By Sarah Raine

Since its foundation in 1949, NATO has been the cornerstone of the defense of the liberal international order.  Yet as this 20^th century alliance for regional territorial defense confronts the more amorphous and global security challenges of the 21^st century, so the alliance has to adapt.  Should it fail to do so, NATO will survive as a collective defense organisation, but it will not thrive.  It will be the regional alliance which handles, for example, severe disorder on the periphery of the Eurozone, or the rise of violent nationalism in states that find themselves on the outside of a reworked European project.   But it will not be the type of alliance which, in 2011, conducted six operations on three continents.  To thrive, NATO has to evolve into a hub of global security with a network of partners across the globe.

As about 60 member states, partners and international organizations assembled in Chicago for the biggest summit in NATO’s history, the superficial signs of adaptation were there.  But the reality is that the present network is unhealthily dependent on the United States, whilst the relevant capabilities of NATO’s European members – and in some instances even their aspirations to such capabilities- are becoming ever more limited.   Only 10 NATO member states chose to participate in Operation Unified Protector in Libya, and only six demonstrated both the capability and the willingness to conduct air strikes.

In contrast, amongst “the rest,” defense spending is on the rise.  This year defense spending in Asia is set to exceed spending in Europe for the first time in modern history.  One recent Economist projection based on current trends foresaw China’s defense spending overtaking U.S. defense spending around 2035.

Europe’s extreme dependence on the United States for NATO’s hard security capabilities is bad for stakeholders in the liberal international order and bad for the alliance. Some aspects of this dependency are unlikely to change.  Absent an unforeseen existential threat, defense budgets are not about to rise any time soon.  Meanwhile, pragmatic concerns over the retention of sovereign control of military capabilities will continue severely to limit the impact of any belated conversion to the pooling and sharing of European military resources.

Yet in a world of the rising rest, it is both online casino realistic and practical to expect European member states to pay more attention to the cultivation of security dialogues beyond NATO’s borders — including joint exercises and the expansion of military training, exchange programs and port visits.  European NATO member states such as the UK and Germany are belatedly ramping up their diplomatic engagements in Asia and Latin America, but the development of parallel military-to-military dialogues is lagging behind.  (In Asia, Europe’s preservation of the arms embargo on China and its promotion of arms exports to friendly powers like India are not insignificant, but it is strategy more by default than by design.)

In the encouragement and coordination of a broader security strategy by NATO’s European members to engage “the rest,” the example offered by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, with his February 2012 visit to Brussels and London to discuss common interests in the Asia-Pacific, is noteworthy.

However, even in the event of this broader outreach materializing, antipathies on the part of the “rest” towards this Cold War-era alliance of the West will be hard to overcome.  Meanwhile, NATO’s own abilities to defend the liberal international order are becoming more limited as security stretches beyond traditional geopolitics to include issues such as economics and resource management.

The community of values which NATO represents in hard security terms will therefore need bolstering through cooperation in other fora.  Parallel organizations of like-minded allies will have to emerge, incorporating those states committed to issues such as freedom of trade, the protection of intellectual property, and the primacy of the rule of law.  The Trans Pacific Partnership has potential to develop into one such organization.  A similarly inclusive initiative in the maritime arena based around the protection of sea lines of communication could also be considered.

The rise of the rest does not need to mean an end to the thriving of the West.  But the continued preservation of the liberal international order will be best protected by a security alliance that evolves beyond shared cultural and historical affinities to engage new partners in new arenas — and by the promotion of parallel economic and resource communities which are inclusive by outlook but disciplined in the values and standards demanded of their members.

Sarah Raine is a Berlin-based Fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

By Mark Leonard

One of the big stories of the last 60 years has been the creation of a European-inspired legal order in the shell of an American security order.  The Westphalian order of Bretton Woods has given rise to a new idea of order that gives greater sway to individual rights, institutionalized cooperation, and an idea of security based on legal interdependence and pooling sovereignty to deal with common problems.  This is often called – in short-hand – the Western liberal order – and I think that the biggest global risk is the threat to that order.

