World Orders in Conflict

In conversation with Nicole Deitelhoff

First of all, a very fundamental question: What is a world order? How stable are such orders and who establishes them?

When we talk about a world order, we mean the rules, norms and organizations that provide collective goods such as peace, prosperity and security, or support states in providing them. ‘World order’ because they do this with a global claim.

World orders are usually born out of major crises, often world wars, when a group of actors with the capacity to act, often states, come together and decide on rules, norms and organizations to prevent future crises. Such orders can be very stable as long as central actors support them. If support is withdrawn, orders become turbulent.

What makes the current crisis in the world order a crisis? Haven't many of these tendencies existed for a long time? Is conflict always part of order and when does conflict over order become problematic?

Every order has conflicts. To a certain extent, all political orders are actually conflict orders. They have the task of dealing with conflicts over scarce goods and recognition in such a way that violence is not used and the need for adaptation is recognized and made possible.

It becomes problematic when this is no longer possible because norms and rules are disregarded and their violation is no longer even considered as such. We are currently experiencing the beginnings of this. This is clear in the case of Russia, which no longer even tries to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine under international law, as well as its allies, who do not even criticize the blatant violation of the ban on the use of force as such. Instead they speak of Russia's legitimate security interests.

But we are also seeing problematic developments in many other areas: Compliance with rules, cooperation with international organizations is going down and criticism of them is becoming quieter or oriented towards political alliances. The current world order is under pressure.

The UN Security Council has long been criticized. Now one of its permanent members, Russia, has launched a war of aggression in violation of international law. Is the UN Security Council still relevant at all or has the idea behind it failed?

The UN Security Council is the highest UN body with the task of averting threats to international peace and security. Due to the peculiar structure with five permanent Security Council members who have the right of veto, it is always unable to perform its task properly when conflicts arise between these permanent members. This was in fact the case from the founding of the UN until the end of the Cold War and again since the 2000s. The Security Council is effectively blocked in key crises. Without a fundamental reform of the voting rules and rights, it cannot perform its task. However, the UN has developed alternative mechanisms, such as the UN General Assembly's Uniting for Peace agenda, which cannot issue binding resolutions but can generate power to act. More must be invested in such alternative mechanisms in the future.

What role do economic dependencies play in the current crisis? Have we made a misjudgement by having deep trade relations with Russia, for example?

The depth of the ties with Russia was not the problem, but the extreme asymmetry. Europe had become heavily dependent on Russia for its energy supply without preparing for problems. This has taken its toll, but at the same time, the forced, very short-term decoupling from Russian energy has also made it clear that it is feasible and that we need more flexibility and more control over other players.

But none of this helps against revisionist actors, because they value their political and ideological goals so highly that the economic costs are of no concern to them. It is therefore not a question of reducing interdependence in general, but of avoiding specific problems of excessive dependence. Interdependence in itself remains advantageous because it increases the costs of armed conflicts and thus makes them more difficult.

How will the new LOEWE group deal with these issues?

The LOEWE group investigates the dialectic between conflict and order in order to gain a better picture of how orders try to keep conflicts productive and under which conditions this is no longer possible. We compare today's world order with earlier ones, but we also look at conflicts in sub-orders, such as the security order, the world economic order or the human rights order, to answer these questions. (ewa)