America’s Crisis of Reality and Realism: A Symposium (Part II)
The following wide-ranging reflections from Richard Sakwa, for which we are deeply grateful, conclude this section of our Symposium. As already noted in Part I, our Symposium on Realism and Legitimacy began with the question: Why is it that realism in U.S. foreign policy practice has all but disappeared, and is this disappearance related to a more generalized American loss of contact with reality itself? Professor Sakwa’s take on this question has a number of fascinating themes, but perhaps most prominent among them — the mistaken belief by a part of the system that it is in fact the whole. Here we see a continuation of the self-idolization theme already explored in Part I — but now it is further fleshed out so as to expose its sociological, cultural-philosophical, international relations and institutional components.
In Part III we will turn to the question of Russia’s legitimacy, and in Part IV, we share three responses which attempt to tackle the problematic as a whole by looking at the inter-relationship between realism, what we mean by ‘reality,’ and the question of political legitimacy. — the Editors
The Geo-Ideological Driver of America’s Redefinition of Reality
— Richard Sakwa
In historical analysis, and to a degree in political philosophy, periodisation is everything. It establishes the framework of analysis, and thereby drives towards a certain set of conclusions, to the exclusion of others. In our case the relevant time period is 1945 to 2022. We can now perceive an essential unity to this era, starting with the Allied victory in World War II and the creation of the Charter international system based on the United Nations, and ending with the institutional and normative foundations of that period under threat.
The period begins with the creation of a new international system, as is typically the case in postwar situations. Drawing from the experience of earlier European postwar settlements in the modern era, starting from Westphalia in 1648, Utrecht in 1714, Vienna in 1814-15 a new international system was created in 1945. This drew on the ideas current at the end of World War I but sought to learn from the failings of the Versailles settlement of 1919. Instead, the UN-based Charter international system incorporated great power dynamics in the form of the permanent members of its Security Council, while giving expression to the normative aspirations to create a system that repudiated the logic that had repeatedly led to war in Europe. The Charter international system became increasingly ramified over the years, and although it is far from becoming a world government, it is the fundamental source of legitimacy for postwar international politics.
At the same time, after 1945 several political orders within the system contested for dominance. The US-led liberal international order developed two main pillars: the economic one, which built on nineteenth free trade ideas, and was formulated in the Bretton Woods economic system and subsequent modifications, including what became the World Trade Organisation; and the military leg in the form of NATO. This was countered by the Soviet bloc and its allies, which for a time included China. The Non-Aligned Movement sought to keep its distance from both, but the legitimacy of its critique of bloc-based politics was drawn from Charter principles. While the postwar international system was a singularity, international politics in this period was inherently pluralistic.
The political West was forged in the context of Cold War struggle, and the characteristics assumed at this time later became embedded in its behaviour and approach to outsiders. This political West is a child of the post-1945 era, combining a formal commitment to Charter norms but combined with a power system with universalistic and power ambitions. It is embedded in a cultural West that has developed over the millennia, and a civilizational West that took shape in the modern era and which spread across the globe in the age of imperialism. This political West is contingent, and perpetuates in new forms the imperialistic impetus that propelled Europe to its earlier dominance. The burden of projection has passed from the great European empires to the US. Internal critique of the political West is generated by appeals to the deeper cultural and civilizational traditions, while external critique is based on clash/dialogue of civilizations ideas, in which Europe/US is just one civilization among many, as well as by appeal to the various anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist movements of the modern era.
The various ‘critical junctures’ within the broader period turn out not to be so critical after all, although they were undoubtedly important and consequential. In particular, the end of Cold War I in 1989 exposed the dilemma that had been present since the beginning of the Charter era. As Stephen Wertheim has so convincingly demonstrated, in 1945 the US was willing to embed its overwhelming power in a broader multilateral framework to endow it not only with legitimacy but also efficacy.[1] As long as the Soviet Union existed an equilibrium between the system and the US-led order was basically maintained. However, the collapse of the Soviet challenge fundamentally disrupted the balance. In effect, the so-called ‘rules-based order’ challenged the supremacy of the Charter system if and when it suited the dominant power in what had become a unipolar international political order. A sub-order effectively claimed the prerogatives, and indeed legitimacy, that properly belonged to the international system as a whole. This sub-order generated a reality of its own and delegitimized alternatives.
