Wednesday 23 May 2018 marks exactly 400 years since the day when Czech burghers and Protestant nobles threw imperial governors out of the window in Prague Castle. This was the beginning of the Thirty Years' War - a conflict the Christian world had never known an equal.
Its fundamental reason was the dissatisfaction of the new centers of power of the time - the Protestant states and France - with the monopoly position of the Catholic empire of the Habsburgs in Central Europe. The hostilities were extremely brutal - on the territory of German lands 40% of the civilian population was destroyed, and in some areas this figure reached 70%. A third of the German cities were burned down. The war ended with the Peace of Westphalia, which laid down the foundations of the international rules of the game. This world - two, in Münster and Osnabrück, agreements between the warring parties - were prepared by several hundred representatives of Catholic and Protestant states. Russia (the Russian kingdom), at the insistence of Sweden, was included in the number of participants in the new order in absentia. But the formation of the Westphalian system did not end there:China was dragged into it against its will in 1840-1842, and India - with gaining independence in 1947.
As Henry Kissinger wrote in his book World Order, "The genius of this (Westphalian) system and the reason for its spread throughout the world is that its provisions were procedural, not substantive." Central among these provisions was the universal recognition of the legitimacy and formal equality of states as “citizens” of the international system. Although there were also purely material provisions in the contracts, as a rule, concerning the territorial transfer. Another important principle of the Westphalian system was the rule “whose power, that is the faith,” borrowed from the Augsburg religious world, which actually prohibited wars for religion. Note that the transition of the territories of one state to another was not regulated or limited by the Westphalian order, and for the next two centuries the European powers fought mainly for land and resources.
A little less than 300 years later, in 1914, irritated by the lack of respect for her, Germany dragged Europe into the First World War. And in 1939 Berlin unleashed an even more terrible conflict. These two tragedies can be combined into one large-scale historical episode. A kind of second Thirty Years War. The main result of this war was the only formal revision of the Westphalian principle of equality in all 400 years. After 1945, a select group of powers - the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - received the unique right to make decisions that are binding on all other members of the international community. The price of this right is victory over Germany and Japan, culminating in the symbolic execution of most of their leaders. That is why it is impossible today to expand the composition of the considered members of the Security Council to include India there,Germany, Japan or Brazil. All these respected states - either defeated or no one serious - did not win.
Moreover, in both cases - both in the first and in the second Thirty Years' Wars - the source of the conflict was forces that were bypassed in the existing system of rights and privileges. It is no coincidence that the great historian and political philosopher Edward Carr stated in 1939: “what has received universal definition as the 'return of power politics' was in fact the end of the power monopoly that the status quo powers had before”. Now the power monopoly has been broken not only in the traditional, military, dimension. For the first time since 1991, the Russian operation in Syria restricted the United States' right to destroy anyone it does not like. China's Belt and Road strategy could end the West's monopoly on economic and soft power. But surprisingly, the initiative for the confrontation still belongs to thosewho seems to have to hold on to the existing order of things.
Moreover, the paradox of the situation today is that now, as indeed all the years after the end of the first Cold War, it is precisely those states that emerged from it that have emerged victoriously from power politics. These are the United States and its European allies. The number of armed interventions carried out by them over the past 27 years is incomparable with the similar actions of Russia, China (which did not fight with anyone) and in general all other countries of the world combined. This makes one think that the Western powers are the real revisionists seeking to revise the international order in a more comfortable direction for themselves.
At the same time, their revisionist thrust was initially directed towards the very foundations of the international order. It is no coincidence that in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s there was so much talk about the "end of Westphal" and the transition to a new coordinate system, including the withering away of classical sovereignty. However, as Edward Carr noted in his time, those who are able to defend their sovereignty speak most of all about the decline in the importance of sovereignty. Now the case is taking an even more exciting turn. This movement was again led by the main revisionists of world history, the United States, who proclaimed, through the mouth of eccentric President Donald Trump, a strategy aimed at deriving unilateral benefits. Thus, there was a final return to the classic for world history struggle not for values, but for resources and domination.
Russia, in fact, has never called for a revision of the formal side of the world order. On the contrary, until 2014, she tirelessly insisted that international law must be respected, and the UN Security Council is the only legitimate organ of the international community. China acted in a similar way. Although Beijing has created international financial institutions parallel to those controlled by the United States, it has never questioned political institutions. The liberal world order that existed until recently was economically completely satisfactory for China, since it allowed it to accumulate strength and gradually position itself as an alternative source of development resources for medium and small states to the West. In a sense, the PRC effectively parasitized on globalization,taking away from its owners - the Americans - resources and jobs.
