keep up with the 2% threshold, gets slandered for “freeriding,” including threats of US troop relocation from Germany toward Poland (Jones 2019; Baldor 2019). In the summer of 2020, Germany was officially informed by the US of the intent to withdraw 25.000 (about one third) of American troops from Germany (Brzozowski 2020). Symbolic as it is, this might be a pre-election signal that the administration has been following the public opinion on the global use of US Armed Forces. The Chicago Council polls have shown that Americans favor their country remaining globally engaged, but dominantly (65%) through “shared leadership” with allies (Smeltz et al. 2019: 11). Deploying troops abroad as a means of global engagement enjoys a much weaker and more fragile support (51%), with younger generations being increasingly suspicious about it (Thrall 2018; Smeltz et al. 2019: 16; Helm and Smeltz 2020). It is important to note, however, that the relationship between public opinion preferences and conducting foreign policy works both ways, i.e., public opinion may also be shaped and manipulated (Ashford 2017: 5). Apart from traditional disputes regarding defense spending, there are also more specific rifts which pertain to some of the key international issues. One of them is the Iran issue, which re-escalated in May 2018, after Donald Trump, in keeping with his campaign promise, announced US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“Iran Deal”), leaving the EU and its member states France, Germany, and the UK alongside Russia and China, as signatories of the document which curtailed Iran’s nuclear program. In order to circumvent the sanctions regime reimposed by the US, and to keep international trade with Iran flowing to mutual benefit, the EU has devised INSTEX, a mechanism that should enable the member states to keep trading with Iran—to Washington’s disdain (DW 2019).

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Russia policy seems less controversial at the moment, although it might prove to be a point of falling-out in the future: While the EU still operates in accordance with the multilateral sanctions regime since the spring of 2014, it does have clear interest in achieving sustainable conciliation with Russia, due to both strategic and economic (including energy and trade) reasons (Lišanin 2018). Donald Trump, on the other hand, despite being accused of sinister connections to Russia ever since the 2016 election, seems to be keeping a tough course toward the old adversary, by repeatedly expelling Russian diplomats, constantly imposing new rounds of sanctions (Holland and Tsvetkova 2019) and sustaining NATO activities in the eastern flank, such as annual Sabre Strike maneuvers in the Baltics and Poland, Enhanced Forward Presence posture, or Trident Juncture exercise of 2018—NATO’s biggest post-Cold War maneuver. Perhaps most notably, there are quarrels about the stance toward China, which is viewed as a trade war adversary in the US but is readily accepted by many European countries—especially those of “New Europe” in the east of the continent, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative and within the 16 + 1 framework for cooperation—likely to include Greece in addition to the current sixteen participants from Central and Eastern Europe (Chatzky and McBride 2019; Kavalski 2019). There will certainly be at least some collateral damage in the American-European-Chinese triangle; it is mostly up to US and European decision-makers to try and find a way to accommodate Chinese economic expansion while upholding their own and each other’s vital interests. This might require a thorough reconsideration of transatlantic trade ties, and ultimately, perhaps, even strategic ties. It is obvious that, even in areas of close transatlantic cooperation, there are numerous issues to be resolved. Throughout most of the post-World War II history, and especially since the vanishing of the Soviet threat, the issue of European strategic autonomy has made the transatlantic relationship particularly toxic. Confronted with the US objections over the PESCO framework for defense cooperation in Europe, then-President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker made an expressive remark: “For years we have been hearing Americans complain that we are not doing enough to defend ourselves. Now we are trying to do more. And that does not suit them either. They cannot have it both ways: either they were right the first time and wrong the second, or right the second time and wrong the first. We are doing more because we have to do more. We cannot depend on allies alone. We both need and want to do something ourselves to be able to safeguard our security interests” (European Commission 2018; Chazan and Manson 2018; Erlanger 2019; Agence France-Presse 2019). He proceeded to explain that the newest European quest for strategic autonomy is not meant to impede NATO in any way, but Washington is still not quite persuaded. For decades, transatlantic squabbles occurred under the circumstances of US pursuing the grand strategy of deep engagement. Does the Trump presidency actually represent a decisive turn toward a more restrained strategic posture of the US, which might be extended beyond 2020 regardless of the winner of the next presidential election (Lissner and Rapp-Hooper 2019)? There are views (e.g. Herbert et al. 2019: 185–213) that Trump’s foreign policy is much less of an outlier than usually

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presented. Whether the possible restraint-oriented turn is motivated dominantly by necessity or a carefully thought-out strategic consideration—or some combination of the two—there are indicators that certain elements of strategic restraint, such as less ambitious use of military force, might figure more prominently in US strategic thought in the future. Would this partial US retrenchment from international politics provide the EU with an opportunity to finally achieve greater strategic autonomy, and would the Trump presidency then, paradoxically, come to be viewed as a factor of European cohesion, instead of global rupture?

4 Discussion Although the notion of Donald Trump as a decidedly restrained policy creator and practitioner has largely been abandoned, some of the indicators that either he or his 2020 challenger might assume a more restraint-based strategic posture still persist. Despite occasional actions in Syria, deployment of troops to Afghanistan, drone warfare and tough rhetoric on Iran and Venezuela, the US did not enter any new international armed conflicts by the last summer of Trump administration’s (first?). As Stephen Walt stresses, public opinion in the US is also shifting toward a most self-centered approach, and away from the global issues the US has traditionally meddled into since the end of the Cold War (Walt 2017: 17). If the US decided to assume the position of an offshore-balancer, based on the prospective grand strategy of restraint, thus reducing its military footprint in Europe, what options would that leave for European strategic actorness and, consequently, for transatlantic defense cooperation? First and foremost, this would be an incentive for a thorough reconsideration of options best suited for transcending the transatlantic rift. The relationship has become toxic in the first place due to the fact that it was developing within an unchanged strategic context of US deep engagements in Europe—regardless of the fact that the initial inducement: Curbing Soviet expansionism has vanished in the meantime. For all the challenges that Russian contemporary assertiveness poses to the US and its allies, Russia has neither the capacity nor a plausible intent to become the continental hegemon. If the buck is ultimately passed to regional powers—the most powerful ones being EU members, and the UK most likely to essentially retain most its defense relationships with the EU even in the case of Brexit—this would, in principle, open some space for the EU to gain a more credible actorness. As a consequence, a reconceptualization of arrangements which guide EU relations with NATO (such as Berlin Plus) would probably ensue, which might include the abandoning the “first refusal right” for NATO, less proclivity toward overly expansive operations for the EU itself, and renewed strengthening of the UN and OSCE mechanisms as key frameworks for the bulk of international missions and operations. It might be asked, where is the actorness if international missions and operations are scaled down? Most notably, in the focus of the Common Foreign and Security

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Policy on territorial defense on the EU level. Traditional framework for territorial defense of most EU members, NATO needn’t be dissolved but could unquestionably be less discernible and, quite possibly, less costly—perhaps even including calling off the dysfunctional 2006 pledge about 2% each member’s GDP. Such a development would likely propel additional intra-EU cohesion that is constantly lacking, motivate members to invest in their respective defense capabilities, and discourage potential “reckless driving.” Unable to incentivize substantive defense integration, due to the divergence of its own member states, as well as US strategic preponderance which, in a way, made actual defense integration redundant, the EU has consistently tried to compensate the lack of proper interest-based actorness by devising muffled institutional arrangements for the utilization of military capabilities. That way, it engaged in quite a specific way of capability signaling, significantly different than the usual signals that states emit (Montgomery 2019). Clarification of common interests, beginning with territorial security, is what would give national capabilities a credible EU-sanctioned purpose. The basis for the shift of focus toward territorial defense is already here: mutual defense clause found in article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union designates the EU as a traditional, full-scale defense pact, and is, in a sense, even more resolute than article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. This does not mean that a more layered defense cooperation would be entirely off the table: The idea of multi-speed Europe or Europe a la carte might not be an optimal approach for certain other policy areas, but it might prove useful in the sphere of defense—after all, it is already de facto recognized by the PESCO framework, and even built in the very foundations of EU institutional framework through the concept of opt-outs. As Csernatoni (2020) rightly observes, “The EU has a long history of disagreements and dissonant national policies on European defense integration. Member states are equally divided on the future of the transatlantic link, Russia, China, and the nature of threats.” The prospect of shift in American strategic approach to issues of European defense might incentivize closer cooperation among the member states. This will by no means make the EU a unitary strategic actor, akin to the US, China, or Russia anytime soon, but it may enhance defense cooperation further. However, this remains just one of the possibilities: The lesson of the Iraq invasion might not have been learned and new divisions (Old vs. New Europe; North vs. South) are not unimaginable. Foreseeable future if the twenty-first century is increasingly likely to bring a continued reemergence of traditional (balance of) power politics, including—and this is particularly pertinent to the EU—spheres of influence. This is not to say that power alone will be the foundation of the international system; issues of legitimacy will remain important as well. After all, “order needs rules and institutions to come to life” (Lišanin 2017: 148). Trine Flockhart conceives a new type of international system, which would encompass multiple orders, and in which “the liberal order will continue, and may even be strengthened internally, but its global reach will be a thing of the past” (Flockhart 2016). Leaving aside the appropriateness of designating the post-Cold War order “liberal” (Porter 2018a), as well as global turmoil which— especially after 2016—opens up serious questions not only about the geographical

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scope of the “liberal order,” but about its very foundations, this is indeed an easily imaginable scenario in the short term. In a great power-guided shift toward the poly-centric world, according to Patrick Porter, particular actions and tools, such as “retrenchment of some commitments, mutual accommodation, power-sharing bargains and spheres of influence” might help to “stabilize relations, lower the mutual sense of threat, accord other powers space to grow, and facilitate the capacity to cooperate in areas of shared interests” (Porter 2019; see also Blankenship and Denison 2019; Allison 2020). Said retrenchment is recognized by some authors to encompass US demands to Western European allies to “step up their contributions to the security of the Eastern flank” as a strategic priority (Simón 2016). With prudent strategic calculations by decision-makers in European member states, and proper calibration of the EU security and defense interests and capabilities, a guided, restraint-based US retrenchment from European affairs might not be the worst scenario for either side of the transatlantic partnership. Acknowledgements This paper has been developed within research activities at the Institute for Political Studies, Belgrade, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. The author is grateful to the participants of the CEEISA-ISA 2019 Joint International Conference held at the University of Belgrade, June 16, 2019, and European Consortium of Political Research General Conference, held at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, on September 4, 2019, for their valuable comments and feedback.

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Mladen Lišanin PhD candidate at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, is a research associate at the Belgrade-based Institute for Political Studies. Member of the OSCE academic alumni network, former Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS Bologna, and a regular commentator of international issues in national and regional media, he is the assistant editor of the academic journal Serbian Political Thought.

Regional Security Orders and International Transformations: The Transatlantic Adaptation and Change Ieva Karpaviˇciut˙ ¯ e

Abstract The chapter focuses on the process of regional adaptation in the context of world order transformation. It discusses the ways regional security orders contribute to stabilization and balance. The chapter addresses the transatlantic region and its political and institutional adaptation to the ongoing systemic transformations. Theoretically, the chapter depicts transatlantic region as a regional security order, which is under the constant adaptation process, based on the interplay between regional institutions, collective identity and power dynamics within the region and affected by external systemic transformations. The chapter overviews the fundamental principles of NATO deterrence that existed during the Cold War and depicts the major changes that emerged right after the end of the bipolar rivalry. It observes the major changes in Alliance doctrine and challenges it faces in the post-2014 security environment. The chapter focuses on the perception of collective defence and deterrence, and how the principles of NATO nuclear and conventional deterrence are changing over the time. It traces the process of NATO adaptation to contemporary challenges and the ways to sustain Allied cohesion, and credibility of NATO’s defence and deterrence. Keywords World order transformation · Regional security order · NATO · Adaptation · Regional stability

1 Introduction The chapter focuses on the regional level of analysis and of world order change implications on regional security. It traces how NATO as regional security order adapts to internal and external changes and challenges. Change is defining all the social systems and constructions, nothing is stable in social life, the most stable is I. Karpaviˇci¯ut˙e (B) Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected] General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_7

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change. It is debated whether the changing world order is leading towards more stability or we are witnessing the transformations to the more turbulent conflict prone international system. The discussion ranges between the pessimistic and more optimistic perspectives. The pessimistic perspective on the emerging world order highlights the disorder, anarchy and challenges to attain the stability in international system. Whereas the more optimistic scholars see a silver lining in the institutions, principles, norms and ability of international society to adapt and stabilize as they face major challenges caused by the ongoing systemic transformation and transition. More optimistic scholars also point to the regional level of analysis and observe that the new world order will have more vivid and politically stronger regions. This chapter is aimed at making a connection between world order, regional orders and regional security orders to explain the security dynamics in the Atlantic region and its defence and deterrence adaptation. Regional security order is perceived as an extension of the concept of regional order that covers all aspects of regionalization process (economic, social, political, military, and cultural, etc.). The transatlantic region is affected by real and perceived change in international system, and influenced by major global as well as regional dynamics, it has to adapt and sustain. This chapter uses Ikenberry’s (2015, 2018) suggested distinction between American hegemony and the existing international order, and applies the same principle to the analysis of the regional level. The similar analytical perspective is also used by English School scholars such as Goh, Hurrell, Wæver that “the firm normative and institutional foundations of liberal order ensure that, while rising powers may alter the material distribution of power in the world, the centre of normative and military power remains the United States” (Ikenberry 2011, as cited in Goh 2013, p. 11). The chapter is addressing the major shifts in NATO’s defence and deterrence and its institutional adaptation to changing strategic environment. It assumes that distinctive regional security orders are reacting to change and manage to promote stabilization depend every single region as well as on the practices that are being developed over the time. The regional security change is natural process; the ability of regional security order to adapt might be determining the survivability of the region. Change of regional security order depends on externally driven challenges and changes in global international order as well as on transformations in regional power balances, regional institutional structures and regional identity together with norms and principles.

2 Regional Security Orders and Global Transformation Scholars observe that the emerging new world order is more diverse, multifaceted, with multiple actors engaged, multiple institutional structures and diverse cultures it means that the stabilization of this type of world order might be even more challenging than ever before. Scholars are focusing on international institutions (Acharya 2012, 2014, 2017, 2018a; Ulfstein 2018; Ikenberry 2015, 2018; Goddard

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2018), addressing normative principles of world order: norms, values and principles (Schmidt 2016). Amitav Acharya highlights the absence of global hegemon and construction of new global multiplex order (Acharya 2014, 2017, 2018b), Andrew Hurrell (2018) points out to an emerging new pluralism, the other scholars observe a shift from order to a new world disorder (Haas 2008, 2017; Hoffmann 1998), which is shaped by complexity, instability and anarchy. Buzan (2011) observes a world order without superpowers; Ikenberry (2011) focuses upon the post-hegemonic multi-partner liberal order, and he observes that in an economic domain the United States might give up some hegemonic rights to others, but in the security domain most likely it will retain its dominance (Ikenberry 2011, 307). At the centre of those academic discussions are complexity, diversity and fragmentation of the world order and emergence of multiple regional orders. In this context, regions, regional orders and regional institutions are being perceived as actors and structures capable to respond to the contemporary challenges faced by multilateralism. Regions will definitely have more room for manoeuvre in shaping and stabilizing an emerging new international order. The discussion ranges between the pessimistic and more optimistic perspectives. The pessimistic perspective (for instance, Hurrell 2006, 2007, 2018) on the emerging world order highlights the disorder, anarchy and challenges to attain the stability in international system. Representatives of this perspective argue, that the emerging world order due to its complexity and absence of commonly agreed principles and structure will be less safe and stable, and hardly unpredictable as well as conflict prone. On the other hand, the more optimistic approach (Ikenberry 2011, 2015, 2018; Ikenberry et al. 2011; Acharya 2012, 2014, 2017, 2018a, b) stresses the institutions, principles, norms and ability of international society to adapt to the major challenges caused by the ongoing transformation and transition. The optimistic approach points to the regional level of analysis and observes that the new world order will have more influential and politically stronger regions, which can be a major source of stability in a newly emerging world order. Contemporary discussion on world order transformation is frequently coupled with focus on regional orders and arguments that the newly emerging global system will be based by more relevant and vivid regional orders. As Henry Kissinger stresses that “regional concepts of order shaped evolution of modern era” (Kissinger 2014, p. 9) and “the maintenance of world order depends on regional orders; the contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another” (Kissinger 2014, p. 9 as cited in Acharya 2017, p. 279). Ian Bremmer outlines that the second best option (Bremmer 2012) for world governance is a regional approach, regional institutions could address regional as well as broader issues. Acharya (2017, 2018a, b), Paul (2012), Hurrell (2018), Wæver (2018) underscore the growing importance of regional institutions and regional orders, to the certain extent they perceive regional institutions and regional orders as stabilizing the world order dynamics. Hurrell observes that institutions are “helping to explain how new norms emerge and are diffused across the international system” (Hurrell 2006, p. 6). Distinctive regional orders can share the same norms and principles

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as well as have similarly functioning international institutions. Institutions facilitate institutionalization and legitimization of those norms and principles and facilitate their change and adaptation. Acharya highlights the significance of regional institutions and underscores, that regional institutions are as important as great powers or nation states (Acharya 2017, p. 276). He observes that “many regional organizations share normative concerns about peace and justice and deserve their space in any meaningful scheme for global order” (Acharya 2017, p. 282). Those shared normative concerns might serve as stabilizing factors when it comes to multi-order world system. Acharya observes that emerging contemporary order is unlikely returning to the multipolarity as existed before the World War II, here “multiplicity of actors matter” (Acharya 2017, p. 276); he notes that “a post-American global order marked by diverse regional sub-systems; a world that is globalized, diversified, and localized” (Acharya 2017, p. 277). The stronger connections between global/systemic and regional levels of analysis are being observed. Ikenberry while making a connection between the global and regional levels notes that there are “regional and global domains of governance and institutional arrangements” (Ikenberry 2018, p. 21) as well as principles and norms according to which the regional and global structures are functioning, so institutional elements as well as matching principles and norms facilitate the functioning of the system. Buzan observes the changes in world order and growing importance of regional level in an emerging international society; he highlights that “a quite workable, decentralized, coexistence international society with some elements of cooperation; and what the possible downsides of a more regionalized international order might be, focusing particularly on the problem of regional hegemony” (Buzan 2011, p. 3). Buzan is coining the emerging world order “a regionalized international order” (Buzan 2011, p. 3); he is optimistic about the regional international system and its ability to ensure security and stability; “regional orders are stronger than the global one, and at the global level there is a well-grounded pluralist international society mainly motivated by coexistence, but with significant elements of cooperation around collective problems (e.g. arms control, environmental management) and projects (e.g. trade, big science)” (Buzan 2011, p. 25). Similarly argues A. Acharya observing that “density of relatively durable international and regional institutions” (Acharya 2017, p. 277), which can contribute to stability of the world order. The counter arguments to Acharya’s observations provide Ikenberry who is addressing the continuity of liberal order and makes distinction between the national power and liberal order of rules, norms and principles. In his view, “an American position may be declining, the liberal international characteristics of order – openness, rules, multilateral cooperation - are deeply rooted and likely to persist” (Ikenberry 2018, pp. 17–18). The sustainability of liberal institutions brings stability to international system as they ensure the predictable transition as well as institutionalize global norms and principles all the parties of international system are expected to abide by. Institutions “are stabilizing the power-political interests” (Hurrell 2018, p. 97) provide a common reaction to major global challenges such as transnational organised

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crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, development of disruptive technologies, cyber security issues, and so on. Evidently, more balance and streamlining between regional and global institutions might bring more stability to international system.

3 Regional Security Orders and Regional Stability In this chapter, regions are regarded as entities with different levels of autonomy, which depends on the interplay of internal and external factors determining regional security. A regional security order is defined as a dynamic structure dependent on changing internal and external factors, which can affect its evolution, change of regional security agendas and threat perception, as well as regional autonomy. Regions and regional security orders are regarded as permanently changing in reaction to externally and internally driven factors that affect regional security order dynamics. It is perceived, that world order transformation might increase regional autonomy, which depends on how strong is connection at the regional level with the international system and systemic norms and principles. It might be assumed that that global powers will be interested in region/regional security and stability should the region be perceived as their strategic interest. As Evalyn Goh observed regional powers “are not trying to hedge against a multipolar order per se, but rather to hedge against an unstable regional order involving a number of major powers” (Goh 2005, p. 30). Obviously, the systemic impact does not disappear from regions, as it receives different forms of interference, and the impact on different regional security orders differs. So-called regionalist perspective (Lake and Morgan 1997; Buzan 2002; Buzan and Wæver 2003; Hettne and Söderbaum 2006) is rooted in two assumptions: “first, that the decline of superpower rivalry reduce the penetrative quality of global power interest in the rest of the world, and second, that most of the great powers in the postCold War international system are now ‘light powers’, meaning that their domestic dynamics pull them away from military engagement and the strategic competition in the trouble spots of the world” (Buzan 2002). Regional security orders reflect the regionalization and constant development of the regions, and thus can be conceived against the backdrop of permanent change and adaptation. Regional security orders can be regarded as consisting of two dimensions suggested by Evelyn Goh, “processes that regulate interstate relations and expectations toward common goals; and outcomes in terms of systemic attributes, particularly the distribution of power” (Goh 2008, p. 117). Regional security order may be defined in terms of the interplay of regional power structure, regional institutionalization process as well as regional identity. Regional security order can be perceived as a process that shapes and directs interstate security relations and ability/or inability to increase, retain, and ensure (formally or informally) the peaceful changes in regional security. Security threats occur from different sources: “collapsing states, interstate conflicts, which may be and often are

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regionalized” (Hettne and Söderbaum, 2006, p. 205), transnational security threats as terrorism, cyber security threats, hybrid threats, etc., have strong impact at the regional level. The degree of order within a region can vary: thus, different security theories address regional order diferently, they speak of regional security complexes, anarchies, anarchic societies, regional security communities, and so on. David Lake and Patrick Morgan portrays “security orders as hierarchical to include the following: power restraining power, great-power concert, collective security, pluralistic security community, and integration” (Lake and Morgan 1997). Similarly, B. Buzan and O. Wæver in Regions and Powers are singling out the following types of regional orders: “collective security, alliance, concert, regime, and security community, as well as hierarchical orders built around great powers” (Buzan and Wæver 2003, p. 475). Bull (1995), Hurrell (2007, 2018), Alagappa (2003), Acharya (2017), Goh (2008, 2013) perceive order as limiting violence and promoting cooperation and stabilization by development of “rule-governed interactions” (Alagappa 2003, p. 39; Acharya 2007, p. 639) and ensuring the continuity of norms-based system. How distinctive regional security orders are reacting to change and manage to promote stabilization depend on the each and every single region as well as on the practices that are being developed over the time. The regional security change is natural process, the ability of regional security order to adapt appropriately might be determining the survivability of the region per se. Change of regional security order depends on externally driven challenges and changes in global international order as well as on transformations in regional power balances and their change, regional institutional structures and regional identity. The regional security order depends not only on institutions, power dynamics within the region, but also on regional norms, principles and identity, which serve as major facilitators of regional adaptation to change and transformation or challenges. Regional security order as an analytical tool helps to depict the security-related regional characteristics and provide the possibility to explain regional security change and adaptation, and identify a certain level of stability that regional security orders might attain. It gives a broader and more comprehensive perspective towards security challenges region faces and its ability to provide regional response. The analysis of regional security orders focuses on the interplay of systemic, national and regional analysis levels. How regional security order is affected by the global world order and how regional security order can uniquely adapt to external and internal security challenges. Dynamics of regional security is shaped/determined by the interplay of various types of regional power, identity and institutions and their impact on regional security, systemic structuring and distinction of different types of regional security orders in the process of permanent change, adaptation and stabilization, also taking into consideration the impacts external factors (mostly international system, and other regions). The re-emergence of power rivalry within the regions might lead to fundamental changes in less independent regional security orders.

