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Page added on April 16, 2014
The Slow Death Of The Old Global Order
In the spring of 2012, The National Interest produced a special issue under the rubric of “The Crisis of the Old Order: The Crumbling Status Quo at Home and Abroad.” The thesis was that the old era of relative global stability, forged through the crucibles of the Great Depression and World War II, was coming unglued. In introducing the broad topic to readers, TNI editors wrote, “Only through a historical perspective can we fully understand the profound developments of our time and glean, perhaps only dimly, where they are taking us. One thing is clear: they are taking us into a new era. The only question is how much disruption, chaos and bloodshed will attend the transition from the Old Order to whatever emerges to replace it.”
Since publication of that special issue of the magazine, events have seemed to bolster the thesis that the current global situation and the American domestic political situation are inherently unstable, and stability will return only with the emergence of some kind of new order. Leaving aside the U.S. domestic scene for purposes of this digression, the gathering global crisis got a penetrating survey the other day from William Pfaff, the longtime geopolitical analyst for the International Herald Tribune (recently renamed the International New York Times).
Pfaff said the world faces an “international disorder unmatched since the interwar 1930s,” fostered by the ongoing Ukraine crisis, the “self-destructive forces” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, growing instability within the world of Islam, and the “serious risk of collapse” of the European Union. Pfaff notes with a small measure of relief that the world isn’t beset these days by ideological dictatorships on the march or any new waves of totalitarianism. Today’s problems, he says, are merely “confusion, incompetence, and intellectual and moral disorder.” He adds: “But these are bad enough, in an over-armed world.”
What’s most troubling about all this is that today’s national leaders seem utterly lacking in any serious consciousness of just how dangerous the global situation is. The current Ukraine crisis , for example, is the product of a long-term Western tendency (the word “strategy” hardly qualifies here, given the lack of any coherent logic involved) to push eastward through what once were the buffer territories of Eastern Europe and press right up to the Russian border.
Though highly provocative, this didn’t generate any serious crisis when Russia remained weak after the Soviet collapse and the eastward push didn’t extend into territories that for centuries had been part of Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. But the United States, European Union and NATO remained blithely unmindful of the consequences when they kept pushing as Russia gained sufficient power to resist incursions into its areas of crucial national interest. What were the leaders of these Western entities thinking?
Pfaff puts that question a little differently: “Why Should Slavic and Orthodox-Uniate Ukraine, its history painfully intertwined with Russia’s, be made a member of what was and still essentially is Charlemagne’s post–Roman Europe?” With one sentence he places today’s sordid events surrounding Ukraine into a broad historical perspective of more than a millennium.
For that matter, adds Pfaff, “Why does Turkey belong in Christian Europe?” He wonders if President Obama, should he be asked such questions, could give a considered and historically grounded answer. “Or does the machinery of foreign-policy making grind relentlessly along behind Mr. Obama’s back, or beyond his attention?”
Good question. And it’s particularly intriguing given the machinations of that meddling bureaucrat, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, who worked behind the scenes to foment the uprising that eventually ousted the duly-elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. She even identified the man who should replace Yanukovych after his ouster and—presto!—he did indeed emerge as Ukraine’s interim leader. It turns out that the United States has spent some $5 billion in fostering “democratic institutions” in Ukraine designed to nudge the country away from Russian sway.
Saner heads would have understood just how dangerous this kind of activity can be. And so some questions intrude: Did anyone in the State Department inform President Obama that this was going on? If anyone had, would the president or his informant have understood the potentially incendiary nature of such diplomatic intrusiveness? Or was the president simply left in the dark, as Pfaff has suggested, while his minions engaged in activity destined to create an unnecessary crisis in U.S.-Russian relations and possibly unleash destabilizing ethnic tensions in a crucial corner of the world?
For historical perspective, it’s worth noting that we look back now with a certain disdain upon the heads of state grappling with events leading to World War I. Those events ended a century of relative stability and peace in Europe, and the men who let that grand epoch pass are seen in history as hapless, out of touch, even stupid. In fact, they weren’t stupid, but they were out of touch and that rendered them hapless in the face of events they didn’t understand.
President Obama and those around him aren’t stupid either, but they don’t seem to understand the nature of our time and the challenges posed by a fading era. They seem incapable of grappling with the kinds of broad historical questions posed by William Pfaff.
But the problem doesn’t reside only with the current administration. There seems to be a zeitgeist in play that retards the ability of our leaders and intellectuals to grasp the transformative nature of our time and hence the havoc besetting the globe. Pfaff is equally hard on George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, particularly regarding what he calls “the Muslim conflagration.” He writes: “Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan—in all of them, a President Bush, or President Obama, together with his accomplices, has passed their way, sowing annihilation.”
He’s right, of course, and equally correct in dismissing the ongoing efforts by U.S. officials to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “in the face of the manifest unwillingness of Israel to allow the conflict to be solved on any terms that do not expel all the Palestinians from the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and award these to Israel (God’s lands, therefore Zionist Israel’s: Sheldon Adelson, sales agent).”
