Unipolarity will continue

Foreign opinion

Do we still live in an era of unipolarity or have we already shifted off to the multipolar system? Well, that all depends on what we define by the term “unipolarity”. Ira Straus, a Fulbright professor of political science and also the founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, argues that unipolarity has only begun and will run for at least another 50 – 100 years. He believes that even after this time has passed, unipolarity itself won’t recede. It more likely will transform itself into a new form. In this special interview for the Russian Council Ira Straus explains why unipolarity is so enduring; analyzes the factors that make it stable and could undermine it; and finally looks at Russia’s future in the unipolar world.

Foreign opinion

Interviewee:
Ira Straus, the founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO.

Interviewer:
Maria Prosviryakova, RIAC

Do we still live in an era of unipolarity or have we already shifted off to the multipolar system? Well, that all depends on what we define by the term “unipolarity”. Ira Straus, a Fulbright professor of political science and also the founder and U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, argues that unipolarity has only begun and will run for at least another 50 – 100 years. He believes that even after this time has passed, unipolarity itself won’t recede. It more likely will transform itself into a new form. In this special interview for the Russian Council Ira Straus explains why unipolarity is so enduring; analyzes the factors that make it stable and could undermine it; and finally looks at Russia’s future in the unipolar world.

Ira Straus, founder and U.S. coordinator
of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia
in NATO

Transcript

Mr. Straus, thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of this interview for the Russian International Affairs Council.

It is my pleasure.

You wrote a number of articles about unipolarity. What does unipolarity mean? What characteristics does it have?

Unipolarity has been better understood in Russia than in America, but badly understood in both. Back in the 1990-s there were very serious discussions among Russians about it. There would be two definitions about it. One was polemical political definition: “unipolarity” is American imperialistic system ... and so on in the old communist rhetoric.

The other definition was quite serious and you can find it in Zuganov. It states that the “unipolarity” is the global system of global leadership by the West, with the West internally led by the United States. And that portrays the reality that the West is predominant coherent force in the world; and the United States is the most coherent core force within the West. This is real and it is not likely to change for a long time to come.

What are the roots of unipolarity? How you can trace it?

You can trace it in two different ways. One is the collapse of multipolarity which went through several stages with World war I, World war II and the Cold war, ending up with bipolarity and then the end of the second pole. Then we had unipolarity. But this is a superficial way to view it.

There is a more profound way to look at the entire modern world system. Ever since Europe made its way around the world, Europe dominated the world (that is from a global standpoint of unipolar system). Yet Europe was internally divided in a multipolar internal system. And if you look a bit more closely, you will see that in the external world, there was always a unipolar leadership, first belonging to Portugal, Spain, Holland and then England. England lasted a long time and then was taken over by America, which meant that the global system was much more unipolar always than the intra-european system.

What happened in the 20th century is simply that the intra-european system also gradually went from multipolaity to unipolarity. The West organized itself; and bit by bit all of Europe became West. This made the world system much more coherent, the unipolarity of the world system – stronger than it had been before. Despite some gains and some losses, many ups and downs and many complications, the overall trend is to a greater not less unipolarity.

Unlike many scholars that claim the end of unipolarity you argue that it has only begun and will run for another 50-100 year. What are the reasons for its longevity?

Well, first, let me say that even though there are many different views among many scholars the overwhelming preponderance of scholarship belongs to the knowledge-industry (the media, the universities and so forth); and there are political tendencies and fashions in the knowledge industry. So, there is no great secret that the overwhelming majority of the intelligentsia belongs to the left of the actual political life of its country. This is true in many countries; and, certainly, it is true in the West. The overwhelming majority of Western scholarship is against unipolarity, because unipolarity belonged to the West and the West is not viewed as the beneficent force of the world from the standpoint of the left.

So, this is the first reason why scholarship is against unipolarity and doesn’t want to discuss it - except to predict its demise. There is a subset of that; if all idealism belongs to the left wing, then people who want to be moderate and people who want to be conservative – and that is the bulk of people – they are going to talk realism instead of idealism. Well, realism likes to talk about balance of power, it also doesn’t like unipolarity. Unipolarity is a form of idealism, it is neither left nor right wing. It is the actually existing world order. But you won’t find much support for it among scholarship. This is for political reasons and for fractional reasons within scholarship. It is not out of objective reasons.

