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International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
International Relations in the Post-Kosovo Context
By Anatolii Torkunov
Anatolii Torkunov is Rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations at the Foreign Ministry of Russia, and doctor of political sciences.
The Kosovo crisis the results of which defy any final and complete appraisal has obviously considerably influenced the entire system of international relations, the general situation in the world, and the relationships between key powers. Today, the Kosovo factor and the problems and trends it bred are acquiring special importance in the context of the still shaping system of international relations. The world is still drawing away from the bipolar system of the past (that disappeared at the turn of the nineties) to a different, and not yet clear, architecture of the world.
This inevitably gives rise to a whole set of questions the answers to which are of fundamental importance for the theory and practice of international relations. Which of the Kosovo crisis elements are of short-lived political importance and which will cause irrevocable shifts or long-term political results? Which is its international legal echo and which of the international legal problems require a constructive answer from the world community? Should the actions of the United States and NATO be taken to mean that Kosovo was the first step toward redivision of the world? Are they able to carry it through? What political alternatives confront Russia and other great powers (China in the first place) which have their own ideas of the world and its problems they are prepared to defend? What are the general dynamics and outlines of the global system in the process of formation?
The Kosovo Crisis and Its International Echo
One can diagnose what the United States and NATO did in Yugoslavia as an attempt to revive Ğthe politics of forceğ and to undermine the international legal system embodied, among other things, in the Pax Europeana idea. The Pax NATO model based on force rather than law stands opposed to it. The efforts of the world community within the UN-sponsored International Law Decade (1989-1999) and the very foundations of 2000 as the International Year of the Culture of the World announced by UN have received a heavy blow.
More specifically, one can describe the crisis as a graphic manifestation of a regional defense organizationıs ambitions that tried to usurp the UN responsibilities and appoint itself a pivot of "global responsibility" in the European Atlantic area and beyond it. These ambitions were confirmed by NATOıs departure, in its new doctrine, from its defensive strategy. It usurped the right to carry out military operations outside its competence area. This undermines the very foundations of the UN Charter, which rests on respect for sovereignty and non-use of force or threat of force. These actions crippled OSCE and its future role in the European security system.
The publicly declared aim of transforming NATO from a military into mainly a political organization has been obviously abandoned. The Russia-NATO Founding Act was discredited or, at the very least, its inefficiency was amply demonstrated. Moral damage was done to the peacekeeping idea.
Outwardly, the US and NATO have scored certain military and political points: they presented to the world a high-tech war which place practically no economic strain on those who unfold it. Besides, some doubting voices notwithstanding, the United States and NATO managed to close ranks of the European community and prevent any breaches of discipline among the allies.
However, an adequate assessment of the crisisı international impacts is not as unambiguous.
One may question the main thing: was the US and NATO superiority of armed force an efficient foreign policy instrument to be applied in the world today? The answer to this question is far from simple if one impartially compares the declared aims and the sum-total of worldwide repercussions of NATOıs act of aggression.
Indeed, the Kosovo events made probable another spiral of nuclear arms proliferation or stepped up production of other types of mass destruction weapons as a guarantee against foreign interference no matter by whom or under which pretext. This puts the international non-proliferation control system to a serious test, which it might fail if the worst comes to the worst.
Lower predictability and manageability of international relations is another negative result obvious in the sphere of international security and stability of which NATO will also fell victim. This effect is brought about in the first place by a possible anti-NATO (or anti-West) coalitions of countries that have few other things in common. By acting in the way it did NATO is creating new regional or even global opponents. The increased threat of terrorism, international terrorism in the first place, supported from abroad and employed to deal with domestic problems is another negative result. (This is illustrated by the recent events in Daghestan, Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk.)
It seems that the worst apprehensions voiced in Russia by the most consistent opponents of NATOıs eastward movement are confirmed. This creates a new domestic situation in Russia, breeds anti-NATO, anti-American, and anti-Western sentiments in Moscow especially among those seeking to exploit the Kosovo developments to reach their own domestic aims. What NATO did in Kosovo has developed into a domestic political factor in Russia to be used by the most aggressive and nationalist forces. This dealt a blow at the first, still vulnerable shoots of democracy in Russia and created new threats to international security. Indeed, in the worst case (which should be never excluded from political argumentation) economically and politically weak and unstable Russia might become an unprecedented source of destabilization in Europe, Eurasia and across the world.
The new international and domestic situation calls on Russia to considerably and inevitably revise her foreign political and general strategic priorities. The military doctrine of Russia will receive certain changes especially in the sections related to nuclear deterrence in relation to non-nuclear threats as well. In any case, because of the entire body of foreign and domestic factors Russia will no be able, or willing, to pursue the old foreign policy line in relation to NATO in the first place.
