Brussels, May 16, 2024

 

1. Continually embracing the complexity of the world

It is always extremely difficult to objectivise a trend towards increasing global violence or the escalating risks of conflagration we face [1]. Today, it is claimed that the return to power struggles and brutal initiatives are characteristics of the 21st century. Without diminishing them, the historian must observe that these have instead been a characteristic of humanity for more than 40 centuries.

Nevertheless, as the data collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at the Swedish University of Uppsala shows, while the number of wars has remained fairly constant since 1946, minor conflicts have increased significantly since 2010, after a decrease in the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall and its consequences on the rest of the world.

Davies SHAWN, Therese PETTERSSON & Magnus ÖBERG, Organized violence 1989-2022 and the return of conflicts between states? in Journal of Peace Research, 2023. https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/charts/

According to Peter Wallenstein, for the world as a whole, the total number of armed conflicts is staggering. Despite great efforts at conflict resolution, it appears that, for each conflict solved between parties with international efforts, a new one emerges, often pursued by splinter groups, requiring the same mix of improvisation and standard operating procedures by the international community [2].

The very nature of these conflicts is evolving to such an extent that the classic distinction between inter-state war and civil war is being replaced by a trichotomy for conflict analysis. The first category includes inter-state conflicts over territory and government [3]. The second category identifies intra-state conflicts over government and a third category contains intra-state conflicts over territory. It should be noted that, whereas during the period 2000-2010, there were only 4 out of 73, from 2011 to 2021, inter-state conflicts represent 7 out of a total of 110. Over the entire period 1989-2021, inter-state conflicts amounted to 14 out of 190 [4].

The professor of foresight, meanwhile, has long been saying that to regard the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the USSR as events that definitively marked the end of the Cold War could only be established over a long period which we have clearly not achieved. Today, we are facing a high-intensity war in Ukraine. One possible outcome is that it leads to a partition of that country along the Dnieper River – or some demarcation further eastwards or westwards – and that a new iron curtain will eventually descend across the continent of Europe for a long time. There seems no question, however, that we are currently facing an ominous bifurcation as a result of a new geopolitical upheaval in the world [5].

So let us simply note, that, in 2024, in some regions, such as in Europe, there is increased media pressure surrounding the issues, along with a challenge to our way of life resulting from greater awareness of climate change and the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. The latter, it should be remembered, has caused more than 6.7 million deaths to date.

Determining an underlying cause for all these symptoms seems rather pointless and could even highlight a linearity which our awareness of global complexity would not accept. This is precisely the view expressed by Garry Jacobs and Janani Ramanathan and their co-authors in March 2024: a piecemeal focus on single issues would be inadequate at a time when the inter-linkages and interdependencies between issues, disciplines, sectors, regions and cultures of an increasingly globalized world had become so evident and determinative [6].

The fact remains that, specifically, all the efforts and initiatives, including those undertaken by the World Academy of Art & Science (WAAS) and by the Millennium Project, in particular regarding education, to highlight this complexity and the inter-linkages between the various issues that preoccupy us are worthwhile.

But such complexity reminds us that there is no simple response to the obstacles hampering the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and that it will be necessary to continue our efforts in a series of different directions to enable beneficial accelerations and favourable outcomes.

 

2. The lack of public interest and common good at the international level

Those who are acculturated to strategic or operational foresight know how difficult it is to progress together towards a common goal such as peace, security, harmony or sustainability without including the idea of the common good as an ultimate aim in a shared vision.

Yet, as stated by the Swiss jurist Robert Kolb, the common good present in international society is blatantly deficient and structurally inadequate. In international law, this concept is the quest for a harmonious equilibrium between general interests and individual interests, between the individual and the collective at every moment in history… Embodied in the social order, this common good becomes a principle which is relevant for the application of the law: it governs the interpretation of the rules by giving them an ultimate purpose which they must pursue [7].

The idea of genuine international community based on common values is constantly being challenged by exaggerated State sovereignty. Thus, international society does not seem to actually exist or assume a specific, active form, being merely a society of societies, whose component societies fully believe that they can be self-sufficient. For Kolb, Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva, this conventional primacy of the individual good over the collective good is reflected in a serious distortion of the spectre of the common good. In the essential sectors, this spectre borders on anarchy and gives free rein to power. And, indeed, sovereignty, nationalism and particularism reign supreme in our world. Universal common good is still simply the aspiration of some enlightened circles [8].