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Russia is still waging its struggle with the West, proceeding from the presumption of the need to establish certain rules of the game. Formally new, but in fact, Moscow calls on the West to simply comply with the requirements for behavior that have existed since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648: not to interfere in internal affairs, respect sovereign equality, and not strive for power domination over others. This, incidentally, puts it in an obviously more vulnerable position in the context of the unfolding second cold war. Because, in fact, the goal of a struggle, as one learned colleague noted, is to win, not an agreement or a deal. Agreements fix the result of the confrontation, but in no case define its goals and objectives. Therefore, from the point of view of the science of international relations, "revisionist" Russia does not just want to come to an agreement, but does it from a position of weakness. Appealing to the minds and even hearts of the partners in the United States and Europe, which is illogical given the already begun conflict.
An agreement can become a target of the struggle only when the opponents unreservedly recognize each other's legitimacy. As was the case, for example, in the case of the brightest "diplomatic" war in the last 400 years - the Crimean War (1853-1856). Then the goal of the main player - Emperor Napoleon III - was not to implement the crazy plans of the Briton Palmerston to seize Poland, the Baltic states, the Crimea and the Caucasus from Russia, but to restore the balance of power in Europe. Which he successfully did after the occupation of Sevastopol. Let us note, by the way, that, as now, in the mid-19th century, Russia's opponents also acted as part of a coalition. But in the century before last, relations between the powers were based on monarchic legitimacy, which performed a function akin to that which the UN Charter is endowed with today - to limit the arbitrariness of stronger states. Russia and China are now calling for the return of such mutual legitimacy.
The United States and its allies are another matter. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, they only did what they violated the basic principles of international communication. They can be understood if we recall the thesis of the Athenian ambassadors in Thucydides' "Peloponnesian War": "The strong do what they want, and the weak do what the strong allow them," and for those who are weaker, "it is better to submit than to endure the greatest calamities." … It was not possible to build a policy in this way in relation to a small, but completely "frostbitten" North Korea, but formally more serious Iran managed to impose its will. Yugoslavia, a large European state, was simply defiantly dismantled for parts, like a stolen car. Jokingly, they sent three authoritarian leaders in the Middle East to the next world and got close to another one. And, finally, they dragged Russia into direct confrontation,supporting a coup d'état in a critical country. And a few months ago, China was declared an enemy, which generally behaved very peacefully compared to the relatively cocky Moscow. Russia has been imposed with measures of economic pressure and from time to time they try to take it "weakly". A trade war breaks out against China.
What we are seeing now is not a counterattack by the West in the literal sense of the term. Because the counterattack follows the enemy's attack, and no one attacked the West. Yes, they doubted his right to usurp the questions of life and death, answered relatively modestly where aggressiveness had already exceeded all possible limits. But, by and large, no one started a systemic struggle with the United States and its allies, and did not think to begin. They themselves became its initiators, after the only deterrent, the mighty Soviet Union, disappeared in 1991. The Westphalian order is based on an unwritten but universal recognition of diversity as an inevitability with which one must live and in conditions of which to realize national interests and development priorities. The core of Western policy after the end of the first Cold War is quite the opposite,denial of diversity. This denial took sometimes caricatured forms. Suffice it to recall the loud article by Francis Fukuyama about the "end of history" and the coming general unification. But the practical consequences of the course taken by the West were the destroyed Middle East, devastated Ukraine and Moldova, the absurd policy of the European Union towards Russia, and many other unsympathetic things. Now nobody demands monotony. Require submission. Now nobody demands monotony. Require submission. Now nobody demands monotony. Require submission.
The Second Cold War did not start in 2017, but much earlier. It's just that after 2014, she moved into a phase when not only one side strikes. This is already progress, and it causes rage on the other side. In a sense, the second Cold War was a continuation of the first, although it is being waged under fundamentally different conditions. The nature of the conflict has not changed - power and prestige, although the ideological factor has disappeared. But at the same time, the Second Cold War is part of a larger process of re-adapting the international order to the balance of power. Both past times - in the first half of the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century - this adaptation went through real wars, destructive for hundreds of thousands and millions of people.
Now the likelihood of a classic, non-hybrid war is less due to the murderous weapons at the disposal of the main participants in the process. Yes, in April 2017, the US missile attack on the allied Russia of Syria was of a targeted nature, and in April of this year the allies did everything not to provoke the Russian side to self-defense. But the reality has already become a balancing act on the brink of a direct military clash of the superpowers with an always unpredictable ending. Most likely, unless a catastrophe occurs, such a struggle can continue much longer than a conventional, classic armed conflict. However, no matter how long it lasts, the result is unlikely to be the creation of new rules of the game - the legacy of the Peace of Westphalia is too great and perfect to be abandoned. Likely,the results will be summed up through the redistribution of resources and power. And so on until next time.
Timofey Bordachev - Ph. D. in Political Science, Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Director of the Eurasian Program of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai International Discussion Club.