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Fractured International Relations [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-15  

The world of hostile international relations and nuclear weapons make for a scary brew.

Writer Fyodor Lukanov pointed out the dangers of nuclear war have not been as high since the 1960’s in his story “Why Russia cannot ‘Sober Up to the West’ by Using a Nuclear Bomb.” Lukanov covers Russian political scientist Sergey Karaganov’s argument that “the use of nuclear weapons could save the world from global catastrophe.”

Public debate on the use of nuclear weapons has been taboo since the United States dropped two on Japan, and we all know the story there. The reasons for the dangerous times we live in are the general increase in aggressiveness in international politics. Add to this the possibility that a full-blown nuclear war can really happen. Karaganov stated that nuclear weapons are a way for Russia and allied countries (like China) to push back at the West. He also stated that nuclear weapons will “break the will” of the collective West by forcing it to abandon its quest for supremacy. It must be remembered that even Karaganov realized that the use of nuclear weapons would be a monstrosity.

Lukanov addressed a doctrine that emerged in the first Cold War: “Nuclear deterrence and Mutual Assured Destruction are a product of the political and technological development of the second half of the twentieth century – the post-World War II era. It was a unique period of relative order in international relations, based on a system of institutions. This made it possible to regulate the interaction between the main actors, primarily the two superpowers, which were the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union.” The institutions that mediated conflict in the Cold War are no longer there because we are no longer life in the Cold War, or at least the first one.

Lukanov said that a different set of institutions should have emerged to deal with new realities. He correctly stated that institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are faltering and need to be replaced by something else. He said “A fixed world order is not to be expected in the foreseeable future. It will not be possible to regulate multilevel international disorder without a qualitative simplification of the picture. And that is exactly what is not expected, unless catastrophic scenarios are taken into account.”

Also, Lukanov addressed the ramifications of the current world order and nuclear weapons, as he doesn’t want current conflicts to spill over into the nuclear sphere. He advocated a set of rules to keep the current competition within certain bounds. Remember, nuclear weapons are more assessable now, both from a material standpoint and a technological standpoint.

We’ve backed ourselves into a corner, and it’s tough to see if we’ll ever work ourselves out. A recent trip to China by our country’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, yielded little except an agreement to have more meetings. Let’s hope, as we move forward, that the world’s powers can somehow embrace the ideas of international law, peace, arms control, and order. Maybe they’ll be a move toward international institutions that can deal with our current world. Realistically, we’re a long way from that, but let’s hope the day comes early.

Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/15/2181410/-Fractured-International-Relations

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