One could argue that it isn’t in America’s interest to push Israel on this matter, though that is eminently debatable. More to the point, though, is the haplessness of a nation continually going back to the well with high expectations of finding water, when in fact the well has been dry for decades. That kind of behavior by any nation denotes a clear lack of seriousness.
Seriousness is what the times call for. We are living through a crisis of the old order, and it demands new thinking, new cautions, new understandings of the profound challenges of this pregnant historical interregnum. If Western leaders continue along the course they’ve been on in the post-Cold War period, they are likely to go down in history in much the same light as those sadly obtuse leaders who presided over the onset of World War I.
20 Comments on "The Slow Death Of The Old Global Order"
J-Gav on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 4:41 pm
“If Western leaders continue along the course they’ve been on in the post-Cold War period, they are likely to go down in history in much the same light as those sadly obtuse leaders who presided over the onset of World War I.”
If they leave any historians around to write about it, that is …
And by the way, does the author really believe that U.S. policy ever came out of its Cold War mindset? Has anybody noticed any benefits coming out of the so-called ‘peace dividend’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union? What I’ve noticed is a lot of war-making (under the guise of fighting terrorism) and belligerence where cooperation might have had a chance to build a more cohesive world.
ghung on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 5:32 pm
Today’s problems, he says, are merely “confusion, incompetence, and intellectual and moral disorder.”
To the political analyst, everything is a political/sociological problem. To the economist, everything is a financial/economic problem. To the idealist, everything is an ideological or spiritual problem. Confused indeed.
One wonders when our ‘great thinkers’ will begin to understand the systemic nature of too many and increasing, claims on too few and declining, resources. Everything else is subject to, and a reaction to, societies needing/wanting stuff; our materialistic nature. While we paint it with all sorts of remarkable complexity, it’s pretty simple, really.
If geneticists truly want to change the world, they’ll find a way to turn off the human greed gene, along with a few others. Our innate drive for survival and competition has become obsolete; is a threat to the entire planet.
Pops on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 6:02 pm
I guess what I can’t understand is the continuation of the idea that there is us and them. Who cares what the Romans did a thousand years ago for cripes sake.
Of course we route for the home team but the idea that we’re on different worlds went out with the earthrise photo.
Arthur on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 7:42 pm
If you visit the Wikipedia page of the National Interest and read the names of the editors and advisory council, it feels like reading the pages of a Tel Aviv phone book (Irving Kristol, Jacob Heilbrunn, Kissinger, Morton Abramowitz, Graham Allison. Even Dov Zakheim, the mastermind of 9/11, is on the list, but I digress). This is the voice of the US elite. Having said that the article is remarkable moderate and realistic in tone. The article is even honoust about Nuland c.s. being behind the coup of Maidan.
The thesis was that the old era of relative global stability, forged through the crucibles of the Great Depression and World War II, was coming unglued.
No need to search for Euro-centric chauvinist hegemon-wannabees uttering these opinions, there are a lot of Americans and now apparently even neocons, feeling that the end of the old order is coming. And they are correct.
The US led West won the Cold War. Good for them. I remember very well the feeling of emptiness emanating in the US after this victory. What to do when there is no enemy? Answer: New World Order; don’t retreat in isolationism, but go for the gold: the entire planet pressed into one financial, legal and administrative structure. Peak-post-cold-war US, that was 2003 on the eve of the Iraq invasion. The entire US was humming for hubris.
However, since the 2000 a lot of new geopolitical relevant facts were created/emerged, challenging the notion that there is going to be a New American Century:
– Introduction of the euro; now the EU economy is the largest on earth under a single currency.
– Comeback of a conservative Russia, thanks to the leadership of Putin. When is he going to crown himself to be the new czar?
– Rise of China and with Russia, leading the BRICS
– Rise of fundamentalist Islam
– Subprime crash of 2008
– increased awareness of general resource depletion, questioning the continuity of industrial civilization as we knew it
– global questioning of the dollar as reserve currency
Nothing of that optimistic 2003-spirit is left now in the 2014-US and this article is no exception. No more dragons to be battled in the Middle-East or in the Ukraine, but calls for restraint.
Encouraging.
Davey on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 7:55 pm
Art, Another collapse bubble of exuberance is the whole European Community euphoria.
Arthur on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 8:13 pm
Why do you think so Davey?
The ‘collapsing’ euro is now traded at $1.40
Nobody is talking anymore about euro-problems, the euro is here to stay. Germany is growing robustly, even Greece probably won’t need a third rescue package and is now stabilized, after a haircut of some 30-40%. Most governments are convinced that renewable energy is the future and are acting vigorously on that belief. No grand imperial designs or wasting much money on ‘defense’.
There is absolutely no euphoria in Europe, but no feeling of ‘slow death’ or much pessimism, let alone despair either. The hottest topic in Europe currently is Islam and that will make itself felt in the upcoming European elections. Europe is moving to the right.
