Researcher and former diplomat Pierre Buhler, warns that where George H. W. Bush once evoked a 'new world order,' Vladimir Putin is imposing his own: a Hobbesian 'return to war of all against all.'
By Pierre Buhler
Published on May 14, 2022 at 16h05
George H. W. Bush once dreamed of it. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he said that a "new world order" could emerge from that crisis, "A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle (...) and where where the strong respect the rights of the weak."
The world order that Vladimir Putin proclaimed when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine is the exact opposite of this utopia. The American president at the time hoped to resurrect the original spirit of the United Nations Charter, launched in 1945 by his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt. It was based on signatories' renunciation of "the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
This world order received its final blow on February 24. The Cold War had of course rendered it ineffectual. The response to the invasion of Kuwait, in accordance with international law, had seemed to foreshadow its resurrection, but this hope fizzled out. NATO's interventions in Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, and then the United States' intervention in Iraq in 2003, effectively violated international law, no matter justifications put forward – the protection of the Albanian population or the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This was also the case in previous violations. For example, an anti-communist uprising and the Communist Party leader's call to counter it (Budapest, 1956). Or, the defense of "socialism" (Prague, 1968), alleged demands of the communist government (Afghanistan, 1979), a coup d'état (Grenada, 1983) etc... Acting in coalition – Warsaw Pact, NATO or any ad hoc coalition – could be seen as lending a veneer of legitimacy to these violations.
Before the Iraq war, and particularly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, some American jurists had sought to justify a new doctrine: "pre-emptive action." This was supposed to authorize military intervention without waiting for the criteria of self-defense to be met, making the use of force consistent with the law. Michael Glennon, one of the defenders of this thesis, called the "school of obsolescence," has formulated it in no uncertain terms: "Where a rule of international law has been repeatedly disregarded by a significant number of states over a long period of, time there is no longer reason to believe that states feel obliged to comply with that rule (...) At this point, the rule has fallen into desuetude and is no longer obligatory (...) It is not international law."
The war declared by Russia on Ukraine brings a bitter confirmation to this theory, to which the majority of jurists refused to subscribe, considering justifiably that the rule of law maintains its quality and status, even when violated. By getting rid of the pretenses dreamed up for previous violations, the Russian president is unsealing the keystone of the international security system – that is, the rule excluding use of force outside the cases provided for by the United Nations Charter.
'Revisionist power'
The motives invoked [by Putin] – the non-existence of the Ukrainian nation and accusations of Nazism – pass into the realm of the absurd, and it is difficult to see any semblance of a coalition in the servile complicity of the Belarusian regime. At the Valdai forum, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Vladimir Putin brandished the threat of a world "without any rules," and of conflicts involving the great powers. Ukraine has been an illustration of this type of conflict and it would "certainly not be the last."
The war declared on Ukraine is nothing other than the execution of this threat. The message is clear. For the "revisionist power" that is Russia, its national interest is better served by the absence of international rules than by the security order established in 1945, which it considers obsolete.
What conclusions should be drawn from this? This order is doomed to break down as soon as its main guardians within the body responsible for administering it – the Security Council, with its permanent members endowed with the right of veto – no longer perform this role. As in the interwar period, when there was no such arbiter in the League of Nations [the forerunner of the United Nations], force will prevail over law. The nuclear weapon, which Vladimir Putin wields as an instrument of ratification for his actions, will embolden those who today want to use it to transgress international law - or to assert what they believe to be their rights. This will undermine non-proliferation regimes and multilateral arms control agreements.
As soon as neither the law nor multilateral frameworks offer reliable guarantees of security, national defence efforts will be faced with the "security dilemma", turning to protection by powerful states or to national defence efforts. The logic of alliances will find new vigor and spheres of influence, or even "protectorates" – we can already see this at work with NATO. Even more than before, the "European security order" is shown to be a mirage.
A parody of the rule of law
"Where there is no law, nothing is unjust," observed the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Formulated in relation to the internal order of states, this observation offers a key to understanding the foundations of the rule of law in the political order. The contempt shown in this respect by the Russian regime, manifested in the barbarity it practices on a daily basis in Ukraine, is also the reflection of a parody of the "rule of law" inspired by the Soviet heritage. Its packaging does not conceal the arbitrariness, the lies, the manipulation, the propaganda, the intimidation and the repression which are the rule, when the rule isn't murder.
Faced with this deadly attitude, of which 20th century history produced too many tragic examples, the only political compass of the Western world – and, even more so, of the European whole – is the rule of law, the foundation for those values and principles that constitute its identity: democracy, freedom and truth.
Pierre Buhler is a former ambassador, now a lecturer at the School of International Relations at Sciences Po, and the author of La Puissance au XXIe siècle. Les nouvelles définitions du monde ("Power in the 21st Century. The new global concepts").
Pierre Buhler
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.