What could this common good look like? Perhaps an overriding interest, as conceived or observed by the French philosopher and historian Raymond Aron. During the 1960s, Aron, author of Peace and War, A Theory of International Relations, noted this interest in the solidarity of the two Greats against total war [9], a solidarity not to self-destruct. For the United States and Russia, it was a means of moving beyond global concepts and ideologies that were seemingly irreconcilable. It was the reciprocal threat of nuclear weapons and the shadow of death for all that would have ensured that established this interest in the absence of a common good. But the common good was clearly present: it was – and, to a degree, remains – the protection of civilisation, or the aspiration of harmonious civilisation.

Other major powers have emerged since the Cold War period – China and India, for example – along with other self-destruction elements: although nuclear apocalypse has not been eliminated, climate change has increased in magnitude and constitutes an additional threat in a world whose population has risen from 3 to 8 billion people in sixty years.

Tackling climate change ought to be the overriding interest of nations and the common good of civilisation: a battle in whose name all wars and international crises should be banned. In this way, international peace and justice could be achieved if all States truly acknowledged the common good represented by universal society, nature and the biosphere. In the words of Robert Kolb, this international community could establish a sort of constitutional law [10] on a global scale. Collective solidarity would prevail over state sovereignty and disproportionate individual ambitions.

Endowed with a common purpose, therefore, how should this collective ambition be applied?

 

 3. Arming wisdom? The collapse of diplomacy and dissuasion

Tomorrow we will try to arm wisdom, but we will not let the human values he taught us be prescribed, values of which he was the living example, stated Raymond Aron on 27 January 1945 in tribute to the French philosopher Léon Brunschvicg (1869-1944) [11].

 

3.1. The United Nations

Arming wisdom is the hope and the necessity of this Post-War period. The aims and principles of the United Nations Charter embody this hope. The first, well-known Article sets out the organisation’s ambition: 

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends [12].

Unfortunately, Articles 45 and 47 of the Charter are less well-known, since they have remained unheeded to date[13]:

Article 45: In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military measures, Members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action. The strength and degree of readiness of these contingents and plans for their combined action shall be determined within the limits laid down in the special agreement or agreements referred to in Article 43, by the Security Council with the assistance of the Military Staff Committee.

Article 47:

1.There shall be established a Military Staff Committee to advise and assist the Security Council on all questions relating to the Security Council’s military requirements for the maintenance of international peace and security, the employment and command of forces placed at its disposal, the regulation of armaments, and possible disarmament.

2. The Military Staff Committee shall consist of the Chiefs of Staff of the permanent members of the Security Council or their representatives. Any Member of the United Nations not permanently represented on the Committee shall be invited by the Committee to be associated with it when the efficient discharge of the Committee’s responsibilities requires the participation of that Member in its work.
3. The Military Staff Committee shall be responsible under the Security Council for the strategic direction of any armed forces placed at the disposal of the Security Council. Questions relating to the command of such forces shall be worked out subsequently.
4. The Military Staff Committee, with the authorization of the Security Council and after consultation with appropriate regional agencies, may establish regional sub-committees [14].

These articles represent the armed wing of wisdom and must be endorsed by the international community and the institutions that support it.

Although Raymond Aron stated that military force remains the bedrock of international order, he recognised that it is not decisive everywhere or at every point[15]. We can see this in the Vietnam of his era or the Afghanistan of our own.

But to take just a few recent examples, Congo, Yemen, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza demonstrate the simultaneous collapse of international diplomacy and dissuasion. These are all examples of our inability to establish peace and protect people: inability in global governance as well as inability in the governance of continental Europe as far as the war in Ukraine is concerned.

 

3.2. Europe

I will spend a bit of time on Europe’s inability, particularly in view of the need for it to keep its own house in order rather than criticise the United Nations yet again. In addition to NATO, there are three institutions that are, to varying degrees, responsible for security in its different dimensions: the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is often forgotten but which was one of the architects of the Minsk Agreements of September 2014 [16].

