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The Future of Global Order and the Possibility of New Visions

 

Inhwan OH: Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Zarakol. So the first question is about the future of global order. So in your recent you note that in the early 1990s, scholars and experts alike offered forward-looking visions, not to mention the Francis Fukuyama's “The End of History.” But today's intellectuals seem unable to present what is coming next. So the question I'd like to pose in line with your argument is this: do you think genuinely new visions are most likely come from the non-Western side of the world? And relatedly, do you think such an emerging order will be pretty much a novel one, rather than a reformed or reshaped version of the existing one?

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Thank you. first of all, thank you for inviting me. it's my pleasure to talk to the East Asia Institute. Yes, so the piece of writing you mentioned I was making an argument that in the 1990s, when the Cold War came to an end, Western intellectuals seemed to have debatable but comprehensive visions about what was coming afterwards. So there I discuss along with Fukuyama, you mentioned, who basically says nothing is coming because we're at the end of history. You know, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis and also Robert Kaplan. By contrast, I think now there's a pronounced anxiety, especially in the West, that what used to be called the “liberal international order” has ended, or is ending.

 

But there isn't really, apart from some, you know, maybe MAGA circles and maybe some tech broad sponsored philosophers, there isn't anybody who's saying this is what's coming next. There seems to be either like a desire to kind of, although this is decreasing day by day, like an attempt to salvage the liberal international order. We can fix this kind of backward looking vision or reaching further back into 20th century analogies about World War II or the interwar period. So most of the frameworks Western intellectuals are operating with tend to be looking to the past rather than the future or what's coming next. That was the point I was making.

 

And then I finished the essay by saying, if new visions are to come, they will more likely come from the non-West because the non-West, what's called the global South, wrongly, I think. Because not everybody, like, Korea is a good example, not all non-Western countries are really “global South,” what used to be called the third world. But let's say non-West, they don't have the same emotional attachment to the liberal international order, even when they kind of benefited from it. And I think not having that emotional attachment is helpful when you're trying to think about what's next. It allows you to be more innovative.

 

Inhwan OH: Yeah, I agree with you on the point that non-Westerns are less emotionally attached to the LIO. But recently, as you noted the anxiety, I think David Lake and Thomas Risse and others you know, put together some pieces on the LIO again. It was published in February, I guess, and they were emphasizing the resilience of the LIO, although there have been multiple times of crisis. They seem to be more, you know, wishful or hopeful for the coming back or reshaping of the LIO to some extent. So there are, I think there is a perception or emotional distance between those who are still supporting the LIO and the rest.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah. I'm at least, well, I mean, they're written in this way. So institutions never disappear overnight. They're often repurposed by new regimes. I'm now writing this trade book that starts from the very beginning and comes to the present. And I was just writing about the warring states period, the Qin and the Han, like in Chinese history. And after each period kind of repurposes the institutions of the old order, even as they sometimes stand against it. I mean, that's just one example. I think it's generally true.

 

So I have no doubt that many institutions, agreements, certainly the economic aspects, like the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and so on, like many aspects of the liberal international order will prove to be resilient. What I am skeptical about is whether they will continue to be used for liberal purposes or even ostensibly liberal purposes, because we could always debate whether the liberal international order was really liberal. But I think it's much more likely that, you know, now some of these Institutions, alliances will be banned to illiberal purposes and in service of American empire building 2.0.

 

Inhwan OH: So some of the features or some aspects like economy aspects of the international order may remain, but the purpose of the order may be not so that liberal as it used to be.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Exactly. So what is resilient? Is it the ideas that are resilient or is it some of the agreements, alliances, institutions?

 

The U.S.-Iran-Israel Conflict and the Structure of the Emerging International Order

 

Inhwan OH: Yeah, great. I'll move on to the second question. It's about the U.S.-Iran or U.S.-Israel-Iran war (or) conflict as a stress test of the emerging order. So this ongoing conflict among U.S.-Israel-Iran appears to have demonstrated either disorder or unorder you differentiated, and you can clarify that distinction as you apply that framework and the current conflict seems to be compressed many fault lines you have written about, including the unraveling of the post 1945 order, the loss of Western normative authority, the agency of non-Western actors, and the question of who gets to write the rules. So from a longue durée perspective, what do you think this conflict reveals about the actual structure of the emerging order?

