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COPYRIGHT 2007 Professors World Peace Academy
Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov created quite a stir when he withdrew his article "Containing Russia: Back to the Future?" from publication in Foreign Affairs and submitted its uncensored version to Russia in Global Affairs. In that article he lamented what looks to be a return of a Cold War mentality in some U.S. foreign policy circles. He argues that we should bring back a pre-World War I system of states based on the Westphalian model.
In this essay, Morton A. Kaplan argues that this discussion of the international system is an important one. He too laments any belligerent Cold War attitudes but argues that the solution will not be in going further back in history but to go forward. Kaplan argues that the world has changed much and a Westphalian system is no longer possible or desireable. The United Nations, which presupposes such a system of nation-states, must also be reformed to adjust to numerous levels of global interaction that place limits on state sovereignty. I have read Foreign Minister Lavrov's article with great interest. He has some legitimate complaints about American diplomacy and the United States has some legitimate complaints about Russian diplomacy. His chief point is a defense of the Westphalian-type international system with its emphasis on state sovereignty and its exclusion of so-called ideological considerations. This misreads the problem by failing to distinguish the current international system from the one that gave rise to what he calls the Westphalian system.
The Westphalian or "balance of power" system was one in which at least five essential actors sought marginal advantages through wars. It depended on the limitation of goals and the maintenance of the essential actors as potential future role partners. This led to a shifting rather than a rigidity of alliances. In such a system the internal character of a state was of no more than marginal importance. What was important to national security was the maintenance of the system including the ability to shift alliances as conditions changed.
That system died before World War II. It was sent into decline by the seizure of Alsace Lorraine by Prussia, the Carthaginian peace that terminated World War I, and the rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union became a threat to the system less because of its ideology than because of its form of organization. Democratic centralism established the rule of the Secretary over the Party, of the Party over the state and over foreign organizations.
At first, foreign communist parties were directed by the Comintern which was ruled by the CPSU. Then they were brought...
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