The Western liberal order has faced threats over the last few years – but mainly asymmetrical ones, including populist states like Cuba and Venezuela or non-state actors like Al Qaeda.  But now there is a conventional challenge: the rise of “post-colonial superpowers.”  The rising powers of the 21^st century – China, India and Brazil – are all relatively new states forged by movements of national liberation whose experience of globalization has been bound up with their new sense of nationhood.  For the West, globalization is destroying sovereignty — but for these new former colonies it is creating sovereignty on a scale never experienced before.  This surge in economic power is also leading to a questioning of Western ideas on sovereignty and the liberal rules of the road.  Let me provide two illustrations.

The first is the rise of the G-20 as the main mechanism for global economic decision-making.  People have focused on who sits around the table — EU members held half the seats in the G-8, and they account for just a quarter of the G-20.  But – from the perspective of the liberal order– it is worrying is that the G-World seems to be one where global governance takes place within informal institutions governed by the balance of power rather than treaty-based institutions that pool sovereignty.  For me this shows that we have been naïve in thinking that integrating rising powers into global institutions will turn them into so-called “responsible stakeholders.”  It is right to engage and involve rising powers in global institutions, but it is now clear that rather than being transformed by their membership of the institutions, the rising are dramatically changing the nature of the institutions themselves.

A more dramatic illustration of the trend against Western liberal values is the Arab Spring.  After 1989, democratization and Westernization went hand in hand.  When countries of Eastern Europe threw off autocratic rule they wanted to join the West.  Now Arab countries However, other problems can arise, and it”s possible for your free-credits-report.com to get dragged into the situation. are democratizing – but they are not turning towards the West.  In many ways they are going through a “second decolonization,” emancipating themselves from Western client states in the same online casino dgfev way that earlier generations freed themselves from Western rule.  Although the revolutionaries themselves may have been using Facebook and working for Google, the politics they will unleash will be challenging for the West.  I do not think we will see fundamentalist Islamists coming to power across the region – but in Egypt we can already see some of the challenges.

These trends are made more extreme because of the way that America is trying to re-invent its leadership for a “post-American world.”  On the one hand, Americans continue to believe that we will transform rising powers by integrating them into existing institutions (in spite of much evidence to the contrary).  On the other hand, they think that Europe’s over-representation in the existing institutions is a threat to the consolidation of that order.

This is leading a declining America increasingly to turn against Europe.  As Walter Russell Mead has written, “Increasingly it will be in the American interest to help Asian powers rebalance the world power structure in ways that redistribute power from the former great powers of Europe to the rising great powers of Asia today.”  The liberal order can probably survive the dismantling of America’s hegemony — but can it survive the political and economic marginalization of the EU?  A little-commented fact is that it was the EU’s normative agenda — rather than U.S. hegemonic power — that gave legitimacy to the liberal order of the 1990s.  If the United States was the sheriff of the liberal order, the European Union was its constitutional court.

Mark Leonard is Co-Founder and Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think-tank. He is the author of Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (2005) and What Does China Think? (2008).

By Dhruva Jaishankar

Glance at most newspapers or current affairs magazines today and you would not be blamed for thinking that the fabric of the liberal order – marked by democratic governance, liberal values, free markets, stable peace, and strong institutions – is inexorably fraying.

The U.S. and European economies appear caught in a vicious cycle of burdensome entitlements, high unemployment, slow growth, spiraling debt, and political gridlock. China is thought to be successfully advancing an alternative model of governance marked by single-party leadership and state-led, market-driven growth. Russia continues its reversion to authoritarianism. The Middle East is experiencing unprecedented political upheaval, primarily to the benefit of the region’s Islamists. Iran and North Korea are seeking the ability to annihilate their neighbors with nuclear weapons. India and Japan, the largest and wealthiest non-Western democracies, are beset by political stasis and economic stagnation. And international institutions – whether the United Nations, European Union, World Trade Organization, or International Atomic Energy Agency – appear increasingly impotent. It is little wonder then that thoughtful commentators and leading policy intellectuals are predicting a de facto G-2 (or “G-Zero”), a “Zero-Sum World”, or the “Return of History”.  “That Used to Be Us,” “Time to Start Thinking,” and “It’s Even Worse than it Looks,” other declinists note ruefully in the titles of several recent books.

