Geopolitical Chaos

Dear all,

I believe we live in a chaotic world, one that is increasingly hard to control. Today I want to set out why I believe this to be the case. I think we live in a world that has an essential inertia to it. There is no realistic prospect of coordinated structural, global change – because in essence no one has the reigns. No one has control. This in essence breeds the chaos I am on about.

To give an example, no one knows what the essential legitimacy of the system we live in is. This is, because, in essence, no one controls system. We often assume, or at least some do, that there are architects of the system we live in and these architects believe in a certain world view that corresponds to reality. In actuality, the world we live in - the social, cultural, political and geopolitical structures – is on autopilot. Flying, slowly, but with a dreaded certainty somewhere, to a place that no one has ultimate control over.

I think this exists in many areas, but the chaos is hard to document, by virtue of it being chaotic and incoherent. As a result, I will focus on the geopolitical chaos of the world as it currently exists.

Geopolitical Chaos in the World Today

The West’s naivety in 1990-1991 seems almost comical today. The sense that the US’s brand of market capitalist liberal democracy had won the Cold War was the prevailing mood. The Gulf War, or the US’ intervention in Kuwait to push back Saddam Hussein’s invading Iraqi force – backed, importantly by the UN overwhelmingly – epitomised a general optimism. The US was now, it seemed, unquestionably the global leader having defeated the USSR. Of course, not everyone was this triumphant, but generally, this was the zeitgeist feeling.

The world felt ordered in the 1990s. The world was largely be composed of sovereign states, and the US wasn’t the only power. Developed states, those like the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Russia had power, but they accepted secondary status. Although these powers tended to be geopolitically influential, but recognised an odd quasi-superiority of the US’ mission. In this way, there was a considerable degree of geopolitical order. This, truly, was the golden age of US global influence. The US created a degree of order with its new pre-eminence, based around a rules-based order with the US deciding what was right and wrong. No enemies in sight, the US was free to push its narrative of the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy to the emerging and developing world.

This, however, was to change, slowly and subtly over the next 25 years. Trends that looked harmless from the vantage point of 1991 now seem ones that the US was crazy to ignore. The key point is the increasing number of geopolitical actors, creating a more multipolar world - multipolar being defined as geopolitical power being spread out and shared among several key political actors like Russia and China. These actors do not share the same concerns and often work against each other to further their geopolitical interests. The reasons for this development is complicated. There is a lot to unpack, and its complexity is part of the reason it has been so hard for the US-dominated order to react effectively.

The first important, and most obvious thing is the rise in economic and political power of developing and emerging countries. There are 193 members of the UN. A lot of them are small, poor and corrupt. As a result, a lot of them don’t have that much political influence, not having the necessary economic and political leverage to influence global politics significantly. Obviously, there can and have been ways in which some small or poor states have used effective strategic planning, especially by using those formal powers global institutions like the UN give them. However, generally, it is hard to do this, as the rich west has so many levers of power.

This is starting to change. What has changed is that the development of new regional emerging powers that have become sufficiently powerful to challenge the US’ dominance. Most obviously China and India have become economically developed and therefore more powerful – having the capability to use a greater degree of economic leverage due to the size of their economies. However, its not just this. Other powers have been able to gain a greater degree of autonomy from the US due to their increasing development. Countries like the Philippines, Mexico, Poland and Indonesia have all gained the ability to become more relevant as political actors. Wealth tends to breed political power because it allows for a stronger military, makes them a desirable trade power and makes them less reliant on other powers. It tends, in essence, to mean that there are less points of leverage over the developing or emerging country by the developed country. As a result, it is far harder for the US to order everyone around in the way it could do in the 1990s. What’s more, it is far easier for credible and meaningful opposition to the US to take place by previously insignificant regional powers.

This means that a form of world order is disintegrating into increasing chaos. Increasingly, different actors are able to make their influence felt, and as a result, the capability for the world to have any sort of meaningful order direction is lessened significantly. This is what a multipolar world means – one that is not guided by an essential ideological or practical logic, but rather internal competition leading to uncontrolled both chaotic and directionless movement.

Non-State Actors

This is one aspect. However, once again, the situation is a complex one. There has been another trend which has increased the relative power of developing and emerging countries which has enabled a more multipolar and therefore chaotic world. This is the proliferation of geopolitically disruptive technology. There are multiple ways in which this massively diverse development has been able to make itself felt.

