Larbi Sadiki
The war rages unabated. This raises questions about the inability of international diplomacy and other globalizing institutions to stop it. Liberalism promotes interdependence as its answer to shared interests and collective peace. The more reason to contemplate why the spread of liberalism especially via globalization has not confirmed this assumption.
One argument distinguishes between so-called “trading and territorial” states. The former subscribes to a win-win brand of international relations whereby shared benefits accrues from trading amongst nations. The latter are states that seem to be bogged in a realist mindset and seek to maximize benefit through expansionism. This is in theory. Perhaps it is an oversimplification to “box” Russia as a “territorial” state, indifferent to trading in the global economy. Why did Russia use force in the Ukraine in February 2022 and not exhaust diplomacy? Russians themselves cite security (the realist argument) as well as dissatisfaction with the global economy (supposed by liberals to yield collective peace and prosperity).
According to the security account NATO enlargement to include countries with which Russia shares borders is menacing to its national security. This is presented by Moscow as breaching the controversial Minsk agreements 1 and 2 concluded in 2014, the year Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
European powers failed to dissuade Russia from using force against the Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitoring the Minsk agreements could do nothing to enforce them and stop the conflict.
Russia seems to endeavour to build, along with China and BRICS states and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a parallel economic order to that led by the US. SCO’s 2022 summit in China points in that direction. This rationale falls under a “trading” state’s calculus of power relations. Basically, Russia is unhappy about its power ratio, and its status as global trading state on par with the US, China, Germany, etc. However, even trading nations can go to war, directly or by proxy. May be this is one reason why there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel for peace between Russia and the Ukraine. This is not theory. Rather, it is a reality in the world of power hegemons.
From the above, it seems both the realist and liberal schools do not separately explain why we have a raging war between two important nations whose economies are of import to the global energy and food security, etc. A recent OECD report describes the devastation caused to Ukrainian infrastructure, lives and economy. The risk of recession is certain for European economies with lower growth rates and higher inflation is forecast for 2023 and beyond. The consequences for the global economy are as gloomy. That includes Russia.
Institutions and Structures of Democracy: The MENA Context
A democratizing world has the structures that should facilitate peace-making. More countries today seem to be drawn to the democratic ideal. In practice, many countries have gone further along the democratic path. But not without trepidation, reverses or total breakdowns. Examples in the MENA region are legion. Democracy is supposed to furnish governance with the checks and balances that inhibit adventurism. Parliaments and national assemble promote accountability. In a democracy, matters of war and peace are taken away from the hands of individual power-holders. Elected deputies are meant to end deference to rulers when it comes to war-making. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait and war in the early 1990s wouldn’t have been possible if Saddam Hussein been subject to the checks and balances of a democratically elected parliament.
The same applies to several conflicts either dormant or active in the region, from Libya to Iraq. In the latter, even elections do not seem to prevent conflict. In the former, conflict has prevented accord and elections. This hiatus is detrimental to the process for peace-making and institution-building.
In MENA, notwithstanding Orientalist generalizations, Islam lends itself to the kind of interpretations that cohere with peace-making. Even though today Islam is independently interpreted by exegetes who are not doctors of Islam. Both theistic and non-theistic frames of thought are subject to readings that promote peace or demote it, practically and ideationally. This is the more reason why scholars in the MENA region must not endorse the dichotomy of institutions and morals. They should be mutually reinforcing. The machinery of government requires codification of peace-making laws and norms that predispose structure and agency, thought and practice, institution and norm to obey the demand for good governance and perpetual peace.
Thus far, finding consensus for peace and democratization continues to present International diplomacy with an intractable challenge. The binary built into the democratic peace makes no sense. Global diplomacy needs both democratic institutions and democratic morals.
Q End of History? Or ‘End of Peace’?
Did Fukuyama get it wrong? His “end of history” thesis promised a world of liberals and liberalism. The triumph of the market is viewed to be the ‘prophet’ of both peace and democracy. The EU, BRICS, AFO, OAS, the League of Arab States, the Shanghai Group, GCC, G7 and ASEAN are all manifestations of increased globalization.
There is abundance of organizational capital with sufficient muscle for spreading peace, cooperation, and intra-state engagement based on mutuality, reciprocity and equality. The expansion of markets, technologies, wireless and shared platforms, gas and petroleum pipelines, borderless exchanges and movement of ideas, goods and peoples is assumed to result in peace-making and expansion of good governance. There is much interest binding nations today. However, why hasn’t the combined goodwill of the above institutions succeed to mediate a badly-needed pause in the Russia-Ukraine war?
Q Might vs. Right?
That is the perennial question in International Relations (IR). Perhaps many countries and leaders may lean towards Marx (a theory of changing the world), or Hans Morgenthau (human nature and power condition states to ready for war in order to guarantee peace), or Immanuel Kant (democracies avoid war-making).
However, there is a meeting point between all three - structuralism, realism and idealism: the quest for a ‘good’ of sorts in IR. It can be summed up by specific notions of moral politics, be they security, justice or democracy. They all recognize the presence of faults in the international system in their own readings of it.
It is common ground today to wager that war hurts all, whether waged by dictators or supported by democracies. This is reason for the world’s peace builders, including states within the MENA region, such as Qatar, to join global efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war. It is never too late.
Larbi Sadiki, Professor, International Affairs Department, Qatar University, Non-Resident Scholar Brookings Doha Centre
Scholar with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Chiba University, Japan. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs; and a Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute, Japan. He is also editor of the series, Routledge Studies in Middle East Democratization and Government. His most recent co-authored book, Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia: A Century for Protestscapes, is published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
