Explaining Post-Cold War International Politics: The Lens of Neorealism and Neoliberalism - Article Example

Explaining Post-Cold War International Politics: The Lens of Neorealism and Neoliberalism In November 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall also signalled the termination of the Cold War between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR), thus ending an era of hitherto unseen hostility and contestation between two competing ways of life. As the international communist movement drew to a close in 1991, there was the hope (expectation, even) that a new climate of cooperation and coordination would prevail in the international system, with traditional rivalries and the pursuit of power being substituted by the collaboration among nation-states in resolving the myriad problems of the world. However, such expectations did not fully materialize, as the post-Cold War threw up its own challenges. Neorealism and neoliberalism (or liberal institutionalism) were the dominant theoretical approaches that sought to explain the bipolar structure of the Cold War and its implications. In the post-Cold War era, these theories retained much of their analytical and methodological rigour, even in the face of challenges from alternative and novel interpretations of the international. The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse how neorealism and neoliberalism help us to understand post-Cold War international politics. To that end, we shall: look into the seminal changes that the international system underwent at the end of the Cold War to comprehend changing nature of international relations in the new era; survey the core theoretical propositions of the two theories in question; and finally, test the explanatory prowess of the theories in the light of the major trends and events post-1991. The most obvious change from the Cold War in 1991 was that, with the demise of the USSR, the world had moved from bipolarity to unipolarity, and the US was the only remaining superpower. The removal of the spectre of superpower competition from the international system also fuelled the anticipation of a greater involvement of multilateral institutions, especially the United Nations, in the conduct of international diplomacy. Further, the post-Cold War found the abundance of intra-state war and other kinds of non-traditional violent conflict, while inter-state wars diminished dramatically. Moreover, the shadow of international catastrophic terrorism loomed large, and following the events of September 11, 2001, it can be said that international politics has well and truly moved into the post-9/11 era. The consequent fears of clandestine nuclear proliferation have only made the non-proliferation regime more rigid and international politics, in general, more turbulent. Finally, in this decade, the rise of China and India, the slow but gradual economic recovery of Russia, and the successes of European integration have combined to pose a challenge to the unipolar structure of international politics in the post-Cold War era. Neorealism, essentially, looks at international relations as it is rather than how it ought to be, and remains pessimistic about the prospects of peace in international society. All strands of the theory maintain that the international system is anarchical or without any central organizing mechanism, populated by nation-states that are in permanent conflict. Nation-states have lexical priority over all other institutions and their national interests are defined in terms of power; every state aims at the satisfaction of these interests by maximizing power (Donnelly 2000: 7-8). The primary motive for all states is survival, and beyond this motive, their persuasions could range from hegemonic zeal to isolationism. Neoliberalism has its roots in the functional and regional integration literature of the 1940s through to the 1960s, and it understands the international system as a web of complex interdependence, with four essential characteristics (Lamy 2005: 213-214): states are key actors in the international system, but not the only (or most important) actors; states are rational, seeking to maximize their interests in every domain; the international system is anarchical and states seek to maximize their absolute gains through cooperative ventures; cheating or free riding is the biggest obstacle to international cooperation, and states exude loyalty to such institutions that are beneficial to them either politically or economically and those that increase their security. The shift from bipolarity to unipolarity, therefore, is the first feature of post-Cold War international relations we shall look at. Neorealism explains this problem of order in international relations, and the resultant effects of that order, by looking at the capability – understood as military might, economic resources, and war preparedness – of states in the international system. For realists, “…the units of the international system are functionally similar sovereign states, hence unit-level variation is irrelevant in explaining international outcomes. It is the third tier, the distribution of capabilities across units, that is…of fundamental importance to understanding crucial international outcomes.” (Dunne & Schmidt 2001: 169) This distribution of capabilities can then be used to obtain the number of great powers within the international system at any given point of time, and that number, in turn, determines the structure of the international system. Therefore, the Cold War order was bipolar since the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) were the two great (or super) powers of the time. Similarly, the Westphalian system was multipolar because it was populated by several great powers, while the post-Cold War order has been unipolar, given the primacy of the US since 1991. Because of (primarily) the rise of China and the consolidation of the European Union as an economic powerhouse, there has been a tendency towards multipolarity in this century; capability calculations along neorealist lines obtains an objective rank-ordering of state strength and provides a clearer picture of world politics, by offering analytical clarity in revealing an accurate visage of the international. Neorealism, however, did very little to explain the end of the Cold War. They took the bipolar distribution of power to be inherently peaceful, if not by intent then by compulsion, due to the operation of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction. Bipolarity was envisioned to endure, and yet the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the USSR occurred unhindered. Neoliberals, on the other hand, had a theoretical explanation for this historic event: they explained that the interplay of internal conditions within the repressive USSR and the external currents of military competition with the US accelerated the fall of international communism and end of the Cold war. The separation of the communist movement from global capitalism created a condition of relative deprivation that could only be corrected through a massive social and political upheaval (Crockatt 2001: 126). This explanation also increased neoliberalism’s theoretical purchase, and optimistic analysts of international politics argued that the post-Cold War world would find a greater emphasis on international cooperation and an increasing role for multilateral institutions. In fact, the Gulf War of 1991 was taken to be a