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4 Origins of Transatlantic Regional Security Order and Its Transformation Social constructivists perceive regions as constantly changing and socially constructed political entities, they argue that regions are emerging and being transformed by ideas and changing identities. Regions are “social and cognitive constructs” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, p. 578), and geography is not the most crucial factor for regional cohesion and longevity. However, regions are not isolated entities; the ideas, principles and values are definitely transregional, interregional and sometimes global. The regional security order is composed by three equally important factors, namely ideas, institutions and regional power relations, to include both normative/ideational and material factors. Wendt underlines the power relations as having a “crucial role” leading towards normative change (Wendt 1999, p. 331, as cited in Acharya 2012, p. 199). Hemmer and Katzenstein (2002, p. 576) highlight the role of institutions and collective identities that ensure the durability of collective Alliances, “exclusive focus on unmeasured institutional efficiencies that are created by a stipulated lowering of transaction costs and a variety of institutional asset specificities risks slighting the causal importance of material capabilities and collective identities”. It is natural that as all the social structures including regions are constantly changing, the change is more than natural. The transatlantic region is not an exception. Since its inception, this region experienced numerous stages of development. In this chapter, the transatlantic region is perceived as a regional security order which adaptation is based on internal power distribution, performance of institutional structures and regional identity. NATO alliance is changing and adapting to the security and strategic environment, to external and internal challenges and shifts. This part of the chapter addresses the transatlantic regional security order and its adaptation in response to transformations ongoing in international system. How NATO as regional security order was changing and what were the major factors affecting its transformation and how it managed to adapt? NATO as a regional security order emerged out of the post-World War II security environment, and was based on the transatlantic values and principles, which have been commonly agreed and institutionalized in 1949. NATO’s inception was derived from numerous internal and external political and ideational implications, including, World War II experiences and memories, the EuropeanUS relations, a fragile security situation in Europe and need for US security assurances, security processes within the European region, and board distrust and hatred as post-World War II traumas. However, first and foremost, the establishment of NATO was aimed at sending “a deterrent message” (Yost 2014, p. 4) to the USSR. A Stalin’s ambition to go as far as he can reach, even beyond Yalta 1945 commitment and Soviet territorial acquisitions (Yost 2014, p. 3) sent alarm signals to Western European countries. For instance, Hemmer and Katzenstein (2002) refer to 1945, when the Soviet Union insisted Norway to sign a defence pact with an intention “to establish a zone of influence over Norway and

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it would have gained a large window on the Atlantic and thus exposed Europe’s northern flank” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, p. 589). Konrad Adenauer wrote in his memoirs that “territories annexed by the Soviet Union since 1939 added up to 492,600 km2 —over twice the area of West Germany” (Yost 2014, p. 3). Evidently, the USSR expansionism called for a unified action from the Western side. By signing the Washington Treaty, the twelve founding states agreed upon mutual defence and deterrence pledge under the Article 5, consensus-based decision making and transatlantic unity. They committed to “contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being” (The Washington Treaty, 1949) of the Atlantic area. Since the very beginning Allies aimed and envisaged NATO’s major role as stabilizing and promoting peace. Jackson (2005, p. 153) stresses the distributive justice principles in “purposive and collaborative international arrangements, such as military alliances”, he observes that the very principles of distributive justices is based on a premise that despite the fact that individual capabilities of NATO Allies and their contributions to NATO defence and power are unequal, the “benefits are and must be equal” (Jackson 2005, p. 153). So, the Article 5 and equal commitment for mutual defence is very significant principle parties agreed upon by establishing NATO. Robert Jackson highlights the “unity of purpose, effort, and sacrifice that justifies the equal benefits they [Allies] receive” (Jackson 2005, p. 153) from the Alliance. Notably, the unity is at the centre of Article 5, political unity of NATO was very important since its inception. Another important principle that has been underscored and injected in international relations practices was multilateralism. Weber (1992) underlined that in early 1950s the United States promoted “multilateralism in Europe, to encourage the emergence of an independent center of power that could lead to a more peaceful and stable period of multipolarity”. Weber (1992) stressed that internally NATO and its “security was indivisible” (Weber 1992, p. 633), the Alliance functioning was based on “a general organizing principle, the principle that the external boundaries of alliance territory were completely inviolable and that an attack on any border was an attack on all” (Weber 1992, p. 633). Hemmer and Katzenstein emphasize that multilateralism “is a particularly demanding form of international cooperation, as it requires a strong sense of collective identity in addition to shared interests” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, pp. 575–576). The Cold War defence and deterrence of NATO were based on one major source of instability and military threat stemming from the Soviet Union. However, since the establishment, NATO was more than just a formally agreed treaty or “aggregations of military power” (Wallander 2000, p. 705). The sense of community and common identity was very significant for the Alliance from the begining (Smith 2000; Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002). Evidently, as a geographical space the North Atlantic region served as “a calculated political agency” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, p. 589), but it wasn’t the single aim for establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The concept of community with its own transatlantic values, principles and identity “transcended military-strategic considerations” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, p. 589).

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From the very negotiation on the Washington Treaty, there was common agreement “on ideological principles” (Smith 2000, p. 1). The Washington Treaty underlines that its members “are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation for their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law” (The Washington Treaty 1949). The normative foundations were as significant as collective defence pledge. The Alliance was formed on a basis of principles and norms, and it evolved as a community with shared values. Allies declared normative background of the Washington Treaty: “to live in peace with all governments and all peoples”, and later Allies kept reiterating principles related to peaceful solutions, peaceful change and stabilization. Inherently NATO was about stability, including the deterrence stability, and expectation for the peaceful change. Interestingly, the Washington Treaty does not contain an explicit intention and will to establish an international organization with all institutional elements such as “political or an integrated military structure” (Smith 2000, p. 1). In reality, during the negotiations the states’ idea of the Treaty was more ambitious than an establishment of the Alliance among states. The process of institutionalization started soon after the North Atlantic Treaty was signed. Security and defence cooperation were materialized. The first meeting of the North Atlantic Council and the Military Committee took place in autumn of 1949. In 1950, NATO started developing the military command structure. In 1951, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was established and Dwight D. Eisenhower was assigned to be the first NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR). NATO also started developing civilian administrative structure, with a Secretary General as a senior political representative of the Alliance. Martin Smith observed that NATO “did develop into a significant international institution during the Cold War period” (Smith 2000, p. 20). The institutional systems enabled “the Alliance to discuss problems, to decide how to address them, and to implement the decisions” (Wallander 2000, pp. 713–714). Despite the fact that initially founding states did not have an intention to establish a collective defence organization, “NATO became a standing political-military organisation in peacetime without precedent” (Yost 2014, p. 4). Regional security order evolved with the institutional structure, identity, principles, norms and with an evolving perception of strategy and deterrence. Deterrence stability was perceived as deterrence by punishment or deterrence by denial; NATO developed its strategic doctrine as well as capabilities to deter the Soviet Union from the attack, and attempted to deter by raising the price of the possible attack. The Alliance developed few deterrence strategies over the years; the first one was called the massive retaliation and was based on the principle that the Alliance would respond to the Warsaw Pact attack with strategic nuclear capabilities. Soviet Union’s conventional pre-emption made massive retaliation pointless (Cimbala 1991; Smith 2000). In 1960s, massive retaliation was replaced by the flexible response strategy; it reflected the aim to retain “the adequacy of the means to be employed in order to ensure that NATO is able to respond to attacks of any size, to prevent uncontrollable escalation, to assure damage limitation and to terminate a conflict imposed upon it at earliest possible point” (Osgood and Wegener 1986, p. 5). It was based on the idea

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that “at each level of fighting the deterrer would seek to be able to do better than the challenger (escalation dominance) and thereby discourage the challenger from escalating” (Morgan 2003, p. 18) and from the use of nuclear weapons. The establishment and evolution of NATO was marked by both internal regionally and nationally driven interests. The transatlantic Alliance was based on the principles of collective defence and transatlantic link with American security guarantees and assurances for its Euro-Atlantic Allies. The Alliance retained the same principles of functioning and carried them through the post-Cold War period. The defence and deterrence principles have evolved together with NATO institutional structure, the same internalized principles of functioning remain unchanged up untill now.

5 Post-Cold War Adaptation of NATO and How History Rhymes Mark Twain’s quote “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes” can be used as an allegory to illustrate NATO strategic adaptation and evolution, which according to Greg Smith “undoubtedly rhyme with the Cold War rather than repeat it” (Smith 2019, p. 41). Neoliberal, Constructivist and English School scholars argued that NATO “helped create conditions that were conducive to peace in Europe after 1945” (Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002, pp. 575–576), and it showed that NATO is capable to facilitate the world order change and contribute to international stabilization throughout the process of transformation, the similar process was observed in a post-Cold War period. NATO as a regional security order acted as a facilitator of change not only at regional, but also at the global level. Ruggie (1992) and Weber (1992) discuss a role of multilateralism in a context of the post-Cold War transformation. They argue that peaceful change after the postCold War was guaranteed by the NATOs institutional adjustment, norms, values and multilateralism. Regional multilateral institutional framework facilitated adaptation and regional stabilization right after the end of Cold War and contributed to peaceful transformation of the international system. Ruggie (1992) highlighted that multilateralism and institutions played stabilizing role during the post-Cold War international transformation. Wallander argues that “the more institutionalized a security coalition, the more likely it is to persist in the face of change in its environment” (Wallander 2000, p. 707). Regional security institutions exist as facilitators of change, as long as they manage adapt to major challenges and perform the following functions: (1) facilitate everyday change and adaptation; (2) facilitate development and implementation of commonly perceived goals in other words “achieve and sustain cooperative equilibria” (Wallander 2000, p. 707); (3) ensure the stability and balanced reaction to major systemic changes; (4) facilitate identity and normative change; (5) define and redefine the institution as well as regional security order. Diego Ruiz Palmer observes that NATO political and institutional practices of “strategy-making” serve three major purposes: “deter potential adversaries; assure individual Allies;

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and not least, in pursuing the first two objectives, ensure a shared awareness and understanding of the strategic intent” (Palmer 2019a, p. 7). The impact of the systemic factors was important for the existence of NATO throughout the period of the Cold War; it was perceived that NATO is a product of Cold War system, and its adaptation in a post-Cold War period was a popular topic for both neo-realists and neo-liberalists. It is commonly perceived that “alliances should not outlive the threats they were created to address” (Wallander 2000, p. 705), however, numerous studies (for instance, Hemmer and Katzenstein 2002; Weber 1992; Smith 2000; Ruggie 1992; Wallander 2000) argue that NATO as the transatlantic Alliance is a complex and multifaceted entity, not an ordinary single purpose military Alliance. It was created as a community with shared values, principles and goals; it developed institutional structures that proved to be adaptable to regional as well as globally driven challenges and transformations. “The Alliance’s common military infrastructure program enabled members’ militaries to work together as complex and multipurpose organizations, not merely as military instrument to blunt a Soviet attack” (Wallander 2000, p. 714) it developed feasible security infrastructure with “enhanced capability for military operations in a wide variety of contingencies” (Wallander 2000, p. 714). How NATO as an institution adapted and continues to adapt and respond to the changing world order? In a Post-Cold War environment NATO has retained the same principles and institutional structures. It adapted to changing security environment by developing a broad partnership programs, launching the Open Door Policy, staring carrying out out-of-area operations, adjusting its military planning and missions, adapting its defence and deterrence posture, and redefining the security environment and thereat perception. NATO adaptation right after the Cold War is marked by several milestones. Firstly, the very end of the Cold War a search for a new selfperception, which was defined in the NATO Strategic Concept of 1991. The second milestone in 1999 is related to the first enlargement wave after the dissolution of the USSR. The third strategic milestone came few years later, right after the September 11, 2001 with broadening of the security agenda and changed threat perception, launched first Article 5 mission and securitized terrorism as a threat for the Alliance. The fourth milestone marks NATO’s reaction to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and its adaptation to the new post-2014 strategic environment (Table 1). The NATO Strategic Concept agreed by the Allies in 1991 addresses changes in the security environment right after the collapse of the Cold War system and focuses on traditional security threats to the Alliance. The Strategic Concept also referred to possible regional ethnical conflicts that might affect regional stability, so it possibly envisaged the upcoming Balkan conflicts. This concept redefined the strategic environment as well as the NATO’s mission and major functions, and underscored that defence and deterrence remained a core task of NATO. However, it was perceived that “a monolithic, massive and potentially immediate threat which was the principal concern of the Alliance in its first forty years has disappeared” (The NATO Strategic Concept, 1991). The changes of the NATO strategic doctrine in a post-Cold War environment coupled with relatively successful arms control negotiations and agreements, including, the INF (The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces

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Table 1 Milestones of NATO Adaptation Milestones of Change and Adaptation

Institutional Structures

Doctrinal Adaptation

Defence and Deterrence

1991, the End of Focus on civilian Cold War institutional structures. Strategic commands scaled down from 3 to 2, the subordinate commands reduced from 65 to 20

1991 NATO Strategic Concept. 1994, development of Partnership projects. 1997, establishment of NATO-Russia Council

Transformation of The major threat NATO armed disappeared forces form territorial to expeditionary defence. Out of area operations (1992, first NATO operation in Bosnia)

1999, Partnerships, Open Door Policy

Development of a mobile command structure

1999 NATO Strategic Concept. Focus on NATO enlargement and partnerships

Continued defence and deterrence adjustment to post-Cold War period. 1999 operation in Kosovo

Military and non-military risks. Regional crises at the periphery of the Alliance

2001, Post-September 11 Adaptation

2010 established Emerging Security Challenges division. 2011 Command structure reform cutting headquarters from 13,000 to around 8,000

2010 NATO Strategic Concept. Defined 3 core tasks of NATO: collective defence, cooperative security, crisis management

2001 launched the first Article 5 Operation in Mediterranean

Broadening of security agenda to include terrorism, piracy, proliferation of wmd, cyber-attacks, energy security issues

2014, Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine

Adjustment of command structure: VJTF, NRF, NFIU, EFP, stand-up military combat headquarters in Poland and Romania. Focus on efficiency of decision-making, hybrid security and cyber domains

2014 reassurance measures for the Eastern European Allies. Focus on collective defence. 2019 China defined opportunity and challenge

Defence and deterrence adaptation. Focus on territorial defence, readiness, responsiveness, and reinforcement. Cyber and outer space— new operational domains

Hybrid, cyber, outer space, etc.

Source Table created by author

Threat Perception

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Treaty, 1987), the CFE (Treaty on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, 1989), START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 1991) and START II (1993) that led to the significant conventional and nuclear forces reductions. “The United States reduced its forward presence in Europe from 325,000 to 100,000 troops, and the European members cut their forces by more than 500,000 troops” (Wallander 2000, p. 718). The US nuclear forces deployed in Europe were reduced “from approximately 4000 in 1990 to only few hundred gravity-dropped bombs” (Larsen 2019, p. 178). As observed by William Alberque, “it appeared at the time that NATO countries and all the countries in the post-Soviet space were headed toward more predictable, stable regional security environment” (Alberque 2016, p. 3). Besides, in 1994 the Alliance agreed upon the Partnership for Peace Framework, which defined an engagement and partnership with countries of the Euro-Atlantic area. The Alliance “developed Partnership for Peace primarily in order to consolidate democratic progress in post-Cold War Europe” (Yost 2014, p. 10). Later, the cooperative framework was expanded beyond Euro-Atlantic area, to include Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. In 1997, NATO and Russia signed NATO-Russia Founding Act, establishing a formal format for cooperation the NATO-Russia Council. The Strategic Concept of 1999 was directly related to the Post-Cold War enlargement of NATO, the goal of Alliance based on normative principles and “common values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the Alliance has striven since its inception to secure a just and lasting peaceful order in Europe” (The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, 1999). The 1999 NATO Strategic Concept provides a balanced approach to traditional security threats and introduces the new types of security risks and challenges. It distinguishes transnational security threats but they are closely tied to traditional challenges and possible traditional military outcomes. NATO Strategic Concept of 1999 emphasized, that “the security of the Alliance remains subject to a wide variety of military and non-military risks which are multi-directional and often difficult to predict” (The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, 1999). These risks include “uncertainty and instability in and around the Euro-Atlantic area and the possibility of regional crises at the periphery of the Alliance, which could evolve rapidly” (The Alliance’s Strategic Concept, 1999). The end of the Cold War as well as terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 marked the major shifts in Alliance security threat perception. The security agenda of NATO is getting shaped by the shift of regional security threats, that depend on external processes as collapse of Cold War systems, negative side of globalization process, resulted in intensification of transnational security threats—international terrorism (terrorist attacks to the United States, 11 September 2001, as a reaction NATO invoked Article 5), piracy, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks, and energy security issues, etc., the very perception of security threats and security environment has been significantly altered. The latest NATO Strategic Concept was issued in 2010, defines NATO as “a unique community of values committed to the principles of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law” (The NATO’s Strategic Concept, 2010). The Alliance retains and reiterates the normative principles, underscores importance of the transatlantic link and reiterates the political nature of the Alliance “NATO remains

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the unique and essential transatlantic forum for consultations on all matters that affect the territorial integrity, political independence and security of its members” (The NATO’s Strategic Concept, 2010). The Strategic Concept defines strategic environment as relatively peaceful stating that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace and the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low” (The NATO’s Strategic Concept, 2010), and defines its deterrence as “based on an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional capabilities, remains a core element of our overall strategy” (The NATO’s Strategic Concept, 2010). This strategic concept evidently attempted to keep the balance between traditional collective security and traditional defence issues and new/transnational security threats. Maintaining the reservation on traditional security threats, the Security Concept emphasized that The conventional threat cannot be ignored. Many regions and countries around the world are witnessing the acquisition of substantial, modern military capabilities with consequences for international stability and Euro-Atlantic security that are difficult to predict. This includes the proliferation of ballistic missiles, which poses a real and growing threat to the Euro-Atlantic area. (The NATO’s Strategic Concept, 2010)

According to Yost, “the constraints internal to the Alliance include the normal structural dysfunctions of a large inter-governmental organisation, shortcomings in collective and national efforts, and disagreements among Allies about priorities among NATO’s core tasks” (Yost 2014, p. 2). The 2010 NSC defined the essential core tasks of the Alliance, those include, collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security. T. Tardy notices that NATO became a significant pillar “in the new liberal order, finding a new mission for itself in the crisis management agenda, which almost replaced the (at the time) less central core task of collective defence” (Tardy 2019, p. 1). However, Yost (2014, p. 2) observes that three core tasks of NATO overlap in many ways, and cooperative security is usually inseparable with crisis management. The Alliance and its partners are carrying out the joint military exercises; this engagement links collective defence, cooperative security and crisis management that evidently intertwined and overlapping. In 2010, NATO has established an Emerging Security Challenges Division to get focused on a broad list of new, transnational security threats and challenges. This decision marked the advancement of the institutionalization of new security challenges to include terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks, maritime piracy, energy and environmental security. This decision might be evaluated as an institutionalized shift in security perception and movement towards a broader understanding of regional, asymmetric threats and challenges. Shea (2013) observes that it was a challenging step broadening NATO threat perspective and institutionalizing new security threats, but he is optimistic about NATO willingness to develop a hub of cooperation’s while retaining its core mission of defence and deterrence.

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6 Post-2014 the Collective Defence and Deterrence In the post-Cold War period, NATO started adapting its military structures and transforming its armed forces form territorial to expeditionary defence, that could be fitted for out-of-area operations and easily deployable military units. NATO also readjusted its integrated command structure, scaled down a number of NATO major commands from three to two, the subordinate commands were readjusted and reduced from sixty-five to twenty (Wallander 2000, p. 718), the numbers of forces and readiness levels have been significantly reduced. In 1999, “NATO land, sea and air forces reduced by 30-40 percent with 35-60 percent retaining a thirty-day readiness level” (Wallander 2000, p. 718). NATO gradually changed its perception of territorial defence, “including forward defence conducted by large and heavy formations, to out-of-area crisis response, underpinned by expeditionary capability based around more deployable but also smaller and lighter units” (Paulauskas 2016). Moreover, the 2011 reform of NATO command structure was “aimed at cutting headquarters at all levels and reducing the assigned personnel from 13,000 to around 8000, was driven by a tighter budgetary environment and based on assumption that the Alliance’s level of ambition would stay the same” (Zapfe and Vanaga 2019, p. 47). In principle, it was perceived that with “non-Article 5 and out-of-area missions, NATO command structure needs to be as mobile as its forces” (Wallander 2000, p. 719). The 2010 NATO Strategic Concept defined that Allies need “robust, mobile and deployable conventional forces to carry out both our Article 5 responsibilities and the Alliance expeditionary operations”. The equipment, operation planning was adapted accordingly. NATO forces were prepared either for stationary defence or for expeditionary deployment to distant hot spots. At that time there was no aim to adjust Allied capabilities, in terms of troop numbers, equipment or posture, to deter and defend Allied territory from a massive land invasion. The strategic environment was significantly altered with 2014 Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military aggression in Eastern Ukraine; it was a wake-up call for the Alliance. Against the backdrop of an ongoing Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine, NATO started to reconsider its defence and deterrence and adapt institutionally, politically and militarily to changed strategic realities. The 2014 Wales Summit agreed upon the reassurance measures for the Eastern European Allies and the adjustment of defence and deterrence posture and command structure. In 2014 NATO SACEUR, Sir Adrian Bradshaw, said to the Associated Press that “Russian meddling in Ukraine has shown that NATO needs a more responsive quick-reaction force that could be deployed in the event Moscow made aggressive military threats against a NATO nation” (Burns 2014, Associated Press). The British Prime Minister David Cameron on 2 August 2014 said that “NATO must overhaul itself to be able to better defend its members from a potential Russian military threat” (Osborn and William 2014, Reuters). In the 2014 Annual Report NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg marked changes in security environment and acknowledged challenges from South and from East to the international order:

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Our security environment has changed fundamentally. To the South, violent extremism is at our borders, spreading turmoil across Iraq and Syria and bringing terror to our streets. To the East, Russia has used military force to annex Crimea, destabilize eastern Ukraine, and intimidate its neighbors. These threats challenge the international order we have built since the fall of the Berlin Wall – an order that embodies our democratic values and is vital for our way of life.

NATO started development of the assurance measures for Eastern European Allies and adaptation of its defence and deterrence gradually based on decisions taken in the Wales (2014), Warsaw (2016), Brussels (2017, 2018) and London (2019) Summits. Those measures can be also called a comprehensive package of “NATO’s post-2014 strategic adaptation” (Palmer 2019a, p. 7). The adaptation is aimed at “reinforcing the Alliance’s presence and military activity in Eastern Europe and introducing substantial long-term changes to NATO’s force posture, enabling it to respond more quickly to future challenges and threats” (Fryc 2016, p. 49). The Wales Summit Declaration highlighted readiness and reinforcement, it agreed upon the reassurance package, including Readiness Action Plan, development of Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), NATO Response Forces (NRF), Framework Nations concept, and NATO Force Integration Units (NFIUs), and the stand-up of military combat headquarters in Poland and Romania. “The size of the enhanced NATO Response Force (NRF) has been tripled to become a joint force of some 40,000 troops and readiness has been significantly increased, in particular through the multinational Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) of some 5000 troops, which is on permanent standby, ready to move within a few days” (Brauss 2018). The VJTF is aimed at rapid assured deployment of “a mobile tripwire on Alliance borders” (Zapfe and Vanaga 2019, p. 41). The 2014 Wales Summit Declaration also highlighted the significance of readiness and reinforcement: Readiness of elements of the VJTF will be tested through short-notice exercises. We will also establish an appropriate command and control presence and some in-place force enablers on the territories of eastern Allies at all times, with contributions from Allies on a rotational basis, focusing on planning and exercising collective defence scenarios.