Since the rejection of the European Defence Community by the French National Assembly on 30 August 1954 and, in its wake, the creation of the Western European Union, considerable efforts have been made to establish a European defence system that would offer a way to arm the declared diplomatic wisdom of Europe – inside or outside NATO [17]. These efforts have had little effect.

Thus, at the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia, the European Union became aware of its inability, both diplomatically and politically, to intervene on its own continent and it had to stand aside in favour of NATO on two occasions: in 1995, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and, in 1999, in Kosovo [18]. There have been numerous European Councils (including Cologne and Helsinki in 1999) aimed at revising the treaties (particularly Maastricht in 1992, Nice in 2001 and Lisbon in 2007) and initiatives to implement programmes, create institutions and raise funds, all with the aim of constructing a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The Union established a Political and Security Committee (PSC) and set up a Military Committee (EUMC) and a Military Staff unit (EUMS) with a view to pre-emptive deployment of military forces. It decided to create a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops, a decision which has had little impact to date. You can judge for yourselves: in April 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron, in a speech at the Sorbonne, again argued in favour of achieving the critical size of 5000 soldiers under the European flag.

Although the Maastricht Treaty had placed the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in the hands of the President of the European Council, the Lisbon Treaty instituted the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Article 18 of the TEU) which has an administration and is therefore a sort of Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Union.

External representation of the European is thus exercised by three actors: the President of the European Council, the Commission and the High Representative, which creates a degree of tension and does not facilitate diplomatic action[19] – a fact not lost on anyone.

Following the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, the Union adopted a common strategy (the Strategic Compass) and set up a European Defence Fund which will total nearly 8 billion euro by 2027. However, this may seem a paltry sum given the geopolitical challenges and compared with the resources allocated by some European countries to modernise their armies: 100 billion euro for Germany, 120 billion for Poland[20]. Such joint European initiatives have not always been encouraged by the United States and have sometimes been hampered by the European States themselves, particularly those that had adopted a position of international neutrality while still being members of the Union (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria) [21]. But we should not deceive ourselves: it is particularism and State sovereignty, corollaries of the lack of awareness of the common good, that are the main barrier. As that great promoter of European integration, Jean Monnet, wrote in 1976: the sovereign nations of the past are no longer the framework for solving the problems of the present [22].

The time has come to build up the European Union’s strategic, and therefore military, autonomy, so that it can play an influential role in world diplomacy and help to promote the values of peace and solidarity that led to the founding of the Union.

Therefore, if we cannot support President Macron in what he describes as strategic ambiguity when speaking of sending European troops to the Ukrainian front, we must salute his proactive notion of identifying a new paradigm in the area of defence: a credible defence for the European continent. For Europe, he reminded us, shouldering our responsibilities means deciding for ourselves and leading our European defence efforts. It means building a new paradigm, more cohesion and concrete initiatives together. This defence power obviously relies on diplomacy that enables us to continue to form partnerships with third countries, in other words to build a Europe which can show that it is never the vassal of the United States and that it can talk to other world regions, to emerging countries, to Africa, to Latin America. Not just through trade agreements, but through genuinely balanced and reciprocal strategic partnerships [23].

 

Conclusion: a more preventive diplomacy

Five practices of international law were developed over several centuries before being enshrined in Article 33 of the United Nations Charter in 1945:

1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.
   

2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their dispute by such means [24].

Negotiation, the traditional diplomatic route with a preventive aim. Taking the form of good offices, it offers a way to establish a negotiation process without participating in it or imposing a solution.

International enquiry, instituted by the Hague Convention of 29 July 1899, along with arbitration, aims, through various investigative means, to uncover the facts behind a dispute and to report these facts to the parties.

Mediation proposes the bases for negotiation and intervenes in the process.

Conciliation not only involves examining the constituent elements of a dispute: conciliation committees must also reach a solution.

Arbitration is a judicial process for preventing and resolving international disputes which has developed since the 19th century[25].