To borrow an image from a Greek philosopher one can say that you cannot step twice into the same foreign political river. This, and an ancient Chinese hieroglyph denoting crisis, implicitly indicate that it can be overcome. It seems that today Russia is facing new possibilities of developing relations with key regional and worldwide powers, China and India in the first place. This does not mean an anti-NATO axis or triangle. Such constructs have no objective or subjective prerequisites. Even in the post-Kosovo era Russia will not regard NATO "through black-colored glasses." This is not a search for any allies against NATO (this might lead very far - to blocs with traditionally anti-Western forces, which are themselves anti-democratic, aggressive and terrorist regimes that removed themselves from the world community.) Russia needs a balanced and well-argumented foreign policy based on clearly identified national interests rather than on romantic expectations. Russia can learn a lot from the foreign policy experience China has recently accumulated.
International Law and Humanitarian Crises
The international legal aspects of the "humanitarian problems" (so-called "humanitarian crises") form an independent problem area intimately connected with the Kosovo crisis. In his time Max Weber described the main feature of a national sovereign state as its legitimate right to exercise violence on its territory. National politics have been following this course (that was also legally confirmed) since the Treaties of Westphalia. Today, there are many new circumstances to be reckoned with.
As the new century is approaching the former consensus that existed in the world community and was registered in international law on how and when an interference into domestic affairs of a sovereign state is possible is losing, at least relatively, its stability. This change is objectively introduced by globalization and democratization we are witnessing today. They breed justified doubts that foreign sources, interstate violence, are the main or exclusive threat to international security and stability. Today, organized large-scale violence in any of the states (this happened in Haiti, Somalia, Ruanda, and elsewhere) has emerged as a real international security issue. Neither the world community nor international law can provide a satisfactory answer to it.
It seems that the problem demands that its different levels be taken into account: from a clear international legal assessment of NATOıs actions in Yugoslavia to a conceptual reassessment of the humanitarian factorıs place in international relations today.
There is no doubt that the Kosovo crisis which by the whim of fate coincided with the centenary of the First Hague Peace Conference and the last year of the UN-proclaimed International Law Decade requires an adequate legal assessment, which, in its turn, demands a discussion of how it may affect international law or, at least, its development trends.
Today, international law bans the use of force or threat of using force, the principle registered in the UN Charter. This is a universal principle equally obligatory for the UN members and all other states. It means that armed force can be used against any state if its actions endanger international peace or security. The UN Charter stipulates that the state may use armed force as a means of self-defense, in case of foreign aggression or to carry out a decision of the UN Security Council. International practice has testified that the Security Council is potentially an efficient structure of high prestige the decisions of which promote international peace and security.
At the same time, conflicts potentially dangerous to peace and security in the world lately often developed not only between states but also inside states (the so-called domestic conflicts). Obviously, not all of them threaten international peace and security. Such threat emanates from those conflicts in which human rights and freedoms are violated on the mass scale, so-called domicide (as distinct from genocide), ethnic violence, etc. They create a new and not yet resolved in a satisfactory way international legal problem: can force be used in cases other than self-defense? Can force be used in the "humanitarian crises"?
The UN Charter de jure does not stipulate armed interference for humanitarian reasons, that is, when human rights and freedoms are violated. From the legal point of view any Security Councilıs decision to introduce armed forces into any state in connection with humanitarian problems can be regarded as an intervention "in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state" under Art 2 (7) of the UN Charter. This can be confirmed by practices of the UN International Court of Justice, which in 1986 stated in connection with the Nicaragua case that "the use of force cannot be accepted as the right method to ensure respect of human rights."
It seems that lack of theoretical substantiation, legal complexity and political sensitivity of these issues notwithstanding, we are witnessing a certain lag between international law and the real processes going in the political and moral spheres. Today, we urgently need a new and much more detailed and unambiguous definition of the legal aspects of the use of force in international relations in the context of globalization and democratization. We need more criteria for the use of force according to the UN Charter, including in extraordinary humanitarian situations. A clear international legal interpretation of humanitarian crises should receive special attention.
The precedent nature of the world communityıs interference into domestic affairs of states for humanitarian reasons should be taken into account. In actual fact the Security Council looks at the humanitarian aspects and arguments when discussing the use of force against any of the countries. Its Resolution 688 (1990) empowered multinational force to carry out an armed intervention in Iraq to protect the Kurds; Resolutions 794 (1992) and 929 (1994) empowered a group of states to set up a multinational force to use it correspondingly in Somalia and Ruanda to make it possible to deliver humanitarian aid and carry out other humanitarian actions.
One can recall that in 1991 the Moscow meeting of the OSCE Human Dimension Conference agreed that "the questions related to the human rights, basic freedoms, democracy and the rule of law are of an international nature as one of the linchpins of the world order." The states that participated in the meeting emphasized that they "stated categorically and finally that the obligations they have assumed in the field of OSCE human dimension are the issues of direct and legal interest for all the statesthey cannot be treated as solely domestic issues of any state."
Today, globalization and democratization going on in the world excluded the humanitarian and human right issues from the exclusive competence of individual states. The world community is justified and has the right to respond to human rights violations by any of the states. At the same time, it is fundamentally important that in each case the world community responds and acts (the use of force included) in an adequate and balanced way in the name of the UN Security Council.