resounding success of the multilateral agenda, and the idea of collective security received a much-needed shot in the arm. However, as the experience since 1991 shows us, the collective security mechanism delivered little of what it promised. The lack of political will perpetuated conflicts throughout the 1990s – most notably in the Balkans and in Rwanda – and it does so still, in present day Darfur. While the international community hemmed and hawed over possible measures to counteract security threats, hundreds and thousands of innocent people were losing their lives to ethnic cleansing and genocide. In Rwanda, amidst much political turmoil, the Arusha Accords of 1993 were signed to engender peace between the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Accords, however, left extremist Hutus displeased, and after a plane carrying the Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, and the president of Burundi was shot down over Kigali airport in April 1994, violence erupted as Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in a systematic genocide. At the end of the fateful week, more than 800,000 lives had been taken, while the UN-mandated Assistance Mission in Rwanda watched as bystanders. In Bosnia, after the Yugoslavian breakdown, the Serbs and Croats (encouraged by Serbia and Croatia, respectively) sought to create “ethnically homogeneous territories which would eventually become part of Serbia and Croatia, and to partition the ethnically mixed Bosnia-Herzegovina between a Serbian and a Croat part” (Kaldor 1999: 33), by using the rhetoric of self-determination. Their ultimate aim, however, was the ethnic cleansing of the country and the usurpation of power, which resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people. Since 2003, the Sudanese government has armed Arab militiamen called the Janjaweed – while, all the time, denying such allegations – which have systematically killed the (traditionally African) farming communities in Darfur. More than two million people are believed to be living in camps in Darfur, while many have crossed over to neighbouring Chad to live in similar camps. While the Janjaweed continue to slaughter, pillage and rape, the international community has so far refrained from labelling this crisis as genocide, because of the lack of adequate data and conclusive evidence. Humanitarian agencies and aid workers warn, however, that this indecision could prove fatal for the hundreds of thousands of displaced African civilians. As the above instances show, a lack of political will can threaten the lives of innocents and embolden aggressors. However, as the experience of multilateralism in the 1990s indicates, consensus in the international sphere is hard to reach and the powers of the UN to prevent international conflict or disruptions in international peace and security are few. In addition, a lack of understanding of new types of conflicts proved to be the undoing of international commitments to maintain peace and security. For instance, in Bosnia, “the international community fell into the [old] nationalist trap by taking on board and legitimising the perception of the conflict that the nationalists wished to propagate” (Kaldor 1999: 58). The confidence of the neoliberal project, thus, has been undermined by the events of the post-Cold War era. In fact, one neorealist scholar described the Bosnian conflict after the Yugoslavian breakdown through the lens of the security dilemma, by taking the three dominant ethnic groups to exhibit similar behavior as states in the international system, each reinforcing its military capability in response to similar acts on the part of its adversaries (Gagnon 1995). However, this was not the only theoretical clarification that neorealism provided; the US intervention in Iraq in 2003 was deemed “unnecessary” and ill-advised by neorealists, who felt that deterrence and containment were better strategies to use in the situation (Mearsheimer & Walt 2003). Therefore, a realist turn in US foreign policy-making may have averted a costly war that has complicated international peace and security in the Middle East. The neorealist posture, however, does not provide an elegant theoretical explanation or solution to undoubtedly the greatest contemporary threat to international peace and security: catastrophic terrorism. Given the express focus on the state, threats emanating from transnational organizations like the al Qaeda does not find any articulation in the core propositions of neorealists. A unilateral response, as in the case of the US offensive in Afghanistan, can rarely exterminate such threats. Here, international cooperation becomes extremely important in disrupting terrorist networks, confiscating assets and finances, and addressing the root causes of terrorism. In fact, some argue for an integrationist model that combines military and economic capacity at the unitary level with political agency at the multilateral level. This strategy put the Global War on Terror in perspective by arguing that it neither defines a threat nor proposes a solution. It remains inadequate because wars have a fixed locale, but terrorists do not conform to such boundaries. Therefore, the extension of the analogy of a “war” on terror would make any civilian area a theatre of war and armed conflict. Again, wars have a definitive end, which are mostly concessional; however, in the case of terrorism, such a connotation is invalid. A single terrorist leader may be brought to justice or a group terminated, but terrorism as an ideational quality cannot be removed through the acts of war. In addition, wars are costly, as the present war on terror is proving, and since there cannot be an end to this war, the perpetuation of the same shall lead to a chronic drain on resources (Haass 2006: 51-75). A related threat that has emerged in the post-Cold War era is that of horizontal nuclear proliferation, either by rogue states or terrorist groups. Indeed, stubborn Iranian and North Korean resistance has posed a crisis of legitimacy for the nuclear non-proliferation regime. However, till date, no terrorist organisation has acquired nuclear weapons, and even if they did, it is unlikely that they could deploy such weapons undetected. Both unilateral and multilateral efforts are important in stopping the clandestine transfer of nuclear weapons, technology, materials, and know-how. Here, the integrationist perspective is a salient clarification. In conclusion, it must be said that the end of the Cold War posed a variety of challenges for the theoretical tradition of international relations that dominated the historic struggle between the US and the USSR. However, with subsequent modifications and analytical developments, neorealism and neoliberalism have maintained a strong presence in the academy, even though many scholars choose to theorise international politics differently. Given the explanatory prowess of the two theories under study, it is difficult to cast them aside, whatever their shortcomings may be. In the end, both realism and neoliberalism remain two essential approaches to the study of international politics. References Crockatt, R. (2001) ‘The End of the Cold War.’ In The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations [3rd Edition]. Ed. by Baylis, J. & Smith, S. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 111-130. Donnelly, J. (2000) Realism and International Relations. 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