 

And once the immediate dust settles, whatever the military or diplomatic outcome, what do you expect to be the more durable consequences of this conflict for the international order or disorder or an order going forward?

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah, thank you. So the disorder-unordered distinction is not my own. Mark Leonard, who's the head of the European Council of Foreign Relations, has a new book out on order. And I think the distinction that he's making is, we have order, then we have disorder when the memory of the order and the expectations and so on are still in place. So what's happening seems disorderly because we have all these expectations about how order should work. And then there comes a point where, you know, basically there is no order. It's not even disorder. It's just, you know, there is no new order has been created. And I think it's a helpful distinction. I mean, I disagree with him. I don't think we're there yet.

 

Historically, there have certainly been periods where things really fell apart. I mean, you can go to antiquity, to West Asia, the Bronze Age collapse. For about 100 years, some of the cultural elements persist, and then the archaeological record is blank. So that would be probably disorder or unordered. I think we're still in a period of disorder and what that I define as, as I say, like, we have ideas about how things should work. We have expectations that there should be one international order. We still have people, as you mentioned, like Lake and Risse and so on, who say the order is still here. Others say, no, it's over. So there's no consensus. It's fragmentation, and quite transactional. Middle powers are hedging, others are trying to plot the course of the next order. Yeah, so it's, for me, that's a disorder. It's not exactly chaos, but the consensus has broken down and some are still in the past, others, anyway. So, and I think the Hormuz situation or the Iran-Israel-U.S. war is a good example of that. We've been kind of living with it for two months now, but it's almost, again, like fallen off headlines almost. I mean, it's actually something that by all accounts is going to cause severe energy crisis. And it is already in Asia.

 

It's already having these effects. Where I live, the UK is predicted to have major like jet fuel shortage this summer, you know, maybe affecting travel and so on, like to that extent. At the same time, you know, attention has kind of moved on. It's kind of there. It's become like kind of part of the landscape as Gaza has, and Ukraine has. And you know they're major conflicts but it's kind of a fragmented. Nobody can pay attention to them all, so people have their pet kind of conflict that they're following if they're being directly affected by it and we kind of exist in this situation of, are the straits closed? Are they open? Nobody can kind of follow it day by day unless they're really on top of it. And for me, that is the very definition of disorder.

 

And I suspect that this situation will persist for some time, I don't think we're going to, again, recreate some kind of consensus or kind of a new order anytime soon. And as we go, we'll likely add more conflicts to this fragmented landscape. And everybody will kind of have to figure out for themselves and their own countries how they survive in this kind of messy world.

 

Inhwan OH: Yeah, so I'm not sure you have read the short Council of Council School memo I and President Chun have written. There we argue that we are in the state of a hybrid unstable order.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah, I completely agree with that.

 

Inhwan OH: Yeah, yeah. This is not sphere of influence politics, great power politics, because they are not endorsing China's (spheres of) influence in the Pacific or Russia's (spheres of) influence. So those are different organizing principles that apply to different regions. So. Yeah, we also pretty much agree with you.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah. I think people are trying to retrofit these older concepts into what's going on, but I don't think it really works. Yeah. I agree.

 

Survival Strategies for Middle Powers: Opportunities and Challenges for South Korea

 

Inhwan OH: The final question may matter a great deal to our audience here at the EAI. In your NSI interview you observed that countries used to dealing with unpredictability those like those in the global south or in the non-western area are probably better prepared for this environment than many Western states. And in light of your statement, South Korea sits in an unusual position, a former periphery state that became one of the most successful beneficiaries of the post-Cold War liberal order, but whose geography puts it directly at the seam between U.S. and Chinese organizing principles in the Indo-Pacific from your vantage point.

 

And drawing on your work of stigma hierarchy and the agents of states that have historically been outsiders to Western-defined orders, what would you say to a country like South Korea or other middle powers that are now being compelled to navigate this holy crisis or fragmentation of the order?

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the arguments that I made in that interview, also in this disorder talk that I'm giving, I do think countries like South Korea are well placed to deal with this, as I said, like this period of disorder that I suspect will be in for longer than we think. I mean, one of the comparisons that I make is in my last book, Before the West, which ends kind of in the 17th century, which is again a long period of disorder. And that disorder disadvantages the old powers of the 16th century, which are primarily Asian empires, like from Ottoman Empire to the Ming, but also the Habsburgs in Europe.