In the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO decided: “to establish an enhanced forward presence in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to unambiguously demonstrate, as part of our overall posture, Allies’ solidarity, determination, and ability to act by triggering an immediate Allied response to any aggression” (NATO Warsaw Summit Declaration, 2016). Following this decision, in mid-2017, NATO has established multinational battalion-size battle groups of Enhanced Forward Presence in the Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, led by Framework nations, respectively, Germany, UK, Canada and the United States. The battle groups in total around 4000 troops are composed of multinational forces, that are deployed on rotational basis. The Multinational Corps Northeast headquarters located in Szczecin, Poland is in charge of collective defence in the region (Brauss 2018). The official definition of EFP mission and contribution to Alliance’s adaptation highlights the significance of NATO collective defence, refer with the connection with the rapid reinforcement by the follow-on forces as well as the transatlantic link:

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These decisions are the biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defence in a generation. Combined with the forces and capabilities required for rapid reinforcement by follow-on forces, these measures will enhance the security of all Allies and ensure protection of Alliance territory, populations, airspace and sea lines of communication, including across the Atlantic, against threats from wherever they arise. (NATO SHAPE)

In 2014, Allies also made a defence spending pledge, committing themselves to increase their military expenditures with the aim of 2% of their GDP within a decade (by 2024), they agreed “to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets, to make the most effective use of our funds and to further a more balanced sharing of costs and responsibilities” (The Wales Summit Declaration, 2014). Defence pledge is one of the internal rifts among the Allies as the European Allies defence share is significantly lower if compared with the United States, and the aggregated numbers of defence spending for many years were in decline. Based on national plans submitted by Allies in 2019, this figure is expected to rise to USD 400 billion by the end of 2024 (NATO: Ready for the Future. Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019, p. 13). In 2015, only 3 Allied states were meeting the 2% defence spending guideline, by contrast, in 2019 this number increased to 9 NATO states (Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries 2013–2019).The London declaration again reiterated the defence pledge aimed at “investing in new capabilities, and contributing more forces to missions and operations” (NATO London Declaration, 2019), most likely the issue of defence expenditures will remain high on NATO agenda for the time being. NATO’s adaptation focused on the responsiveness, readiness and reinforcement— namely improvement of NATO ability to respond to major challenges, including military ones, readiness to have capabilities and preparedness to respond, and assurance measures for Eastern Allies and ability for timely reinforcement. Procedures for accelerated decision making enable the Alliance to take a decision on the deployment of rapid response forces within 8–12 h (Brauss 2018). In addition to that at the Brussels Summit Allies have launched the NATO Readiness Initiative, aimed at improving NATO’s readiness and responsiveness, under this initiative Allies by 2020 “will offer an additional 30 major naval combatants, 30 heavy or medium manoeuvre battalions, and 30 kinetic air squadrons, with enabling forces, at 30 days’ readiness or less” (NATO Brussels Summit Declaration, 2018). NATO is also working on implementation of a “balanced and robust set of political and military measures in response to Russia’s development and fielding of the SSC-8 and other missile systems, including by adapting our air and missile defence posture, conventional force posture, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and by ensuring the continued effectiveness of NATO’s nuclear deterrence” (NATO: Ready for the Future Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019, p. 5). The NATO mission-specific mobile command structure, as approved in 1994, seemed to be inappropriate in a post-2014 strategic environment; NATO started adapting its commands to bring back the principle of territorial defence. A major focus of adaptation is Allied preparedness and reaction time, also the preparation of followon forces to provide reinforcement if needed. As Brauss (2018) a former NATO Assistant Secretary General observes that: “Ensuring the credibility and effectiveness of NATO’s posture requires a holistic view at the breadth and depth of the Alliance’s

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entire territory and its periphery and adjacent waters; any potential adversary’s risk calculus at any time needs to come to the conclusion that NATO is capable of dealing with all relevant contingencies and deny the adversary any options, so that even a limited aggression or attempt at coercion in one region”. In 2019, NATO adopted a new Military Strategy to reflect the process of adaptation and “to ensure NATO defence and deterrence posture remains credible and effective” (NATO: Ready for the Future Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019). The self-evaluation of the adaptation published by NATO in 2019 highlights that “over the past few years, NATO has implemented the biggest adaptation and reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War” (NATO: Ready for the Future Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019). NATO defence and deterrence adaptation “represented a logical and evolutionary structural refocus from an expeditionary mindset to a defensive one concentrated on NATO’s re-born peer competitor to the East” (Smith 2019, p. 42). NATO as a regional security order attempted to create a new environment and find a new mission for itself, by adjusting its strategy and command structure; however, the external political dynamics have brought it back to its initial mission of territorial defence. NATO developed its new identity after the end of Cold War, focusing on stability in Euro-Atlantic area and conflict preventions as well as out-of-area operations. Thierry Tardy stresses that “a sense of community enabled NATO to survive the end of the Cold War and the geo-strategic turbulence that followed” (Tardy 2019, p. 1). This not only produced interoperability and joint military doctrine, but also a security community of countries and people sharing more than just a common threat (Tardy 2019, p. 1).

7 NATO at 70: The Age of New Technologies, Complexity and Change At 70, NATO defines itself as a values-based security community with certain norms and principles, significance of the transatlantic bond as well as internal cohesion, unity and solidarity. The Alliance perceives itself as a provider of security to “our territory and our one billion citizens, our freedom, and the values we share, including democracy, individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law” (NATO London Declaration, 2019). The threat perception remains multifaceted with mixed origins and sources of instability. It includes traditional military threats as well as new threats of asymmetric origin, requiring innovative and complex reactions. The Alliance is challenged by multiple and complex threats and challenges together with technological challenges, that can fundamentally affect the defence and deterrence as well as, cyber security, new technologies, threats of hybrid nature that might have negative impact on the resilience of Allies populations. The NATO London Summit declaration highlights that “state and non-state actors challenge the rules-based international order” (NATO London Declaration, 2019).

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This order is perceived as more complex, multifaceted and fragmented than ever before it is more challenging to provide and retain coherent and cohesive reaction. Together with terrorism, cyber and hybrid threats, Russia’s aggressive military actions are defined as a constituting “threat to Euro-Atlantic security” (NATO London Declaration, 2019). In 2019, NATO defined China’s growing influence and international policies as challenge and opportunity; China was mentioned in NATO Summit Declaration for the first time in a post-Cold War period. “Together with the threats from Russia NATO’s Mediterranean Allies face challenges stemming from the South of Europe, moreover, the challenges from North Korea and possibly over the longer period China would be particularly worrisome for Alliance” (Larsen 2019, p. 178). New threats are being included into NATO security agenda. In 2016, to respond to technological challenges, NATO intensified development of cyber defence, announced “a cyber space as an independent operational domain of potential confrontation allowing better coordination of initiatives and the establishment of common terminology, doctrine, and principles, more importantly, it enabled the integration of cyber activities into joint effects, encompassing all domains of warfare” (Mercier 2018, p. 6). In 2019, the Alliance highlighted anti-satellite challenges and announced outer space as its new operational domain. Analysing this decision, Frank A. Rose stresses upon the following possible directions: understanding of anti-satellite threat, place of outer space in defence planning and operations process, coordination with the United States and possible engagement with the EU (Rose 2020). Evidently, NATO operations become more complex and multifaceted, besides the traditional land, sea, air, occur two additional cyber and outer space operational domains. Most likely in the future NATO will have to retain its focus on disruptive technologies, cyber defence issues, outer space, and anti-satelite challenges. Jessica Cox a director of NATO nuclear policy directorate defines contemporary strategic environment by highlighting Russia’s nuclear capabilities including the deployment of nuclear weapons in European region and large numbers of nonstrategic nuclear weapons that Russia possess, its development of new nuclear systems including hypersonic ones, and growing nuclear capabilities of nuclear weapon states such as Russia and China (Cox 2020, pp. 1–4), she stresses that “Russia and China are once again investing heavily to create more sophisticated and diverse nuclear arsenals” (Cox 2020, p. 1). NATO perceives the need to adapt its defence posture “by ensuring the continued effectiveness of NATO’s nuclear deterrence” (NATO: Ready for the Future Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019, p. 5). NATO’s nuclear weapons are intended to reassure “Allies of the strong trans-Atlantic commitment to collective security, demonstrated by NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements in which European and North American Allies share the risks and responsibilities of nuclear deterrence” (Cox 2020, p. 4). As D. Palmer (2019b) observes, the principles of conflict have significantly changed, they change the deterrence, for instance delivery systems have greater geographic reach, accuracy and operational impact, strategic stability is affected by advances in technology and communication. At a time when discussions on weaponization of outer space make modern warfare seem like a sci-fi thriller, nuclear weapons can seem to be outdated, nuclear-armed nations such as Russia and China

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are once again investing heavily to create more sophisticated and diverse nuclear arsenals (Palmer 2019b, p. 155). The new thinking about the deterrence is focused on regional aspects, proliferation, new disruptive technologies and complex security environments. Obviously, it is more complicated to rationally plan in advance and find the right toolkit meeting the future challenges and strategic environments. Contemporary challenges call for closer cooperation and coordination between NATO and the EU; this cooperation most likely will be intensified in the future. As a reaction to strategic environment, regional developments and hybrid challenges, the NATO-EU cooperation has been intensified, to include common efforts in fight against hybrid security challenges, cyber security issues, to improve military mobility, expand cooperation in domains of crisis management, the EU has been defined as a unique and essential partner of NATO (Brussels Summit Declaration, 2018). Areas of cooperation include coordination of military requirements, customs and border-crossing legislation, regulations and procedures, and transport infrastructure (NATO: Ready for the Future Adapting the Alliance 2018–2019). Evidently, the major challenges have a hybrid nature; it is hard to differentiate whether they are internal or external, so the Alliance attempts to adapt to the existing situation militarily and institutionally. The security threats of hybrid nature are “related to mixed/ambiguous attribution and unpredictable origins of the threat, which complicates and slows down the securitization process” (Karpaviˇci¯ut˙e 2017, p. 21), the threats of hybrid nature are squeezing the reaction time needed to prepare and provide an adequate and timely response. NATO adapts politically and institutionally, reiterates resilience of Allied societies and adaptation of capabilities. The “capabilities such as cyber, logistics, targeting, space, and strategic communications – tools for modern and hybrid warfare – were added to many of NATO headquarters” (Smith 2019, p. 42). The existing security dynamics reveal that NATO is remaining a collective defence and deterrence Alliance and at the same time attempting to retain a holistic approach vis-à-vis transnational security threats, especially cyber, hybrid, terrorism, outer space, energy security issues and technological developments. While re-focusing on the main task of collective defence and deterrence, NATO faces numerous challenges related to traditional security threats, NATO continues developing the approach towards the new asymmetrical security threats including of hybrid nature. M. Mälksoo observes that “countering hybrid warfare emerges as continuing relevance and resilience test for the Alliance” (Mälksoo 2018, p. 386). Wæver by addressing the world order change observes that Europe is retaining its privileged place in a world order “with two permanent seats in the UN Security Council, and as the closest Ally of the leading power, the United States, both in general political sense and through the world’s strongest and deepest military Alliance, NATO” (Wæver 2018, p. 76). The Alliance is constantly adapting to the external challenges and readjusting the regional order to sustain the security and stability at the regional level also contributes to the multifaceted, multiplex world order stability. At 70, NATO attempts to prove as being sustainable and adaptable security community, that could retain its unity and act as a stabilizing regional order by

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facing major transformations and turbulences. NATO’s attempts to adapt to the contemporary multiplex world order with numerous hardly predictable asymmetrical challenges as well as re-emerging traditional security threats indicate the normative side of NATO’s identity. Despite the changing security environment, the Alliance retains the consistency of normative foundations that are continuously reiterated in all Summit declarations. The adaptation process, as well as focus on new security challenges and development of new operational domains, namely cyber and outer space refer to Allied attempts to “restore normative order” (Mälksoo 2018, p. 381) and contribute to regional as well as international stability.

8 Conclusions The liberal world order remains the backbone of the international system, but due to its complexity and multiplicity of interests, institutions and actors, the stabilization of the order is shared between global and regional level. The interactions of global/systemic and regional levels are becoming significant for sustaining the global order and for stabilizing regional imbalances. The transatlantic region and its adaptation to the ongoing transformations indicate its adaptation to numerous and diverse threats and challenges stemming from multiple sources. NATO as a regional security order attempted to adapt to a new post-Cold War environment and find a new mission for itself, by adjusting its strategy and command structure; however, the external political dynamics have brought it back to its core mission of territorial defence. As a regional security order, NATO developed its new identity after the end of Cold War, focusing on stability in Euro-Atlantic area and conflict preventions as well as out-of-area operations. The Alliance is gradually adapting to the existing traditional and non-traditional security challenges and retaining a dual track approach vis-à-vis Russia (deterrence, reassurance and dialogue), as well as attempting to sustain a balanced and proportionate approach in all strategic directions. Obviously, the major changes in Alliance’s threat perception are driven externally including terrorist attacks of 2001, as well as the end of Cold War and the Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine. The holistic approach towards new security threats and challenges, including technology (cyber, artificial intelligence, hybrid challenges), and more prudence on traditional security threats most likely will be needed in the future. “NATO’s durability is closely connected to its ability to change, and to the collective resolve of its members to preserve the Alliance as an international security hub” (Mercier 2018, p. 3). The Alliance is constantly adapting to the external challenges and readjusting the regional order to sustain the security and stability at the regional level also contributes to the multifaceted, multiplex world order stability.

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Ieva Karpaviˇciut˙ ¯ e is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas Magnus University and an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania. She carried out research and published on regional security, regional security orders, regional power dynamics, NATO, transnational security threats, defence and deterrence, arms control, and Lithuania’s foreign policy.

Transition and Middle Power: Turkey’s Strategic Autonomy on the Atlantic Area Border with the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa Alberto Gasparetto Abstract Turkey’s quest for strategic autonomy combined with mounting nationalism at home have been prominent factors in re-orienting the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa. Today, Ankara has a more autonomous foreign policy compared to the past and it has emerged as a middle power who has a say in all the most important matters at the regional level and in the main next-door contexts it is involved in. It has the ability to challenge existing partnerships and alliances, recur to an aggressive foreign policy and even the use of force when soft power strategies do not pay off. Finally, it has the ability to either mediate among competing interests and wrest concessions, by raising the stakes not only among rival regional actors but also between great powers, reaping the benefits of their rivalry. Keywords Turkey · Middle East · Middle powers · Strategic autonomy · Erdogan · Mediterranean · Horn of Africa · Syria · Libya · Qatar · Somalia · Iran · Russia · US · UE · Natural gas · Economic exclusive zone

1 Introduction In the literature on middle powers, much attention has been paid to such “established” middle powers as the BRICS countries, while the concept of “emerging” middle powers is thoroughly underexplored. By considering the latter more revisionist than the former in terms of pursuing economic, military, cultural, religious and political goals to challenge the existing order, this chapter focuses on how Turkey has exploited some of the main recent political crises in the surrounding area to its own benefit. In the context of a rearrangement of regional dynamics upon the Arab revolts in 2011, I argue that Turkey has attempted to take advantage of a number of inflamed regional and extra-regional crises in order to re-emerge as a regional hegemon after the downfall of Ahmet Davutoglu’s “zero problems foreign policy”. In doing so, it A. Gasparetto (B) Department of Political Science, University of Padua, Padua, Italy © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_8

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proved to have the attributes of a “middle power”. By specifically addressing the contested category of “middle power”, this chapter aims at testing it empirically in the different areas where Turkey is expanding its influence in defiance of the existing framework of alliances. First of all, the ongoing war in Syria, then the Qatar crisis vis-a-vis the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, and its dominant player, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), third its increasing involvement in African affairs (Libya and the Horn of Africa) and finally its meddling in the Libyan conundrum and the Mediterranean. As a typical emerging middle power and by exploiting its quality of being considered as a “torn country”, in all these contexts Turkey has also increased tensions with old strategic allies—the US, NATO and EU countries—by approaching more and more its historical rival—Russia—noticeably after 2016. Erdogan’s Turkey has been in search of strategic autonomy for almost the past two decades. In the most recent years, it has even been a destabilizing force in regional politics, by defying traditional alliances to pursue its national goals independently. A preliminary research question is the following one: How has Turkey shaped its regional agenda to counterbalance the other regional powers (especially Iran and KSA) in the Middle East? Secondly, how has it managed its membership in NATO and its multiple mutual understandings with Russia in multiple scenarios? Then, how has Turkey tried to both serve as a role model based on its soft power and build new partnerships? Finally and more generally, what can one expect in the near future from such a regional restructuring resulting from such a liquid and penetrated regional system? This chapter relies on extensive reference to the recent landmark literature about middle powers in the Middle East (for instance: Ehteshami 2014; Fawcett 2017; Önis and Kutlay 2017). I will show whether and how such an analytical category can be used to understand Turkey’s role and power status in regional and international relations.

2 Preliminary Conceptual Definitions According to the main academic debates, a univocal definition of “middle power” still does not exist. Notwithstanding, hundreds of academic works have pointed to the increasing role of a bunch of emerging economies under the acronym of “BRICS” (which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in international relations for at least the past two decades. The present time is characterized by a high dose of fluidity in international politics as a consequence of a relative decline in US hegemony and likewise a power redistribution as of the 9/11 events, the economic crisis in 2008 and most of all the Arab revolts in 2011. Besides, great attention has lately been paid even to “near-BRICS” of “MIKTA” (an acronym for Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey and Australia), designating “a group of countries which are consolidated democracies or hybrid regimes with a significant potential for further democratisation” (Önis and Kutlay 2017, 165). However, even if “confusion reigns

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supreme” (Robertson 2017), a basic definition grounded on some broadly accepted common features is required. In general, a primary step is about locating middle powers in the middle of a spectrum ranging from “small states” to “great powers” or “superpowers”. Intuitively, such a devised definition must depend on certain factors or functions any middle power is supposed to possess to differentiate it from greater and smaller powers. Of course, the main theoretical issue at stake is to identify specific criteria to establish a definition. As a matter of fact, most studies on middle powers result from idiosyncratic debates within specific countries claiming to belong to such a category. For instance, traditional studies on either Canada or Australia or more recent ones on South Africa, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea focus on such “self-proclaimed” countries (Valigi 2017, 9). Difficulties, contradictions and misunderstandings can emerge as a consequence. According to Jeffrey Robertson (2017, 366), “with the growth of the number of states claiming to be middle powers, policymakers and commentators are pushing for their inclusion in a separate category. They are not middle powers, but ‘significant powers’, ‘entrepreneurial powers’, ‘constructive powers’ or even ‘top-20 nations’”. To overcome a widespread conceptual vagueness, scholars have then tried to make a list of some generally common criteria (Holbraad 1971; Soward 1963; Cooper et al. 1993; Carr 2014). Most of them have pointed to location between great-power systems, their size between great and small powers, their position with reference to ideological or political systems. Material capacity is usually considered one of the lowest common denominators alongside behaviour, identity and role. Material capacity is a function of a state’s size in terms of geography and population, and it is also related to economic and military capabilities. Normally, the greater the state is in terms of population, the greater is its economic performance expected to be. At the same time, the greater the economic performance, the more sizeable is its possession of technology and the greater its results in military capabilities (see Mearsheimer 2001). However, whether consulting quantitative analysis or qualitative approaches or indeed mixed perspectives, what is missing is still a taxonomy of “middle powers” (Valigi 2017, 24–33). Any middle power may not even satisfy all the above-listed conditions, but just some of them. This helps explain Iran’s exceptionalism, for instance. In spite of generally being considered as a great regional power, it is not taken into account when elaborating the definition of “middle power”. As mentioned below, Iran makes up for its long-standing negative economic performances by projecting its influence abroad and acting as a “role model” for some other regional countries and local actors. Anoush Ehteshami (2014) contends that none of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) states, neither Turkey nor Iran, satisfy all the established criteria for “middle power”, but they just meet some of them. In particular—Ehteshami’s argument goes on—even if MENA countries are often bestowed middle power status, they must be considered just as nothing more than “great regional powers”. According to him, the concept of “middle power” “has the dimensions of global power politics at its heart”.

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Jeffrey Robertson criticizes the most authoritative academic definitions, by stating that they suffer excessively from domestic political discourse. Hence, he advances a more pragmatic definition, based on the geographical and historical context within which a supposed middle power operates: “in the context of global governance in the 2010s, a middle power ought to be considered as a state with an interest in and capacity (material resources, diplomatic influence, creativity, etc.) to work proactively in concert with similar states to contribute to the development and strengthening on institutions for the governance of the global commons” (Robertson 2017, 366–367). Another intriguing definition of “emerging middle power” is given by Ziya Öni¸s and Mustafa Kutlay (2017), particularly tailored for the Turkish case. By recognizing that world politics has been experiencing a relative decline in US hegemony as well as a high degree of fluidity corresponding to the emergence of regionalism (Buzan and Wæver 2003), they state that emerging middle powers “play a productive role in a rapidly shifting global environment” under four critical conditions: (a) emerging as “role models” for other countries, both regionally and globally, depending on their democratic and economic performance and using soft power; (b) an effective capability of building coalitions under a set of normative values or principles; (c) a balance between expectations and effective capabilities, by recognizing its structural limits as a middle power; (d) the ability of giving their contribution to specific “niche areas” through the use of diplomacy. Detlef Nolte (2010) has also taken part to this scholarly debate, by stressing the need to make a “clear-cut distinction between regional powers and middle powers”. Indeed, he admits that clear-cut distinctions are not always possible. Indeed he is rather concerned with the definition of “new regional power” as opposed to the “traditional” idea of “middle power”. By encompassing some of the crucial attributes of the latter, the former concept is focused on the ability “to play a stabilising and leading role in its region”; “its willingness, and of course also its capacity or ability to assume the role of regional leader, stabiliser and, if not peacekeeper, or at least peacemaker”; “should be acceptable to its neighbours as a leader responsible for regional security. A broader, or extra-regional acceptance is perhaps a necessary condition, but not sufficient, even if supported and promoted by big powers” (Nolte 2010, 890). All this considered, and for the purposes of this paper, I argue that a state can be included within the category of a “middle power” if it satisfies at least two conditions: (a) it possesses such material capabilities (in terms of territory extension, population, economic resources, military power) that it can exert enough influence not only on the most important issues at the regional level of reference, but also in other contexts of international politics which it is involved in; (b) either by recurring to its soft power or even to the threat of use of force, it is successful in either mediating among competing interests and points of view and/or in wresting concessions. This happens not only vis-à-vis rival regional actors but also towards great powers. As a result of these two attributes, it has a say in all the most important matters on the regional level and those it is involved in on the global one; as a consequence of its actions and policies, it is recognized as an indispensable actor to deal with.

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In turn, I argue that a “regional power” can be defined as a state aiming at leadership or hegemony in its own region, by exercising a high degree of influence through both material and ideational capabilities. On the one hand, material capabilities have to do with economic performances, possession of technology and energy resources, military power and influence on energetic routes; on the other hand, ideational capabilities refer to non-material resources, meaning a wise use of soft power tools such as diplomacy, persuasion, a wise use of religious and cultural kinship, acting as a role model and so on. In a nutshell, ideational resources refer to a state’s legitimate authority, its credibility, its legitimacy. What there must also be is an explicit claim for leadership which is either directly made by a country’s political leaders or it is assumed by its behaviour and posture towards regional dynamics, its “active engagement within regional and international organisations, its pivotal role in crisis management and mediation activities, its identification and engagement with its region” (Parlar Dal 2016, 1428). To put it with Daniel Flemes (2007), if a state enjoys enough legitimacy, such a claim for regional leadership must receive broad acceptance.

3 The Case of Turkey as a “Torn Country” Emel Parlar Dal (2016) is among those scholars who have extensively tried to conceptualize the case of Turkey as a middle power. Like many others, she has noted that most definitions are confused due to the vagueness of any existing framework and the lack of empirical research in regional power studies. She argues that the challenge to provide a definition has to do with the fluidity of the concept of “regional power” and its often overlapping characteristics with that of “middle power”. For example, she classifies such countries as Brazil, India and South Africa (so-called IBSA) alongside with Turkey as “emerging regional powers”, detaching them from such more traditional middle powers as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. Odd but conceptually interesting at the same time. Once again, the need to look for common criteria is felt. By relying on extensive literature on the issue, Parlar Dal (2016, 1427) argues that “regional powers may be defined as powerful states in their respective regions without looking at whether they pursue relations of enmity or amity”. Erdogan’s Turkey has been in search of strategic autonomy (Karda¸s 2011) for almost the past two decades. The thesis of this chapter is that in the most recent years, Turkey has tried to reaffirm itself as a middle power in the international system. In doing so, it has even become a destabilizing force in regional politics, by defying traditional alliances to pursue its national goals more vigorously and wrest concessions in the different contexts it is involved in. In spite of appearances, Turkey’s foreign policy has been rational and has complied with classical realist imperatives. In his most famous essay, Samuel P. Huntington characterized Turkey as a typical “torn country” (1996), meaning a nation with a single predominant culture that places it in one civilization while its leaders seek to shift it to another civilization.

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Turkey’s characterization as a “torn country” is particularly enlightening in order to interpret its aggressive foreign policy and its apparent questioning of such traditional alliances as NATO and prospective EU membership. As early as the end of the Cold War (1989–1991) several opportunities unfolded in front of Turkey to establish new relations with peoples and countries formerly precluded due to the Bipolar Era’s tight rules (Hale 2000; Robins 2003). Those people and countries were located in the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia and Middle East. It means in most of the territories once belonging to the Ottoman Empire, with which Turkey has historically enjoyed concrete linguistic, cultural and religious kinships. Huntington used this category to develop a paradigm of the possible unfolding scenarios of the twenty-first century. He argued that the future of international relations would be dominated by civilizational conflicts—especially between the West from one side and Islam and China from the other. Turkey places itself along the fault lines of competing and warring civilizations. However, this is not the right place to pay attention to Turkey’s idiosyncratic features. The focus here will not be on Turkey’s changing identity but rather on how a more fluid international system led to a shift in its geopolitical interests and foreign policy goals. By borrowing Huntington’s insight on Turkey as a “torn country”, this analysis is centred on Turkey’s regional surroundings in order to argue that after the 2011 Arab Revolts, the country experienced a new leeway in the Middle East to reaffirm its influence by acting as a destabilizing middle power. Another interesting aspect of the concept of “torn country” has to do with Turkey’s riddance of its reputation to be considered nothing more than a bridge between contiguous continents for decades. When the Cold War came to an end, Turkey started to breed a new self-consciousness around the idea of having the potential to play a new proactive role and pursue its interests beyond the environmental constraints of the bipolar global system. No longer a “brigde”, which supinely accepts external dynamics, but rather a “pivot”, which acts to directly govern international phenomena, emerges as a broker in regional disputes, shapes and even changes international politics around its policymakers’ perceptions and world vision. It is no doubt that Ankara’s foreign and Middle Eastern policy during almost the first decade of AK Parti’s ruling was successful in achieving its openly stated goal: to establish a “zero-problems foreign policy” and aim at performing a “strategic depth” (Davutoglu 2010). That strategy was grounded in the idea that Turkey would rise as a power-broker in the Middle East and fix the most explosive regional issues by exerting its soft power. From the Israeli-Palestinian question to the Iranian nuclear issue, from the Israel-Syria reconciliation to the war on Jihadist terror and so on, Turkey would emerge as a benign power and be accepted as the most reliable regional power by not only its neighbours but also the external great powers. That strategy was also aimed at gaining European countries’ acquiescence and being accepted as a member of the EU. To reach that goal, Turkey was asked to perform some important economic and political reforms at home and so the AK Parti leadership gained momentum (Robins 2007). It is in this light that Turkey has sought to better pursue its own “Neo-Ottoman” design consisting in penetrating the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and

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other regions. Those regions were traditionally neglected by the old Kemalist elite compared to its long-standing Western-oriented penchant. This was first based on Turkey’s strategic alliance with NATO and then efforts to gain the EU membership. And so it remained almost undisputable at least till the AK Parti came to power in 2002. First the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident with Israel and secondly the 2011 Arab uprisings made this layout crumble, together with the fact that already in 2007 the EU membership process was given a halt by some European countries. Syria and the ongoing crisis in particular turned out to be a litmus test for Turkey’s foreign policy.