Davey on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 8:40 pm
Art, come on, Europe is a mess with the can being kicked down the road. Now the Ukrainian issue with a resurgent Russia and paranoid friendless Russian leadership. I agree with your view on the US to some extent but I see no reason to be a euro optimist nor do I see much optimism with the people. My girlfriend is from the alpine region near Austria and she knows first hand the pessimism. My daughter in Madrid finds little to me optimistic about in Spain. Maybe the Dutch are uniquely euro optimists.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 9:24 pm
Well, we know one thing for sure, and that is that Belgium — or at least some front entity operating out of Belgium — is the proud owner of about $350 billion in US treasuries. Of course, the rampant speculation is that the Fed is the money-man behind that front entity and is buying its own bonds secretly with newly printed dollars just to make it look like there is actual demand for those bonds. The reality, of course, is much different.
Arthur, when you say “nobody is talking anymore about euro-problems”, I have to disagree. I read about severe economic and social issues brewing in Euro-land almost every day. I don’t have time to go and try to find those links. But rest assured, when it comes to the fraudulent global economy and all the dirty deeds being done dirt cheap to keep this piece of crap BAU going, all you have to do is follow the swarm of cockroaches to find out where they live, and in that dark stinking place, you’ll find Uncle Sam and all the financial elites from America and Europe all huddled closely together. If America goes, Euro goes, and vice-versa. They are tied at the hip — that’s from an article on ZeroHedge that I read yesterday.
J-Gav on Wed, 16th Apr 2014 11:27 pm
My comment concerning the above discussion was blocked – with no explanation. It contained no profanity nor any call for armed rebellion. That being the case, I see no reason to continue posting on this site. It’s been interesting and I thank you for your insights and shared experiences. J-Gav.
ghung on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 12:24 am
J-Gav – I’ve had the “your comment was blocked” message recently and found that it was a system fluke. Not sure why, but I was still able to comment later. As with you, it was a normal, civil comment, though perhaps a bit long. Ghosts in the machine….
Boat on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 12:47 am
Obama are GW are two presidents cut from a different cloth when it comes from a military perspective, let alone since WWII. Obama looks continually looks for less intervention than for more and certainly does not push a preemptive policy that GW did. The US is in very rough numbers 30% Hawk, 30% Dove and 20% in the middle.
Rather than asserting our self on the world stage over issues, many of our citizens and I think our president feels more like were dragged onto it.
It has nothing to do with being meak, weak, niavity or inexperience. He would much rather tighten restrictions on fuel by ships near our border but is pragmatic enough to let ng flare to push for job and GDP growth during a weak economic period. He will drone any thought killer of Americans but for the most part stay out of Syria.
If there is to be war it will happen after the next election where Hilary and the Rep candidate will be more hawkish. Then maybe you will appreciate Obama’s ability to tamp down our aggressive nature. You see, WWII scared the crap out of US. The US simply can’t let any nation get to big for it’s britches. Obama is a rare president that has a longer leash.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 12:52 am
Hey Gav, don’t go man. You are one of the best at comments here with balanced, factual, and short words. You are fair and honest to all the other people commenting. I would hate to loose your impute. I am sure it was just a weird fluke. Please check that out before reacting
Makati1 on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 2:34 am
I got the ‘block’ just yesterday and when I returned to the site later, it was clear sailing. When you get a complicated system like the internet, it can not help but have gremlins and glitches. As time goes on and more and more is added, the tangle will only get worse until it fails someday and never comes back.
Makati1 on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 2:37 am
Boat, I doubt that ‘O’ has any power to prevent the actions of his masters. If you think the ‘Constitution’ President is actually in control, you better look again. He has successfully trashed the Constitution and most of the Amendments in his 5+ years so far. We will be a 3rd world nation by 2020. Wait and see.
DC on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 4:13 am
My comment on article this was blocked as well…
Arthur on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 5:58 am
J-Gav, reconsider your decision/impulse. I have had hickups as well while posting. This site is an admirable beacon of free speech.
Arthur on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 7:03 am
NRW, nobody is ‘going’. Some people though will be shaved more rigorously than others. America will be downsized from ‘benevolent hegemon’ to ‘just another great power’. Join the club, I would say.
Stilgar Wilcox on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 10:08 am
“One wonders when our ‘great thinkers’ will begin to understand the systemic nature of too many and increasing, claims on too few and declining, resources.”
What will probably occur to them at some juncture of depleting resources is their own power dwindling, and that will scare them much more than anything else.
Stilgar Wilcox on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 10:17 am
My last post didn’t make any sense when I read it back, but I’m on meds from a Hernia operation, so disregard. My brain will be build up a new charge and reset to green like the circuits in the movie, Jurassic park in the next few days.
Makati1 on Thu, 17th Apr 2014 10:57 am
Stilgar, I think they already see the writing on the wall and are trying to ignore it or to grab all they can before the storm. The powers that be are not stupid. Psychopaths for sure, but not stupid ones. Or so it seems to me.