As global security deteriorates, one of the problems both in understanding it (even in knowing what to worry about most) and in figuring out what can and should be done is that so much seems to be going wrong at once. Beyond the individual issues of rising inter- and intra-national conflicts, ecological disruption, economic inequalities and malfunction, and fragmenting social cohesion in so many countries, there is a system failure on a world scale.

That thought directs attention towards the world order — the way in which international relations are arranged through institutions, treaties, law and norms — and the problems that are and have been chipping away at it.

The 2024 Yearbook of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is out now, compiling and reflecting on the key data and trends in peace and security during 2023. In the introductory chapter, I explore the problem of the world order today. The chapter is available in full online. Here on my blog, this and succeeding posts will present the arguments in a somewhat tweaked, less formal and slightly fuller manner, with some updating to cover the way things have moved on.

The security horizon, 2024

Armed conflicts

A broad overview of peace and security today is far from encouraging. It’s nonetheless important to take it on – my irreducible view is that problems cannot be addressed let alone solved unless you look them straight in the eye. Evasiveness about the nature of the problems we face leads to delusional policies and before too long complacency becomes aggressive. That way lie chaos and worse. To find optimism, start with honesty.

So let’s get to it.

The high number of armed conflicts today is among the key markers of a deteriorating security horizon. In 2010, there were 31 armed conflicts, but 59 in 2023. Among them are

• Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2014 when it seized Crimea and sent forces into eastern Donbas, drastically escalated with a major invasion in February 2022;
• The escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine that started on 7 October 2023 when Hamas made its incursion from Gaza into Israel, killing civilians and security forces and seizing hostages, to which Israel has responded – and continues to respond – with massive devastation of Gaza;
• The civil war in Sudan, which has forcibly displaced 9.2 million people according to UNHCR, 7.1 million of them within Sudan and 2.1 million fleeing the country (as of 2 June 2024 – the number keeps rising and may already be an understatement since a week later the International Organisation for Migration said there were 10 million displaced people);
• Renewed violence in eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), driving a quarter of a million people from their homes in early 2024,  adding to the 6.9 million people already displaced by persistent violent conflict over two decades;
• The upsurge in fighting in Myanmar as the insurgent coalition launched a major offensive against the military regime, leading to thousands of deaths and massive forced displacement – hazy statistics suggest that, as well as almost a million Rohingya refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh, there are well over two million displaced people inside Myanmar.

Armed conflict between states or between political rebels and governments are not the only blight on well-being, safety and security: in some Central and South American states, armed criminal gangs are the major security concern, as the collapse of the state in Haiti showed, unfolding through 2023 and into 2024 .  

Nowhere did it seem that international actors—whether third-party governments, the United Nations system or regional organizations—were able to help manage the conflicts or move them towards termination.

Geopolitics

At the same time, contestation continues between China and the United States over Taiwan and, more generally, the geostrategic situation in Northeast Asia, as well as over China’s legally unsupported claim of sovereignty to a huge swathe of the South China Sea that lies well outside its internationally recognised territorial waters, along with further claims China presses against Japan in the East China Sea. These disputes persistently lead to close encounters of a maritime kind – warships passing very close to each other as one harasses the other and tries to cut it off and force a change of course. There have also been close aerial encounters.

There is no single rules-based international order but, rather, several overlapping orders, including both regulations and important non-formalized norms of international conduct.

Among other developments that cause, let us say calmly, some concern, in February last year Russia suspended its participation in New START—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the USA. Overall, the total world stockpile of nuclear warheads continues to decline from a Cold War insanity of more than 70,000 to today’s total of just over 12,000, still more than enough for apocalyptic purposes.

Meanwhile, both at least partially driven by and driving these geopolitical insecurities, global military spending in 2023 grew for the ninth straight year, surpassing the previous record level of 2022 to stand at $2.443 trillion.