It is from this momentous disruption that all else flows. The US-led order became radicalized, claiming a universality that had earlier been contested by the Soviet bloc and its allies. This radicalism took at least five distinct forms: the Hayekian, which unleashed the neoliberal revolution that had been gathering force since the 1970s across the world in the form of globalization; the Hegelian, whereby the idea of the ‘end of history’ assumed that the ideological evolution of humanity had come to an end and in which there could be no sustained legitimate alternatives to US-style liberal democracy; the Kantian, which underpinned the East European anti-communist revolutions and which now generalized human rights as the ‘last utopia’;[2] the Marcusian, which in the end took the form of identity politics, reinforcing the shift away from class-based sociological analysis towards the sustained disaggregation of the individual from broader collective categories; and last but far from least, the Hobbesian, in which the American struggle for primacy became existential and sustained an unmitigated militarism throughout the post-Cold War era.
This post-Cold War universalism was accompanied by new forms of dominance, which took the form of the ideology of ‘primacy’ (reinterpreted in the Trump years as ‘greatness’). The institutions of the US-led sub-order engaged in a process of expansion that assumed an inherent uncontested legitimacy. Soviet and later Russian claims that the country deserved some sort of equal partnership in the post-Cold War international politics because of its role in peacefully dismantling the Cold War confrontation were brushed aside as the protestations of a weak and declining power. Instead of the transformation of international politics based on Charter principles (which had inspired the Gorbachevian revolution in the first place), enlargement and expansion became the order of the day. This in particular concerned the expansion of NATO in Europe, accompanied by aspirations to become the core of a genuinely global security system.
The combined claims to universality and dominance have several real-world consequences. First, a hermetic approach to policy-making and more broadly, public discourse. Ideas coming from outside of the liberal order are routinely and dogmatically dismissed as self-serving and illegitimate. The first charge may well often be correct, but the closure of the political West’s mind is the salient feature of our time. It generates a reality that is largely impervious to the concerns of others. This leaves little scope for empathy, let alone sympathy, for the viewpoints of antagonists. Power and ideas have fused, the hallmark of an ideology. This combination provoked the current degradation of diplomacy, demonstrated most spectacularly in the ‘diplomacy war’ between Russia and the political West. Embassies have been denuded of staff and dialogue reduced to a minimum, where it exists at all.
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Power and ideas have fused, the hallmark of an ideology.
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This gives rises to the second characteristic, namely a Gnostic form of Manicheanism. Global problems are reduced to a simple binary. The inherent dualism of the political West is generalized to the entirety of international politics. This black and white picture paints protagonists as not just mistaken but inherently evil. This was the classic Marxist-Leninist approach, and in an inverted form it now dominates the style of political discourse in the political West. If a political project is viewed as universal, and with an inherent need to dominate international politics, then regional rivals will be demonised and excluded.
This assumes a specific form in the post-Communist era, our third characteristic, namely democratism. Democratism is not quite the same as the advocacy of democracy, which is an entirely legitimate exercise and one of the foundations of the Charter international system. By contrast, democratism is imbued with the hermetic and Manichean characteristics described above. It renders democracy an instrumental and directed process to reinforce the power aspirations of the political West. Nationalist political elites in East European countries very quickly learned that if their ambitions were couched in the language of democratism, accompanied by attempts to distance themselves from Russia, they would find a ready audience in the political West. Democratism is generated in part by ideas drawn from democratic peace theory, which postulates that consolidated democracies do not go to war with each other. If that is indeed the case, then the more democracies there are in the world, then the greater the security of the political West. This security-democracy nexus reinforces the trend towards categorizing non-democracies as a security threat. This logic is then expressed in the form of the struggle of democracies against autocracies, the binary logic that only reinforced Manicheanism and closure.
The political consequences of these three features have been dramatic. The hubristic claims of the political West leave little scope for diplomacy. This is a new style of international politics that has had dangerous consequences. In the case of Russia, its concerns about the expansion of the political West, and in particular its security system, to what the former defense secretary Robert Gates called ‘the gates of Moscow’, forced an uncomfortable choice on Soviet/Russian leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin. Recognition of the preponderant power of the political West and acquiescence to its leadership was one thing, but subordination to an expanding power system was another. The appropriate policy response has been one of the major fracture lines in post-communist Russian politics. Radical liberals and Westernizers stress the enormous benefits to be derived from accepting a subaltern position within the political West. This is contested by statists, neo-traditionalists and Eurasianists of various stripes, who insist that Russia by its very essence is a great power. In their view, renunciation of its great power aspirations would signal the demise of Russian sovereignty in its entirety.