The above indicates that time has come to put on the agenda an international treaty which would proceed from international law and take account of the new realities. It is expected to determine in which cases and for which aims it is possible or necessary to interfere for humanitarian reasons. It could stipulate the violation of which human rights and infringement on which freedoms may invite such interference. We probably need an international structure (possibly at the UN Security Council) to pursue the aims of such treaty.
The Asymmetric Multipolarity and Russia
I would like to dwell on one more question connected with the Kosovo crisis and related to the entire world. What can be said about the general dynamics and outlines of the world system that is taking shape, the contemporary system of international relations in the context of the Kosovo factor and its wider perspective?
Not so long ago President Clinton said: "we are trying to set up a model for the entire world." He also formulated the task of "involving our recent adversaries, Russia and China, into the international system as open, flourishing and stable nations."
One may ask: How does the task fit into the real context and global political trends caused by the Kosovo crisis?
Obviously, Russia and China, two strong and independent powers with political positions of their own and the desire to insist on them, fail to fit in the PAX NATO scheme and its unipolar world, sometimes described as a pyramidal international system. We are all aware of its fundamental faults. Russia, China or any other power will never agree to play the role of weak yet "open" third-rate NATO satellites, and this is not all.
The strategists of the unipolarity are underestimating these countries where their aggregate might (the nuclear potential, territories, population strength, etc.) are concerned. The United States do fill in a special place in the world today and do possess special foreign political and other resources yet this is not enough to carry out their own policy single-handedly. They cannot do this independently of other powers that either belong to a limited circle of great powers (with large comparable potentials and aggregate resources that, taken individually, are much larger than the resources of other countries) or even to the influential regional power centers. None of the world powers, the United States, which some people describe as the only remaining superpower, have enough resources to become the gendarme of the unipolar world.
It should be added that the unipolar pattern contradicts many of the key and long-term development trends independent of short-term political situations. We have in mind the radical changes obvious in the world today, democratization and globalization in the first place. They open a prospect of global transformations of the entire system of international relations. It is moving towards a world without violence in which the centuries-old ideals of peace and humane international relations will be realized.
Globalization is not developing along a straight line, but is accompanied by fragmentation and relapses of religious and ethnic fundamentalism, etc. The world has not yet reached true multipolarity it is just taking shape. This situation is often described as a uni- and multi-polar system of "pluralistic monopolarity." It seems that "asymmetric multipolarity" is an apt term to be applied to the world today. It is a kind of a transition period that reflects a specific and therefore transient distribution of power and resources in a common "field of forces" of the above long-term world trends.
In fact, the bipolarity, monopolarity and multipolarity of the world today are nothing more than definite and, to a great extent, formal descriptions of the way aggregate power and national might are distributed in the world. They do not describe the content of the present-day international relations. For example, in a multipolar world several approximately equally strong powers may stand opposed to each other or they may cooperate in the formally same pattern of the national might distribution. In other words, the formal structure of the emerging world order has not yet received an adequate content.
It will depend to a great degree on subjective factors, concrete foreign political strategies and tactics, conceptions and doctrines which the key figures, Russia included, will select. This explains why the Russian foreign political community of practical workers and theoreticians is concerned with elaborating the key aspects of our strategic idea of international relations the conception of the world in the twenty-first century.
It was the Foreign Ministry of Russia that initiated a discussion of this problem of paramount theoretical and practical importance. It is expected to unite all leading Russian experts in foreign policy, practical workers and analysts, researchers and lecturers.
I would like to add that a Russian Association of International Research is being set up to pool the efforts of Russian foreign policy experts. It is expected to gather together prominent figures from research institutes and higher educational establishments in the capitals and regions. The Association will provide a firmer scientific substantiation of the countryıs foreign political activity and boost practical applications of scholarly efforts. It will chart and support the most promising trends in international research, etc.
The conception of the world in the twenty-first century that is being elaborated in Russia is based on a notion that we need an adequate and cooperative mechanism of managing the current globalization processes. Its efficiency will depend on a combination of national and international efforts, a special role of the UN as the sole universal mechanism of ensuring world peace and security. We recognize that there are qualitatively new threats to the multipolar world order: proliferation of mass destruction weapons, regional conflicts of the new generation, a threat of another spiral of the arms race, the widening gap between rich and poor countries, spreading international terrorism, more acute demographic problems, etc. Our aims are of strategic nature reflecting our interpretation of the dominant, rather than short-term, trends of world political development in the context of globalization.
Russiaıs foreign policy regards democratization and humanization of international relations as its strategic goal. We know that today our advance toward them can be neither fast nor simple. No matter what obstacles we might encounter our progress requires that we should:
Finally, a genuinely multipolar world order of the twenty-first century is possible only if the larger part of the world community and all real and potential influence centers come together to support it. Russia should develop and improve her relations with all participants in international relations that share common interpretation of the newly emerging architecture of world policy of the twenty-first century. This is of fundamental importance.