As we are reminded by the French historian Laurence Badel, diplomacy may take the form, both at the United Nations and within the European bodies, of a negotiation instrument before being a discussion forum [26]. Active preventive diplomacy, a subject dear to Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) [27], seems far removed from the diplomacy of appeasement characterised by the shadow of the Munich crisis in 1938. How often have we alluded to this in recent years: raising the subject of diplomatic negotiation with the Kremlin equates to being labelled a “Munich sympathiser”. According to Peter Wallenstein, the prominent professor and former director of the Peace and Conflict Department at the University of Uppsala, the concept of preventive diplomacy contains the constructive actions undertaken to avoid the likely threat, use or diffusion of armed force by parties in political dispute [28].

Although this approach was revived by Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his Agenda for Peace in January 1992, the European organisations tried to make it an essential foundation of their practice after the fall of the Berlin Wall[29]. They perhaps failed to make it credible, however, for the reasons we have mentioned.

The importance for the WAAS of cultivating the values that underpin its principles is paramount: peaceful coexistence, fellowship, shared humanity, universal solidarity and shared responsibility for common futures[30]. These could form the basis of the universal common good whose need we have stressed. I do not need to remind you that this common good can only be established through dialogue between people brought up not only on such values, but also on an understanding of the world and on dialogue itself. Learning to understand each other and talk to each other is of great importance. European culture turns negotiation into the art of knowing the Other, states Laurence Badel. Knowing the person’s culture and reflecting on the best method of communication to deal with them are considered key elements in negotiation[31]. Naturally, therefore, education must remain central in any global construction effort. Such education must be that which frees us from our certainties in order, as expressed so clearly by the educationalist Philippe Meirieu, to exchange views on convictions and knowledge [32]. Clearly, such knowledge comes from understanding other people and the trajectories of temporalities: retrospective, present and prospective. That I mention this point will come as no surprise to anyone.

The WAAS also knows the extent to which any challenge approach, such as that relating to peace and security, can only be resolved in the diplomatic and military fields of negotiation and violence. There has been much emphasis, in relations with Russia, on the collapse of a peace model founded on trade and the movement of goods and capital. The complex and systemic dimensions of global relations require us to consider such economic and social dimensions. In 2001, when examining relations between the European Security and Defence policy and NATO, the National Defence Research Institute of the RAND Corporation clearly noted that, in future, it would also depend on transatlantic economic relations[33]. The aim of turning NATO into a global system after 9/11 clearly has not altered this issue, in which, at that time, Russia still seemed to be a stakeholder.

In addition, some of the governance methods and techniques highlighted by the WAAS in its ambitions can be investigated and developed. Preventive diplomacy essentially takes place through impact prior analysis before decisions are taken [34]. The world cannot create itself by rolling the dice. Rational decision-making requires thought and elaboration.

It was Raymond Aron, once again, who asserted this point:  the reasonable conduct of politics is the only rational one if the goal of the intercourse among states is the survival of all, common prosperity and the sparing of the peoples’ blood [35].

The blood of the people – of men, women and children – is clearly what is at stake when we talk about security. And it is a key reason for grasping this issue with all the necessary intelligence and determination.

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

 

[1] This text is the background paper for my speech in the session « Root Causes and Remedies for Rising Insecurity, Social Unrest, War and Violence and Global Turbulence » at the 64th Conference and General Assembly of the World Academy of Art and Science, on 16 May 2024. I would like to thank the organisers, and in particular Garry Jacobs and Janani Ramanathan, for giving me the opportunity to speak on this sensitive subject.

[2] Peter WALLENSTEEN, Understanding Conflict Resolution, p. 38, Los Angeles, Sage, 2023.

[3] Source UCDP, March 2022, in P. WALLENSTEIN, Understanding Conflict Resolutions…, p. 76.

[4] P. WALLENSTEEN, Understanding Conflict Resolution…, p. 82-83.

[5] Emmanuel TODD et Baptiste TOUVEREY, La défaite de l’Occident, p. 19, Paris, Gallimard, 2024.

[6] Garry JACOBS, Janani RAMANATHAN e.a., Origins and Pathways for the Future of the World Academy of Art & Science Strategic Perspectives and Opportunities, in Cadmus, March 6, 2024. https://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume5-issue3-p1/origins-and-pathways-future-of-waas

[7] Robert KOLB, Théorie du Droit international, 3ed., p. 421-424 et 429, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2022.

