Decoding the New World Order and the New Foreign Policy Paradigm

Prof. Dr. Tarık Oğuzlu

The world we are living has been going through a radical transition for sometime. The founding dynamics of the world order established after World War II under the leadership of America, known also as the “rules-based liberal world order,” are rapidly evaporating, but no new order has yet taken its place. The rising powers of the non-western world, both the so-called Global East and Global South, are increasingly questioning the material and normative underpinnings of the postwar liberal order that has long reflected the superirority and legitimacy of the countries nested in the Global West.

Both the Global East, centered around Russia and China, and the Global South, which includes over 140 countries, no longer accept the dominant position of the wealthy, developed, liberal, and capitalist countries, clustered in the Global West, as a natural situation.
Simultaneously, many are adopting the view that today’s world is beginning to resemble the rigid/tight bipolar Cold War environment that existed between 1945-1990.

In my opinion, the current international order can be described as either multi-actor/multi-centric or as a flexible/loose bipolar system. For one, the United States and China are far ahead of other states in terms of power capacity. These two giants have economies of $27 trillion and $18 trillion respectively, and no other state can catch up with them in the medium to long term. The only powers with the potential to act as global poles are the U.S. and China. However, while Washington and Beijing are far ahead of other global capitals, it is not possible to claim that they are the natural leaders of two global blocs, separated by ironclad lines of divergent interests and values and seeing each other as enemies.

During the Cold War, the United States was the natural leader of the Western bloc, and the Soviet Union of the Eastern bloc. This is not the case today with China and the U.S. Even America’s traditional allies are unhappy with the competition between the U.S. and China, and neither these countries nor the Global South want to take sides between the two giants. We live in a world where states try to embrace a policy based on multi-connectivity and multi-alignment taking advantage of every opportunity. Strategic autonomy and multi-vector foreign policy are the hallmarks of our time.

However, we must not turn a blind eye to the fact that there has been a recent polarization and fragmentation in global politics and competitive power blocks are emerging. There is a tense and nervous America, trying to convince everyone of a division between the Global West and Global East, seeing the ground beneath it shifting. And we see China responding to this in its own style. Alongside the way, countries within the so-called Global South bloc are being pressured to choose sides.

This leads me to think that the current international order is on the cusp of rapidly evolving toward a rigid/tight bipolarity. The competition between these two giants has begun to permeate every aspect of life. We are in an era where security is growingly defined from a comprehensive perspective. The dynamics of securitization are in full swing. This perspective makes it difficult to establish sincere and cordial dialogues between great powers and adopt common positions in the face of global challenges. International platforms of the Global West, such as NATO and the European Union, have begun to officially view countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran as existential threats.

Another development is the escalation of arms race. We see that actors inclined to align behind these two countries, primarily the U.S. and China, are also taking different sides in the context of the wars and tensions in places like Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan. Even on issues like global warming and pandemics, our world is becoming increasingly divided, moving away from producing common solutions.

Today, it has become very difficult for states to establish sustainable alliances and multilateral international platforms based on shared values and interests. The crisis of the United Nations is visible to all of us. Instead, we see states prefer gathering in small, thematic, and informal settings. A transactional mentality based on pragmatic, short-term and thematic collaborations and give-and-take relations is on the rise everywhere.

It is now clear that lawlessness is solidifying and power politics is gaining momentum in today’s world. Many states, especially major powers, are trying to achieve results purely through brute force, without regard for international law and norms. Everyone is in search of building a geopolitical sphere of influence that aligns with their own capacities.

Another characteristic feature of today’s world is that many countries are increasingly approaching foreign policy more emotionally and reactively rather than rationally, regardless of their power capacity. Uncertainty, fear, anxiety, stress, and unpredictability have become the natural trends of our time.

Despite the revolutionary changes in communication technology and the acceleration of globalization, it is paradoxical that the human family is moving further apart instead of talking to one another. Under the information bombardment accelerated by social media revolution, humanity is failing to produce knowledge that everyone can agree upon.
In this emerging post-truth era, it is increasingly becoming difficult to agree on what is true and what is false in many different fields. Information has become instrumentalized and politicized more than ever before.

The legitimacy of the concept of expert knowledge has severely eroded. In fact, many people think that the explanations of so-called scientific experts in the face of today’s complex problems serve the interests of vested groups benefiting from the current system, rather than being neutral and objective. How else can we explain the rise of populist politics, the loss of momentum in mainstream center-left and center-right political parties, and the normalization of extreme and fringe opinions on a wide range of issues?

It is not experts/public intellectuals/scientists, who research a subject scientifically and bring it to public attention, but rather self-proclaimed opinion leaders who shout the loudest and are most visible on social media and mass communication platforms, that receive more attention. As image becomes more important than content, the race to construct reality through manipulative perception operations has intensified.

Ours is a world where the artificial intelligence-based algorithms divide humanity on the basis of hate, envy, fear and fame, rathern than solidifying it on the basis of common consciousness, values, and emotions. In today’s world, people are increasingly being condemned to live isolated in ghettos and becoming vulnerable to all kinds of perception operations. Those who possess the most institutional and technological capacity are more likely to succeed in the race to shape perceptions of reality. From this perspective, commercial technology companies driven by profit motives and states driven by security concerns are ahead in this race.

Humanity is not becoming stronger; it is being commodified and enslaved.
We live in a world where societal and interpersonal trust is fast eroding. In such situations, protectionist reflexes naturally increase. The thesis that relationships based on mutual dependence with others will generate prosperity and security is rapidly losing ground. In today’s world, where self-sufficiency is increasingly valued and Machiavellian thinking is gaining traction, the darker sides of human nature are presented as immutable realities. Kantian/liberal views, which argue that a more just, secure, and prosperous world can be built based on common sense and rationality by learning from historical experiences, are now under attack.

I don’t want to sound too pessimistic, but at this rate, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before we see a third world war. Periods when competition between great powers intensified, when the dominant power feels threatened by a rising power and mobilized all its resources to prevent it, have always resulted in world wars in the past. Times when protectionist economic policies gained momentum, when a security-oriented perspective dominated all aspects of life, when international institutional structures became dysfunctional, when illiberal, authoritarian, and populist political movements grew stronger, when militarization skyrocketed, and when humanity lost its moral compass, have always led to global destruction. Hopefully, we are not experiencing a similar situation.