World power

World order §5: Laws and norms – and the double standard

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

How do you solve a problem like the world order?

We have had one – an order, a way of arranging international relations through institutions, treaties, law and norms – for virtually eight decades since the end of World War II. It has had its ups and downs and gone through some changes, though nothing fundamental. But now, so much seems to be going wrong at once – more armed conflicts with rising death tolls, worsening ecological disruption, growing economic inequalities and fragmenting social cohesion in numerous countries.

It all adds up to system failure on a world scale. This post, number 5 in a series based on the introductory chapter to the recently released SIPRI Yearbook 2024, focusses on the importance of laws and established norms in the world order.

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World order §4: Conflict management in a disordered world: the Security Council and Gaza

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

During the 2020s, on current trends, four times as many people (or more) will die in war as in the first decade of this century. Since 2010, the number of armed conflicts each year has almost doubled. The number of refugees has more than doubled in the same period. Meanwhile the world spends vastly more on the military than ever before, 2.443 trillion US dollars in 2023, compared to about 1.1 trillion at the start of the century.

What is going on? What has happened – is happening – to the world and to conflict? How come conflict management doesn’t seem to be working any more?

This post is number 4 in a series, based on the introductory chapter to the recently released SIPRI Yearbook 2024, asking, What world are we shaping for ourselves in the coming decades if these trends continue unchanged? 

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World order §3a: NATO enlargement

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Most of NATO is involved, together with other states that are politically defined as part of the ‘West’, in the war in Ukraine by providing training and equipment for Ukraine’s armed forces and by supporting its government financially and politically. NATO is also involved in another way as part of the Russian narrative that presents the invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 as forced upon Russia by NATO’s incorporation of eastern European states since the end of the Cold War.

Russian spokespersons and others have treated NATO’s increasing membership as an exculpatory reason for, or a partial justification for, or a proximate cause of, or a contributing factor to Russia’s war against Ukraine. These are arguments worth looking into.

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World order §3: The current disorder

/ Dan Smith / 4 Comments

The world order is under pressure. For world peace and stability, the core security tasks of the key international organisations such as, above all, the UN and regional organizations such as the African Union (AU) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are to manage and reduce conflict and to establish and build peace.

The problem is that for the past decade and more, the overall number and longevity of armed conflicts have increased along with their intractability. These armed conflicts that international mediation or conflict management seem unable to reach or influence are, alongside confrontation between the great powers and generally toxic geopolitics, key markers of the current disorder.  

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World order §2: Power, norms, origins and longevity

/ Dan Smith / 6 Comments

The world order is under pressure from a combination of political, economic, social and ecological factors, to such an extent that it is not simply weakening but is at risk of cracking, fragmenting and coming to an end. There are some who will cheer because of its many evident flaws over the past 80 years, the injustices and wars it has permitted and even fostered. But be careful what you wish for, folks. Too much of history warns us that doing away with an unjust order does not necessarily mean introducing one that is more fair. And the world order that is staggering today brought some real benefits despite its flaws.

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World order §1: Order under pressure

/ Dan Smith / 4 Comments

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.

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