International Order at the Turn of the XXI Century

        The article explores the role of intervention in maintaining and re-shaping international order over the last decade. The right to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states was asserted by the West in the 1990s by operations in the former Yugoslavia. This led to the emergence of the principle of «selective legitimacy» which laid the moral groundwork for persecution of political figures, such as Slobodan Milosevic. However, further evolution of this principle construed by the Bush Administration as the right to «preventive» intervention, raised contradictions among the group of world leaders. A number of United States’ European allies refused to recognize «regime change» as a logical consequence of the principle of humanitarian intervention they once helped establish. However, the United States no longer seeks to achieve wide international consensus on its foreign policy goals but rather acts unilaterally disregarding the differences with its allies whose interests the Bush Administration claims to defend.

The Legal Norms of International Regulation:
Waves of Unification

       A short period of relative stability of international law after the Second World War came to an end in the early 1970s. At that time, the collision of «conservative» and «progressive» traditions of regulation in international relations started. This resulted in a wavy movement of the international community toward the elaboration of universal legal norms of international behavior and their implementation by an expanding range of states. The first wave of unification was initiated by the adoption in 1970 of the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the UN and of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The second wave arose from the crises in the late 1980s and early 1990s: the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, conflict in ex- Yugoslavia, escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the first war in Iraq. The third wave marked the appearance of new international norms, such as «pseudo-peacekeeping» operations or international criminal tribunals. The most recent fourth wave, which took off in the late 1990s, is characterized by the practical application of the doctrine of intervention.

Multilateral Intervention after the Collapse of Bipolarity

        Since the end of the Cold War humanitarian intervention has extended its rationale to protecting the universally recognized norms, such as human rights. However, intervention still implies interference into domestic affairs of another state in order to change or maintain the existing government or the distribution of power. States continue to pragmatically use intervention as their foreign policy tools. The centrality of national interests hardly receded in the face of universal norms. Over the last decade, two major changes occurred in the nature and mechanism of intervention. First, intervention became more rare and shifted toward multilateral frameworks tending to seek authorization by international institutions, mostly the UN. Second, attempts have been made to legitimize intervention by basing it upon universally recognized norms. The operation in Afghanistan and war in Iraq testified to the erosion of the principle of non-intervention and the increasing conditionality of state sovereignty.

The Toolkit of «Conflict Behavior» in International Economic Conflicts

        In the era of globalization the nature of international economic conflict has changed and therefore requires a new toolkit for settlement.
        Whereas economic conflicts traditionally stem from the clash of national interests, in a globalizing world struggle for resources has acquired ecological and demographic dimensions. Globalization currently implies mainly westernization – or even americanization – of international economic relations. Although there is no viable alternative to American leadership today, replacement of the leader is inevitable and states must prepare themselves for it. Liberalization of the world economy pursued by developed countries is heavily criticized in the Third World. The economic gap between the North and the South is further widened by the impact of multinational corporations who mainly serve the interests of western governments, particularly that of the United States. The international community must therefore embark on a policy of non-discrimination and abstain from using economic sanctions. Such policy must be embedded in a set of appropriate international economic institutions. Depreciation of such institutions can lead to imbalances between the processes of globalization and regionalization. Although international institutions are unable to cope with the underlying causes of economic disparities, they can contribute to the settling of international economic conflicts.

Managing Contemporary International Conflict

        The failure of the Cold-War conflict management tools to effectively address the conflicts of the post-bipolar world has highlighted the need for a critical review of the traditional causes and patterns of conflict. Parties to contemporary international conflict break down into three major categories: developed countries, countries in transition (post-socialist states, China, Iran, Arab countries etc.) and developing countries. The task of conflict management in contemporary international relations faces the stumbling blocks of national sovereignty and the right to self-defense. At the same time, this task increasingly shifts from the responsibility realm of the international community to the superpower competence of the United States. Although the conceptual and practical toolkit of conflict management has been considerably developed over the past decade, the question of who should be «in charge» is still open. American ambitions are contested by a group of states, including Russia, China, France and Germany. The prospects for an effective mechanism of conflict management to emerge in the foreseeable future are still vague.

Western Studies of International Institutions

Supranationality as a Eurotrend

The Notion of Human Security in Contemporary Political Science

«Hydro-Political Arms». A Chinese Perspective .

National Interest in Contemporary World Politics

«The Paradox of Georgia» in Russian Politics

Who Lost Georgia?

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Anatoli Torkunov.
Rector of MGIMO-University - A Newly Elected Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences

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Reviews

Making Borders Transparent?
Transparent Frontiers. Security and Transboundary Cooperation in Russia's New Borderlands / L.V. Vardomsky, S.V. Golunov. Moscow-Volgograd: AEFIR, 2002. 573 p.

Systems Approach to Foreign Policy Analysis
A.D. Bogaturov, N.A. Kosolapov, M.A. Khrustalev. Essays on Theory and Political Analysis of International Relations. Moscow: AEFIR, 2002. 384 p.

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