(Personal note: I have recently been persuaded by SIPRI’s data mavens to insist on the 3rd decimal point. There’s a reason beyond pure nerdishness. Rounding the total to 2.4 trillion implies the 0.043 that disappears from the figure is relatively unimportant. It does, however, stand for forty three billion US dollars. Not small change.)

Ecological disruption

All this is unfolding against a global backdrop of accelerating ecological disruption, undermining the natural foundations on which all human societies are built and depend. The cumulative and continued release of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere from industry, transport and agriculture has combined with the naturally occurring El Niño Southern Oscillation to beat all heat records. 2023 was the hottest year on record, with a global average temperature 1.5° Celsius above the average of the pre-industrial era, breaching the limit agreed in the Paris Agreement of 2015 as the desirable target for restricting global warming. That makes it the hottest year for at least 174 years for which there are good records, and probably the hottest for the 125,000 years since the interglacial period of geological history. In addition, the 12 months from February 2023 through January 2024 were the first year-long period in which the global average temperature stayed 1.5° Celsius above the pre-industrial average. And all the 12 months from June 2023 through May 2024 were the hottest on record for the respective month.

And the heating of the world is not the only issue of ecological disruption that we face. A later post takes a look at those issues and their security implications. Impatient readers, instead of waiting, can look back to a couple of earlier posts, or sideways to other material.

In sum: close to midnight

So, as forewarned at the start of this section, the overview is not encouraging. Reflecting this assessment, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set its ‘Doomsday Clock’ at 90 seconds to midnight, the metaphorical hour of the apocalypse, for the second year running. This keeps the clock at the closest it has been to midnight since it was instituted in 1947. It compares to its position at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 as the cold war ended. The Bulletin’s editorial board accompanied its January 2024 announcement with a warning that its decision not to change the setting does not reflect stability but, rather, persistent and worrying instability.

It is that complex pattern of armed conflict, geopolitical confrontation and ecological crisis, building over the course of at least a decade, that has put pressure on the world order and led to a discussion in which it is often presented as broken and no longer fit for purpose, neither in economic nor political dimensions.

But what is this world order?

Discussion about whether or how the world order is or should be changing is in many ways a strange discussion because there is considerable uncertainty about the exact topic. This uncertainty lies not just in the value that is placed on the idea of order, nor only in the views and assumptions about who benefits from it. It lies also in the simple yet not so simple question of what the international order actually is.

In the West, politicians and commentators often use the expression ‘the rules-based international order’ to describe what is defied by actions to which they profoundly object, such as Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, Malcom Chalmers helpfully pointed out a few years ago that there is no single rules-based international order but, rather, several overlapping orders, including both regulations and important non-formalized norms of international conduct.

The degree of confusion this can sow is deepened when, as so often, it is unclear whether the discussion is about an arrangement set in place by the most powerful state (or states) for their own benefit, or, rather, a system of rules and norms that is meant to constrain and limit the exercise of power, and, if the latter, whether it is an order that used to work in that but doesn’t now, or an order that was always a figment of a western liberal imagination.

To set out my stall at the outset, my own view, expressed in various ways over an embarrassingly long period of time, is that the international order has always been flawed, has always favoured the rich and powerful over the poor and weak, and yet has had a lot to commend it, such as the emphasis on human rights and national sovereignty. Further, now the order is getting rickety, we are beginning to see what we would lose if we got to the stage foreseen by Germany’s former former minister Joschka Fischer of no world order.

With that background, what I intend in this series of posts, based as said on the introductory chapter to the SIPRI Yearbook 2024, is to look at the implications for the world order of some of the key events and trends of today. I’m asking, What world are we shaping for ourselves in the coming decades if these trends continue unchanged?

I begin by exploring the contested notion of ‘world order’ and the deficiencies that are creating a disordered world. I take a look at the status of some of the international laws and norms intended to govern and limit armed conflict. I follow that with how challenges to the international order are affecting international security and stability, including the negative impact of climate change on peace and security.

I finish, with my unquenchable tendency to be forward leaning, with some thoughts about the benefits of developing the international habit of cooperation – and how that could be achieved.