Such pessimism also has popular resonance. Today, two-thirds of Americans believe their children’s employment will be worse than their own. Most already think that China’s economy is larger than that of the United States, when in fact it is still less than half its size. A Pew survey last year showed that citizens of the former Soviet Union (including the Baltic states) were far less enthusiastic about their countries’ shifts to democracy and market economies than they were at the end of the Cold War. And faith in the European project is dissipating rapidly across the continent. Meanwhile, institution-building as it pertains to world trade, climate change, and nuclear disarmament appears to have stalled.

And yet the first drafts of history are often destined for the rubbish bin. Predicting the decline of the liberal order (often inextricably linked to narratives about the future of democracy, liberalism, free markets, peace, and global institutions) is an age-old pastime.  Whether Sputnik, the 1973 oil shock, major terrorist attacks, or post-colonial wars, a wealth of supporting evidence has been used to prophesize the end of the free world. In fact, the picture is far rosier than one might infer from the torrent of pessimism casino pa natet currently emanating from the Western commentariat. Consider the following:

–          Democracy is advancing. 65% of countries evaluated by Freedom House nbso online casino can be counted as electoral democracies, a slight increase since 1995 and a significant increase since 1990. However, a higher proportion of people (53%) are living in electoral democracies today than at any other time in history. And of those 3.75 billion people, 70% now reside in the developing world.

–          Liberal values are spreading gradually. 76% of independent countries today are considered free or partly free by Freedom House, an improvement over 72% in 1995 and 63% in 1990. The standards of acceptable behavior concerning the treatment of marginalized groups – whether ethnic or religious minorities, women, or the economically disadvantaged – have also risen across the board.

–          Market liberalization is progressing, if fitfully. Although the overall quality of world economic freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, has declined slightly since 2008, the figures have improved for every region outside the United States and Europe.

–          Trade is booming. After a slump in 2009, global trade rebounded strongly with 14.5% growth in 2010 followed by 6.5% growth in 2011 according to figures compiled by the World Trade Organization.

–          Liberal democracies are delivering. According to the UNDP, every country for which data is available – both democratic and non-democratic – has experienced improvements in human development (health, education, and income) since 2000.  Developing non-democracies marginally outperformed developing democracies over this period (1.28% as compared to 0.91% per annum), but the apparent ‘democracy tax’ is chimerical given non-democracies’ lower bases, their resource exports, and – in some especially egregious cases such as North Korea and Somalia – inadequate data. It should also be noted that in terms of human development the likes of Ghana, India, Bangladesh, and Mongolia have outperformed China, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Iran over the past decade.

–          The world is becoming more stable and peaceful. Violence – whether interstate wars, civil wars, political disturbances, or organized crime – has dropped steadily since 1991. Deaths resulting from war-related violence have fallen 45% since the 1990s, and 70% since the Cold War, according to figures compiled by the Peace Research Institute-Oslo. Crime-related fatalities have also declined in roughly three-quarters of all countries over the last decade.

Taken together, these trends augur well for the future of the liberal order as the West declines and the ‘rest’ rise. And anecdotal evidence suggests things might only get better. Burma and Egypt are experiencing historical elections. Political intrigue and infighting in China, coupled with decelerating growth, have led to serious questions the world over about the viability of the Beijing model. Vladimir Putin faces popular protests in Russia, while Bashar al-Assad might not be leading Syria by the end of the year. The leaders of major countries meet more regularly and discuss a wider range of issues than ever before. And while details and implementation remain problematic, all the world’s major powers are in agreement about the challenges the global order faces, from economic protectionism and weapons of mass destruction to climate change.

Optimism should always be tempered by caution, and none of these realities should engender hubris, but the underlying basis of the liberal order is certainly alive and well. The only difference is that the West may no longer be able to claim ownership over it.

Dhruva Jaishankar is a Transatlantic Fellow for Asia at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

By  C.  Uday  Bhaskar

The emerging international global order to my mind is better described as a polycentric heptagon – an uneven seven-sided polygon  comprising the United States, Russia, China, the EU, India, Japan and Brazil. The USA, EU and Japan represent one strategic entity with shared security interests; Russia and China are conscious of their non-Western orientation; and India and Brazil  are the equivalent of swing states  that  have the potential  to acquire greater relevance in the heptagon.