4 Turkey and Its Divergent Goals with Western Powers in Syria Upon the 2011 Arab Revolts, Turkey started to significantly pull away from its traditional Western penchant and gave up to the Davutoglu doctrine itself. Ankara merely realized that its interests did not completely converge with those of the US and the EU anymore. As mentioned above, this issue is rooted in the wake of the Soviet Union collapse and the end of the Cold War. In the absence of a common “enemy”, Turkey and the US visibly began to have different threat perceptions. While Washington prioritized its struggle against Saddam’s Iraq and the Islamist regime in Iran, Ankara was more prone to act as a status-quo power. While Western powers focused on Islamic jihadism, notably after 9/11, Turkey’s existential threat is represented by Kurdish separatism, especially after the bloody Nineties. Hence, Ankara’s new paradigm in foreign affairs has been to tactically look for alternative partners who have the same view about threats and share similar strategic goals besides traditional alliances, especially after 2011. If under the Davutoglu doctrine Ankara looked for a multidimensional foreign policy, continued strains with the EU and the US do nothing but push Turkey to search for economic and strategic opportunities in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, not to mention big global players such as Russia, India and China. This new approach came out of a more powerful search for strategic autonomy (Kardas 2011) and was driven by an old new ideology renamed Turkish Gaullism (Taspinar 2011)—which represents a common denominator for both the Kemalist faction and the AK Parti. Between 2010 and 2011, Ankara’s foreign policy has indeed experimented a shift from Davutoglu’s Strategic depth to a tactic and opportunistic Erdoganism. Arguably, the turning point in the Syrian crisis is represented by the 2015 Russian decision to enter the war. With the outburst of Arab revolts, Turkey’s perception was that its importance was steadily waning in the eyes of Western powers. 2015 is also significant for Turkey’s domestic politics as a year when Erdogan’s resolve to carry on the peace process with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) suddenly halted. The internal economic crisis produced a political stalemate at the June elections. Erdogan bet on his own figure to find a way out of the impasse. He called for a second

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snap election in November 2015 and built up his electoral campaign by politically exploiting two distinct factors: the new terror wave launched by the Islamic state following the 20 July terror attack in Suruc, which opened up a blood stained season in Turkey; and his legacy in bringing Turkey to play an influential role in international markets and the global economy, by creating the conditions for many slices of Turkish society to share the benefits of entering modernity. He leveraged on being the only man able to lead the country to recovery from economic hardships and to manage the terror threat, whether Sunni jihadist or Kurdish (Khalid 2016; Sayari 2016). A major matter of contention with the US was Turkey’s outline of the safe zone along the border with Syria. While Turkey was in favour of including a no-fly zone, the US rejected it to avoid fuelling a dispute with Syria. Besides, while Ankara had conceived the safe zone as free from ISIS, the Syrian Government and the YPG (People’s Protection Units), Washington pressed for making it cleared only of the Islamic state (Solaker, 11 August 2015). Ankara suffered from Washington’s decision to stand by the Kurdish resistance to counter the Islamic state’s gradual seizing control of territory in Syria. A watershed event was the successful Kurdish resistance during the Siege of Kobane between September 2014 and March 2015, when the YPG, which is the mainly-Kurdish militia in Syria and today’s primary component of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), was able to stave off jihadist forces from the Canton. The US’ gradual support for the YPG against the more ominous threat represented by the Islamic state further persuaded Turkey not to be an indispensable partner within the Western alliance any longer. In Turkey’s perception, this was exacerbated by a paradox: the US, who listed the PKK as a terrorist organization, were supporting the YPG, a group who they confirmed has links with the PKK (TRT World 2016). Hence, the new looming alignment between the US and the YPG further strained relations between the two old strategic partners. This in turn spurred Turkey to tactically bargain a solution with Russia, the West’s old rival. The opportunity for the rapprochement with Moscow came out in August 2016, after a nine-month period of freezing of bilateral relations following the downing of a Russian jet in the Syrian skies on 24 November 2015. Henceforth, Turkey made a virtue of necessity with Russia in Syria and found an accommodation which became institutionalized under the Astana framework as of early 2017, along with another of Turkey’s regional rivals, Iran. The need to settle its disputes with Tehran and Moscow about what groups to support in the Syrian quagmire spurred Ankara to find a tricky compromise with them. Turkish AK Parti’s policymakers knew that they were moving along a delicate equilibrium between not displeasing Western powers too much and marching arm in arm with two of the US’ most threatening subjects globally. All this, far beyond being a matter of identity in Huntington’s terms, can be best described as a conflict of interests and a result of a reconfiguration of regional geopolitics. In fact, despite merely representing the synthesis of diplomatic efforts between competing regional powers, the new trilateral nexus (Flanagan 2013) emerged against the interests and goals of the US and European countries. However, from the Turkish perspective, this cannot be treated as the establishment of brand-new strategic alliances against old ones. But it must still be considered as a tactical agreement on

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a local issue. A temporary entente born out of a marriage of convenience regarding a geopolitically specific and delimited affair. The bargaining chip of this trade-off was about keeping in power Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad. Iran and Russia regarded him as irremovable. For Iran, he represented and still represents a crucial link in the chain of its Shiite corridor which runs from Tehran to Beirut and passes through Baghdad and, indeed, Damascus. The construction of what was dubbed a “Shiite crescent” was vital in Iran’s perspective to increase its appeal to Islamist groups in the region and so to counter KSA’s expansionism, Turkey’s emerging power and Israel’s military threat. But the survival of Assad’s regime was likewise important to Russia because it granted Moscow an indirect access to the Mediterranean Sea. Although Erdogan was at loggerheads with Assad, Turkey’s leading question was the Kurdish resistance organized by the PKK/YPG along the border between the two countries. It was against this backdrop that Erdogan staged three military interventions in Syria within three years. First, it was the operation Euphrates Shield, started on 24 August 2016 and aimed at countering the Islamic state in the Aleppo governorate and at moving the YPG back to the east of the river to rule out the completion of a Kurdish-dominated area in Northern Syria named Rojava. The second one, Operation Olive Branch, was carried out in January 2018 in the Afrin District still against the Kurdish militias. The third one, Operation Peace Spring, began on 9 October 2019 because of Turkey’s dissatisfaction with the US regarding the first buffer zone outlined between them and the SDF just two months earlier. The end of this third military operation forced Turkey to sketch out a second buffer zone with Russia which came into force under the Sochi Agreement on October 22 (The Defense Post 2019). The demilitarized zone (DMZ) would be around 30 kilometres deep, stretching from the Euphrates River to Tall Abyad and from Ras al-Ayn to the Iraq-Syria border, but excluding the town of Qamishli. It would be jointly patrolled by Russian and Turkish troops. All YPG forces were ordered to withdraw from the buffer zone entirely and demilitarized. The main goal of this section is to show some crucial factors that have pushed Turkish AK Parti’s establishment to reorient the country’s foreign policy along different pillars compared to the recent past—before the Arab revolts. Even if Turkey remains a staunch NATO ally, it has been forced to come to terms with Russia and accept both its overarching role in Syria and the presence of Iran—a country with which Turkey shares a long-standing tradition of economic cooperation coexisting with geopolitical rivalry (Gasparetto 2018).

5 Turkey’s Rising Axis with Qatar Turkey’s fostering of relations with Qatar has gone hand in hand with a context made up of increasing tensions with the US, worsening relations with Damascus, diverging goals with Russia and Iran in Syria, the establishment of two threatening subjects along its borders—Kurdish Syrian Rojava and the Islamic state. As Cafiero

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and Wagner (2016) argued, it was due to “a public recognition that both states face common enemies, sponsor the same non-state actors, have similar reactions to numerous regional crises, and ultimately share several long-term objectives”. This became evident not only during the crisis within the GCC, but also in the search for new spheres of influence in the Horn of Africa. Qatar has been pursuing a more independent foreign policy beyond the GCC’s framework, irking the political leaderships of the KSA, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who withdrew their ambassadors in March 2014 as a retaliation. Those countries along with Egypt started to blame Qatar of conducting a revisionist foreign policy based on increasingly good ties with Turkey, advocacy of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt especially through its international TV channel al-Jazeera and, above all, cordial relations with Iran. The crisis between Qatar and the GCC countries erupted in Summer 2017. Qatar was put under air, land and naval blockade by those Arab states. Ankara did not waste any time to come to Doha’s rescue, by delivering food aid, fruit and vegetables. As Aras and Yorulmazlar (2018, 6) stated, Turkey exploited this crisis by moving “to speed up the establishment of its military base in Qatar. […] Turkish soldiers are currently based in Tariq bin Ziyad military base in Doha with the ultimate aim of expanding this base to hold 5000 troops in the future. The two countries had their first joint exercise on August 1, 2017 with the participation of over 250 Turkish soldiers and 30 armored vehicles”. It must be noted that both Qatar and Turkey represent two of the US’ most important allies in the region, the latter especially in balancing against Iran and Russia. In spite of rising tensions with Ankara, due to its apparent disengagement from the West, the US still considers Turkey as a crucial player in the region, as a result of its strategic geographical position, its direct presence along the Syrian border, its centrality in the refugees deal with the EU, its relevance regarding energy transportation corridors, its role against jihadist groups. Indeed, scholarly debates tend to include the country either within the category of “middle power” or at least an “emerging” one yet. The rising fluidity in the system of regional alliances, especially after the outburst of Arab revolts, pushed Ankara to wholeheartedly act in tandem with Qatar even involving political and military issues. Thus happened what Cannon and Donelli (2020) singled out as the birth of a third pole between the Sunni bloc led by the KSA and the Shia one headed by Iran and whose rivalry has spilled over the boundaries of the Middle East to affect political and military dynamics in both North Africa and the Horn. Indeed, Ankara has increasingly felt threatened due to the evolving Syrian crisis and has faced risks coming from both Riyadh and Tehran, let alone Moscow. Doha’s and Ankara’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, especially as of the 2013 military coup which removed Mohamed Morsi’s electorally legitimized government, contributed to exacerbate Qatar’s relations with the KSA and the UAE and to further isolate Turkey. By making a comparison between Morsi’s overthrow and the 2013 Gezi Park’s protests, Ankara tried to sell the view that a global conspiracy against democratically elected governments was at work. At the same time, Qatar rushed to the aid of the Muslim Brotherhood by providing sizeable financial support and by launching a public campaign against Egypt’s military elite

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through its own popular TV channel al-Jazeera (Baskan 2016). Furthermore, Turkey and Qatar approached the Libyan crisis by taking the same side, since they have offered financial and military support to the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Fayez al-Sarraj against General Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), and strongly backed by the UAE. Twelve months later, in return for Turkey’s food and economic relief, Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani pledged to invest $15 bn in Turkey and channelled them into Turkish financial markets and banks (Mogielnicki, 30 August 2018). Such a move came at a right time when Turkey was suffering from economic hardship, with high unemployment, plummeting Turkish Lira, loss of domestic purchasing power and Erdogan’s faltering domestic legitimacy. The widening of economic relations involves the energy sector too, as in September 2017 state-run company Qatargas signed an agreement with Turkey’s Botas to supply 1,5 million tonnes of natural gas each year for three years (Reuters, 20 September 2017). Furthermore, while TurkishQatari bilateral trade amounted to $1,5 bn in 2017, the two partners expected to soon reach $5 bn (Shoeb, 21 February 2018). However, in spite of reciprocal proposals in boosting economic ties, those figures need to be contextualized with other regional actors having relations with each of them. First of all, Turkey’s bilateral trade with the KSA and the UAE combined amounted to $14 bn in 2016, nearly ten times more compared to $1,5 bn with Qatar. Second, while the total amount of Saudi and UAE companies operating in Turkey are 1481, the Qatari firms are just 117. The size of EU investment in Turkey accounts for more than 2/3 of the total—$150 bn, which is exactly ten times the volume Qatar pledged to Turkey (Mogielnicki 2018). As regards Turkey’s dependence on energy imports, it is worth noting that the increasing imports of oil and gas from Qatar is entirely negligible compared to other such partners as Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Iraq, the KSA (mfa.gov.tr). Conversely, GCC countries still represent the biggest slice of Qatar’s economic relations. For instance, although Turkey is the fourth country to import Qatar’s non-oil products (6,1%), Oman is by far its first and foremost partner, with 44% of the total volume (QatarChamber, 22 October 2017). All these arguments considered, it is worth noting that in spite of converging military and political goals in MENA, Turkey-Qatar’s burgeoning economic relations still cannot represent a valid element to counterbalance the deep ties each of them have with the GCC (Oxford Gulf & Arabian Peninsula Studies Forum, 2017). As such, their bilateral relations face a remarkable limit in the regional landscape. The ongoing crisis in Libya confirms to what extent their respective relations vis-à-vis the UAE could potentially be upsetting. Likewise, it suggests how carefully they are called to play in order to avoid further and irreversible collision with the UAE and, by extension, the KSA. However, both the Arab revolts and the crisis between Qatar and the GCC show how Ankara’s evolving foreign policy has been opportunistic and increasingly tactical. Although tensions with the US and the EU (whose analysis goes well beyond the aim of the present chapter) still remain at work, Ankara is seen as a crucial actor that demands to be taken into account in several regional issues. The case of the Qatar-GCC crisis in particular shows how Turkey’s moves make it

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a central and decisive player which craves for being granted the status of “middle regional power”.

6 Ankara’s Growing Involvement in African Affairs Beyond the global relevance of Arab revolts, 2011 represented a turning point in Ankara’s foreign policy even regarding its approach to African affairs. Until the AK Parti rose to power in late 2002, Africa was considered a traditionally neglected area. As seen in the above sections, the new foreign policy course inspired by the Davutoglu doctrine led Ankara to exploit cultural and religious bonds with territories formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire. Africa was no exception too. The first decade (2002–2011) Ankara’s Africa policy was grounded in a soft power strategy largely concerned with humanitarian diplomacy and economic development (Donelli 2018, 63; Ozkan 2018, 43). However, Erdogan’s official visit to the Somalian capital Mogadishu in 2011—the first such of a non-African leader in the past two decades— to respond to a devastating famine marked Turkey’s evolving awareness of Africa including political and security aspects. A case in point of Ankara’s new approach to Africa was the reopening of Turkey’s Embassy in Mogadishu and the activation of the Istanbul-Khartoum-Mogadishu air route (Donelli 2018, 61). To date Turkey has opened at least 40 embassies all around Africa alongside four consulates, while Turkish Airlines has increased flights up to 46 African destinations in 28 countries (Ozkan 2018, 44). Ankara’s growing presence in Africa has been possible through the activities of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (Turk Isbirligi ve Koordinasyon Ajansi—TIKA), the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (better known as Diyanet) which all work as operative branches of Turkey’s government. These agencies contributed to increase Ankara’s trade with the continent, to open several schools and universities in many African countries, to build infrastructures such as airports and roads, to provide healthcare and humanitarian assistance through the establishment of refugee camps. Even though Turkey’s economic role in Africa has increased over the years, its weight should not be overestimated when compared to Turkey’s trade volume with the rest of the world (Ozkan 2018, 46) and with the other GCC countries’ engagement in the Horn of Africa (Donelli 2018). Somalia has arguably represented the cornerstone of Turkey’s growing presence in that region. Besides humanitarian aid, development policies and the search for new outlets for Turkish products, Ankara realized that taking political responsibility in facing security-related questions was a key issue. Hence, in 2017 it opened a military base in the country, the largest such overseas, to train Somali soldiers (Reuters, 30 September 2017). Furthermore, according to Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Turkey attaches particular importance to ensuring peace and stability in Africa and contributes to the United Nations missions deployed in the continent. Turkey is currently providing personnel and contributing

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financially to seven of the existing nine peacekeeping missions in Africa”. Beginning in 2014, Ankara has also scheduled a number of training programmes and has been hosting thousands of African trainees [mfa.gov.tr]. In short, Turkey has gradually emerged as a security provider in the area. However, as Donelli (2018, 63) noted “even though this development is officially for strengthening Somali security in order to face the attacks by the radical Islamic group al-Shaabab, from a wider perspective, it is in line with a deep process of securitization of the whole Horn of Africa”, meaning that during the past decade a bunch of Middle Eastern countries have exported into the whole region their harsh political and military competition. Turkey’s engagement with Somalia followed a novel model compared to either Western or Middle Eastern states. Firstly, the state only gives an indirect support through the coordination of activities under TIKA. For the rest, and “in cooperation with the official diplomacy (ministries and state institutions)” non-state actors, such as NGOs, charities, businesses, religious groups, have played a major role in building relations with the society. Furthermore, Turkish NGOs operate directly from the Somali territory, contrary to other external states which operate from outside. This has given Ankara a powerful leverage, opening the possibility of “fostering interpersonal dialogue and engagement with local actors” […] “since it helps to foster the inclusiveness of all local parties and increase mutual trust” (Donelli 2018, 73). “Turkey really has won the hearts and minds of Somali people”, as Information Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman told Reuters (Reuters, 30 September 2017). In other words, the Turkish model of delivering money and aid directly to recipients in the Somali government ingratiated Turkey with local power brokers and provided Ankara with access and power in Somalia, as well as other local countries. Secondly, and contrary to the past, Ankara has overwhelmingly operated autonomously from traditional western allies. Turkey’s involvement with Africa has shifted from multilateralism, which still matched Davutoglu’s doctrine, to bilateralism, according to a new search for strategic autonomy. Operating besides traditional multilateral organizations such as the UN has in turn contributed to Turkey’s legitimacy among the local public (Donelli 2018). Thirdly, and once again contrary to Western powers, Turkey’s engagement with Horn of Africa countries has been possible thanks to the lack of a colonial past. This in turn was beneficial to foster its image of a benign external power not interested in looting but committed to development, by refusing to adopt the classical Western principle of conditionality. As Sucuo˘glu and Sazak argued (2016, 73), “through adopting a non-conditionality approach, Turkey demonstrates that it is able to engage with recipient governments in a spirit of solidarity while not sacrificing effectiveness and efficiency”. This strategy seems to have paid off. Indeed, in many African countries, their governments have ordered to close down schools and hospitals linked to Fethullah Gulen, who has been charged with being the mastermind behind the July 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey. Erdogan has also recently declared that Somalia has invited Turkey to explore for oil in its waters (Al-Jazeera, 21 January 2020). Upon the downfall of the main tenets of Davutoglu’s doctrine and as a consequence of the necessity to reorient its foreign policy course after the Arab revolts, Ankara’s engagement with

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the Horn of Africa can be seen as the symptom of its relentless search for international recognition as an emerging power with a global projection.

7 Turkey’s Increasing Entanglement in Libya and the Dispute in the EastMed Turkey’s external prowess faces an evident flaw. As the country’s economy strongly relies on energy imports, the diversification of energy supplies has become an urgent necessity through the years. In 2016, Russia was the first exporter of natural gas to Turkey (53% of the total pie), followed by Iran (17%) and others (Rzayeva 2018). Hence, diversifying energy suppliers, finding alternative partners and new gas fields to exploit in order to mitigate risks associated with energy dependency have always been primary concerns for Turkish policymakers. Under Erdogan’s leadership, this has not only represented a chief foreign policy goal but is also the natural corollary of the already-mentioned search for strategic autonomy. This was particularly true upon the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 shootdown near the Syria–Turkey border on 24 November 2015, an episode after which Moscow curbed ties with Ankara for some months, contributing to cripple Turkey’s economy. Turkey craves to strengthen its role in the Mediterranean further by emerging as an energy hub for the transportation of hydrocarbons from the Levant to Europe. All this considered, Ankara’s appetite for energy lies at the ground of its recent palpable moves in the Mediterranean and in favour of Libyan UN-backed GNA. By exploiting Italy’s lack of assertiveness in the wake of the initiative for Libya held in Palermo in November 2018, Turkey gradually injected itself into the Libyan theatre during 2019. Haftar in turn launched his military initiative in April 2019 to regain Tripolitania province and annex it to Eastern Libya and has increasingly received support from the EAU, Russia and Egypt. While in fact Haftar forces control most of Libya’s oil fields and facilities in fact, oil revenues are controlled by the central bank in Tripoli (Reuters, 28 November 2019). Erdogan’s gamble was to link Turkey’s fate in the Mediterranean to political and military developments in Libya. He did so by overtly taking side with Serraj to counter Haftar’s advance and any other external actors, including Italy—which was once admittedly a sponsor of the UN-backed GNA. In late November 2019, Erdogan clinched a crucial partnership with Serraj, focused on delimiting reciprocal maritime boundaries (Exclusive Economic Zones, EEZ) and expanding security and military cooperation. Turkey is also interested in securing future contracts for arms, hydrocarbon exploitation and infrastructures which would be lost if Haftar’s offensive had success. Such moves have irritated the main other coastal countries—namely Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, let alone Italy and France—who nurture the same energy ambitions in that portion of the Mediterranean Sea. They felt they have been cut off from that prospective energy corridor. Upon encompassing Jordan and Palestine too, this grouping had formalized the creation of the Eastern Mediterranean

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Gas Forum (EMGF) in Cairo in January 2019, from which Turkey was noticeably excluded. The Greece-Cyprus-Israel energy entente was blessed by the EU who has a great interest in the EastMed project, which would transport Israeli gas from the rich Leviathan field to European, especially South-Eastern, markets. By creating their own alternative route to the TAP-TANAP pipeline, their aim is to bypass Turkey to bring gas to Europe and thus limit its hegemonic ambitions on the Mediterranean (Reuters, 2 January 2020). By relying on the Ankara-Tripoli Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Turkey in turn hopes to hinder if not halt the EastMed. Ankara perceives energy supplies in the Mediterranean as a matter of national sovereignty and security, considering that “between 2003 and 2010, a series of bilateral Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) delimitation agreements were signed between the republic of Cyprus (RoC), Egypt and Israel” (Demiryol 2018, 444). Turkey’s perceptions have been chiefly guided by shifts in Mediterranean alliances with the emergence of the already-mentioned partnership between Israel, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt and their exclusionary approach. The nationalist penchant in Turkish politics has mirrored in the announcement of the Blue Homeland Doctrine (Mavi Vatan), whose main goal is “to achieve Turkey’s control and consolidation in the three seas surrounding it, to impart her regional and international influence and allow it energy sources, which will support its economic and demographic growth without dependence in other countries”. This doctrine feeds on the non-recognition of the post-World War I arrangements over the Aegean. Indeed, its view is not limited to the three seas—the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black sea—but extends to the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Arabian Sea, including the Persian Gulf (Pinko, 31 March 2020). Under the MoU and upon the approval of the Turkish parliament, Erdogan’s government started to deliver tanks, troops, navy vessels, drones and some 10,000 Syrian fighters to Serraj’s rescue as of the beginning of 2020. Even though President Donald Trump told Mr Erdogan in a phone call that “foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya” (BBC, 6 January 2020), the US have nothing but indirectly endorsed a Turkish role in Libya (TRT, 8 June 2020) to counterbalance Russian influence. Needless to say, the US’ retreat from many theatres in the past years gave a sort of green light to other players such as Turkey to fill the void. After months of bloody conflict, in May 2020 Turkey-GNA joint forces were able to drive LNA forces out from strategic places such as the al-Watiya airport and the naval port of Misurata which, as a matter of fact, will be treated by Ankara as a bargaining chip for its successful commitment. Haftar’s credibility has emerged weakened from this situation, and his retreat from attacking the West has altered the military calculus in Western Libya (Al-Jazeera, 18 May 2020). There have also been tensions recently between Haftar and Egyptian President Al-Sisi, one of his main sponsors. From the “middle power” perspective, Turkey’s efforts have paid off as two strategic assets in Libyan territory will pass under its tutelage and will, respectively, become a military airbase and a naval port (Almasdarnews, 13 June 2020). Turkey has also gained Serraj’s support for Ankara’s energy ambitions. Under the MoU, Turkey has also recently applied for licences to start drilling off the coast of Libya

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(ECFR, May 2020). Turkey could use this success to raise the stakes in front of the international community and its main adversaries above all by appealing to the legitimacy of the deal clinched with the GNA. Erdogan could also opportunistically claim to have been the only international player to have supported the only UN-legitimated government of Libya, namely the GNA. It becomes evident that in approaching Libya and the EastMed, Turkey preferred confrontation to cooperation. Some scholars have shown that “natural resources raise the opportunity costs of conflict” by generating the conditions for cooperation and interdependence; however, Mediterranean natural gas has indeed “created new area of inter-state tensions” (Demiryol 2018, 443), increasing Ankara’s threat perceptions in this geopolitical square. As a paper from the ECFR highlighted, “Turkey has responded in its traditional fashion – with escalation: namely, by increasing its military presence in Libya and concluding the maritime agreement with the Tripoli-based government. In parallel, Turkey has deployed naval expeditions to explore gas fields claimed by the Republic of Cyprus and to chase away research vessels operating under Republic of Cyprus licences” (ECFR, May 2020).

