“…I would like to make five points. Firstly, it is clear that the informational and technological revolution is changing everything. It is changing the world economy but it is also changing the political system. It is transforming the nature of states and the nature of interstate relations. Nevertheless, the state remains the core of the international system. This is a very important point.
My second point is that we need strong but renovated states which are able to adjust according to the changes we are talking about. And that, of course, is a difficult task because if states are not able to adjust to the new realities, then they could impede the adjustment not only of the states themselves but of the international system as well. Also, there are new sorts of political units. The nation-state itself is a relatively recent construction by historical standards because it started in 15th century and maybe in a hundred years from now we will have political units substantially different from states, even if states continue to play a role. And the European Union by the way may be regarded as a formal laboratory for the emergence of new political units. So, we need strong states, renovated, efficient but also states which are able to deal and to work with other stake holders, sectoral NGOs, but also economic organizations, firms, enterprises, etc. In many governmental issues, states must cooperate with non-state actors. But only powerful and efficient states can do that in a proper way.
My third point is that even though some of us thought that the international system was more or else chaotic; nevertheless there are signs of a new structure coming up. This structure can be summarized in 3 words – multipolar, heterogeneous, and global. Multipolar means what it actually means. The number of poles depends on the sphere in question. The poles in the political military sphere are not the same as the poles in the economic sphere even though there is an intersection between the two. Multipolarity has, of course, a number of implications which I will elaborate on later.
Heterogeneity is a very important concept. It signifies that we are not all alike in ideological terms. It implies that the world is going to remain ideologically diverse, with different cohabitating political regimes. Liberal democracy as it is supposed to work in the West will not spread all over the world quickly and I don’t know if it will ever spread all over the world, but certainly not in next 20 or 25 years. And therefore we have to learn to cooperate and to work together, as countries which do not share the same ideology sometimes do. And it is essential because since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West has placed a lot of stress on ideological factors. We must cooperate, work constructively together while recognizing our ideological differences.
Thirdly, I referred to globalism of the current structure. Global means that the degree of interdependence is likely to increase in the foreseeable future and of course it is not only a quantitative matter, but also a qualitative. Interdependence alters the nature of international system itself. Globalization is a consequence of the IT revolution. In point of fact, globalization is a reality that will stay with us, but it requires strong and effective governance. This governance cannot be rigid; it must be flexible. Lack of flexibility is obviously part of the problem.
To say that the world has become multipolar means that “G-1” does not suffice. On some issues “G-2” might be relevant. For instance, for climate it may be so, that something like “G-2” (that is US and China) might be at least the starting point. Because if we have “G-40”, it may not work out. Even regarding the European Union, “G-27” is a difficult group to manage. So a given “G-n” depends on the subjects. If you take the Security Council of the UN the G n, what is it? Especially, if you take the Council of permanent members. Everybody agrees that we should change the composition of permanent members. To do so I think we should be led by two guidelines. One is that “G something” cannot work if there is no a basic agreement among its members about the responsibilities and the goals of that group. If there is no agreement among the members of the group that they should work collectively and instructively on something; it can not work because you will always have divisions among the members, and this is exactly what happened during the Cold War in the Security Council.
Is the situation much better today? I am not entirely convinced. There should be a kind of charter for each group on what goals they want to achieve, what they are gathering for. The second guiding principle is that being a member of a “G something” should not be a matter of status. I don’t want to offend anyone but what is now “G-8” started like “G-5”, the next day Italy said why not us and Italy joined, the next day Canada said “why not us” and Canada joined. And then Russia joined. But I think that there should be a clear understanding that to be a member of a “G something” you have to bring something on the table. It could be forces in the security field, contributions on peace keeping and peace enforcement, help in money or economic matters. The members of a “G something” have to commit themselves to bring in resources on the table. If not, they should not be accepted. So, that means that they have not only rights, it’s not only a matter of status but a matter of responsibility. And if we keep these principles in mind we could improve the situation significantly.
Now we have various Gs, G-8, G-20, G-14, the Security Council – it is also G-5. And these Gs are legitimate only if their members meet objective criteria, namely they have to agree to behave in a cooperative way. They also have to take into account the interests of smaller countries, without however becoming inefficient. And here we have an interesting concept of partnership. But to what extent partnership is related to multilateralism or multipolarity? It’s a relatively delicate issue.
Multilateralism refers to diplomatic techniques while multipolarity refers more to a kind of balance of power but in a cooperative dimension. Some of us, our Russian colleagues, insisted that the UN Charter should be more respected. But with all due respect international law is very different from internal law and we cannot expect people to observe international law without some kind of balance of power in a wide sense. The UN system, if it is to remain legitimate has to be modernized; therefore we have again this issue of the composition of permanent members in the Security Council. All this has a lot to do with the issue of good governance.
Good governance is an essential condition for survival of the planet for two reasons. One is that if we do not find proper solutions to the governance issues, globalization can not continue. If globalization breaks down we might be in the situation more or less similar to the situation which led to World War II or to the Cold War. And that could lead to catastrophic scenarios that are very difficult to imagine in detail. However, we have a common stake to maintain globalization but again globalization can survive only if we have proper governance. And there is also another reason why good governance is vital: we have to deal together with the emergence of new sorts of problems unprecedented in world history, such as the climate issue or some health problems. Nowadays everybody is talking about H1N1. But we might have one day a pandemic as serious as AIDS which could be transmitted through air. So, for all these reasons good governance is fundamental.
There is no perfect solution to the governance issue. The terminology “good governance” instead of “government” alludes to soft kinds of arrangements which are also something new in world history. And this has to be discovered by trials and errors. There is an empirical side of this. What kind of principals could inspire good governance? I will mention two. One is appropriate balance of world and regional organizations. One of the reasons why the UN system is weak is because regional organizations are too weak. And therefore most problems which are very important for the stability of the international system, for example the Middle East, can not be seriously treated at the UN level because it is too high alevel. We have to apply something that in the European Union we call subsidiary principle. Problems have to be solved at the lowest possible level. And it is only when some very serious matters occur at the low level that cannot be solved at that level that they have to be taken to the highest level. For instance, in the Middle East possibly the Iranian problem has to be tackled at the top level but most problems should be dealt at the lower level. What am I trying to say here is that in the future we should work much more on developing regional organizations. And here we have a difficult question – how do we define appropriate regions? That’s a geographical and geopolitical issue.
My next point is regionalization. In order to have an efficient governance system we have to employ, I repeat, something like the subsidiarity principle of the European Union which means that problems should be solved at the lowest possible level. Many geopolitical problems in the world have to be solved regionally with the inclusion of all major actors. It has to be reiterated that it is only when it is impossible to solve the issue at a low level that it should be brought to the upper level, to the Security Council of the UN, for instance. Therefore we need strong regional organizations. I thought that Russia was in favor of more regionalization to solve political problems. But I realized at this meeting that for some Russians regionalization stood for a stronger NATO. Of course, this is not what it means to me. I think that the Russian proposal for a new security system in Europe is a very legitimate one. After all, historically speaking we have known two rises of stability – Vienna Congress and Helsenki Act, that is from 1973 to collapse of the Soviet Union.
And my last point is that there are a number of concepts which are quite interesting. These are: trust (how to increase mutual trust?) confidence, partnership, cooperation, rules of the game. I strongly believe that if we don’t give flesh to these words, if we don’t give them substance, we will be in trouble because the institutional arrangements are stuck if there is no trust and confidence and mindsets are not changed…”