The rise of the “rest” would imply the four non-Western members viz: Russia, China, India and Brazil – which also form the BRIC group. Collectively the cumulative comprehensive power index of the US-led grouping will be  of a higher order for the next two decades.  The re-ordering will occur as and when China overtakes the USA as the world’s most prosperous nation by way of overall GDP — and how Japan / East Asia responds to this change.

The US-led international order, and the selective interpretation of what constitutes “liberal” as well as the exigencies under which certain values are to be protected, will be either resisted or challenged by the “rest” – but in an uneven, issue-based manner. To that extent, it may be in order to qualify the emerging global ambiance as a “contra-polar” world, where contradictory policy pursuits and contrarian impulses are the norm.

This would be a sharp contrast to the black-and-white binary division of the Cold War.  A heptagon  covered by a gray sheen may be the more valid characterization of the emerging global environment consequent to the “rise of the rest.”

Asian geopolitics will be critical for the texture of the emerging contra-polar world in which the China-Japan-India triangle will subsume these complexities and contradictions. Will the imperative of globalization as manifest in trade, commerce and investment be the principal consideration for bilateral relations — or will emotive nationalism roil the triangle?  Will the United States be a quiet spectator as nbso online casino reviews China seeks to create a unipolar Asia?  Will the rise of China be as peaceful as Beijing would like the world to believe, or is there a revisionist agenda that will be progressively unveiled?  The contestation in the South China Sea could well be the bellwether for the posture that China will adopt in the future.

Thus China’s profile (by way of comprehensive national power) and the manner in which it orients itself — as supporting the existing status quo, or pursuing a revisionist  path to maximize Chinese interests — will define the degree to which the international order is under threat, or being challenged.  Path dependency will be an important determinant and here the “swing” stance adopted by Russia, India, and Brazil apropos China’s posture will be of considerable salience.

While the BRIC nations have a correspondence by way  of being more in the “developing nation” category than in the  G-7 / high per-capita grouping, their strategic interests are often at variance and exude latent adversarial traits.  The Russia-China-India relationship is illustrative.

Within Asia, the deeper tussle is whether authoritarianism as represented by China is the more viable model for the future – or whether democratic dissonance and disorder as manifest in India will be the proverbial tortoise that will finally prevail.

Managing contradictory compulsions is the challenge for the heptagon and invoking the principle of quantum computing may not be invalid.  The Western world is undergoing a process of transmutation – and certain rhythms and  practices will  have to change since they are unsustainable.  Lifestyle rhythms and consumption practices are already under strain and the changes that are on the anvil are being driven from within.

On the external front, the revisionist impulse that will challenge the existing international order is more likely to come from China, which has chosen a very different value system and where the concept of being “liberal” has negative connotations. The strategic culture associated with China is indicative of a deep-rooted conviction (certitude?) that the post-1949, Mao-derived  model is the more successful – and is to be deified, defended and propagated when the time is opportune.

India, on the other hand, may be a resistant power – in the sense that it can resist change or stricture if  applied to it – and these are traits associated with the pachyderm.  But its distinctive strategic culture is more reactive and empathetic with the status quo that in principle supports the liberal, democratic order.

C. Uday Bhaskar is a Fellow at the National Maritime Foundation, Delhi and Adviser, South Asia Monitor.

From the draft Global Trends 2030 report:

Will the United States be able to work with new partners to reinvent the international system, carving out new roles in an expanded world order? How the US evolves over the next 15-20 years—a big uncertainty—will be among the most important variables in shaping the  international order.

The United States’ relative economic decline vis-a-vis the rising states is inevitable and already occurring, but Washington’s future role in the international system is much harder to assess. An economically restored US—the likeliest scenario—would be a casino pa natet “plus” in terms of the capability of the international system to deal with major global challenges during the long transitional period to a fully multipolar world, although a strong US would not alone guarantee that the growing global challenges were met. A weak and defensive US, on the other hand, would increase the chances of a dysfunctional international system.

Even as the United States’ economic weight is overtaken by China—perhaps as early as the 2020s based on several forecasts—the US most likely will remain primus inter pares among the other great powers in 2030 because of its preeminence across a range of power dimensions and legacies of its leadership role. Nevertheless, with the rapid rise of multiple other powers, the “unipolar moment” is over and Pax Americana—the era of unrivalled American ascendancy in international politics that began in 1945—is fast winding down.