8 Concluding Remarks: Turkey as a Middle Power and the Way Ahead Regional ties are becoming increasingly fluid. Though the Middle East has a structural resilience to having a regional leader or hegemon, Turkey could only benefit from this situation by stealing the final spoils of the regional competition. It can thus trying to give a clear response to the crisis of its foreign policy resulting from the 2011 Arab Revolts. Ankara had to manage to square the circle with Moscow both in Syria and Lybia. As a consequence of the US diminishing role from most of global contexts, Turkey has seemingly found local win-win agreements with Russia. Ankara is also playing its game of brinkmanship with Washington regarding the heated issue of the Russian S-400 transfer. Nonetheless, even if several misunderstandings with its old strategic partner still remain, the US, the EU and NATO cannot afford to deliver Turkey to Russia. Erdogan is aware of that. Erdogan is aware of Turkey’s strategic position at the turn of contiguous and intertwined geopolitical contexts. Erdogan is also aware that despite appearances, there are several overlapping interests with them, alongside increasing divergences. That is why he is trying to blackmail the US and the EU on many issues. Turkey’s foreign policy is not inspired by madness, but it rather comes out of a rational calculus between risks and opportunities. The new Turkish-Qatari military alliance, backing the Muslim Brotherhood in many cases to the GCC’s distaste, can be seen as a response to the gradual US retreat from the MENA. Even though the KSA called for the establishment of an Islamic military alliance in the Middle East, it excluded such Shia-dominated countries as Iran and Iraq (Reuters, 15 December 2015). However, rather than envisaging a grand Sunni alliance under Riyadh, it seems that Turkey and Qatar will continue to cooperate

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autonomously to counterbalance both the Arab-Sunni bloc under the Saudi umbrella and the Shia one led by Iran (Cannon and Donelli 2020). Turkey’s increasing presence in the Horn of Africa is the symptom of two related phenomena. First, the increasing engagement of Middle East states in the Horn of Africa—Turkey, Qatar, the KSA, the EAU, Egypt, Iran—entailed that high polarity and bitter rivalries between them have spilled into the region by overlapping and reproducing themselves locally (Cannon and Donelli 2020). Second, Turkey’s involvement in Somalia and neighbouring countries was dictated by its appetite for projecting abroad its power in search of new commercial outlets and markets with the purpose of supporting its economic growth. Of course, there can be a limit to this hyperactive and aggressive foreign policy approach in the long run. Specifically applied to the case of Turkey’s engagement if Africa, but suitable for all geopolitical contexts, it is represented by what has been described as the “danger of overstretch” (Donelli 2018). By borrowing a concept outlined by Paul Kennedy in relation to the US decline, it is a typical plague which hits global powers consisting in the exhaustion of material resources to sustain their over-engagement abroad. This is particularly true in the light of the recent bad macroeconomic performance, which not only have seen Turkey’s macroeconomic fundamentals faltering but have also threatened Erdogan’s internal consensus. After all, Erdogan has never made a mystery of Turkey’s global ambitions. By underlying Turkey’s strategic location between Europe and Asia, he has recently declared: “We want to make Turkey a production base at global level. In order to enable our industrialists to turn the wheels of production much faster, we put into service all mechanisms, including credits and incentives. We maintain and even extend our supportive policies, which will allow our farmers to get the worth of their labor and hard work. We aim to be among the most advanced countries in every area, from developing high-tech products to software and artificial intelligence, which are considered to be the future of the world” (Erdogan, 27 June 2020). As it was argued in fact, “Turkey’s actions in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, such as its latest actions in Syria, the Red Sea, and other places in the world, are a part of a complex and bigger plan, which was designed by Turkey to establish maritime control in its surrounding seas. The plan will allow Turkey’s economic and energetic independence and growth” (Pinko 31 March 2020). According to the above presented arguments, some hypotheses have been confirmed: (a) Turkey is used to acting more like a rationalist actor who responds to realist imperatives, rather than being an actor driven by ideology; (b) consequently, the search for strategic autonomy is its main foreign policy goal, as rising risks in global politics have prompted Turkey to pay greater attention to security and defence policy in the Middle East and outside; (c) especially after the 2011 Arab uprisings, the struggle against regional isolation entailed many different tactical responses grounded in a generally opportunistic layout in foreign policy rather than a strategic and comprehensive framework. This condition brought Turkey to look for any partners who, more or less overtly, would help it better satisfy its foreign policy goals, mirroring a shift from Davutoglu’s Strategic depth to Erdogan’s tactical manoeuvring and opportunism.

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Matching the case study here presented with notable reference literature about categorizing “middle power” and “emerging regional power”, it seems that Turkey represents an evident case of “emerging regional power”. Ankara put forward a design to emerge as the solely great regional player aspiring to be the natural leader in the Middle East. In doing so, it met countering moves by its main geopolitical rivals, notably Israel, the KSA and Iran. Notwithstanding such an ambitious political goal, Turkey seems to meet the minimal requirements to be defined as a “middle power”, according to the definition adopted in the first chapter section, even if in a destabilizing manner for the established global power framework. Not only does it possess material capabilities (in terms of territory extension, population, economic resources) to be able to exert enough influence on the most important issues at the regional level and the global one. It also has a say in all the most important matters at the regional level and in the main next-door contexts it is involved in, by challenging existing partnerships and alliances, recurring to an aggressive foreign policy and even the use of force when soft power strategies do not pay off. Finally, it has the ability to either mediate among competing interests and points of view and wrest concessions, by raising the stakes not only among rival regional actors but also between great powers, reaping the benefits of their rivalry. In other terms, Turkey is increasingly recognized by external great powers as a crucial actor who has the ability to solve regional disputes and is an essential player they need to rely on. Turkey is so crucial even in evident cases of diverging interests with Russia and Iran in the Syrian theatre, with the EU towards the refugee deal, with the US in relation to either the Kurdish issue and the air defence system involving the purchase of S-400 from Russia and other matters. Turkey has decisive ties with some of the most important players both in the Middle East and outside. Like it or not, they have to deal with Ankara in all the most important regional issues. Turkey can be included in the category of “middle power”, considering both its regional power status and its centrality for external actors who have an interest in regional dynamics and balance of power in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and even the Horn of Africa. Briefly, by playing the “torn country” card, Turkey stopped considering itself as a mere bridge between adjacent continents or regions. It nurtures the perception of being the pivot that is central to the most important regional issues, and for this very reason it pursues its strategic autonomy in search of any partner whose geopolitical goals meet its interests whether tactically, locally or selectively. To put it simply, Turkey has turned to what might be labelled as a “swinging power”.

References Al-Jazeera. (2020, January 21). Erdogan says Somalia invited Turkey to explore for oil offshore. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/erdogan-somalia-invited-turkey-explore-oiloffshore-200121063247049.html.

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Alberto Gasparetto PhD in Sociology and Political Science at the University of Turin, is Teaching Assistant at the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies, University of Padua, Italy. He does research and has published journal articles and book chapters on the foreign policy of Turkey and of Iran.

Undefended Borders in the Atlantic Area: The North American Security Community Miroslava Kulkova

Abstract The presidency of Donald Trump brought significant changes to the dynamics of the North American continent. Such evolution might raise questions if we are not witnessing the beginning of an order transition. Recent events also put to contrast the exceptionally peaceful relations between the United States and Canada that were arguably taken for granted before. North America is one of the rare examples of a security community—such a regional order, where there is a dependable expectation of peaceful resolution of any conflicts. The North American security community is in many ways unique. The final proof of it that the longest undefended border in the world between two countries did not stop to exist in times of the greatest threat to the United States on its territory, the 9/11 terrorist attack. The United States practised cooperative and collective security, and instead of closing the border, it initiated the Smart Border Agreement in 2001. Keywords Regional transition · Regional order · Peace · Security community · North America

1 Introduction The presidency of Donald Trump brought significant changes to the dynamics of the North American continent. Since he resumed office in 2016, he almost drove his allies on the brink of a trade war; pushed Canada and Mexico to renegotiate North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to American favour; and started to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the 2,000-mile southern border as he promised in his presidential campaign (Lakhani 2020). This new evolution in North America might raise questions if we are not witnessing the beginning of a new order transition. However, these recent events also put to contrast the exceptionally peaceful relations between the United States and Canada that were arguably taken for granted before. The US-Canada relationship was for M. Kulkova (B) Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_9

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the last decades considered one of the most peaceful in the world, where the use of force between the two powers was practically unthinkable. As President John F. Kennedy said on behalf of the Canada-US relationship in an address to the Parliament in Ottawa early in 1961: “Geography has made us neighbours, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies” (Cyr 2016). Canadians were frequently referred to as “delightful people” (Kieninger 2001); “friends” in John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1961 (Cyr 2016); or “two children of a common mother” (Klein 2019). The last one is an inscription on the Peace Arch at the United States and Canada border between the communities of Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia. However, this special relationship between Canadians and Americans is a relatively new phenomenon. These two nations waged war in 1812, and as late as the 1920s, there were military plans on both sides prepared for the situation of American or Canadian attack. As late as 1926, Col. James Brown was working on Canadian Defence Scheme No. 1 against the American invasion, and in the United States, the Army War College developed Plan “Red” for war with Britain and Canada (Eayrs 1958, 121; Shore 1998, 347). The top defence priority, premised on the American invasion, was not officially abandoned until 1931 in Canada (Holloway 2006, 43). This chapter is interested in the order transition on the North American continent that led to the transformation of the relationship between Canadians and Americans from conflictive to one of the most peaceful in the world. I use the concept of the security community, coined by Karl W. Deutsch (1957), which gained popularity in International Relations literature again in recent decades thanks to the work of Adler and Barnett (1998). North America is one of the rare examples of a security community—such a regional order, where there is a dependable expectation of peaceful resolution of any conflicts. States no longer consider war as an option in mutual relations. The North American security community is in many ways unique. Firstly, contrary to Western Europe where the power relations were relatively more balanced, the United States is an unchallenged hegemon in the region and a global superpower. Canada alone does not pose a threat to the United States. There is a clear asymmetry in the relations with the United States and its regional neighbours. Former Canadian Ambassador to the United States Allan Gotlieb argued in his O. D. Skelton Memorial Lecture on Canadian foreign policy, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Statute of Westminster that “over the past 60 years, Canada’s strategies on the international plane have largely been driven by our concerns about our relationship with the United States. In the drama of Canada’s foreign policy, the U.S. is always the principal actor; at the table where Canadians prepare the ingredients of their foreign policy, the U.S. is always the principal guest; when Canadians assemble to discuss their needs and destiny, the spectre of the U.S. is always there to dominate their thoughts” (Gotlieb 2019). Secondly, in contrast to very institutionalized relations in Western Europe, the relations between the United States and Canada are characterized more by reluctance towards institutionalization. Yet there is some unprecedented pooling of sovereignty present, and the United States and Canada clearly showed an exceptional amount of

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trust towards each other in certain moments in the past. There is a general agreement that the US-Canada relations indeed can be characterized as a security community, yet this case is not often examined in detail. After introducing the concept of the security community, I examine the change of relations between the United States and Canada since the creation of the Confederation of Canada in 1867 when Canada “gained complete domestic autonomy, control of national defence and trade policy, increasing internal cohesion, limited de facto control over its foreign policy, and a measure of recognition by the United States” (Shore 1998, 338). It is analytically meaningful to start the analysis in 1867 because although the imperial connection can never be fully ignored, Canada was an actor with its own foreign policy goals independent of Britain in 1867. I examine how wary rivals transformed into allies in two world wars and eventually created a security community. The final proof of the existence of the security community was cooperative and integrative approach towards the longest undefended border in the world in times of the greatest threat to the United States on its territory since Pearl Harbor—the 9/11 terrorist attack. The United States practised cooperative and collective security and proved to be a trusting partner, and instead of closing the border, it initiated the Smart Border Agreement in 2001.

2 Mexico—Member of the Security Community or Not? Before continuing with the chapter, short clarification must be made. Some authors, for example, Alejandro Chanona (2005) or Buzan and Waever (2003) consider Mexico a member of the security complex, together with the United States and Canada (Buzan and Waever 2003; Chanona 2005). However, this is quite problematic. I do not consider Mexico a part of the North American security community, despite it being the member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now renegotiated the Agreement between the United States, the United Mexican States, and Canada (USMCA). The main reason is that the relations between the United States and Mexico are qualitatively very different than relations with Canada. If we look beyond the empty shell of institutions, we can observe a very different level of trust—sine qua non of the security community. An excellent manifestation of different levels of trust is the border regimes. While the border between the United States and Canada is for decades considered the longest undefended border, border between Mexico and the United States is heavily guarded. Even when the United States initiated so-called smart borders after 9/11 out of fear of terrorism, the attitude towards Mexico was different than towards Canada. While in the US-Canada agreement the coordination and exchange of information played a major role, in the US-Mexico agreement the stress on the coordination and exchange of information is not that prominent (Chanona 2005, 10). While the United States only share with Mexico, they coordinate behaviour with Canada, even outwardly. Lastly, the current development regarding the wall with Mexico only confirms that

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the relationship with Canada is fundamentally different than the relationship with Mexico.

3 Security Community—A Theoretical Framework The concept of security community was originally introduced by Richard Van Wagenen according to Adler and Barnett (1998). However, it is Karl W. Deutsch, who is widely considered a father of the concept. He coined it first in his Political Community and the North Atlantic Area in 1954, and three years later in the seminal study, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience written together with his associates. According to Deutsch (1957), the security community is a special type of political community. Political communities are social groups with processes of political communication, some machinery for enforcement and some popular habits of compliance. What makes security communities a distinct type of political communities is the elimination of war and its expectations within their boundaries. “If the entire world were integrated as a security community, wars would be automatically eliminated” (Deutsch 1957, 2). Security community is thus a group of people that became integrated to the point that they attained a sense of community and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough, to assure for a long time dependable expectation of peaceful change. Security community can be either amalgamated or pluralistic—amalgamated if states formally merge to one unit and pluralistic if they retain formal and legal independence. Pluralistic security community is more common type. When scholars write about security community, they usually mean pluralistic security community, and it is also the type this chapter focuses on. Deutsch challenged dominant view of international politics as being characterized by anarchy and war and offered a revolutionary concept—community of states where war is eliminated. It is important to underline that although Deutsch et al. spoke about political communities being social groups, his treatment of security communities is mostly state-centric. As Ditrych (2014) points out, “they define pluralistic security communities primarily as clusters of political units – that is, states – rather than, for example, as networks of transnational (or societal) transactions to which agents would be ‘hooking up’, but without producing new durable social association as a consequence” (Ditrych 2014, 352). Thus, original Deutschian concept of security community described a group of states that via deep integration of their societies reached an extraordinary state, where they do not expect to use force against each other anymore and attain a sense of community, characterized by mutual sympathy and we-feeling. The concept was resurrected forty years later by Adler and Barnett (1998). In their seminal edited volume Security Communities, they offered new conceptualization of pluralistic security community and rich empirical application of the concept on world regions. While their conceptualization brought long-forgotten concept back into the centre of security studies, it also made this concept much more ambiguous.

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Adler and Barnett defined pluralistic security community as “a transnational region comprised of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change” (Adler and Barnett 1998, 30). They were even more state-centric than Deutsch, who focused mostly on the relations between peoples and generative power of transaction flows. Where they substantially diverted from Deutsch is further categorization of (pluralistic) security communities. Definition of Deutsch (1957) was parsimonious and quite exclusive. Adler and Barnett (1998) essentially saw three phases of development of security community—nascent, ascendant, and mature. Plus, mature security communities can exist in two types—loosely and tightly coupled. However, the definition of nascent security community is so loose and conditions so minimal that almost everything can be defined as nascent security community. It is enough that states consider how they might coordinate their relations in the future, the trust can be absent, and states perform sort of “search missions” to test future cooperation. Only in mature security community, war becomes improbable, and it is expected that states will practise self-restraint towards partners (Adler and Barnett 1998, 55). Also, only in tightly coupled security community, mutual aid becomes matter of habit, and states start to practise cooperative or collective security. This categorization is arguably the reason scholars now use the concept of the security community so loosely. It aims to be complex, yet it is so broad that it makes its own application analytically ambiguous. Nascent security community would not qualify for Deutschian security community at all. Perhaps only tightly coupled security community would fully qualify for a security community in Deutsch’s deep understanding of the concept. Adler and Barnett also did not consider geographic proximity as a necessary condition for the evolution of the security community. They suggested existence of an “imagined region” or a “cognitive region” (Adler and Barnett 1998, 33). Adler and Barnett argued that in today’s globalized world, actors can have shared identities even without frequent direct contact. This only adds to the general looseness of the conceptualization and makes the concept of security community ungraspable. If practically any cooperative effort aimed at diminishing the possibility of war can qualify as nascent security community and at the same time states do not even need to be contiguous, then almost any cooperation can be security community. Despite the criticism that Adler and Barnett’s take on security communities arguably made the concept more ungraspable; they can be credited for wide popularization of this concept in the IR and security studies. After their seminal work Security Communities, the concept quickly proliferated (Diamint 2010; Khoo 2004; Koschut 2014a, b, 2016; Lanteigne 2006; Ngoma 2003; Pouliot 2007; Wagnsson 2011). As Koschut noted, many scholars have made use of the concept and expanded its original scope in order to make it more applicable to the study of contemporary IR, broaden its empirical use, and position it as an alternative concept to other forms of security governance and peaceful orders, such as alliances, regimes, international organizations (IOs), and imperial orders (Koschut 2014b). In my work, I am using the original Deutschian understanding of the security community in its much narrower and more exclusive sense with more focus on people

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and interpersonal contact. Contra Adler and Barnett (1998), I also retain focus on the geographic contiguousness. When explaining conflict and cooperation, geographic proximity is by many authors considered crucial (Bremer 1992; Miller 2001; Volgy et al. 2017). There is persistent evidence from empirical models advanced by scholars studying conflict and cooperation that regions have a significant impact on numerous research questions of interest (Volgy et al. 2017). To paraphrase Bremer and Miller, from regions of contiguous states come both the hottest wars and the hottest peace. Thus, the analyses of regional groupings can generate the most interesting and policyrelevant knowledge. More so, because the geography and neighbours are something that states cannot choose or change. Security community thus refers to such an order, where there is a dependable expectation of peaceful resolution of any conflicts. Apart from self-restraint, common projects, and multilateral decision-making, collective and cooperative security emerges. Defence and security are closely connected to sovereignty and thus belong to the most sensitive issues. Cooperating in this area in combination with other practices shows high levels of trust. Moreover, cooperative security makes effective defence from another regional partner/s practically impossible. Therefore, it not only shows a high level of trust, but guarantees peaceful resolution of any future conflict. Many authors also mention collective identity or sense of “we-ness” as a sine qua non of the security community (Deutsch 1957; Wheeler 2012). However, I argue that we are not speaking about collective identity in the primary understanding of the term. If we look on Western Europe or North America—prime examples of security communities—we do not see “European” or “North American” identity spread among people (or the argument could be that this identity is only manifested when its members are in a different environment, so this identity becomes their unifying common denominator). Americans and Canadians are not really “North Americans”, even Canadians struggle to have common Canadian identity when the voices calling from independence from the francophone part have not completely disappeared throughout centuries. Yet perhaps this narrow, intuitive conception of common identity is not correct. As Adler and Barnett (1998) suggested, it is possible to speak about common identity to the extent that actors locate themselves within a shared or congruent storyline (Adler and Barnett 1998, 54). In that sense, it would be possible to speak about common identity in North America or Western Europe as long as there is enough positive intergroup contact and commonalities. The shared storyline, and thus shared identity, is, therefore a dynamic feature that evolves with time. Thus, the members of security community identify with each other on a certain level. They share common norms, values, and political institutions and are deeply interdependent. Decision-making in certain fields is integrated and spreads to other fields as well. The security community is understood here as the most cooperative and peaceful order, where the expectation of peaceful resolution of future conflicts is truly dependable. The IR literature is not quite clear on how security communities evolve. Adler and Barnett (1998) introduced a stage-wise thinking about transformation from different

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types of security communities, which pointed out in the direction of gradual, cumulative change. Although I do not think the concept of security community should be used on any regional order besides the one where there is dependable expectation of peaceful resolution of any conflicts, I agree with this idea of peaceful change having distinct stages. Very helpful is also Karl W. Deutsch’s concept of take-off point. Take-off point indicates a point/period, in which small, scattered movements change into larger and more coordinated ones with significant power behind them (Deutsch 1957, 83). It is not a new beginning or some radical break, but it is rather a marked quickening and deepening of integration. Before take-off, political integration may be a matter of theorists, for a few statesmen, after take-off, integration is a matter of broad political movements, of governments, or of major interest groups (Deutsch 1957, 84). Thus, in the evolution of the security community, there will be a phase before takeoff point and after the take-off point. Before take-off point, gradual rapprochement of former rivals, emergence of first cooperative efforts and increased socialization is observable. After take-off point, the integration will be markedly quickened and deepened until the trust reaches such a level that states start to practise collective security. The use of arms and preparing for war between the states will become unthinkable.

