Why did the Former President of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin War caution that the world is on the brink of a new Cold War?
He stated, “Some say it has already begun. Instead of building new mechanisms and institutions of European security and pursuing major demilitarisation, the West and particularly the US declared victory in the Cold War.
Triumphalism went to the heads of the Western leaders. Taking advantage of Russia’s weakening and the lack of a counterweight they claimed monopoly domination in the world.
The enlargement of Nato, Kosovo, missile defence plans and wars in West Asia had led to a collapse of trust. To put it metaphorically, a blister has now turned into a festering wound.”
The central concern that former President Gorbachev was flagging is whether there has been a failure of statespersonship in evolving a new world order transcending the frozen hostility of the Cold War era.
To explore this trepidation it is imperative to trace the evolution of the institutions of global governance.
The League of Nations emerged out the wreckage of the First World War that killed 25 million people. It was founded on the standard of a “just peace” enunciated by President Wilson.
The principal nations of those times wanted to ensconce their distaste for war into a new form of international order. The League and a series of mediation accords proposed to supplant conquests for dominance with licit means of dispute resolution.
Participation in these new structures was open to all and theoretically comprehensive. Every form of defilement of peace was strictly proscribed, yet no state was alacritous to apply its terms. Timeworn mindsets reigned.
Two superimposing yet conflicting post war orders came into existence. The sphere of covenants and treaties charted by the Western democracies in their relationship with each other and an unimpeded precinct arrogated by countries that had voluntarily extracted themselves from this edifice of restrictions to attain greater latitude of action.
Ultimately the instability inherent in this order failed to keep the peace and soon the Second World War engulfed the world.
Out of the shambles of this great conflagration emerged the United Nations in 1945. The structure of the United Nations and the balance of power enshrined in the veto system of the Security Council was representative of the power dynamic that existed at that point in time.
The vision being that the United Nations would implement collective security via a global concert.
Over the past seven and more decades, the track record of the United Nations has been variegated.
A myriad number of wars and violent conflicts have taken place around the world that have killed, maimed and rendered homeless millions of people, but what the United Nations has successfully prevented is a conflagration on a global scale of the kind seen in the First and Second World Wars.
However, the end of the Cold War provided the victors a golden opportunity to redesign the institutions of global governance to reflect the transformation in the trans continental scheme of things between 1945 and 1989.
The obvious low hanging fruit was the restructuring of the United Nations Security Council.
By posturing the enigma as to which nation can possibly be kept out rather than which country must be brought into the zone of perpetual membership, the entrenched five have effectively stymied any attempt to contemporise the most important organ of the UN system to reflect the current influence equilibrium.
The failure to do so has contributed to the increasing redundancy of the UN. Member states and “coalitions of the willing” have simply ignored the UN with impunity and resorted to unilateral action on more than one occasion.
Similarly, regional groupings, private initiatives and platforms outside the formal United Nations structure have become more fashionable and influential in the economic arena.
The World Economic Forum, emergence of the G-20 and other quasi formal structures outside the UN framework are all manifestations of the resistance to reform.
Another such outmoded legacy is the Non Proliferation Treaty that comes up for review next year. The NPT entered into force in 1970 and effectively divided the world between nuclear haves and nuclear have nots.
Over the years various other constructs were put in place to perpetuate this nuclear apartheid, including the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Nuclear Suppliers Group that came into existence as the London Club in response to India’s first nuclear test in 1974.
While the pillars of the NPT non proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use of nuclear technology are extremely relevant even today, what is missing is a reality check on the current situation.
Over the years certain countries who are not signatories of the NPT have emerged as nuclear weapon states India, Pakistan and North Korea being the overt ones, while Israel has maintained a strategic ambivalence with regard to the status of its nuclear weapons programme.
However, here lies the rub. While Pakistan and even China, which is one of the recognised Nuclear Weapon States, have been involved in proliferation to North Korea, allegedly Iran and some erstwhile regimes in West Asia, India’s track record has been impeccable.
By way of an example, the Ayatollahs of non-proliferation may consider it worth their while to even belatedly recognise India’s imperative to test both in 1974 and then again in 1998.
They should take cognisance of its non-proliferation credentials and offer to admit it as a nuclear weapon state into the hallowed portals of the Non- Proliferation Treaty. It would only lend gravitas and further credibility to the NPT regime.
In the remaining decades of the 21 century it would be worthwhile to heed the sage advice of President Gorbachev.
It is a worthy endeavour to try and construct a new international order that reinforces the concept of order within regions, reassesses the concept of balance of power, reaffirms sovereignty of nation states, democratises and broad bases institutions of global governance to surmount the impending new variant of the old Cold War.
The writer is a lawyer and a former Union minister. The views expressed are personal. Twitter handle @manishtewari