Projections of the future are always difficult and I make it only for contrast with people who confidently predict every year that the unipolarity is going to end. The discussion of unipolarity began only in 1990-s; before that it was the discussion of atlanticism. The Atlantic institutions are the institutions of global unipolarity. Every year throughout my political life - which began in 1960-s and 1970-s - it has been predicted that the NATO is going to end in a year or two. And this has been a predominant tendency in forecasting. Here we are 50 years later and NATO is still there without the slightest hint of disappearing. I have learnt to take these projections with heavy skepticism. There is no real evidence behind them.

Part of the reasons for the projections of the end of unipolairty is the total misunderstanding of what it is. The majority sees unipolarity as only being about America. And of course, China’s aggregate GDP will surpass America’s, it is inevitable. So, that makes it easy to predict: “There will be an end”. But it totally misunderstands what the unipolarity is about. If we look at Zuganov’s formulation, which despite all of his hatred of Western unipolarity comes close to the truth: “unipolarity” is western global leadership with the United States as the most organized leader of the west.

Western global leadership has been around for 500 years; and the West keeps growing in terms of its membership. Before 1989 it didn’t include Eastern Europe, before 1945 it didn’t include Germany or Italy, or Japan. The West is continuing to expand as westernization continues everywhere. Chinazation doesn’t occur anywhere. Russianization doesn’t occur, except in Russia’s most immediate space, where it occurred hundreds of years ago and Russia is trying to preserve that. But westernization takes place everywhere: the West gradually expands. The aggregate West today is more than a billion people, about as many as China has. China is not going to catch up to aggregate western GDP. Probably, never will. Certainly, not in our lifetime.

What effect does globalization have on unipolarity? Does globalization make it stronger or undermine it?

A bit of both. I would say that globalization is contributing to the acceleration of westernization. But it is also dispersing power more, because it is accelerating the growth of non-western powers. As such it creates the basis for the new projections which are: “The unipolarity will end because China is growing”. But, as I said, this is based on misunderstanding of what is the unipolar core of the world order.

Unipolarity is a lot stronger than those projections allow. It is still possible that if China and India and Brazil, and other powers were to keep growing, and if they were to be united against the West very cohesively -then unipolarity would collapse into a new bipolarity or a new kind of chaos, semi-multipolarity. If we add Russia’s nuclear force to the anti-Western side, then we have nuclear bipolarity again. It is possible that we could return to a kind of bipolarity, punctuated by more chaos, because it would no longer be controlled, like the old bipolarity was by a single power – the Soviet Union. Instead it would be a somewhat incoherent second pole with the nuclear forces from Russia, the economic force from China and other forces dispersed. It seems unlikely to me that this would happen in a very effective way.

It seems to me that all the BRICS countries play a double game. One, is to unite with each other for occasional unity against the West. And the other, is to try to have the best relation possible with the West. The West remains the coherent group and lends some degree of coherence to the world order as a whole. And westernization, I expect, will continue.

There is one other big threat to unipolarity and that is the rise of Islamism, promoted by the democratization in the Middle East, promoted by the United States itself in the last year. This is a new turn.

How do you think the Arab spring will affect the unipolarity?

We don’t know yet what the final result will be, it is much too early to tell. But it does create some new possibilities for damage to unipolarity. If the major resources of global energy fall into anti-Western hands, that will make things a lot worse for unipolarity. No question about that. So far the major energy resources have belonged to non-Western, but pro-Western states in the Gulf region. If the whole Middle East goes in a more Islamic direction, it will be very hard for those very fragile regimes to hold on.

If unipolarity is the most stable system, why is it that it will only last for the next 50-100 years?

It won’t necessarily end. One of the paradoxes in world order, one of the nightmares in world order system is how a world order can adapt to new rising powers. The theory is that this is what usually leads to world wars. There are lots of discussions about whether the rise of China will lead to a big conflict between China and the United States. And it might. The unique thing is that this has not always happened. The transition from Britain to the United States occurred in a friendly way, without conflict. There were World wars, but that was because of Germany, not because of any troubles between Britain and the United States. So, this is an example of a pass over within the unipolar system. And yet the primary unipolar system in the world as a whole wasn’t changed by that. This is the clue to it all. If the West is able to continue gradually expending its membership the end of unipolarity will never take place.

Will unipolarity take a new form then?

It will transform itself into an increasingly global unipolarity.

Such as global government?

Global unipolarity eventually will become a global government. Now that is not a prediction that I am going to make and say that it is going to happen for sure. It could happen. It could also be that unipolarity would collapse in 30, 50 or 100 year. Though I don’t think it is going to collapse in 5 or 10 year. But it becomes really hard to predict what will happen in 30, 50 or 100 years.