4 From Rivals to Allies—Before Take-off Point (1867–1940s) The American threat was well alive in the 1860s. After the end of the American Civil War, the Union had an army hardened by long, bloody struggle and plenty of grievances with the British Empire. In 1866, House of Representatives even passed legislation to enable Canada to “join” the Union (Holloway 2006, 40). Given existence of Manifest Destiny in nineteenth century—the idea that the United States is destined by God to dominate the entire North American continent—the Canadian fears were not irrational. Canadians took this threat seriously. When the political leaders of the British North American colonies met to discuss confederation, military considerations were high on agenda and the American threat was conducive to Canadian confederation (Holloway 2006, 40). Situation at the end of 60s and beginning of 70s between newly created Canadian confederation and the United States was strained also because of so-called Fenian raids. These were series of small-scale armed incursions by IrishAmerican Civil War veterans across the border from 1866 to 1871 in an attempt to trade Canada for Irish independence (Shain 1999, 53). The American government was purposely slow to disarm the Fenians, and they faded away only after the settlement of Alabama Claims in 1872. The Alabama Claims was not just an important diplomatic dispute between the United States and Great Britain, but also a crucial event from the point of international

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law. The peaceful resolution of these claims has set a precedent for solving international disputes through arbitration (Office of the Historian 2020). It was described as “the greatest nineteenth-century triumph of rational internationalism over shortsighted jingoism” (Bingham 2005, 1). Alabama Claims ended an era of wars between Britain and the United States. The contentious issue of the dispute between the United States and Britain was the inadequacy, with which Britain followed its neutrality laws regarding the American Civil War and actually aided the creation of a Confederate Navy. The United States demanded compensation from Britain for the damage wrought by the Southern-operated commerce raiders that were built in Britain. This dispute is partly connected to Canada and the fear they felt towards the United States because some Americans suggested that Britain should offer Canada to the United States in compensation (Office of the Historian 2020). Britain and the United States finally signed an agreement in May 1871, which became known as the Treaty of Washington. The agreement established an arbitration commission to evaluate the merit of US financial claims on Britain and addressed Anglo-American disputes over boundaries and fishing rights. The arbitration commission, which issued its decision in September 1872, eventually order Britain to pay the US $15.5 million in gold as compensation for the Alabama claims (Bingham 2005, 1; Office of the Historian 2020). In the early years of the 1870s, Britain withdrew its troops from Canada and redirected them towards the rising threat of Germany, leaving only small garrisons in Halifax and Esquimalt (Holloway 2006, 40). Contrary to what would be expected, Canada did not create a large standing army (spending on the militia, in fact, dropped well below planned $1 million) (Holloway 2006, 40). It is unclear, if this surprising event was a result of Canadian assurance of deterrence capabilities of the Royal Navy, difficult militia recruitment or lack of resources (Holloway 2006, 40). Most probably, it was some combination of all of those factors. However, this unilateral demilitarization and, more importantly, removal of British troops greatly diminished the American perception of threat from Canada. Data compiled and presented to Congress in 1903 showed that spending on American fortifications along the Canadian border stopped by the mid-1870s (Shore 1998, 342). This is quite surprising, because the removal of the fortification is usually a sign of exceptional trust between two states. It is usually a culmination of cooperative efforts and deepening integration, because the opening of borders is a very sensitive issue. The costs to states that fail to defend their borders, against possible incursions from their neighbours, are usually high—at a minimum, states risk losing control over portions of their territory; at worst, they risk being subjugated or destroyed (Hoffman 2002). North American case is thus unique, because here the opening of the borders was at the beginning of the cooperation and later integration. When discussing uniqueness of the border regime between Canada and the United States, physical geography must also be considered. Canada and the United States share the longest border in the world between two countries. Its sheer size makes it hard to defend effectively. Some of its parts are located in the scarcely populated territories. However, the fact that the United States stopped fortification by the mid1870s is still quite extraordinary. Even more extraordinary is the fact that Canada

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did not create a large standing army and did not attempt to fortify its borders at least in the more populated areas. This benevolent border regime was used by people from both sides of the boundary. As Ackleson and Kastner (2008) wrote, “during the 1800s the U.S. and Canada enjoyed a cross-border convenience trade in agricultural commodities, with settlers on both sides selling grain and livestock to one another. In many places, the boundary had been unmarked or demarcated by a post sign; multiple free crossing points have tended to exist, hence the long-standing application of the adjective ‘undefended’ to the U.S.-Canadian border” (Ackleson and Kastner 2008, 13–14). Throughout its history, the majority of Canada’s population has been spread along the country’s southern belt, at distances ranging within 100 miles from the Canada/US boundary, leading some observers to qualify Canada as a “borderland society” (Ramirez 2009, 31). The contact between Canadians and Americans was frequent and natural, as people traded over the border and migrated. By the end of the nineteenth century, the number of Canadian-born living in the United States was equal to 22% of Canada’s total population, and those who throughout the century had moved and settled permanently in the United States were estimated at nearly 1.8 million (Ramirez 2009, 31). Thus, the permeable borders between the two neighbours were created organically, but later began to be supported also institutionally by favourable immigration policies and continually benevolent border regime. However, this close contact over the border was not always unproblematic. With the beginning of the twentieth century, tension was felt along the border regarding the disputes over water. Settlers in Montana and Alberta were building competing canals to divert the waters of the St. Mary and Milk Rivers for their own use (International Joint Commission 2018). On the Niagara River, it was increasingly clear that the two countries needed a management plan that could balance the growing demand for hydroelectric power with the interests of navigation, while safeguarding the Niagara Falls (International Joint Commission 2018). It became clear that some systemic solution regarding the water disputes must be made, because Canada and the United States would always be affected by each other’s actions, especially in the Great Lakes area along the border. The Boundary Waters Treaty was signed in 1909 between Great Britain (on behalf of Canada) and the United States. It created International Joint Commission (ICJ), which was the first treaty-based institution created between the United States and Canada. Its purpose was to “prevent disputes regarding the use of boundary waters and to settle all questions which are now pending between the United States and the Dominion of Canada involving the rights, obligations, or interests of either in relation to the other or to the inhabitants of the other, along their common frontier, and to make provision for the adjustment and settlement of all such questions as may hereafter arise” (MacKay 1928, 292). The Treaty itself offered rather general principles regarding the settlement of disputes tied to the shared waters. These principles were then applied on a case-bycase basis by a permanent international joint commission of six members, three to be appointed by each country (MacKay 1928, 292). This commission had quasi-judicial power and three offices—one in the Washington, United States; one in the Ottawa,

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Canada; and one regional office on the Great Lakes in Windsor (International Joint Commission 2018; MacKay 1928, 293). IJC is together with NORAD, which will be discussed later, the only treaty-based institution with shared facilities, permanent personnel, and budget (Carment and Sands 2019, 10). It is an anomaly in otherwise stable trend in American-Canadian relations of retaining sovereignty and of minimal institutionalization. It was a first integrative effort in the relations between the North American neighbours, and it set an important precedent for further cooperation. IJC is interesting also because it was created during the strong anti-Americanist sentiments in Canada. Anti-Americanism reached its peak in Canada in 1911 when the Reciprocity Treaty that would lower the trade barriers with the United States made Canadians manufacturers afraid of big American companies (Baker 1970; Doran and Sewell 1988). The Canadian sentiments towards the United States started to shift only during the First World War. The First World War was significant not just for the transformation of relations between Canada and the United States, but for the Canadian identity as well. Catalyst of the creation of distinct Canadian identity was the conscription crisis in 1917–1918, which was accompanied by riots and hostility towards French Canadians. Canada as a British Dominion was automatically considered to join war on the side of the Allies. While English-speaking Canadians volunteered to fight, French Canadians had no loyalty to the British. They saw themselves as living in a sovereign country that was not necessarily subservient to London (Scott 2014). This led to certain disenchantment with Britain. Moreover, Canadian national pride arose after the First World War. Canadian military forces distinguished themselves especially in battles of Somme, Vimy, Passchendaele, and during so-called Canadian Hundred Days. The losses on the European battlefield fuelled a feeling that Canada earned its sovereignty from Britain. It can be argued that the conscription crisis and the First World War helped Canadians realize their own distinct identity. The achievements and losses on the battlefield and a new sense of identity strengthened Canadian assertiveness towards Britain. Canada, for example, demanded a separate seat at the Paris Peace Conference, and— even if it played only small role there—Canada got the seat. It also became member of newly established League of Nations. During the 1920s, we can observe gradual strengthening of Canadian independence on Britain—it expanded its Department of External Affairs and reduced its reliance on British diplomats (Hilliker 1990, 3); it has exchanged its first ambassadors with the United States; and the King-Byng affair set a new tradition of non-interference in Canadian political affairs by the British government. As was mentioned earlier, in the 1920s, the United States and Canada still developed hypothetical war games scenarios with the other as an enemy. It is true that these were mostly exercises and neither Canada nor the United States were preparing for war with the other. But the fact that these scenarios existed shows that the possibility of armed conflict was more than zero. The top defence priority, premised on American invasion, was not officially abandoned until 1931 in Canada (Holloway 2006,

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43). However, successful collaboration with the United States began to change the Canadian perception of military threat from the United States (Holloway 2006, 43). The Great Depression hit hard both the United States and Canada and influenced their economic relations. The 1930s were characterized by American isolationism (Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act from 1930, raising already high import duties), Canada’s retaliatory policies, but also great breakthrough in their economic relations. In 1929, 18% of US merchandise exports went to Canada, and 11% of US merchandise imports came from Canada (McDonald 1997, 803). So, when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raised average US tariff by 20%, it was significantly felt in Canada (McDonald 1997). For example, during 1929–1931, export of cattle to the United States dropped by 84%, milk and dairy by 65%, etc. (McDonald 1997, 808). Canada soon retaliated with higher tariffs as well. The trade war in the beginning of 30s worsened already dire situation. However, with the new President Roosevelt and Liberal selected in Canada a breakthrough in economic relations came in 1935. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King negotiated and signed Reciprocal Trade Agreement in 1935. This marked the end of Canada’s seventyfive-year quest to negotiate a reciprocity treaty with the United States (Boucher 1985, 6). As promised by both parties, the agreement ended the disastrous tariff war and reopened a lucrative foreign market which had long been closed to Canadian goods. It also integrated the Canadian economy more closely with that of the United States (Boucher 1985, 7). IJC, cooperation during the First World War and Reciprocal Trade Agreement, was the first effort to bring the two nations closer. This trend of ever-deepening cooperation and integration was quickened with the beginning of the Second World War.

5 From Allies to Friends—After Take-off Point (1940s–2011) Quickening and deepening of integration is observable from the 1940s. The relations between the United States and Canada began to be referred to as “special” since the end of the Second World War (Courtney and Smith 2010; Cyr 2016; Muirhead 2004). The Second World War was very conducive to the positive image between two peoples and triggered even closer cooperation than during the First World War. Two unprecedented agreements are important from the 1940s—the Ogdensburg Agreement (1940) that established the Permanent Joint Board on Defence and the Hyde Park Agreement (1941) that interconnected the two economies for wartime purposes. These two agreements represented an important milestone in the relationship between the United States and Canada. Permanent Joint Board on Defence was the first step towards collective security and at the beginning of the Cold War played an important role in the creation of the North American Air Defence Command

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(NORAD) that will be discussed later. The Hyde Park Declaration of 1941 was an agreement between the United States and Canada to allow American-produced components of war materiel manufactured in Canada for Britain, to be included in the Lend-Lease Agreement (Dreisziger 2006). It also represented a first step in closer trade cooperation and integration between the two countries. There was even Clayton Knight Committee established that recruited air forces not just in Canada, but with Roosevelt’s permission also in the United States. Trade between the two countries grew in the post-war years as more and more sectors integrated production to better supply customers through economies of scale (Sands 2009, 8). This increased intergroup contact, as people traded and cooperated with increased frequency. Regarding intergroup contact, it grew exponentially after the Second World War. Virtually, the whole of Canada’s out-migration after the Second World War took place across the border and into the United States, and the participation of Canadians to the cross-border population flow was so widespread as to make this migration movement truly continental in scale (Ramirez 2009, 31). After the Second World War, Canadians enjoyed an era of open access to the United States and crossed the border frequently each year for business and pleasure (Sands 2009, 10). Canada’s restrictive immigration policies began to slowly and gradually ease after the Second World War, partly thanks to booming economic growth (and demand for labour) and partly due to changing social attitudes (Dirks 2006). However, it was not just the migration. Tourism grew after the Second World War as well, and Americans and Canadians visited each other with increased frequency. In 1946, about 4 million tourists visited Canada and over the next two decades that number nearly quadrupled (Statistics Canada 2018). In the 1950s, nearly every tourist entering Canada came from the United States (Statistics Canada 2018). In 1947, 98% of all trips that Canadians took abroad were to the United States, and this share was quite stable for many decades, because it only fell to 85% in 1990 (Statistics Canada 2018). As the 50s and Cold War progressed, the integration of Canada and the United States deepened, especially in the field of security. Britain’s military and economic weakness created new dilemmas for the United States and Canada. Canada lost its historic British counterweight to the United States, and the United States was forced into Britain’s old imperial role (Thompson and Randall 2002, 171). The Soviet threat in combination with geopolitical changes in the international system brought “a degree of intimacy between Canada and the United States that the war against Germany had never demanded” (Thompson and Randall 2002, 171). Both countries became members of the multilateral North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, and a year later, Canada followed the United States into the Korean War. As Norman Robertson, Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, commented to Acting High Commissioner in Great Britain in 1946 on the ever-deepening security cooperation: “To critics of the nature of Canadian-United States defence relations, the only answer is that they are logical and inescapable. As State Department official once remarked, the United States would want close ties with Canada even if, instead of being inhabited by delightful people, it were populated by baboons. Given the

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facts of geography, aviation, and modern technology, a close defence relationship is inescapable” (Kieninger 2001, 154). The need to protect North America from Soviet nuclear bombs and long-range bombers made Canada indispensable to continental defence against transpolar air attack (Thompson and Randall 2002, 171). The United States wanted to gain access over Canadian airspace and to base a forward radar station in the Canadian north (Hale and Gattinger 2010, 49). Canada also started to view the American role differently after the Second World War. A superpower neighbour was considered an important ally with the Soviet threat rising and power of Great Britain falling. By the words of former Canadian Prime Minister, Lester Pearson: “Britain and France had become lesser Great Powers, not too far above Canada in strength and resources. Britain, though remaining the heart of a new Commonwealth, was certainly no longer in a position to commit us by her decisions in vital matters of war and peace, as in 1914 and again 1939. This made our relations with Britain easier, if less important. It was now the United States that had that power, a hard fact which brought us anxiety as well as assurance” (cited in Kieninger 2001, 119). The Soviet threat was highly salient for the United States’ and Canada’s insecurity was also high, given the fact it lost its counterweight in Great Britain. Defence agreements between Canada and the United States in the early 1950s centred on the building of radar networks across the territory of Canada—the Mid-Canada Line (also known as the McGill Fence), the Pinetree Line, and the famous Dew Line (NORAD Office of History 2013, 5). This cooperation led to a natural extension of talks regarding the possible integration and execution of air defence plans. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the US Air Force (USAF) exchanged liaison officers and met at key conferences to discuss the potential of a shared air defence organization (NORAD Office of History 2013, 5). The cooperation in defence grew closer and more intimate progressively over the 50s. Firstly, under the provisions of Recommendation 51/4 from 1952, American interceptors could be deployed to Canadian air bases and Canadian interceptors to American bases (Jockel 1982, 3). All interceptors would be under the operational control of the country in which they were located. A year later in 1953, the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD) issued Recommendation 53/1. It provided that interception of aircraft by fighters of one country could be undertaken in the airspace of the other when the second country’s air defence command would be unable to execute the interception with its own forces (Jockel 1982, 3). Once again, solely national operational control was to be retained. As Jockel (1982) argued, over time, military officers began to see the air defence of the continent more and more as a joint effort and less and less of one in which sovereignty should play a role (Jockel 1982, 5). On 2 June 1955, Air Marshall Roy Slemon told the Aviation Writers Association in Montreal that a joint Canada-US air defence command was “inevitable” (Jockel 1982, 5). By 1957, co-operation between the United States and Canada had progressed to the point where interceptors, in an emergency, could enter the airspace of the other partner in pursuit of hostile aircraft and could be temporarily deployed to the other partner’s bases (Jockel 1982, 13). As Jockel (1982) further explained, “There

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was a full exchange of radar data and contiguous radar coverage in many areas along the border. There was constant communication between CONAD [Continental Air Defense Command] and RCAF ADC [Royal Canadian Air Force Air Defense Command], including a joint planning group at CONAD headquarters in Colorado Springs” (Jockel 1982, 13). The crucial new element of the progressive integration of air defence in the 50s was also integrated command over the air space. Chiefs of Staff of both USAF and RCAF recommended that the two national air defence efforts be operationally integrated and authority over them be delegated to a “Commander-in-Chief, Air Defense, Canada-United States” (CINCADCANUS), who would report to both the US and Canadian Chiefs (Jockel 1982, 13). By 1957, the details had been worked out and the top defence officials in each nation approved the formation of the North American Air Defense Command, which was stood up on 12 September in Colorado (NORAD Office of History 2013, 5). The creation of NORAD was an unprecedented departure from otherwise institutionally shallow cooperation and created North American Air Defence Command (NORAD). NORAD represented a discretion-granting policy between the United States and Canada and was truly anomalous in terms of pooling sovereignty. NORAD introduced binational command, thus theoretically enabling the Canadian deputy commander to summon the US Air Force to respond to a threat. On the other hand, Americans gained access to the Canadian airspace. Both countries thus granted each other discretion over the field previously exclusively controlled by the other. Discretion-granting policies are according to Hoffman (2002) strong indicator of trust between the states. Moreover, this discretion-granting policy happened in the field of defence, which is sensitive for sovereign states and thus is even more powerful demonstration of trust. A proof of how unique this cooperation was also in comparison with other close military allies of the United States is the attitude of the Chiefs of both air forces. Jockel (1982) described that the Chiefs warned the Secretary that the Canadians might want to link a North American command to NATO. Such linkage would force the disclosure of certain American plans to the Europeans and “might impose upon continental U.S. defence forces restrictions which would be militarily unacceptable” (Jockel 1982, 4). Clearly, what was comfortable to share with Canada was not safe to share with others, not even close allies from NATO. The relationship between the two air forces was indeed very close. NORAD was not a project imposed by a more powerful actor (the United States) on the weaker one (Canada). It was a pet project of both military forces with the jointly perceived air defence mission at the heart of it. NORAD was also accompanied by a series of Defense Production Sharing Agreements, negotiated simultaneously, and amended numerous times since. Collectively known as Defense Development and Defense Production Sharing Arrangements (DD/DPSA), these accords have created a degree of interdependence between the US and Canadian defence industries (US Congress 1991, 105). This extensive defence industrial cooperation has resulted in the partial integration of Canadian and United States’ defence bases.

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As Thompson and Randall (2002) noted, apart from partial defence integration, America’s Cold War quest for raw materials security further encouraged economic integration. NORAD and Defense Production Sharing Agreement marked the beginning of the deepening of economic integration—Canada-United States Automotive Products Agreement (1965), Free Trade Agreement (1987), and finally North American Free Trade Agreement (1994), which was an extension of free trade area to Mexico as well. Unlike the earlier periods, the US direct investment in Canada and bilateral trade increased simultaneously (Thompson and Randall 2002, 171). Canadian defence became intimately connected to the defence of the United States. One of the main points of Canadian defence strategy became that “Canada designs its defence policy without autonomy vis-á-vis U.S. defence policy” (Murray 1994, 59). The final proof that high level of trust was achieved between the two countries and Canada and the United States transformed into the security community was the reaction to the 9/11 attacks especially regarding the “undefended border”. This major blow into the security of the United States had far-reaching effects on American foreign policy. The United States was threatened on its soil for the first time since Pearl Harbor. An “undefended” border or more precisely border with the benevolent regime would naturally be considered a security weakness. The United States initiated so-called smart borders after 9/11 out of fear of terrorism. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the different attitude towards Canada is clearly visible in comparison with Mexico. While the defence of the United States’ southern border became strengthened and it cooperated with Mexico mostly from the position of power, the attitude towards Canada was cooperative and more equal. While in the US-Canada agreement the coordination and exchange of information played a major role, in the US-Mexico agreement the stress on coordination and the exchange of information was not that prominent (Chanona 2005, 10). The US-Canada Smart Border Action Plan had 30 points that proposed the establishment of joint facilities, joint passenger analysis units, joint enforcement coordination, integrated intelligence, and even joint international cooperation (joint technical assistance to developing countries or joint presentation to European Community in CIFREI) (US Department of State 2002). In addition to the Smart Border Action Plan, a Bilateral Consultation Group for Antiterrorist Cooperation and Ad hoc Committee of Ministers of Public Security and Anti-terrorism were created (Chanona 2005, 6). Thus, in times of the greatest security crisis, the United States turned to Canada to cooperate and address this problem cooperatively. The defence of the two states was in 2001 so integrated that preparing for armed conflict was rendered practically impossible.

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6 Conclusion Regional orders are not static. The fact that states once waged wars against each other does not mean they cannot integrate and have deep cooperation in the future. Western Europe is the most researched case; however, there are other states that successfully progressed with their mutual relations. This chapter aimed to show how one such transformation from rivals to friends occurred on a not-so-often-researched case of North America. It used the concept of security community to describe a regional order, where there is a dependable expectation of the peaceful resolution of any conflicts. Canada and the United States changed from enemies in 1812, to rivals during nineteenth century and friends in second half of twentieth century and twenty-first century. Take-off point in the 1940s marked significant quickening and deepening of the integration between two states. It resulted in unprecedented pooling of sovereignty in the form of NORAD in the 1950s and finally demonstration of trust and collective security in 2001. North American case showed apart from institutionalization and political integration, “bottom-up integration” is crucial for security communities (Hale and Gattinger 2010, 3). Since nineteenth century, open cross-border trade and interaction exemplified often into cross-border convenience trade which gradually—though not consistently—developed into formalized, macro- and micro-level transnational production and trade structures (Ackleson and Kastner 2008, 15). But it is not just about trade. 90% of Canada’s 29 million people live within 60 miles of the US border. Over 30 million people make trips through the Detroit ports of entry each year; almost as many follow in the Buffalo region, and roughly 20 million cross in the Seattle area (Ackleson and Kastner 2008, 15). Canadians have been for century considered American cousins, depicted as nice and polite people (stereotype present in almost every American TV shows or movies). This positive image was affirmed in both world wars, where both nations fought side by side. Consistent positive experience with one another led to recession of suspicion of American influence on Canadian side and enabled deepening economic and societal integration. The fact that regional orders are not static, however, has also its dark side. Regional relations can transform not just towards more peaceful regional orders, but in the opposite direction as well. Koschut (2016) has done some pioneering research into the disintegration of security communities, when he examined how normative change can lead to security community disintegration, yet processes of degradation of the cooperation are not well-researched in the literature. One could argue that disintegration of security community between the United States and Canada could be perceived since the beginning of the presidency of Donald Trump. However, the embeddedness of the security community among the people is crucial here and could give us hope that the security communities can outlast hostile leaders. Increased positive contact leads to the development of trust. This is often supported by elites, either by various initiatives or simply by creating conditions enabling free travel and trade. This was the case of North America, where people

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from both sides of 49th parallel traded and visited each other freely for centuries. This creation of trust among peoples is important. If it is embedded, then even if new leaders came to power with more hostile intentions, the trust and positive relations would pose a powerful obstacle to such revisionism. This, however, presupposes a democratic regime being developed in the region at this point as only in democratic regimes the public exercises control over their elected leaders. In June 1965, Canadians were asked “Which country is our best friend?”. A majority of Canadians (58%) named the United States, followed by the United Kingdom (24%) and France (3%) (Sigler and Goresky 1974, 640). Sigler and Goresky (1974) tentatively argued based on various public opinion polls that the US and Canadian populations are more mutually responsive to each other than to others (Sigler and Goresky 1974, 640). In the public opinion poll from 2005, 73% of Canadians and 82% of Americans viewed Canada as a friend and ally of the United States and its policies (IPSOS 2005). The trend of exceptional trust and mutual responsiveness towards each other is stable and widely present in North America. This arguably makes the North American security community more stable. More time would be needed to alter the positive image and trust developed between two nations over the centuries. The understanding of how the peaceful change is initiated and what factors are crucial for the evolution of the security community especially in times of world order transition is now more important than ever. This knowledge can inform better foreign policy decisions and prevent less favourable ones. Acknowledgements This research was supported by the grant UNCE/HUM/009.

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Miroslava Kulkova PhD candidate at the Charles University in Prague working on a dissertation on regional security transformations. She is currently part of two research projects—on hybrid revolutionary actors and on security communities. She was part of the research project of Kosovo Foundation for Open Society, for which she examined normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia and its implication for regional security.

China’s Economic Presence in the Baltic States and Belarus: Economic Statecraft Amidst the Great Powers Competition Liudas Zdanavicius

Abstract The Baltic states and Belarus serve as the good illustration of how different states and regions respond to the process of global political and economic system transformation, which is characterized by the weakening role of the Western states (particularly US, but also unclear path of the EU transformation) and the rise of aspirative China. The chapter analyses how the Baltics states and Belarus differently react to the Chinese economic expansion in the region. The Baltic states despite publicly declared interests on deeper economic cooperation with China (including the participation in 17+1 format) have just minor economic dependency on Beijing. Trade volumes, transit and FDI flows are minimal and do not represent an official comparatively high level of “economic expectations diplomacy”. At the same time, China can not easily implement the patterns of its economic expansion in the Baltic states because of their comparatively good financial situation, presence of the vast EU funding for the strategic projects. The strong security relations with the United States is also one of the major factors, which lowers the interest of the decision makers in cooperation with China. This is particularly visible in the cases of the 5G and possible Chinese investments in the transportation infrastructure. Despite some similarities (patterns of trade), Belarus has no access to benefits of EU membership, is in a considerably more economically vulnerable position and heavily depends on Russia. This makes its cooperation with China more similar to the patterns observed in the developing states, where China has a growing footprint in the economies, using debt diplomacy and other influence tools. Keywords Economic statecraft · China · Lithuania · Latvia · Estonia · Belarus · 5G · Rail baltica · Talsinki · Debt trap · Debt diplomacy · 17+1 · Economic sanctions

L. Zdanavicius (B) General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy, Vilnius, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_10

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The Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) after 2014 are receiving more attention from scholars of international security, because of their frontline geographical position in the ongoing tensions between Russia and the West. The Baltic states and Belarus serve as the good illustration of how different states and regions respond to the process of global political and economic system transformation, which is characterized by the weakening role of the Western states (particularly US, but also unclear path of the EU transformation) and the rise of aspirative China. In this chapter, the economic presence of China in the Baltic states and the Belarus is analysed. The addition of the Belarus, which is not a member of NATO and European Union, but Russian-led Eurasian Union, to the analysis provides the opportunity for fruitful case comparison study. China policy towards Belarus, characteristics and intensity of bilateral political and economic interactions is very different from the Baltic ones. On the other hand, some components of the Chinese economic presence in this country have a direct impact on the Baltic states (the transportation sector, cooperation in the field of defence technologies). The chapter analyses how the Baltics states and Belarus differently react to the Chinese economic expansion in the region, because of the structural (membership in the different cooperation formats, level of the relations with the United States) and the domestic reasons.