 

And really, the winners, when all the dust has settled, are the up-and-coming smaller European states, like in western Europe, England, France, and so on. So, I mean, of course, it's not an exact parallel, but I do think these periods of disorder are more advantageous for the non-statuo-quo powers, like the more up-and-coming countries. So we may find that in this competition between U.S. and China and Russia, like the older powers of, let's say, the 20th century, with structural pressures, AI, financialization, climate change, and so on. Because they're bigger countries, they're stretched thinner, they have bigger challenges.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: And there may come a moment where middle powers find themselves in a more advantageous situation. Especially countries like South Korea, as you say, a beneficiary of the old order, but not one of the top players, but materially in a good position to go into a period of disorder. At the same time, as we discussed, not having the same emotional attachments to being more open, I suppose, to different strategies. Like, so for instance, Europe. Europe also has a lot of middle powers, but they are so attached to the 20th century order that they cannot really think outside of the box. So I mean, none of this, it's going to be a tough time, no matter where you sit, you know, periods of disorder. We all have to learn to live with high degrees of uncertainty and volatility and things changing rapidly.

 

But I do think countries like South Korea are in a better place to deal with this.

 

Inhwan OH: Yeah. I hope that South Korea could take advantage of the position we had enjoyed historically and politically.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah.

 

Inhwan OH: And although we are somehow on the same side with Japan on some issues, but I also think that there's some difference between Japan and Korea in terms of how we approach the LIO and how.

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: And there's nothing wrong with recognizing the positive aspects. But at the same time, the world is moving on. So we all have to adjust. And how well you can adjust depends on how well you're able to let go of the past.

 

The Limits of Mainstream IR Theories and the Search for New Analytical Frameworks

 

Inhwan OH: So the last question is about what mainstream IR gets right and wrong about the current issues or current status of the international order. One of the recurring threads in your pieces from After Defeat through the Before the West and your essays on essentialism trap. Is that mainstream IR theory, realism, liberalism, and even much of constructivism has been built on assumptions drawn from relatively narrow slice of Western European history. And that this is becoming especially limiting precisely at the moments like the present and when the order, those theories normalized, is unwinding or unraveling.

 

So the questions are, where do mainstream IR frameworks help and where do they actively mislead us in reading the pressing issues of our time, including those conflicts in Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine, and what concepts or starting points such as disorder or unorder would you put in their place?

 

Ayşe ZARAKOL: Yeah, I mean, you know, IR schools, if you're talking about, you know, realism and liberalism, they are very, like, they're late 20th century forms of, like, very old ideas, you know, that have existed not only in the West, but also, you know, in Eastern philosophy and so on. If you posit constructivism against a kind of materialism or empiricism. Again, those are very old debates that have existed as long as people have been around. What is the world made of? So I don't have a problem with the schools as such. It's just we shouldn't get trapped into their late 20th century versions. We have to, again, update.

 

And one of my arguments has always been, if we know more history, Especially if we know more than European history, we can update these theories for the 21st century. So the 20th century versions had lots of blind spots. When I was a graduate student, this is something I talk about in Before the West directly, but the idea that the liberal international order could end or could fall apart, like nobody ever discussed it, you know, like it was this teleology of ever expanding, you know, Western order becoming universal international order. That kind of end of history thesis was also in IR theory. We've already mentioned the spheres of influence stuff.

 

You know, spheres of influence, people now look at, you know, what Trump is doing and then what China is doing. Like they try to read it through kind of a late 19th century spheres of influence. But these are not the European empires and the world is not what it used to be. I mean, again, I don't have a problem with arguing, you know, great powers compete. Of course they do. I mean, they always have in a way, but why do we need to read these through the lens of a very short period in history?

 

I mean, now there are many, many more sovereign states, actors, you know, we've talked about middle powers, you know, we just need to kind of broaden our horizons, Even this discussion that we've had about long periods of disorder, there was no room for that in IR theory at the end of the 20th century. Again, because not enough history has been studied.  ■ 

 

■ Ayşe Zarakol is a Professor at the University of Cambridge.

 

■ Translated and Edited by Sangjun LEE, EAI Research Associate
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