By Pramit Pal Chaudhuri

All geopolitics is local. India’s long-term foreign policy vision will ultimately reflect its domestic political system. And the political choice the country has made is to be a democratic polity, even if it still has a lot of warts. How then do we explain India’s reticence to be a promoter of liberal values and position itself as a democratic nation?

I argue this reflects a combination of factors.

• One, India’s poverty has made its populace see democracy as a functional choice rather than an ideological one. Until economic reforms took place, there was a sense democracy was a necessary burden. There is evidence this attitude is changing among a younger generation.

• Two, India’s relative weakness militarily and limited capacity in other areas meant it was willing to compromise on democracy and values if security interests were at stake. This pattern can be discerned in its Burma policy, dealings with neighbors like Sri Lanka and, most obviously, in its relations with casino online Russia and China.

• Three, India’s political leadership is conscious that it is forging a nation – and that it is roughly at the stage of a 19th -century Western nation. Again, these local motivations can override its better instincts overseas, as seen in its tentative response to the Arab spring.

Otherwise, the Indian establishment is clear in its support for liberal international institutions. India wants to modify the present world order but never to overthrow it.

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is Foreign Editor of the Hindustan Times.

By Stephen Szabo

The rise of the rest has to be to more clearly classified as that part of the non-West which is democratic and that which is not.  India and Brazil fall into the first category with China and Russia clearly in the second. This distinction is an important one as values matter in foreign policy.  The West is not simply a geopolitical alliance based on interests, for if it was it would have disintegrated with the end of the Soviet threat. The fact is that the West does exist and continues to do so based on its shared values in open political systems and its shared vision of a broader liberal international order.

As Vaclav Havel reminded the West during the Cold War, the nature of the domestic political system of a state has important consequences for its foreign policy; the prospect of the replacement of a democratic hegemon by one based on state capitalism and authoritarianism has important international consequences.  The hegemony of the West which characterized the Cold War and immediate Cold War period is now over.  The West is facing a serious challenge to its economic and political predominance and it is possible the Western moment in human history will come to an end in this century.

The growing role of China is clearly the most significant challenge to the liberal international order to emerge since the shaping of the Bretton Woods institutions. China is a deeper and more serious challenge to the liberal order than was the Soviet Union. The West cannot contain the PRC as easily as it did the USSR, because the military dimension is not the only dimension of Chinese power and its economic success has enveloped and divided the West. As its economic power grows (it is growing more rapidly than the NIC in its earlier studies anticipated), its political and soft power will grow with it. It stands a good chance of offering an alternative to the liberal international model of the West.

It is a mistake to view the China threat as predominantly a military one; if the United States does so it will risk exacerbating its military and fiscal overstretch.  That the rise of China is occurring during a period of crisis and relative decline of the West only makes the consequences more serious and imminent. The fragmentation of Europe, which will be the consequence of the Eurozone financial crisis, allows China the option of playing off Europeans against each other best online casino and further fragmenting the EU as an international actor and partner of the United States.

Chinese policies toward Syria in the UN Security Council are a sign of what is to come and how major liberal international institutions will be marginalized.  This applies not only to the UN but also to the IMF and the World Bank, as the money China will have to offer for financial bailouts and development aid will dwarf those of these international institutions.

India remains the only other major contender for emerging power status that can reshape the world system.  While it will not see itself as part of the West, its democratic system and open society makes it a potential partner of the West.  This will combine with its security interests as it seeks to balance a rising China — a country with which it has longstanding territorial disputes which could intensify as the competition for natural resources and the leadership of Asia grows.

Whether India will see its values and interests in the expansion of the international liberal order to include itself, or whether it will be tempted by the legacy of Third World neutralism, will be one of the fundamental questions of this century.  Yet the prospects of India joining the West are real, while the possibility of China taking this view are much more remote.

What is clear is that the West must reconstitute and revitalize itself in order to remain at the core of the liberal international order and to slowly expand that core out. The fact that this remains an era of democracies and democratization offers hope for the western model and its prospects for enlargement. The West must regain a sense of self-confidence and unity if it is to offer a model for the emerging new international order.

Stephen F. Szabo is Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States