The Iraq Crisis and World Order
Program Staff
Dr. W.P.S. Sidhu, Senior Associate
Mr. Cyrus Samii, Senior Program Officer
Aim
This project examines the implications of the war on Iraq and its aftermath on contemporary notions of world order. The two primary areas of interest are the effects that the conflict will have on the existing UN-centered world order in general and on the current global regimes designed to manage weapons of mass destruction in particular.
Background
The basis of world order, with the United Nations at the centre of the system of global governance, has come under increasing strain in recent years. One reason for this was the inflated expectations of what the UN could accomplish. A second is the growing disconnect between the sources of threats to peace and security, lying increasingly within rather than between states, and the norms of sovereignty on which the UN-centred world order is based. A third is the growing gravity of threats rooted in non-state actors, including but not limited to terrorists. A fourth is the growing salience of weapons of mass destruction. And the fifth is the growing disparity between the power of the United States and that of all other members of the United Nations and the challenge that this poses to the Westphalian fiction of sovereign states equal in status and legitimacy. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 removed the cobwebs from the strategic big picture and brought these multi-pronged developments to a head in relation to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
Today the issue transcends the insignificance of Saddam Hussein. It has metamorphosed into the question of what sort of norms should govern the world and whether these should be based on rules and laws or the force of arms. This is why the war on Iraq has the potential to reshape the bases of world order in fundamental, profound and long-lasting ways. For it has the potential to replace:
- A multilateral system of global governance centered on the UN with a unilateral system of US preeminence;
- Leadership by consent-cum-persuasion with leadership by command and control;
- The European search for a new world order based on the Kantian transition to liberal institutionalism with the old world order, discarded by Europe after centuries of increasingly destructive warfare, based on force of arms;
- The Westphalian order of sovereign states, of equal status and legitimacy, with a post-Westphalian order of one preeminent if virtuous power;
- Self defence (wars of necessity) with preventive aggression (wars of choice);
- The tried, tested and successful strategy of containment with the untried, untested, potentially destabilizing but possibly unavoidable doctrine of preemption;
- Deterrence with compellence;
- Nonproliferation and disarmament, as represented in the NPT package, with nonproliferation only; and
- Universal nonproliferation as per the NPT with differentiated nonproliferation, where the proliferating countries’ relationship with the NPT is subordinated to their relations with the U.S. – U.S. friendly countries like Israel are not in the list of countries of concern, U.S.-hostile countries are grouped into the axis of evil countries, and U.S.-ambivalent/neutral countries like India become objects of watchful caution.
Project
Two distinct policy-oriented workshops were organized to examine the above-mentioned themes. Each workshop included sets of authors and larger groups of discussant and participants, including officials, drawn from international and regional organizations as well as some key countries, especially from the Muslim world.
The first workshop, hosted by King Prajadhipok’s Institute in Bangkok, Thailand, and supported by the Government of Germany, focused on the broad implications of the emerging US-centric world order in structural, political and institutional terms. Discussions addressed the problematique in light of the war on Iraq as legal and legitimate; illegal but legitimate; and illegal and illegitimate. Participants in this workshop addressed the following issues against this backdrop:
- Does the Iraq crisis suggest a genuine challenge to a world ordered by norms and institutions?
- What are the likely implications of a leadership model based on consent-cum-persuasion being displaced with a leadership by command-and-control?
- How will these developments affect the European search for a new world order based on the Kantian transition from barbarism to culture through liberal institutionalism? What might the European response be to the reemergence of an old world order based on force of arms?
- How will key countries, significant regional organizations and surviving international institutions deal with an unfamiliar post-Westphalian order of one preeminent if virtuous power?
- The second workshop, hosted by Ritsumeikan University and Ritsumeikan Asia-Pacific University, in Beppu and Kyoto, Japan, concentrated on global responses to the evolving US-led military and non-proliferation doctrines.
Discussions addressed the issues of evolving war, military and defence strategies as well as non-proliferation and disarmament approaches raised by the war on Iraq. This workshop will focused in particular on Northeast Asia and the Middle East (which covers all the states in the ‘axis of evil’) as well as South Asia. Participants in this workshop deliberated on the following issues:
- What is the relationship between arms control, disarmament and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?
- What weaknesses did the Iraq crisis expose in the non-proliferation regimes and in the UN system’s role as a central arena for handling proliferation crises? What successful elements of the international community’s policies vis-à-vis Iraq should not be forgotten?
- What are the lessons learned for devising international responses to proliferation challenges in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia?
- Will the supplanting of “wars of necessity” with “wars of choice” become a global norm?
- How can the untested and potentially destabilizing doctrine of preemption be managed, if at all?
- Can the existing nonproliferation and disarmament regime be successfully substituted with a nonproliferation only regime based on rights but no disarmament obligations?
- Can the concept of universal nonproliferation be effectively switched into a regime that is US-centric and subordinated to the relations between the new proliferators and the U.S.?
Outputs
UN University Press will publish two companion-edited volumes with short chapters based on selections from the papers developed by the authors within the workshops. The volume is expected to be published by early 2006.
In addition, IPA and UNU will distribute reports that draw out policy-relevant conclusions from the two workshops.