1 Theoretical Framework: The Baltic States and Belarus and China’s Economic Statecraft The topic of the China economic presence in the Baltics received only limited attention from scholars. Baltic states are researched in a broader framework of ChinaCentral and Eastern Europe Countries (CEE) interactions. Matura (2019) analyses correlation between levels of economic and political cooperation between CEE countries and China. Report produced by China Observers (2020) provides a comprehensive overview of China’s economic and political presence in the CEE region, drawing the conclusion that in the last years it has considerably expanded and become an important factor. Larçon and Lamy (2017) book provides an extensive overview of Baltics states—China bilateral economic relations. Scott (2018) analyses the security dilemmas of China presence (including related to economic expansion in the Baltic ˇ states. B¯erzi¸na-Cerenkova and Andž¯ans (2018) and Andrijauskas (2020) provide the glimpse Latvian and Lithuanian relations with China (including the balance between political and economic interests). Jüris (2019) analyses the China involvement in the so-called Talsinki project, but also analyses the broad context of Beijing BRI activities in the Baltic sea region. In the last decade, China started more active global economic expansion including the region of Central and Eastern Europe. Beijing constructs its presence in this region

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in the framework of The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 (Cai and Nolan 2019). Also the Baltic states (but not Belarus) are the members of the “17+1” (16 Central and Eastern European countries, Greece and China) cooperation format. Important to mention, that Belarus is an observer of “17+1” format. Beijing economic expansion could be analysed from different perspectives. Beijing by itself positions this process as peaceful, cooperation based, mutually beneficial and creating additional value for all sides (“win - win” concept). After the beginning of the US-China trade war, Chinese leaders present themselves as the protectors of the free market in the backdrop of rise of protectionism (Xinhua 2019). This rethorics mimics liberal International political economy discourse. At the same time, there is a steady stream of both academic and political texts questioning both economic benefits of cooperation with China and possible implications of China economic expansion on the national security of the partner countries and regions. Holslag (2017) states that despite neoliberal rethoric, the real China actions are “offensive mercantilism”. China’s rise led to a resurgence of “economic statecraft” approach, which has close links with the realist—mercantilist school of IPE, geoeconomics. Baldwin (1985) describes how powerful states use a wide range of economic tools (sanctions, foreign aid, etc.) in order to achieve their foreign policy goals. Literature on economic sanctions provides distinction between positive and negative tools of economic influence. Most authors agree that efficiency of the influence tools depends on the level of economic dependency of the target country on the sender country. So more developed are trade, investment and other economic relations, the broader opportunities for the country, planning to use economic statecraft instruments. Blackwill and Harris (2017), Wigell et al. (2020), and Lai (2018) and other authors provide extensive overview of the China use of the economic statecraft instruments such as “debt traps”, investment flows, construction of the infrastructure, corruption, economic espionage, economic sanctions (e.g. to enforce support for the One China policy). Reilly (2017) analyses different uses of Chinese economic statecraft tools in Europe (dependent on the case, both positive and negative initiatives to the target countries or EU as the whole are being used). China economic expansion is often analysed in the context of broader influence toolset, used by Beijing, which includes “soft power”, elite subversion and a broad range of the “influence operations” (Diamond and Schell 2019). Analysis of the policy responses of the Baltic states and Belarus decision makers’ is incomplete without understanding how the local elites interact with the Beijing economic expansion. China has a long and painful historical experience of the so-called Century of humiliation, when part of the country elites served as the agents of interests of the Western colonial powers. The terms “comprador elites” or “comprador bourgeoisie”, which are actively used in dependency theories and neocolonialism studies (e.g. Samir Amin, Poulantzas), come from 19th China. Often, the comprador bourgeoisie is contrasted with the national bourgeoisie.

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Usually, this term is used to name local elites in the developing countries, which behave on the interests of the Western capital and global capitalist system in general. China economic expansion is facilitated by the work with parts of the target countries’ elites. It is possible that Chinese government partly tries to mirror Western practices of the “Century of Humiliation” and use them both in developing and developed countries. In other words, the most important goal is to achieve, that in the target country at least part of the decision makers will be interested in deeper economic links with China. This pattern fits the idea of Hirschman (1980), which states that a country can try to work directly with the sectors and regions in the target country, which benefit from the interaction with it. These groups try to create a “friendly attitude” towards the country, which provides these benefits. Kahler and Kastner (2006) state that China uses the strategy of strategic engagement, which aimed to deliberately expand economic relations with the target state in order to influence its behaviour and improve the relations. Grimmel and Eszterhai (2020) research results on the impact of the extent of the economic relations on the BRI countries attitudes towards China at least partly support this view. On the other hand, the behaviour of some BRI countries, such as Greece and Hungary, which try to amend EU policy towards China demonstrates an even broader extent of this effect. So balance between punishment and inducement tools should be analysed. Wong (2019) introduced the term “subversive carrots”, which means positive inducement instruments used by China, which are providing economic benefits that work outside of established political processes and violate expected political standards. The effectiveness of subversive carrots is strongly dependent on the level of public accountability in the target country (the Baltic states and Belarus have radical differences in this regard). In case of the Baltic states and Belarus-China activities could be compared to Russia strategy of economic statecraft, which uses interest groups, dependent on the economic relations with Moscow (transportation sector, exporters, energy intermediaries, etc.), in order to influence the Baltic states domestic and foreign policy (Zdanaviˇcius 2018). For comparison of the Baltics—China and Belarus—China economic interactions patterns it is beneficial to discern two separate models, which China uses with developed (stronger, more resilient) and developing (weaker, less resilient) countries. In some countries, both models are being used, but usually one of them prevails. Developing states’ models could be identified in Western Balkans, Latin America, Central Asia, Africa and other regions.

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China and partner countries economic cooperation models Developed states model

Developing states model

Geography

EU member states (some states are between two models)

Some European states—non-EU members

Factors, which have impact on the belonging to the model

Average or good economic performance; Access to cheap or free sources of financing (high tax incomes, high credit rating, availability of substantial EU funding)

Poor economic performance; Difficulties to find financing sources for infrastructure and other projects

Financial interactions

FDI (including M&A)

Loans (often recipients government guaranteed) in the most cases provided by the Chinese banks, FDI

Economic feasibility of the projects with the Chinese participation

Both efficient and economically infeasible projects (particularly “white elephants” in infrastructure, such as non-operating ports, airports)

Both efficient and economically infeasible projects (particularly “white elephants” in infrastructure, such as non-operating ports, airports)

Who pays in case of the failure Usually Chinese investor of the project?

Often the government—recipient, because China is providing the loan for the implementation of the project with the government guarantee

Decision making

Decision-making process is public. Usually public tenders or other necessary procedures are carried on

Decisions on Chinese investments or loans are non-transparent. In some cases, corruption factor is involved. There is no fair and open competition between possible investors

Legal environment

Chinese companies must operate following general legal requirements (including fair competition, environmental, taxation, etc.)

Chinese companies often have specific preferences (in some cases specially created, because of the “strategic importance” of the projects) Often workforce, materials and equipment are brought from China

China influence on domestic and foreign policy (including such issues as “One China” policy, human rights and other issues)

Low to average (depends on the level of economic dependency and other factors);

Average to high (depends on the level of economic dependency)

Table created by author

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This chapter works on the hypothesis that Baltic states (later in the text 3B) lean towards developed states model, Belarus—towards developing states. The main factors pushing 3B and Belarus apart are: state of democracy (thus level of political accountability and character of decision making), economic situation, EU and NATO membership (Russia–Belarus integration process). China economic expansion in the Baltic states and Belarus is not happening in the power vacuum. The Baltic states are members of the EU and NATO, have very close security relations with the United States. If we operate on realistic “zero sum” game concepts of economic statecraft, higher levels of economic (and later political) engagement with China could lead to lower levels of engagement with the EU and United States. The United States declared strong negative attitudes towards China economic expansion in Europe (including CEE) region. The main aspects of this attitude could be drawn from Vice-President Pence programme speech on relations with China in 2018 (White House 2018). United States openly opposes unfair domestic and foreign Chinese economic practises, such as theft of intellectual property, unfair trade practices, cyber and traditional espionage, forced transfer of technologies and companies ownerships. Beside other instances it was reiterated in 2019 by State secretary Mike Pompeo during the visit to Italy stated “I urged my Italian friends to see how China uses its economic power to cultivate political influence and erode sovereignty”, and “I raised concerns about China’s zero sum predatory approach to trade and investment and what it could mean throughout Europe and Africa and the world at large” (REUTERS 2019). European Union and its core states position on China is softer, but its economic expansion is also seen with rising caution. In the 2019 strategic outlook, EU named China “an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance” (European Commission 2019). In 2020 the EU published the new industrial strategy, one of which openly undeclared goals—to strengthen positions in the economic competition with China. European Parliament in its declaration openly challenged then 16+1 China-CEE cooperation format and asked participating countries “to ensure that their participation in this format enables the EU to have one voice in its relationship with China” and asked the “Member States to carry out sound analysis of suggested infrastructure projects to ensure no compromising of national and European interests for financial support and long- term commitments to Chinese involvement in strategic infrastructure projects and potentially greater political influence, which would undermine the EU’s common positions on China” (European Parliament 2018). The new European commission leadership particularly after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemics are becoming more explicit when discussing strategic rivalry with China (Johnson 2020). In case of Belarus, engagement with China could (or already is) lower dependence on Russia.

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2 Overview of the Major Cooperation Trends of the Baltic States and Belarus with China In the framework of World—system and dependency theorists Central and Eastern European countries are usually seen as the part of so-called semi-periphery (Vliegenthart 2010). At the same time, Baltic states are successfully developing region, which move towards core (centre status). Nominal GDP per capita in current USD compared to the United states, percent 1995

2000

Estonia

11%

11%

Belarus

5%

Latvia

8%

Lithuania

8%

2005

2010

2015

2018

24%

31%

31%

37%

4%

7%

12%

10%

10%

9%

17%

23%

24%

28%

9%

18%

25%

25%

30%

Germany

110%

65%

78%

86%

72%

76%

United States

100%

100%

100%

100%

100%

100%

2%

3%

4%

9%

14%

16%

China

Source World Bank database

Despite the fact that nominal per capita GDP in the Baltic states is considerably higher than in China, there is still huge asymmetry in the economic weight. For example, Lithuanian GDP constitutes only 0,38 and Belarus only 0,44% of China’s GDP. Such economic power asymmetry creates fertile ground for China to use both positive and negative economic influence mechanisms.

548

Import

3.40%

1.20%

5.60%

25.20% 510

160 3.20%

1.20%

Share, %

22.90%

48.10%

Change 2019/2015 928

277

EUR

2.90%

0.90%

Share, %

Lithuania

Source Central banks of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, National statistical office of the Republic of Belarus

169

EUR

Export

Latvia

Change 2019/2015

EUR

Share, %

Estonia

Bilateral trade in 2019

614 3452

28.00%

EUR

Belarus

171.60%

Change 2019/2015 24.80%

4.90%

Share, %

58.10%

-13.50%

Change 2019/2015

232 L. Zdanavicius

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The Baltic states and Belarus trade patterns with China are pretty similar and are characterized by heavy asymmetries. In all cases the Chinese exports are at least a few times bigger than imports. Statistical data demonstrate that despite expectations from the beginning of implementation of the BRI, negative trade balances with China does not improve, or even is getting worse. High negative trade balances also partly could be explained by the developed transportation sectors in the 3B. Part of the imported Chinese goods is later reexported to other countries. The pattern of very asymmetrical trade relations is similar to most of the other Central and Eastern European countries that trade with China. EU core countries have considerably better trade balances with China, but in most cases still record the deficits. Trade asymmetry is even more prominent in the trade structure, which in some aspects remind the trade relations between developing and developed states. China exports medium or high added value manufactured products (mostly machines and different electronic equipment, textile products, etc.). At the same time, a considerable share of the Baltic states and Belarus exports to China are low or medium added value products. Estonia stands out of this pattern, because of the comparatively high share of machines and equipment in it’s export to China. 29% of Lithuanian exports to China in 2018 were furniture. At the same time, China was the 5th most important export market for hi-tec products (mostly lasers), but in 2018 it was barely visible EUR 22,3 million (Versli Lietuva 2019). In 2018 more than 40% of Latvia export to China consisted of rough and sawn wood. Belarus export to China mainly consists of commodities and low added value products, in 2018 54,3% of Belarussian exports to China was potassium fertilizers, 8,89% polyamides, 7,24% concentrated milk (Comtrade 2020). At the same time, there are clear signs that the Baltics states do not restrain from a sharper stance towards China in the political sphere. So the main question should be asked, if trade and investment relations with China in the 3B are miniscule, why these countries invest considerable attention to the relations with China and development of economic cooperation. As in many regions, this is based on the high expectations for the future opportunities. The sheer size of the Chinese market, potential arrival of the big investment projects creates urgency not to miss economic prospects. Such expectations are supported by the rhetorical promises of the Chinese officials and business circles. Despite the fact that China has not managed to construct economic linkage based on the real economic engagement of the 3B countries, its leverage is increased by the fear of the 3B decision makers to lose potential benefits. Despite the small amount of the economic interactions, China does not hesitate to use both negative and positive incentives towards 3B countries. Recent experiences of the Baltics states show that China is eager to use economic sanctions in order to achieve its foreign policy goals (particularly, in the “One China” policy objectives field):

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• In 2011 The Dalai Lama was on an unofficial visit in Estonia. During this visit he met with the President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and the Defence Minister Mart Laar. According to the Estonian officials, China retaliated with the freeze of the economic relations. For example, Beijing did not allow Estonian producers to receive permits for export of their products to the Chinese market (ERR 2014). Also the Estonian minister of foreign affairs was not allowed to participate in the official opening of the new embassy building in Beijing in 2014 (Re:Baltica“, „Verslo žinios“, Postimees 2019a). • In 2013 The Dalai Lama unofficially visited Lithuania, where he met with the President Dalia Grybauskait˙e and visited the Parliament, where he had a meeting with the big group of the MPs. China immediately retaliated. The process of the approval of the import certificate for Lithuanian milk products was stopped, despite agreements reached before The Dalai Lama visit. The visit of the Chinese commerce Deputy Minister Jiang Zengwei, during which it was planned to discuss cooperation in the transportation sector and possible Chinese investments in the Port of Klaip˙eda was immediately cancelled (Jok¯ubaitis 2013). The Lithuanian prime minister and other officials put a lot of the efforts to “thaw” the frozen relations and the import of the Lithuanian milk products was only approved in 2016 (Valstybin˙e maisto ir veterinarijos tarnyba 2016). At the same time China is also interested in keeping 17+1 format alive (withdrawal or low representation of any country would bring reputational damage to the project). • In 2018 during the visit of The Dalai Lama, highest Lithuanian officials have not met with him (possibly trying to avoid possible China retaliatory actions). • At the same time Latvian high level officials do not meet with The Dalai Lama during his regular visits to this country, one of which was just before the 16+1 Summit, held in Riga 2016. Latvian officials, including the Minister of Foreign affairs, officially distanced themselves from such visits. Such tactics were fruitful—there was no visible economic pressure of Beijing towards Latvia. In this regard China’s economic pressure model is similar to Russian economic pressure, which regularly targeted the Baltic states. For example, Russia seeking in its foreign policy objectives imposed import restrictions on Lithuanian milk products (2009, 2013), road carriers, Latvian fish products, closed the oil pipeline “Druzhba” in retaliation for sale of the Mažeikiai oil refinery to Polish instead of the Russian company. Finally, the Baltic states together with other Western countries in 2014 were targeted by Moscow’ sanctions which effectively banned exports of most of the food products (Veebel and Markus 2018; Zdanaviˇcius 2018). On the other hand, China uses the positive incentives such as granting import certificates for food products (milk products, wheat, fish products, beef). 3B producers of such products are looking for expansion of the export opportunities and Chinese market is seen as very promising. Each issue of the import certificates is usually touted both by the 3B and China officials, but the real economic value of such market opening is mixed.

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For example, Lithuanian prime minister and ministry of agriculture actively promoted the export of Lithuanian wheat to Chinese market. After receiving certificates in 2019 for exports, Lithuanian businesses started actively exporting wheat to China. In 2019 the export was EUR 47 mln. (almost 20% of the total Lithuanian grain export), in the first 4 months of 2020—almost EUR 70 million (Statistics Lithuania 2020). On the other hand, after receiving permission to export milk products Estonia managed to export only around EUR 5 million in 2019 (around 2,5% of total export), exports of the also permitted fish products reached more than EUR 7 million (almost 5% of total exports) (Statistics Estonia 2020). Latvian results are even worse—in 2019 it has managed to export to China only milk products for EUR 181 thousands (CSB database | Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia 2020). 3B producers often can not efficiently use the opening access to the Chinese market, because successful operation there depends on finding reliable partners, knowledge of the market, legal requirements and mentality (Alonderyt˙e 2020). Baltic states’ experience with Russia demonstrates that growing export creates potential possibilities to limit it using non-formal tools (custom checks, phytosanitary requirements, etc.). Distribution of the accumulated FDI at the end of 2019 Lithuania

Belarus

Latvia

Estonia

EUR mill

%

EUR mill

%

EUR mill

%

EUR mill

%

Total

18,169

100.00%

13,120

100.00%

16,115

100.00%

24,816

100.00%

EU

15482

85.21%

5697

43.42%

12,047

74.76%

19,613

79.03%

US

222

1.22%

143

1.09%

136

0.84%

171

0.69%

China

8

0.05%

409

3.12%

55

0.34%

6

0.02%

Russia

295

1.63%

4138

31.54%

1580

9.80%

245

0.99%

Source Central banks of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, National statistical office of the Republic of Belarus

Chinese FDI to the Baltic economies are still minimal (or in other words barely visible), with some notable exceptions, which will be discussed later. In case of Latvia Chinese FDI considerably declined after 2015, when the government struck rules of so-called Golden visas (residence permits in exchange for investments or acquisition of the real estate). After the start of this programme, more than 300 Chinese investors used this opportunity (mostly acquiring cheapest possible real estate) to receive Latvian residence permit. After the requirements for the programme were considerably stricktened (higher minimal threshold for real estate acquisition, additional payments for renewal, etc.), part of the Chinese investors decided to leave Latvia. At the same time, this statistical data could not show the whole picture of Chinese presence, because part of the Chinese investments could come through the third

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countries. For example, when Chinese company acquires control of a European or US company, which has FDI in the Baltic states. The most notable China investment projects in the 3B: • In 2019 Finnish FinEst Bay Area Development announced that China company Touchstone capital partners will participate in Tallinn—Helsinki (Talsinki) undersea tunnel. Projected cost—EUR 15 billion (Virki 2019). • Didi Chuxing, Chinese ride sharing company became one of the main investors of ride sharing Estonia startup Bolt; • In 2017 Chinese state company “CITIC Telecom CPC” acquired “Linx Telecommunication”. This Dutch company has Estonian branch. Currently, Chinese company controls part of the existing undersea internet cables between Estonia, Finland and Sweden (Re:Baltica“, „Verslo žinios“, Postimees 2019b). • Chinese engineering company, Guangzhou Hangxin Aviation Technology, for EUR 43 million has acquired 100% of the Estonian aircraft maintenance and repair company, Magnetic MRO (ERR 2018). • In 2019 China’s genome research company BGI Group invested EUR 15 million in sequencing centre in Riga (Baltic Times 2019); • In 2013 state-owned North China Power Engineering (NCPE) acquired Lithuanian company Energetikos tinkl˛u institutas (electricity infrastructure company with 40 employees). This company is actively participating in construction projects of Lithuanian electricity grid (including strategic ones) (Aušra 2019). NCPE also actively participated in the Belarus electricity grid modernization projects (including projects related to the Astravets NPP). • In 2017 owners of the Kaunas thermal plant and one of China’s largest energy producers Datang International Power Generation (DIPG) established a joint company to construct a new combined cycle gas powered electricity plant in the second largest Lithuanian city. Preliminary cost of the project—EUR 120 million (Ministry of Commerce 2017). In 2016 there were public announcements about construction of a coal power plant (projected size of investment EUR 300 million) with one of the subsidiaries of DIPG, but it was later cancelled because of environmental concerns and opposition from the Lithuanian government. At the moment the writing project of the gas power plant has not commenced, it is unclear if this project would pass Lithuanian investment screening mechanism and if it has any economic logic. • In 2015 one of the biggest electric machinery producers in China “Jiangsu Linyang Electronics” acquired Lithuanian producer of electricity metres “‘Elgama”. • Lithuania presents itself as one of the best investment destinations for Fintech investments. Chinese Fintech companies are actively attracted to use the benefits of the liberal Lithuanian regulatory environment and access to the EU payment market. At least 5 Chinese Fintech companies received licences issued by the Bank of Lithuania. Currently their activity is minimal. On the other hand, FDI to Belarussian economy is rapidly growing. After the start of the BRI Belarus has seen a serious inflow of Chinese FDI, which increased from EUR 17 million at the end of 2010 to EUR 409 million in 2019 (National statistical

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portal of the Republic of Belarus 2020). Interestingly, combined recorded Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian FDI to Belarus in 2019 were considerably higher than FDI from China. FDI flows in 3B and Belarus are still considerably lower than to some members of the 17+1 format, not to mention Western European countries. Rhodium group report on Chinese FDI in Europe data demonstrates that total accumulated Chinese FDI at the end of 2019 reached: EUR 50,3 billion, Germany— EUR 22,7 billion, Hungary—EUR 2,3 billion (Merics 2020). Belarus has managed to attract Chinese FDI to it’s manufacturing sector. Notable examples: joint Belarussian-Chinese car manufacturing plant “Belgee” (new factory near Minsk, which assembles Chinese “Geely” brand cars). Chinese “Mideahorizont” factory produces microwaves, water heaters and other appliances. In 2020 joint company “Belaruskali - Migao” opened a new fertilizers production plant (total cost of the project EUR 102,9 million). Despite Belarus and China officials constantly declaring high Chinese investment flows, most of the so-called Chinese investments are actually investment projects, implemented using credits by the Chinese state banks. Belarus contrary to the 3B has no access to European Union funding (including funds for implementation of big infrastructure projects such as Electricity system synchronization, GIPL gas pipeline, Via Baltica, Rail Baltica and others). For example, the amount of EU structural funds programme 2014–2020 for Lithuania was EUR 5,4 billion, Latvia—EUR 3,8 billion, Estonia—almost EUR 3 billion (European Commission 2020). Also, because of the poor economic performance (which partly is the result of inefficient economic policies, partly on high reliance on economic cooperation with Russia) Minsk has considerably worse possibilities to borrow in the international market. Belarus Standard and Poor’s international credit rating in April 2020 was B, when Estonian AA−, Lithuania A+, Latvia A+. Such disparity leaves Belarussian government in considerably weaker negotiation position regarding Chinese finances. Most of the Chinese loans are bounded, which means that for at least 50% of the loan value Chinese made goods (e.g. industrial equipment) should be purchased. In many cases, Chinese workers should be employed in the project implementation. This lower added value of the project implementation to the Belarussian economy and at the same time increase negative trade balance (which increases in bilateral trade correlates with the increase of the borrowing for project implementation). Such bounded character of the loans means that project success risks fall on the Belarussian state, when Chinese side reaps benefits (such as the higher export of goods and services plus interest payments). Some analysts also say that in some cases, factors of corruption from Belarussian officials could be involved (DW 2019). China—partner countries currency swaps is another tool of China debt diplomacy. They must be seen as standing lines of credit, proving the right for the partner country to exchange the negotiated sum of its national currency to RMB. So if country faces financial difficulties, it could use this instrument instead of turning to the IMF.

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Belarus has signed two Swap agreements with China: in 2009 for up to USD 3 billion (AFN 2009) and in 2015 for up to USD 1,1 billion (National Bank of the Republic of Belarus 2015). The RMB funds were used to purchase goods and services imported from China. At the beginning of 2020 total Belarus debt to China reached USD 3,4 billion (20% of total government debt or just slightly more than 5% of GDP), for comparison debt to Russia constituted—USD 7,9 billion (Ministry of finance of the Republic of Belarus 2020). NBER report (Horn et al. 2019) estimates that total Belarus foreign debt to China (including private borrowers) is more than 10% of GDP. In this regard Belarus is still in better position compared to many developing states (e.g. Kyrgyzstan debt to China reached 22,6% to GDP, Tajikistan—than 17% of GDP, not mentioning such countries as Djibouti where it has reached 70% of GDP). Belarus already faced serious problems with the investment projects implemented together with the Chinese companies: • In 2012 Chinese company China CAMC Engineering Co. started implementation of the new factory for production of the white cellulose. Cost of the project—USD 850 million (USD 654 million Chinese bonded loan). The project was finished in 2017, but the factory can not reach full projected production capacity, cannot produce white cellulose at all and creates serious environmental problems. The main reason—low quality of the implementation. Belarus government was forced to finish this project without Chinese help, but it is unclear if it will be possible (DW 2019). • In 2005 Belarus decided to modernize three concrete manufacturers in order to increase production capacity. At that moment demand for concrete was soaring both in domestic and foreign markets. The project cost EUR 1,2 billion (mostly financed using Chinese bonded loans). All three factories because of the declined demand and increased competition are operating at 70–80% of the capacity and are recording big losses. Total debt in 2015 reached USD 1 billion. Belarus government was already forced to return the loan of USD 500 million from the state funds (Borisov 2019). Chinese credits were also used to modernize Belarussian infrastructure (roads, railways, electricity grid, etc.). The most important Chinese Belarussian project is the industrial park “Great stone”. This is the biggest such Chinese project outside of China. The industrial park, which is operated jointly by the Belarussian government and Chinese state corporations “China Merchants Group” and Sinomach, is planning to become a major high technologies manufacturing hub. Until 2020 in the infrastructure of the park USD 528 million were invested (mostly using Chinese credits and FDI) (Belta 2020a). The park at the beginning of 2020 had 60 residents from 15 countries (33 Chinese). There is widespread criticism about the pace of the project implementation and it’s

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possible prospects (Mardell 2019). At the moment of writing only few manufacturing companies started implementation of their projects in the park. Belarussian expert Sitvitski (2019) accentuates the main drawback to the export potential of the “Great stone”—goods made in Belarus has no special access to the EU market, which has a negative impact on possible profitability of the possible manufacturing activities.