[8] Ibidem, 431.

[9] Raymond ARON, Paix et Guerre entre les nations, Préface de la quatrième édition, p. 7, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1966.

[10] R. KOLB, Théorie du Droit international…, p. 440.

[11] Raymond ARON, La philosophie de Léon Brunschvicg, dans Revue de métaphysique et de morale, t. LV, n° 1-2, 1945, pp. 127-140, p. 140. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40899141

[12] United Nations Charter, Peace, dignity and equality on healthy planet, United Nations.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

[13] R. KOLB, Théorie du Droit international…, p. 433.

[14] United Nations Charter, Peace, dignity and equality on healthy planet, United Nations, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text

[15] R. ARON, Paix et guerre entre les nations, Préface de la quatrième édition, p. 11.

[16] Laurence BADEL, Diplomaties européennes, XIXe-XXIe siècles, p. 433-434, Paris, Presses de Science Po, 2021.

[17] Voir Daniel MÖCKLI, European Foreign Policy during the Cold War, Health, Brandt, Pompidou and the Dream of Political Unity, London-New York, Tauris, 2009. – Sylvain KAHN, Histoire de la construction de l’Europe depuis 1945, Paris, PUF, 2021. – Pierre HAROCHE, Dans la forge du monde, Comment le choc des puissances façonne l’Europe, Paris, Fayard, 2024.

[18] Ibidem, p. 434.

[19] Federica BICCHI & Nikla BREMBERG, European Diplomacy in Practice, Interrogating Power, Agency and Change, London-New York, Routledge, 2018.

[20] Francisco Juan GOMEZ MARTOS, La défense commune européenne : ambition légitime ou vœu pieux ? dans Pascale JOANNIN dir., L’État de l’Union, Rapport Schuman 2023 sur l’Europe, p. 164, Paris, Fondation Robert Schuman, Éditions Marie B, 2024.

[21] Nicolas BADALASSI, Histoire de la sécurité européenne depuis 1945, De la Guerre froide à la guerre en Ukraine, p. 182, Paris, A. Colin, 2024.

[22] les nations souveraines du passé ne sont plus le cadre où peuvent se résoudre les problèmes du présent. Jean MONNET, Mémoires, p. 617, Paris, Fayard, 1976.

[23] E. MACRON, Europe Speech, 25 April 2024, Elysée, 2024 https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2024/04/24/europe-speech

[24] United Nations Charter : https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-6

[25] L. BADEL, Diplomaties européennes…, p. 427-428.

[26] L. BADEL, Diplomaties européennes…, p. 376, 406, 425, 430.

[27] Dag Hammarskjöld, Le rôle vital des Nations unies dans une diplomatie de la réconciliation., Londres, 2 avril 1958. #

[28] Peter WALLENSTEEN, Preventing Violent Conflict, Past Record and Futures Challenges, p. 34, DPCR-Uppsala University, 1998. – P. WALLENSTEEN, Understanding Conflict Resolution… p. 286sv.

[29] L. BADEL, Diplomaties européennes…, p. 431.

[30] Garry JACOBS, Janani RAMANATHAN e.a., Origins and Pathways…

[31] L. BADEL, Diplomaties européennes…, p. 377.

[32] Philippe MEIRIEU, Ce que l’école peut encore pour la démocratie, Deux ou trois choses que je sais(peut-être) de l’éducation et de la pédagogie, p. 37-52, Paris, Éditions Autrement, 2020.

[33] Robert E. HUNTER, The European Security and Defense Policy, NATO’s Companion or Competitor?, p. 159-161, Arlington, Rand – Rand Europe, National Defense Research Institute, 2002.

[34] Ph. DESTATTE, Increasing rationality in decision-making through policy impact prior analysis, Blog PhD2050, Namur, July 12, 2021. https://phd2050.org/2021/07/12/pipa_en/

[35] R. ARON, Peace and War, A Theory of International Relations (1966), p. 45, New Brunswick (USA) and London, Transaction Publishers, 2003.