Makei commented on world order best suited for current stage of human development
A problem dealing with the liberal international order is structural – as noted by Belarus’ Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei in his article published in Russia in Global Affairs journal
According to Mr. Makei, history shows that world orders (or rather regional orders, if viewed from a historical perspective) flourished when they were supported by hegemonic states. “The modern world was in a hegemonic phase approximately from ‘the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2007’, as the American economist Joseph Stiglitz said. Indeed, it was the era of US triumphalism, a unipolar moment. Politically, that moment ended with the US imperial overstrain in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Meanwhile, economically, it was put to an end by the global economic and financial crisis caused by market fundamentalism, which reigned supreme in the United States. We live in a post-hegemonic era now,” he explained.
The Foreign Minister wondered which order is best suited for the current stage of human development. “History shows that, in non-hegemonic periods, regional and less often ideological orders prevailed. Is regionalism (or ideology) suitable for the modern world? Of course, this is a fairly viable option. Indeed, it is much easier to achieve effective co-operation at the regional level than at the global one, because regions are more cohesive political, economic and cultural units than the global structure. Each region has its own clear hegemons in the ‘Gramscian’ sense, capable of influencing the formation of regional orders. Moreover, the political mainstream in all regions seems to support such an evolution. For example, a few years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with the idea of building a Great Eurasian Partnership aimed at strengthening and ensuring even greater co-operation and integration of this part of the world,” Mr. Makei said.
According to Belarus’ Foreign Minister, it is quite possible in this way to create a world order that will be represented and implemented through regional orders linked to each other by means of effective co-operation.
“However, debates in the West mostly speak in favour of preserving the current liberal international order. The Last Best Hope: The West's Final Chance to Build a Better World Order article – published recently in the Foreign Affairs journal – is very instructive in this regard. Based on a speech by US President Biden in March 2022, in which he said that ‘the West now faces a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force’, the authors proposed the idea of creating a G12 group in order to consolidate Western countries. They assert that the new group should not be a disparate ad hoc group like the G7, but an effective mechanism ‘to prevent Russian revanchism and compete with China’. They see the last hope for the salvation of the liberal international order in their idea,” Mr. Makei noted.
He added that these proposals are not what the authors actually mean, “In fact, they propose to strengthen the regional Euro-Atlantic or, as it can be called otherwise, the ideological ‘democratic’ order. Their recipe of more democracy for peace will certainly not be able to save the liberal order as an international phenomenon. On the contrary, if implemented, this idea will actually hammer the last nail into the coffin of the liberal world order, because the West’s consolidation will force others to accelerate the pace of their own regional or ideological consolidation. Accordingly, the existing gap between the democratic and autocratic camps will increase, and regional or ideological orders emerged as a result of this scenario will be more involved in rivalry than in co-operation with each other. The liberal international order as an integral phenomenon cannot be saved for a simple reason: it does not reflect the fact of the world diversity,” Belarus’ Foreign Minister concluded.