3 Cooperation with China: Between the Economic Opportunities and Security Threats The economic expansion of China as in the other regions creates dilemmas for the Baltic states decision makers—where is the balance between the possible benefits (if there will be any) and national security questions. In this regard two main approaches could be distinguished: • China optimism. This rethorics replicates China officials “win - win” discourse about broad prospects of fruitful economic cooperation. • China pessimism. This way of thinking unintentionally is based on the preconceptions of the realist—mercantilist IPE school. Chinese economic statecraft is seen as the grave danger to the national security of the 3B (including manipulation of domestic and foreign policy, distancing from US and EU, possible impact of Chinese–Russian partnership and other issues). Economic benefits of the possible Chinese involvement are also seen as exaggerated. The positions of the highest-level officials of 3B could be seen as the balance between these two approaches, but usually quite careful rhetoric about cooperation with China is being used (particularly during the bilateral meetings). This could be explained by the will not to lose possible economic benefits and at the same time not to give up the most important national security interests. For example, Estonian Prime Minister Ratas stated “The relationship between China and Europe is constantly growing closer. This provides some great opportunities for Estonian entrepreneurs” (Government of the Republic of Estonia 2019). Latvian Prime Minister Kuˇcinckis “Latvia has a friendly business environment; it is ready for various types of cooperation with China” (Ministru kabinets 2018). Split between China optimism and pessimism has also clear institutional boundaries. Representatives of Ministries of economy, transportation, agriculture and Central banks are considerably more optimistic. It could be explained by the close contacts with the interested business sectors and general liberal approach to the foreign economic relations. On the other hand, China pessimism is prevalent in the national security institutions, including intelligence agencies. 3B states intelligence agencies starting from 2019 in their annual reports started to give quite explicit assessments of dangerous activities of the Chinese state. Such

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aspects as illegal activities of the intelligence agencies, strengthening of the illegal lobbying activities, potential dangers of Chinese investments in the critical sectors, dangers of the use of the Chinese technologies, close cooperation between China and Russia in the security sphere and other aspects are being described. For example, Lithuanian intelligence agencies annual threat assessment report (AOTD & VSD 2020) stated: Through technological development and economic leverage, China increases its geopolitical influence and creates preconditions for vulnerability of the states involved in its economic projects. China’s Belt and Road Initiative and other strategic development projects are aimed at achieving global economic dominance and technological advantage. State officials, stateowned and private companies, intelligence agencies and Chinese communities abroad are involved in this process. The active penetration of Chinese investments in foreign countries carries the risk of losing control over resources and infrastructure, market manipulation, and political influence.

Representatives of the defence sector are also afraid of the negative impact of the relations with China on the strategic relations with the United States and NATO in general. Unease about possible Chinese intentions beside general close Russian– China relations in the security sphere, was strengthened by the Joint Russian–Chinese Naval exercises in the Baltic sea in 2017. Does economic statecraft have an impact on the Baltic states foreign and domestic policy? All Baltic states are members of 17+1 format. They are participating in the annual summits of the leaders of the governments (though for the first time China suggested to hold the presidential summit of 17+1 in 2020 hosted by Xi Jinping, but due to COVID-19 the summit still did not take place). Lithuania was an active organizer of the 17+1 Fintech summit in Vilnius in 2019. There are regular visits of 3B officials to China (mostly, ministers and vice ministers of economy, agriculture, transportation and other related sectors). For example, in 2019 there were 4 such visits from Lithuanian ministry of economy to China. As it was mentioned before, 3B officials are not meeting with The Dalai Lama. ˇ B¯erzi¸na-Cerenkova and Andž¯ans (2018) mentions toning down rhetoric of Latvian officials towards China. But there are also examples, of foreign policy activities, which openly interdicts China policy interests: • Explicit intelligence agencies reports (which often receive harsh reactions from China embassies) (BNN 2020). • Despite the rhetoric positive towards economic engagement with China the Baltic states (contrary to some 17+1 countries, including Poland, Hungary, Greece and others) supported joint 23 countries statement Joint statement on human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang in UN (Joint statement on human rights violations and abuses in Xinjiang 2019). • During the COVID-19 crisis, Lithuanian foreign minister asked WHO to invite Taiwan to become a member (Beniušis 2020).

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This pattern is different from such countries as Greece, which because of the deep economic relations with China tries to soften EU policy towards Beijing. The Baltics states also have important mechanisms, which potentially limits Chinese investments in the strategic sectors, important for national security, are investment screening procedures. Also important are the legal regulations, which limit acquisition of the Chinese equipment, which could potentially be dangerous to national security. • Latvia in 2017 amended its National security law and included a requirement for screening of acquisitions of the companies in the strategic sectors (such as media, natural gas, electricity, heating). Full or partial transfer of ownership of such companies or their shares is possible only after receiving government approval (National Security Law 2018). • In 2018 Lithuanian considerably amended an already pretty strict Law on enterprises and installations of strategic importance for national security. Transfer of ownership, big acquisitions of companies (e.g. of the new communications equipment) and new projects in the strategic sectors (transportation, energy, ICT, defence) need to receive approval of the special commission (Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania 2018). Such regulation creates the possibility for the government to stop possible Chinese investments in the strategic sectors. Proceedings of the Lithuanian commission for the coordination of the protection of the objects, important for national security are not public. The only opportunity to know, if any investment or acquisition was stopped, in the case when the entity is not allowed to proceed went to court. At the moment of writing, only companies, possibly connected with Russia, were in the process of litigation. • Estonia officially has not yet introduced an investment screening mechanism. But in May, 2020 Estonian Parliament passed the so-called Huawei law (Electronics Communications Act), which introduces security reviews of the communication equipment needed for the development of the communication networks in the country (Nicholls 2020). This law creates the possibility for the government to vet Chinese communication equipment (particularly in the case of developments of the 5G mobile networks). Existing regulation in the Baltic states fits the requirements of the 2018 EU investment screening directive. At the same time, sceptics see a lot of gaps in the existing regulation, because investment screening mechanisms depend on the capabilities of the government agencies to collect necessary information about possible harm to national security. Also there are not enough mechanisms to limit acquisitions of the potentially harmful hardware and software (ELTA 2020). This balance of the China optimism and China pessimism could be illustrated by the developments in the specific China–Baltic states economic relations sectors: implementation of the 5G technologies and transportation sector. Implementation of the 5G and possible participation of the Chinese companies in this process has created serious tensions.

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The US government has banned Huawei from access to the creation of its 5G networks. There is also a wide campaign carried on by Washington to stop allies from allowing Huawei and other Chinese companies from participation in the development of the 5G networks. Security concerns and inseparable links with Chinese state are being cited. Mobile operators in the Baltic states are already using Chinese equipment (Huawei, ZTE and other) in their existing networks. Also Latvian operator Bite has signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei regarding using their technology in a 5G testing base station (LSM 2020). The United States is the most important security partner for the Baltic states, both in the NATO framework and on bilateral basis. Baltic states heavily depend on US military support in case of possible Russian aggression. Washington sends clear signals to the Baltics. Reuters (2019) reported that in 2019 the US ambassador pressed the Lithuanian government not to allow China’s technology giant Huawei to participate in the development of the country’s 5G network. Lithuanian vice minister of defence E. Kerza in 2019 commented, that “Our strategic partners [US] have said that if Chinese equipment finds its way into our networks, they can hardly imagine military cooperation” (BNS 2019). Baltic governments tried to solve the problem of decision on 5G on EU and NATO level. In the beginning of 2020 European commission issued non-binding security recommendations on the implementation of the 5G networks, which included recommendations to limit participation of the “high risk” suppliers. The recommendations were based on the inputs of the member states (including the Baltics) (European Commission 2020b). Non-binding character of these recommendations. Estonia (White House 2019) and Latvia in 2020 signed bilateral declarations on cooperation with the United States in the field of the 5G. Lithuanian government has not declared the timing of signature of the similar document. Despite not explicitly mentioning Huawei or other Chinese suppliers, wording leaves no doubts “suppliers should not be subject to control by a foreign government without independent judicial review; financing should be transparent, commercially based, and follow standard best practices in procurement, investment, and contracting; ownership, partnerships, and corporate governance structures should be transparent”. Lithuania has still not signed a similar declaration, but at the moment of writing there were strong indicators that it will happen. Signing of such documents demonstrates the will of the governments to block Huawei and other Chinese companies from the 5G networks creation process. New Estonian “Huawei” law also demonstrates will to act. Issue of the impact of the Chinese technologies is not limited to the issue of the 5G. In 2020 reacted to the media investigations, the National Cyber Security Centre under the Ministry of National Defence of Lithuania, concluded that in CCTVs, made by Chinese companies “Hikvision” and “Dahua”, remote control of the cameras could

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be achieved through cyber-attacks due to a number of risks, examples of which were poor password safety solutions and software vulnerabilities. At least 57 Lithuanian public institutions were using these cameras, including such important for the national security as Border police, VIP protection service and others (NCSC 2020). Cooperation with China in the transportation sector provides a good glimpse of the policy options for the Baltic states. All three Baltic states regularly express interest in attracting the Chinese transportation flows to their rail systems and ports. From the economical perspective, this is particularly important for Latvian and Estonian ports which, because of the Russian policy aimed to reroute it’s transit goods from the Baltic ports to the Russian ports in Leningrad oblast. Hardest hit is Estonian transit. Estonian transit rail freight turnover dropped from 23,8 million tones in 2010 to 2,2 million tones in 2019 (Statistics Estonia 2020). Estonian ports turnover dropped from 45.5 million tones in 2010 to 37,9 million tones in 2019. Latvian ports and rail transportation turnover is approximately the same as in 2010. But in 2019 Latvian ports cargo turnover declined by 5,7%. Contrary to the Baltic colleagues, Lithuanian port of Klaipeda in 2010–2019 almost 1,5 times increased its turnover (it mainly depends on the Belarussian and local cargo flows, contrary to Latvian and Estonian ports which much more depend on Russian transit flows). After the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the radical change in the China–EU rail transportation plans occurred. Before the main route was seen as going through Russia and Ukraine, but because of the conflict currently the main route goes through Russia–Belarus–Poland (Jakóbowski et al. 2018), making the Belarus one of the most important transit hubs for China–Europe rail transportation. There is constant growth of the rail transportation flows between China and European Union. But it’s share compared with the maritime and air transport is still small. In 2017 only 1,4% of all cargo (by volume) between China and Europe was transported through rail transport (Jakóbowski et al. 2018). At the same time from the geographical perspective, there is limited space for the Baltic rail and port infrastructure in BRI context. The most direct route to Western Europe goes through Poland. The Baltic ports could be interesting for transportation to Scandinavian countries and as alternatives for overcrowded rail infrastructure on Polish Belarussian border (which in some cases leads to delays). Part of transit trains passing through the Baltics from China is also headed to Kaliningrad region (and later to Germany). 3B also interested in becoming so-called postal distribution hubs, when the Chinese goods arrive to the postal terminal by rail and later distributed in the EU countries by other means of transportation. In May, 2020 first such train arrived to Lithuania from China. Xinhua (2020) reports about plans to run such trains at least once per week.

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Baltic states officials and the transit business have put enormous efforts to attract Chinese goods. There are regular delegations from China. Transportation topic is regularly discussed in the 17+1 formats. In 2016 during the 16+1 summit in Riga, CEEC-China Secretariat on Logistic Cooperation was established under the Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Latvia. Despite the fact that the “Great stone” industrial park still has very limited manufacturing capacity, Latvia and Lithuania are actively competing for its possible transit flows. Prime ministers of Latvia twice (in 2018 and 2020) visited industrial parks. Latvian pharmaceutical company Grindeks is planning to open a manufacturing plant in this complex (Belta 2020b). For example, Lithuanian transportation ministers in 2020 twice visited the park and discussed the cooperation possibilities. Operator of the “Great stone” “China merchant group” was operational in China’s intention to acquire control of the port of Klaip˙eda. Beijing from the beginning of 2000s expressed its interest in its acquisition, but the process once again accelerated in 2015, when this question was discussed during the visit of Chinese vice Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli. In 2015 Chinese state-owned “China merchant group” signed the cooperation memorandums with Klaip˙eda port, Lithuanian Railways and Kaunas FEZ. Company representatives promised to use Klaip˙eda as the transportation hub for “Great stone” industrial park in Belarus. Despite the fact that negotiations on possible Chinese investments were not public, the media reports that China was interested in becoming a port operator by controlling more than 50% of its shares. China was also seen as a possible investor in the major port expansion project—construction of the deep-water port (estimated cost of the project EUR 800 million). The Port of Klaip˙eda is the main hub for military logistics for Lithuania, important both during the peace and conflict stages. So possible Chinese investments or even scenarios when Chinese company becomes the operator of the port receive a negative reaction from the national security community. In the 2018 Lithuanian media report, the intelligence agency State security department provided Parliament with the information about negative security implications of the possible Chinese investments in the Klaip˙eda port (BNS 2018). Lithuanian Defence Minister Karoblis was even more explicit, that a Chinese purchase of the port could allow Beijing to “create obstacles for the arrival of military cargoes, military equipment, [or] reinforcements” in a crisis. “Our position is very clear that it’s a strategic infrastructure project”, he said. “We can’t afford to be dependent on China” (Gherke 2019). In 2019 newly elected Lithuanian President G. Naus˙eda stated, “that Chinese investment into a deep-water port construction Klaip˙eda can undermine national security” (Jakuˇcionis 2019). China officials and companies were actively investigating the possibilities to participate in the biggest EU funded infrastructure project “Rail baltica” (planned cost—EUR 5,8 billion). The interest was both possible control of the project and participation of the Chinese companies as the contractors in the construction phase.

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Rail Baltica project has not only potential economic value, but also will have a big national security aspect. The defence analysts and officials stress that the railroad would be crucial for military mobility in case of potential Russian aggression against the Baltic states to bring reinforcements from NATO allies (BNS 2020). China’s role in the “Rail baltica” project could potentially rise in case of successful implementation of the already described “Talsinki” undersea tunnel project. This tunnel would serve as a connector between “Rail Baltica” and Finnish rail system. In this case, Talsinki project could serve as part of a bigger Chinese plan to take control of the possible North–South rail corridor between planned ports on the terminus of the new maritime route in the Arctics and the rest of EU (Jüris 2019). Despite active promotion, official declarations and cooperation efforts (and number of cooperation documents and formats), Chinese cargo flows in the Baltic states transportation infrastructure are minimal. Only fragmented data publicly available, but for example, share of the Chinese containers in Riga port despite rapid growth in 2019 constituted only 2,1% of the total port cargo turnover (Postimees 2019a). Lithuanian railways in 11 months of 2018 transported almost 8800 containers from China (Butkus 2018). Cooperation in this field serves as the good example of China’s “perspectives diplomacy”, when Beijing is working with the high expectations from the partner countries. The Belarus does not solve such dilemmas as 3B states. In case of Belarus-China acts as the opportunity for the Minsk to counterbalance the pressure from Moscow in order to sustain economic support from Russia (such as lower export oil and natural gas prices). In the past Minsk also used the temporary improvement of the relations with the EU and West in general in order to counterbalance the Russian influence, but growing presence of China expands the opportunities to manoeuver. In 2016 Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and China President Xi Jinping signed a Belarus-China declaration on establishing relations of trustful comprehensive strategic partnership and mutually beneficial cooperation (Belta 2016). There are no open political disagreements between China and Belarus. Minsk, which also is being regularly pressed by the international community for the human rights violations, is not criticizing China’s domestic and foreign policy. In December 2019 Minsk received the long term zero interest USD 500 million loan from China. Before Russia declined to provide Belarus with the USD 600 million loan using it as the pressure tool in order to stimulate Minsk for deeper political and economic integration. So in this case Beijing once again acted as the counter balancer. On the other hand, this loan was needed to return previous credits taken from the Chinese banks (so it has acted as a debt relief measure). The character of the Chinese interaction with Belarus, which is closer to non-EU states (or even China - African relations), is supported by the fact, that China is using so-called Stadium diplomacy in Belarus. 2019 it was declared, that China will construct new national stadium and swimming complex in Minsk (total cost–USD 235 millions) for free (Belta 2019a).

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Vondracek (2019) found empirical evidence that “China employs stadium diplomacy to secure natural resources and to secure diplomatic recognition in line with the One-China policy”. Belarus contrary to the Baltic states has close cooperation with China in the defence sphere. The most notable project was the successful creation of multiple launch ballistic missile complex “Polonez”. The complex with a range of 200 km (there are plans to expand it to 300 km or more) was started to operate in 2016. It is based on Chinese, soviet and Belarussian technologies. The Belarus in 2009 was interested in acquisition of the similar Russian system “Iskander”, but because of unknown reasons have not reached agreement with Russia on this issue. So military cooperation with China could be seen as a possibility for Belarus to diversify its defence technological cooperation and strengthen its own defence industry (Alesin 2017). There is also close bilateral cooperation in such areas of military technologies as space satellites, air defence systems (Belta 2019b). Belarus has not expressed any reservations towards participation of “Huawei” and other Chinese companies in the creation of the 5G infrastructure. For example, in 2020 “Huawei” will create (using its equipment) 5G coverage testing zone in Belarus (in “The Great Stone” industrial park) (Belta 2020b). Another Chinese company ZTE in May, 2020 already launched the first 5 g network for testing purposes in Belarus (ZTE 2020).

4 Conclusions The patterns of the Baltic states—China and Belarus—China considerably differ. The Baltic states despite publicly declared hopes on deeper economic cooperation with China, participation in 17+1 format has just minor economic dependency on Beijing. Trade volumes, transit and FDI flows are minimal and do not represent an official comparatively high level of the “expectations diplomacy”. At the same time, China can not easily implement the patterns of its economic expansion in the Baltic states because of the comparatively good financial situation, presence of the vast EU funding for the strategic projects. The strong security relations with the United States is also one of the major factors, which lowers the interest of the decision makers in cooperation with China. Despite some similarities (patterns of trade), Belarus has no access and benefits of the European Union membership, is in a considerably more economically vulnerable position and heavily depends on Russia. This makes its cooperation with China more similar to the patterns observed in the Western Balkans or Latin America, where China has a growing footprint in the economies, using debt diplomacy and other influence tools.

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Liudas Zdanavicius researcher and the Coordinator of the strategic level national security and defence courses at the Defence Research Center of the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania. He is the author and co-author of articles and books on security in the Baltic Sea region, including such topics as Russian foreign and national security policy, Russian economic influence. Currently he is actively working on China’s and Russia’s economic influence in the Baltic sea region countries.

Conclusion Fulvio Attinà

Abstract The post-World War II order was intended to restore normal international relations and to face primarily two key problems of the world space, the recovery of the nation-states beaten by the war and as well the building of sovereign nationstate in the colonial areas, and the ensuring of the stable growth of all the national economies and liberalization of the world market.

The post-World War II order was intended to restore normal international relations and to face primarily two key problems of the world space, the recovery of the nation-states beaten by the war and as well the building of sovereign nation-state in the colonial areas, and the ensuring of the stable growth of all the national economies and liberalization of the world market. In today’s international studies, the values and principles of the world policies toward these problems are known as the values and principles of liberal internationalism. The governments of the Western countries chose such values and principles as the bedrock of the post-war order. They made such decision because the liberal values and principles fitted to the political and economic interests of the Western states and, consequently, they approved consistent world policies. In truth, the world policies, that the world institutions approved and implemented, did not always fit to liberalism but fairly well to the interest of the Western countries. Shortly, liberal internationalism served the Western countries more than the Western coalition served liberal internationalism. However, many states have been socialized willingly or not to the world policies, especially to the economic, trade, and finance liberal policies. On such base, experts argue that the governments of the main countries that have been socialized to the liberal institutions and policies will re-organize the world and bring in the multipolar order on the ashes of the order imposed by the Western countries. They assert that a new kind of world order is beginning to materialize because the largest and wealthiest countries of all the world regions are connecting with each other, sharing policy goals and collective F. Attinà (B) Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Attinà (ed.), World Order Transition and the Atlantic Area, Global Power Shift, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63038-6_11

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problem-solving, and reducing exposure to a one-dominant-power world. Such a transition mechanism, which works by the pragmatic interconnection of the foreign policy goals of many middle and great powers that are scattered around the world, is the heir of the world war mechanism of the past, which was ignited by the value clash and the power confrontation of big coalitions under the leadership of rival world powers. Lot of studies offer evidence of the great transformation that world wars take to the order of international relations. Mostly, such studies have been written in the past century. The First and, much more, the Second World Wars of the past century have been tremendous events. The occurrence of two instances of a phenomenon of such destructiveness in a short lapse of time stimulated the mind of historians, social scientists, and political scientists. The ‘polemologist’ qualification was given to scientists such as Gaston Bouthoul and Quincy Wright that in the past century produced the large books that have been the seed of war studies published by political scientists and sociologists. The two political science theories that more pay attention to the order transition subject acknowledge, not with the same emphasis, that in past times great powers waged war to reshape world order. To the hegemonic theory, such event occurred quite regularly. To the power transition theory, instead, such event neither occurred regularly in international politics nor was the normal transition process. Today, the scientists of the two theories are in doubt about the transition mechanism of the present order. They share scientific knowledge about the leading role of one powerful state for shaping international order and explain transition by the dissatisfaction and will of the rising power to revise the principles and institutions of world politics. Also, they assume that any rising power is ready to hold the costs of all-out war to turn down the existing order and get the benefits of the new one but confess that such assumption is hardly true in today’s world because of conditions that keep off the crash between the leader and the challenger country. They confess also that the knowledge about such conditions needs to be adequately based and developed. In truth, knowledge about the now-in-progress order transition is poor also regarding alternate mechanisms and macro-decisions for exiting from the current order crisis. On the whole, most of policymakers and diplomats as well as many scientists and experts see disorder in front of them rather than order transition. In other terms, if the American order was the normal in past time, to international relations practitioners and experts disorder is the new normal. Accordingly, it is ordinary that governments and diplomats do not feel themselves constrained to act in the world affairs by taking in due account the economic, financial, and security policies that have been made by the world institutions, the norms that have been written in international law treaties, and the will of the great powers that promote such policies. In the new-normal disorder, what matters is the national interest and the national power to impose the own interest on the other states by acting alone or with the help of other states, especially the help of regional and world powers. The thesis that disorder is here to stay assumes that disorder is accepted as a sustainable condition by the large majority of the countries. Data and trends confirming such thesis have to undergo careful observation and analysis as much

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as the data and trends that support the thesis of order transition. The chapters of the present books have discussed such thesis and analyzed relevant data and trends. In particular, the chapters of the second part of this book have looked into the countries of the Atlantic area. Two main questions are on the table. First, the present state of disharmony that oscillates from dissent to quarrel depending on the relevance of the issue at stake to the US leader, to the EU leaders, or to both of them, and to the will of one or of both parties to swiftly come to a conciliation or to flex the muscles before going to talking about the middle ground agreement. The book chapters do not foresee significant change of such state of Trans-Atlantic relations in the short and medium term. The rift will be still there. At time, it will widen or shrink. However, the governments on both sides of the Ocean are conscious that, at the time the world order is in question, they have no other partners to share with the values and interests on which to build the common defense of the existing order or to reform it at the time of the possible transition. The second question is about vertical vs. horizontal relations. Atlantic Alliance is the outcome of the unequal conditions of the countries on the two sides of the Atlantic at the end of the world war. Neither European countries nor Canada had resources comparable to that of the United States. Furthermore, all the European countries had the problem of the post-war reconstruction. The gap between the United States and the remaining parties never disappeared. It cannot be filled but on the improbable event of the European Federation birth. The Alliance has always been an alliance of unequal parties and, consequently, a structurally vertical alliance. But, after the end of the post-war reconstruction, the good performance of the European economies that the European integration process pushed up gave to the European countries self-esteem and, since the introduction of the Euro currency, also self-reliance. Nothing has been smooth and easy, but gradually the Europeans came to the conclusion that the vertical structure was not bearable anymore. The problem is that no one knows how to turn it down. Official EU declarations on the identity and autonomy of the European Union are not rare documents. The reality is that, especially after the 2004 EU enlargement, there is not a united European front on what horizontal relations should be constituted in the Atlantic Alliance. No European country is firmly anti-American either.

Fulvio Attinà is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations, and Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam at the University of Catania, Italy. Former Chair of the Italian Association of Political Science (SISP), he served also in the governing bodies of ECPR, ISA and Italian ECSA. Visiting professor at universities in America, Asia and Europe, he is the author of The Global Political System, Palgrave, 2011 (also published in Italian, Spanish, and Russian).