The debate in Russia is an expression of its permanent liminal status, torn between becoming part of the political West, aspiring to become a better version of Western modernity (which in essence was the Soviet communist project), or to become an alternative altogether. This liminality has been at the heart of Russian state development since Peter the Great set Russia on the path of modernization and Westernization, and it endures to this day. In 2022 permanent liminality faced its sternest test, and the events of that year will sooner or later force choices that will decide the fate of the country for generations to come.
The Second Cold War, like the first, is a political choice and not an imperative of international politics.
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China is faced by similar dilemmas, although its choice is rooted in a far stronger civilization context, and with a political culture now imbued with a coherent and workable vision of its future. That is why the political West is correct to identify China as a genuine peer competitor and its greatest long-term challenger. To that degree the political West is capable of a realistic assessment of political materiality. However, this appraisal only makes sense within the limited and contingent framework of the interests of the political West as it developed since 1945, and with its radical inflection since 1989. The Second Cold War, like the first, is a political choice and not an imperative of international politics.
If we broaden the horizon of reality, we see that appeals to focused development strategies, genuine peaceful coexistence and non-alignment, and attempts to give substantive meaning to the ‘win-win’ formula opens up new possibilities for engagement, cooperation and the revival of diplomacy. Classical realists dismiss this as naïve and unreal, but by appealing to a tradition of great power politics that reaches back to Thucydides, the substantive opportunities opened up by the Charter international system are suppressed. One does not have to be an idealist to argue that there is nothing so unreal as realism when it is untethered from its context. The architects of the 1945 international system learned fundamental lessons from the failure of earlier projects for international order. They sought to combine the realities of power (the prerogatives enjoyed by the permanent members of the UN Security Council) with norms, embodied in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the whole body of subsequent protocols and international law. The enduring context is a world threatened by nuclear annihilation and rampant militarism, accompanied by the ideological generation of hostility. The Charter international system offers a viable framework for peace and development, but it requires a revolution in consciousness, popular pressure and leadership of rare quality for its promise to be fulfilled.
The essential problem is that within the Charter system a sub-order claims privileges and prerogatives that in the end undermines the viability not only of the system as a whole but also of the sub-order itself. The US-led rules-based order generates hostility from outside protagonists, it forces binary choices on third-party countries that most would prefer not to have to make, and ultimately degrades the quality of the democracy that the political West justifiably espouses. Above all, such a perspective on global affairs generates conflict and war, undermining the fundamental tenets of the peace project defended by the political West. The Ukraine war in 2022 was accompanied by the extraordinary denigration of peace activists and non-alignment. Critics of the war are denounced with neo-McCarthyite epithets, and debate is closed in an oppressive and intolerant manner. Groupthink is reinforced as outliers and critics are castigated. The noise in the hermetic echo chamber rises to the point that rational debate becomes impossible. Alternative viewpoints and policy choices are denounced as ‘talking points’ of the enemy, condemning the liberal order to global marginalization and inevitable decline. Turning inwards, domestic divisions are exacerbated, the public sphere is degraded and civil conflict intensified.
While the Global South defended the normative order represented by the Charter international system, and thus either quietly or explicitly condemned the breach of these principles in February 2022, it does not buy into the Manichean representation of the conflict advanced by the political West. The anti-hegemonic structures, processes and institutions of the Global South have been greatly strengthened, many of them in alliance with a Russia that has been forcibly stripped of its liminal status as it became a pariah in the West.
The renewed civil war in the Global North leaves much of the Global South cold. Their attitude is a plague on both your houses, and they seek to build a better alternative to the dominance of the political West. While the West lauds itself on its vigorous response to and unity in the face of the Russian invasion, the greater tragedy is that this unity is of a sub-order whose patent incompetence in failing to prevent a long-predicted war and inability to deliver public goods to the citizens of the ‘united’ political West is becoming increasingly apparent. The war of 2022 is by far the most consequential critical juncture since 1945. The international system established at that time is being tested as never before, but it will most probably survive as a new anti-hegemonic order is created in the Global South to counter the hubristic political ambitions of the political West. The Charter international system will remain the source of legitimacy as a new realism begins to shape international public discourse. A new balance in international politics may be restored, and thus the international system saved from its absorption into an ambitious and restless sub-order. The future of humanity depends on it.
Richard Sakwa is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Kent and a board member of the Simone Weil Center. His latest book is Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War (Lexington Books, 2022).
NOTES
[1] Stephen Wertheim, Tomorrow the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy (Harvard, Belknap Press, 2020).
[2] Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press, 2012).