Part One: U.S. strategy in the 21st century: leadership through hegemony
Chapter II: Role and Place of the USA in the Twenty-first Century in the Research of American Political Scientists and Scholars of International Affairs
Hans Binnendijk: Back to Bipolarity?
It makes sense to start with the works of those authors whose analysis of current events and the future is preceded by a historic overview of structures and systems of international relations.
Occupying a prominent place among American scholars of international affairs is Hans Binnendijk, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and editor-in-chief of Strategic Assessments. In one of his articles, co-written with Alan Henrikson, he identifies six historic systems of international relations.11
The first system functioned in the period between the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the battle of Waterloo (1815); Binnendijk defines it as a “loose balance of power” in a multipolar framework.
The second system came into being at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and survived until the Crimean War (1853-55); it, too, was based on a balance of power, but already there was a pronounced anchor, Great Britain, and emerging, informal bipolarities (between Great Britain and France in the West; Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the East).
The third system emerged in the period between the Crimean War and World War I (1914). It started off by being multipolar but ended up by the early 1900s in a rigid bipolar block system (the Entente nations on one side, and the Alliance powers on the other).
The fourth system existed in the period between the World Wars (1918-1939). The authors assign no definite characteristics to that system, which is only natural because it is hard to define from a structural perspective. This period was neither multipolar (the axis-pole of Germany, Italy, and Japan was formed in the middle of this period) nor bipolar (the other “axis” was not well defined until 1941) nor unipolar because neither of the “axes” or powers dominated in the world.
The fifth system corresponded to the Cold War period (1945-1989), manifesting itself at first as “multipolar” and transforming soon into a “fundamental bipolarity.” (In reality, there was no such thing as “multipolarity”; there were two victorious powers that regarded each other from the very beginning as ideological and geostrategic rivals.)
The authors draw attention to one important fact: All five systems emerged initially as multipolar and grew into bipolar structures. They also emphasize that “Bipolarity was not the only factor that produced the major conflict, but it provided a structure for it and appears to have made conflict more likely.” Here they confuse cause and effect, for bipolarity is actually the consequence of a conflict that brews because of deep contradictions between two sides.
Finally, the sixth system came into being after the end of the Cold War (1989). The authors consider it difficult to characterize this system because its long-term trends are not yet defined. In this connection, Stanley Hoffmann, another prominent American theorist of international affairs, wrote that when you are unsure how to name a system, you call it “post-something,” such as post-Cold War Era, post-Industrialized Era, post-Communist Era, etc.
The sixth system has five categories of players and four dominant trends that affect the players’ behavior in different ways. The democratic players are the market-democracy nations. Their ideology has become global (the authors remind us that of 191 states in the world, 117 embrace democracy). The USA is their leader, and the international system at present is unipolar because America’s influence is global in character.
The second group of players is the states in transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Chief among them are China, Russia, and India.
The third category is the “rogue states”: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan, Cuba, and Serbia. The authors state: “Containment of their activities has become the main task of the U.S. defense policy in the first decade of the sixth system’s emergence.”
The fourth category is failing states; counted among these are Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Algiers, Somalia, and Haiti.
The fifth category is nonstate players, an assortment of different kinds of subjects with different structures and goals. For instance, the global corporations (in our terminology these are called transnational companies or transnational banks) promote the globalization of the world economy; this goal is also pursued by international criminal syndicates, while terrorist organizations, on the contrary, work against market democracies.
The authors list the main trends in the world: (1) rapid globalization; (2) democratization; (3) fragmentation (meaning the process of setting-self-apart by a state or group of states); and (4) proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). What’s ironic about the third trend is that it is stimulated by globalization; groups of states seek out their place in the globalizing world and increase their might on the regional level, i.e., fragment. (The authors here fail to see the contradictory process of interaction between globalization on the one hand and integration or fragmentation on the other.)
The authors believe that these global trends are going in the direction of bipolarity. “A look at recent relations among the major powers tends to confirm this possibility.”
They believe that Russia and China are the stimulating factors in this process. In the former case, they mean U.S. disagreements with Russia regarding approaches to NATO, anti-missile defense, proliferation of WMD, the knot of problems around the Caspian region, and also NATO’s policy toward Serbia. In the latter case, they note the conflicting positions of the USA and China on the issues of Taiwan, Tibet, those same WMD, human rights, espionage, and economic policy. They write: “As a result, China and Russia are strengthening their security relationship with each other, overcoming countervailing factors which might otherwise prevent a closer collaboration.”
In their opinion, it is these common suspicions about the West that prompted Yevgeny Primakov to propose the idea of a wider Russo-Sino-Indian alliance against Western democracy, an alliance which would inevitably be driven toward cooperation with the rogue states.
Should a new polarization take place in the sixth system, new forms of interaction may emerge, similar to those that existed during the Cold War years, only “based this time on common interests rather than ideology.”
Binnendijk and Henrikson prognosticate: “It could be a schism between the technologically advanced haves (the market democracies) and have-nots (the rest). …This coalition might be more difficult to deal with and deter than our Cold War foes. It is not a future to encourage.”
And in summary: “A new bipolar world is not inevitable. History need not repeat itself, but current trends are leading us in that direction.” The authors call on politicians to take this scenario into consideration.
11 Hans Binnendijk with Alan Henrikson, “Back to Bipolarity?” Strategic Forum, no. 161 (May 1999); Internet.
The 21st Century: The World Without Russia
(Philosophical-sociological Essay)