First, new non-governmental groupings have increasingly become geopolitical actors in their own right. An automatic or semi-automatic firearm, previously the preserve of national armies has become the staple of the guerrilla group. This is a relatively well-established form of weapon has only recently been utilised en masse – the increasing wealth of developing countries has generally enabled the capability for large numbers of weapon to find their way into the hands of insurgents. It is disastrously effective, wreaking havoc on large parts of the developing world by allowing small groups of combatants to act effectively without a massive amount of manpower. This is not the only new piece of technology which has enabled increasing insurgency, there have been others. The internet had also been crucial. Online finance through both legal and illegal means and the ease of spreading propaganda via the internet has enabled terrorist groups to gain in strength and wealth. Technology combined with the stresses and strains of being at the bottom of a big interconnected international system undergoing significant change has caused an increase in insurgency across the developing part of the globe. ISIS and Boko Haram are just two examples of a much larger trend of increasingly asymmetric warfare. These groups often are geopolitical actors in their own right. They tend to be particularly disruptive. They tend to be difficult to defeat, often make a relatively significant impact on the domestic politics of other states – for example with Islamic terrorism in the West or in Russia – and facilitate international crime. What’s more, and crucially, it is often very hard for the traditional weapons of US dominance to have significant effect because these actors often reject both statehood and the US. These terrorist or insurgent groupings, so hard to defeat in places like Nigeria, Afghanistan, the Philippines and Levant increasingly act as geopolitical actors in an increasingly confusing world.

As the world becomes more multipolar – i.e. less under the thumb of the US – this will undoubtedly become worse. The multipolar nature of the world has made the current situation considerably worse. Nation States often support terrorists and insurgents in other countries to meet their geopolitical ends. In Lebanon, Iran’s support of Hezbollah provides an excellent example. What many world deem radical anti-Israeli, anti-Western Islamic terrorists are supported by a major geopolitical player. Similarly, it has become convenient for Kenya and Ethiopia to maintain some degree of internal division in Somalia. Terrorist groups in turn act to encourage the development of others elsewhere. For example, ISIS spreading from its original base in the Levant to Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya. As a result, in large parts of the developing and emerging world, more complex relationships between actors cause geopolitical chaos. This geopolitical chaos tends to be self-reinforcing. As more non-state insurgent groups develop, the capability for more non-state insurgent groups grows.

This is a recipe for chaos, and we are currently seeing an increasing amount of it. The 2000s and 2010s has seen substantial numbers of difficult-to-defeat insurgencies across the globe. The US is no longer able to keep all these dangerous insurgencies down. Of course, in some places, these insurgencies have temporarily increased US influence. In Iraq, for example, the rise of Iranian-Shia influence has been temporarily hastened by the need for the US to support Iraq in the defeat of ISIS. However, I think this analysis misunderstands the trend. The trend is of decreasing US capability to do these things, to control the world in the way it used to, and the increasing ability of other regional and world powers to fill its shoes. Russia, China, France and Iran have therefore all been fulfilling the role of defeating insurgents that the US may have played 20 years ago.

Geopolitically disruptive technology

The increasing availability of technology makes other things possible as well. It allows second-rate powers to exert disproportionate influence, thereby decreasing the degree of geopolitical cohesion generally. Often, it is not new technology itself being utilised, but rather an increasingly ability and willingness to coordinate a geopolitical strategy which uses these tools. Oddball states like North Korea show this general trend with the greatest degree of clarity. North Korea has used almost every tool available to it to the extreme, in a very explicit and coordinated way. It has utilised, for example, the increasingly murky world of finance – which cannot be completely regulated or protected - to prop up a failing economy. In addition, it has also developed nuclear weapons. Unthinkable 30 years ago, this expresses both a loss of control by existing global authorities and an increasing ability to understand previously tricky-to-comprehend technological inventions by second and third-tier nations. This is really dangerous and creates geopolitical chaos, as a country with a nuclear weapon is one that others cannot have ultimate power over. A more multipolar world where demands of countries like North Korea cannot be ignored is therefore one we increasingly inhabit.

The Breakdown of the Distinction between the Domestic and International Relations

A similar trend of increasing interconnection between the domestic and the international has also complicated the relatively clear lines between the foreign and the domestic. As a result, we have a more confusing world with far more players contributing to every action. This, like terrorist organisations, confuses previously clear distinctions. As with international terrorism, it is increasingly hard to keep things contained. It is increasingly hard to make clear and effectual decisions that effect the direction of clear aspects of the domestic or foreign policy of a state.