The greatest danger to unipolarity is the lack of ideological support for it within the unipolar core of the world, within the Western countries, where the academics are writing articles against it. The only support you find for “unipolarity” as a word in the West is not referring to the actual unipolar system, it is simply referring to American nationalism, assertiveness and unilateralism, which is a fundamentally different thing from the unipolar structure of the world order. And it tends to be destructive to unipolarity just as often as helpful to it. Perhaps, more often. Unipolarity suffered more blows under George W. Bush - where these advocates of American assertive unipolarity were all very prominent - than in any other recent administration. Now it has suffered blows under Obama because of his enthusiasm for democratizing the Middle East. We don’t know what the ultimate results of that will be. It might turn out not as dangerous as it looked at first, but we will see.

What is Russia’s role in the unipolar system? Does failure to include Russia in the unipolar system make the system more vulnerable?

Indeed it does. If there were coherent thinking in the West about unipolarity it would certainly be understood that expanding the western sphere is a way of reinforcing unipolarity. At the same time it would be understood that one can not expand it to the whole world at once. One of the great weaknesses is that expanding the western sphere is equated with democratization of any country anywhere. And this has led to the illusion that if we spread electoral democracy and free elections in the Middle East, this will somehow make things better for us in the world. Well, it could. But the evidence is also the contrary. In Russia electoral democracy probably will make things better. Russia is not going to vote Islamists into power.

However, the time when there was real chance for a rapid and deeper linkage of Russia to the West was the early 1990-s and the West failed to use this opportunity. Instead the West focused at Russian policy, on giving advice to Russia on how to transform itself economically. And the psychological anchoring of Russia to the West was what the West should have focused on. The provision of some dignity for Russia within the Western-led international system was the essence of what would lead to that psychological anchoring. As a result Russia reacted partially against the West.

It is not a bipolar system. There is a nuclear bipolarity in the sense that there are two nuclear deterrent forces, but Russia doesn’t use its nuclear force for the protection of anti-Western causes all around the world. If it did - as it did to a great extent during the Soviet era – then the world system would be more bipolar. As of now, the bipolar element is a much reduced element in the world order.

What could be the best way to integrate Russia?

I think it will have to be a more long term project than it could have been in the early 1990-s. But the crux of it remains twofold. The one part is a return gradually to a more liberal democracy in Russia, but this is the part that every westerner will tell you. The other part is a strategic rapprochement. And that remains as difficult now – and in some respect as easy now – as it would have been in the early 1990-s. It requires some efforts on both sides to come to the table and seriously discuss what are the areas of agreement and disagreement, and what could be done to combine this into a common policy.

Do you see this as Russia joining NATO?

That is the goal of the strategic rapprochement. It should be institutionalized. And the crucial strategic institution is NATO.

Russia is much worse off because it hasn’t been able to integrate with the West. And the West is much worse off for lacking Russia. It is not just the global unipolar system which is worse off – of course it is – but the United States is worse off. We wouldn’t have had September 11 if we have had the common policy on Afghanistan in the 1990-s, after the Soviet Union withdrew. Russia has paid the price in the nearer abroad, because of the continuing disputes with the West.

What are your concluding thoughts on the future of unipolarity?

Even if we don’t integrate Russia – but I hope we will – economic unipolarity will remain, the West will remain the largest economy of the world, the West will remain the cultural modernizing pole of the world. So, cultural, civilizational unipolarity will remain; and strategic unipolarity will remain. Despite the fact that an equal nuclear force exists, the strategic power of the West in all actionable respects and usable forces remains far-far greater than anyone else’s and will for a long time to come.

Unipolarity will continue as far as can be reasonably projected; to guarantee its future more countries will have to be integrated gradually - realistically - not leaping too far and diluting unipolarity, but not going too slowly and losing unipolarity. It always requires a very skillful effort, and Russia is the most important single country for this effort. There are as well other countries in East Asia that are gradually becoming part of the West. So, it doesn’t depend entirely on Russia. However, the world would be much better for having Russia as a part of the unipolar world system and for having unipolarity they can gradually not fade into the sunset, but gradually absorb the whole world. Then we will get to the global government, it is a reasonable prospect, no one else has found an effective way to create a world government, but this is the one way that has a reasonable prospect of being effective, and I hope we will get there.

Thank you so much for the interview!