RISKY BEHAVIOR ON THE BRINK
In any case, the danger of an international war between great and intermediate powers has clearly increased in recent years. Because of this concern, I chose to entitle the 2018 Munich Security Conference “To the Brink—and Back?”—meaning that what we observed in many places all over the world was, in fact, “brinkmanship”: extremely risky behavior that placed countries on the brink of war.
The hope was that the conference would be able to send a signal of de-escalation and détente and present initiatives showing how the world could step back from the brink. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Instead, many speakers added further fuel to the fire. At the end of 2019, I am even more concerned than I was in 2018.
I do not mean to sound alarmist. A major war continues to be rather unlikely. But the risk is, unfortunately, clearly greater than it was just a few years ago. One reason is the growing perception of threat in the great powers’ capitals, which bears the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy—after all, “If everyone prepares for a hostile world, its arrival is almost preordained.”6 The situation today is more strained and dangerous than we have seen since the end of the Cold War. So it is high time for political leaders all over the world to take this danger seriously and act accordingly.
GLOBAL TREND: MORE INEQUALITY, LESS FREEDOM
Obviously, not only war and violence are playing a greater role these days. A new systemic competition appears to be on the horizon. Liberal democracy and the principle of open markets—the only conceivable models of legitimate political and economic order back in the 1990s—are no longer the clear preference in today’s world.
The 2018 Freedom Report issued by Freedom House states dryly, “Democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades in 2017 as its basic tenets—including guarantees of free and fair elections, the rights of minorities, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—came under attack around the world.”
According to the Freedom House indicators, 2019 was the fourteenth year in a row in which there were more countries where political rights and civil liberties declined than countries that registered a positive trend. Similar conclusions were drawn by the latest Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index, which scores the development of democracy and the market economy in 129 developing and transitioning countries. The alarming trend identified by these researchers can be summarized as more inequality, less freedom.
In China the Communist Party developed a system of authoritarian state capitalism, which was thoroughly successful in opening the path from poverty to moderate prosperity for wide parts of the population. This made China into an attractive example for many authoritarian states to follow. This is despite the fact that the authors of the Transformation Index also emphasize that democracies are much more capable of combatting corruption, social exclusion, and barriers to fair economic competition. Autocratic states have a much poorer track record in this respect, not to mention human rights.
Nevertheless, primarily because of China’s economic success, the Chinese government is completely confident that its system is a suitable export model for other states to imitate—even as President Xi Jinping is having the constitution changed so that he can remain in office indefinitely. At the same time, Beijing matches growing assertiveness abroad with increasing repression and surveillance at home.7
Russia left the path toward a liberal, democratic state under the rule of law a long time ago. A true opposition, free media, and a vibrant civil society are not tolerated at all. And yet the idea of “strong leadership” is catching on more, not only with the Russians, but also in many other places in the world.
Even in the European Union, there are advocates of “illiberal democracy.” They want to restrict freedom of the press and free speech, warn about the “Eurocracy” in Brussels, or fall for general xenophobia. They constitute an axis of fear that seeks salvation by retreating into the nationalism of years gone by.
And lastly, even in the United States, which used to be regarded as the land of freedom, defenders of democracy must now fight daily for compliance with those standards that were once considered unassailable.
Liberalism has come under pressure in another form as well. For decades the principle of an open global economy was considered a guarantee for gains in prosperity, but this is now being increasingly questioned. Negotiations about dismantling trade barriers in the framework of the World Trade Organization have been stagnant for years. Ratification of regional free trade agreements has become quite difficult, even between the European Union and Canada.
In the meantime, President Donald Trump has introduced new protective tariffs on steel and aluminum, and since June 2018 goods from the European Union are no longer exempted from these duties. There is a real danger that this is the prelude to introducing ever more measures, culminating in a trade war—which means nobody wins.
GLOBAL CRISIS MANAGERS UNDER PRESSURE
International organizations and agreements have also come under pressure. Successes like the Paris Agreement on climate change and the nuclear deal with Iran do show that it is still possible to find answers to questions of global concern. But precisely these examples also show that the compromises reached are built on shaky ground: Donald Trump announced the United States’s withdrawal from the climate accord back in summer 2017. And after the withdrawal of the United States from the Iran framework in May 2018, its future has become highly dubious.
Important powers, first and foremost the United States under President Trump, are cutting back funding for peace missions or pulling out of specialized agencies of the United Nations. Just like during the Cold War, the United Nations is once again frequently paralyzed because the permanent members block each other in the Security Council. And because the council no longer reflects today’s global distribution of power, frustrated states are switching to substitute formats; informal “clubs” like the G7 and G20 are gaining momentum. This is happening because these less regulated bodies allow for something resembling “effective multilateralism.” But is that really true? Didn’t the 2017 G7 summit, the results of which Trump later undermined by tweet, sow doubts about such alternative formats?
My friend Ian Bremmer calls this phenomenon the emergence of a “G-Zero world,” a vacuum fed by the decline of Western influence and by many states focusing on their own domestic problems. The result, according to Bremmer, is a world in which no country alone, nor any group of states, is willing to develop a truly global agenda, let alone provide solutions for the world’s problems.
In Europe the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s continuing intervention in Eastern Ukraine demonstrate that our continent is no postmodern paradise in which the use of military force is impossible. The dream of 1990—that the end of German partition would allow for the emergence of a comprehensive Euro-Atlantic security architecture that integrates Russia—has gone up in smoke.
OVERALL, PESSIMISM PREVAILS
Only traces of the widespread optimism of the early 1990s remain. Scholars who believe in overall progress are striking a different note in their contributions to today’s discourse. It is not all that long ago that they would have expressed the opposite opinion.
Just twenty years ago, we believed that the world would move more or less constantly in the right direction. Democracy, human rights, and the market economy were advancing everywhere. International organizations took on ever more tasks and appeared to epitomize the model of global governance—one that would be equal to taking on the challenges of environmental pollution, child labor, and infectious diseases. So much appeared to be on the right track.
The establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995 was considered a milestone. An open global economy was considered good for everyone in the long run, and for this a shared regulatory framework was needed. That was a broad consensus in principle, even though unfair trade practices such as dumping and export