A good example is the rising power of transnational corporations. The corporations, previously largely internationally irrelevant and able to be taxed by nation states have gained in power, strength and independence. Large transnational corporations are good examples. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba and Tencent all act with considerable power. In the case of non-Chinese companies, there is an increasing tendency to act with a degree of independence from any one state. For example, wealth generated by many of these companies often exists in a bubble which no one state can penetrate. The existence of tax havens, for example, means that often these corporations are able to pay very small amounts of tax. Apple in Ireland or Amazon in Luxembourg provide examples of how it is possible to take advantage of the EU’s single market without paying very much tax at all. As a result of this, it is hard for a nation to tell its companies what to do – as the company now has a greater degree of independence from the state it is meant to be based in. For example, Coca Cola can remove jobs from one country or move the place where it has it is domiciled relatively easily. This means it is harder for a state to act unilaterally or change direction to a significant degree, because economic production is independent of a particular nation. This creates a more multipolar world. The US, the EU and Russia have to take into account whether a particular policy will alienate now politically independent corporations who act independently of these countries. More powerful actors need to be taken into account in every decision, and as a result, it is far harder to create a cohesive strategy for global order.

What’s more, many of these companies are able to make really politically significant decisions such as the general qualities of public debate. Often companies like Twitter and Facebook are hard to regulate. The state does not decide what the public forum is to look like. It may decide the general rules and regulations that it must follow, but generally Facebook and Twitter will always have considerable flexibility. Maybe, for example, Facebook makes a decision about the fact it doesn’t want ‘hate speech’ on its platform. It decides what this is, and excludes people who really shouldn’t be excluded from public debate. It therefore decides what is an acceptable aspect of public debate, which is a huge power for a corporation to have – and one that is hard to take away from Facebook easily. It’s not just this. For example, ad boycotts by corporations like Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s on Facebook have attempted to shape the way that public debate takes place. HR departments look for ways for companies to influence things while simultaneously maximising profit. As a result, corporations act as aloof from any one state – making them independent - while also making really politically significant decisions. Therefore, these actors often make decisions relating to the basics of the state apparatus, infringing on states’ traditional prerogatives. We have the large corporations, who as long as they continue to exist in their current form, have a considerable degree of autonomy as well as an increasing willingness to make politically important decisions. It becomes a lot harder to act unilaterally as a nation when large parts of your economy act autonomously, and often contrary to your intentions.

This breakdown between the previously strong wall between the domestic and foreign is not just a corporation thing – although in a world which is generally organised around economic production and consumption, this is obviously relatively important.

The previously relatively stable wall between the domestic and global spheres is breaking down. This is an element of the chaotic world we inhabit. It is a lot harder for us to do many things. One, it is harder for any one power to implement a cohesive strategy or ideal clearly onto the world because of the massive multiplication of the number of geopolitical actors. Two, it is harder to control the essential economic and political direction of the state. As there is no longer that same degree of control of the things that used to be essential to a national community, like economic production in a state, a fundamental change of direction or strategy becomes a lot harder for a geopolitical unit.

The Consequences

As a result, it is a lot harder than it was in the early 1990s for us to have a global consensus about much. There is a far greater degree of chaos across the globe, and it is likely that the degree of chaos is going to only increase as more countries become richer, and more technology becomes readily available. Good examples of this lie in the inertia around reforming of organisations everyone agrees need to be reformed. The WHO, the WTO and the UN are three good examples. In all, parties with competing grievances and agendas look to change things in different, and often mutually exclusive ways. As a result, no reform at all happens, and the same anachronistic structure remains.

Before I conclude, I want to clarify that I do not think that there is necessarily more conflict globally. No, chaos and war are two different things. Although wars may get harder to end, due to an increasing number of interests and factions present in the fighting, the chaos I’m referring to is of a different quality. It exists on top of the generally peaceful state-base world we inhabit. The state is generally stable, but the relationships between states in an increasingly globalised world has less and less coherence, and makes less and less sense. It is this which I think is key, and makes geopolitics so chaotic.

Conclusion

I think it will get increasingly hard to act effectively and cohesively as a world. Increasingly, it seems that it is the case, that we are locked in a system – right or wrong – that we are held in by virtue of what we value. We value increasing our wealth and economic growth. We also value the development of poorer countries, so that they can escape what we deem to be crippling poverty.

This is all laudable in isolation, but the internal logic of doing this yields results that the West is largely uncomfortable with – increasing chaos and decreasing control. This in turn can actually provide problems for the continuance of a Western Liberal ideology. It is thus the case that there is a paradoxical effect here, but one that is likely to continue. The West should use its dying breath to try and extend what is meant by the term West. Places like India, Indonesia and large parts of sub-Saharan Africa have the capability to help the West carry the baton. The West needs to not be scared of letting its values to be – in part – promoted by others if it truly cares about its moral mission.

Yours,

WFF