Has the Long Peace Become a Long War on the Individual?

This article seeks to answer two questions: What is the current state of our international system, how did it develop, and where is it going? Where does the individual fit in within the developing international system?

The nuclear weapons era heralded by the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki initiated a shock to the world Zeitgeist whose repercussions have rippled through to societies today. But contrary to the expectations of those who witnessed the two terrifying displays of human destruction, the dropping of the A-bombs ushered in a period of what John Lewis Gaddis called “The Long Peace.”

What transpired since the shadow of the Second World War was a “Cold War,” a period dominated by two superpowers locked in a nuclear-armed stalemate against one another: nominally, the capitalist United States and the communist USSR. Also following the Second World War‘s closing was the institutionalization of a grand vision of world peace in a United Nations, which would presumably bring countries together in a commitment to international harmony. The Bretton Woods economic order effectively made the United States the banker of last resort for failed economies, and as the sole remaining major power in the West, the preserver of the peace.

The Russians however, as a former ally of the U.S. during World War II, took Europe’s weakness as a cue to drive to the West, and to demarcate a sphere of influence behind an “Iron Curtain.” The Russians’ acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1948, the same year Truman “lost China,” was an aftershock to the international system.  While Mutually Assured Destruction led to the resolving of conflicts between the two superpowers in proxy wars, a third power eventually developed – Maoist China. China would serve as balancer in a deadly game between Russia and the United States, one that would lead to America attempting to ease relations with the Maoist regime during “detente.”

Since the 1970s, the USSR stagnated, and after a period of glasnost and perestroika, whose actual effects should be severely scrutinized by the analyst, the Soviet Union formally dissolved. While former apparatchiki and state security personnel found a home in the new Russia, the greatest emblem of communism in the world was legally and ideologically dead.

Despite the horror of living under the existential threat of world annihilation, no “hot” wars between major powers broke out during The Cold War.  What seemed to many to have been an ongoing nightmare was actually a relative period of peace.  Speculation abounded that it wasn’t a “balance of power” that ruled international relations, but rather what Stephen Walt coined a “balance of threat.”

The end of the bipolar order, by the surmise of the realists, was not necessarily a good thing. A bipolar order was held to be more stable, as it provides a ready channel for weaker states in terms of alliances and neutrality, while hegemons tend to be universally feared and eventually loathed.  This tends to be the case despite the hegemon’s accommodations or tributes of self-sacrifice to maintain prestige and the legitimacy of its authority. Due to the reality of self-interest, the lone superpower becomes a sitting target for revisionist states looking to upset the status quo. The costs to the superpower of maintaining the status quo become even too great for it to manage without pressure building for a redistribution of powers and a change to the international system, as Robert Gilpin has noted.

During the Cold War, the United States became so firmly tethered to the fates of so many states through trade and through its currency, and through its role as global policeman, that it was yanked forward into commitments too burdensome for even it to bear after the Soviet Union formally collapsed. The absence of the USSR as the face of world communism (which had not yet transmogrified into radical environmentalism) made America’s overarching role in the world seem less legitimate.  So while America has scrambled across the world expending vast resources trying to put out local brushfires, and free-riding Europe sat back lobbing tomatoes at the haughty hyperpower, China, Russia, and Iran laid low and quietly developed their respective capabilities.

Another trend that took place after the legal disbanding of the USSR was the flourishing of regional and international trade alliances. The European Union blossomed. ASEAN and NAFTA were formed. GATT became the WTO. The IMF and World Bank took on more aggressive roles. Even Russia and China, though they have skirmished on a few occasions, have largely cooperated, as demonstrated by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Meanwhile, NATO has declined to largely symbolic status. Under Obama, the United States unilaterally scrapped its anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) program in Poland and the Czech Republic. It yielded to Russia in renegotiation of a nuclear arms reduction pact, said nary a word about the country’s violation of the Joint Forces in Europe treaty, and has even invited the former Cold War enemy to partake in the joint administration of an ABM regime. These actions would be inconceivable to undertake for those of a Cold War mentality. But is this progress?

To answer this question we have to consider if nuclear weapons, and the pervasive taboo that has developed against using them, has led to a novel environment where states have stopped fearing one another and instead are concentrating on a much more fundamental threat to the status quo: The empowerment of the individual.

The Internet has made communication and information in abundant supply, and individuals are enlightening themselves and each other, as well as spontaneously self-organizing against the big lies that underlie various kinds of state power. The unregulated universe of shared intelligence is turning out to be an inherently democratizing force, as we see not only with the American tea party, but more violently with the Middle Eastern “revolutions.” Apparently, it looks like world powers are coming together to redirect any truly democratizing uprisings, in the Western liberal sense, and to steer them towards usurping organizations, like the socialist-Islamic hybrid The Muslim Brotherhood.

The presence of nuclear weapons is such a fait accompli that the scary development of the insane Iranian mullahs getting nuclear weapons, even after threatening to obliterate Israel, hardly makes an eyebrow raise nowadays. Instead of concentrating on deterring Iran, the West is fostering revolutions through seemingly self-defeating monetary and economic policy and trying to co-opt them.  In international relations parlance, the core appears to be  integrating the periphery and semi-periphery into the world system. This process entails not just militaristic, but ideological breakdown, using such active measures as demoralization and fusion tactics.

So when world powers are both destabilizing and integrating minor powers into the world system, that is, the burgeoning global governance regime being planned by the UN, IMF, and World Bank, one must wonder, have states stopped fearing each other? And if they have, is that good or bad?

While some may think that such a possible development as states ceasing to fear each other would be good, because there would probably be less nationalism and less war, on the other hand, after a bit of forethought, there may be signs that point to the realization that for the individual, to quote Egon from Ghostbusters, “It would be bad.”

World events lead me to believe that major powers no longer seriously fear each other as a result of an extended period of MAD and America’s role as ‘benevolent hegemon.’  Unfortunately for us and the world, America looks domestically to be becoming less and less benevolent every day.  A political elite has come to power that is actively seeking to erode our national sovereignty, as well as our exceptionalist role in the world as champion of the individual. If the world remains on the current path, what lay ahead is an international system whose rationalization would be a diminished role for the individual.

What we are seeing more and more internationally, instead of military alliances among major powers and war treaties, are global governance schemes, such as cap-and-trade and Agenda 21. There are also potential international agreements brewing regarding children’s rights and a small arms ban that would egregiously intrude upon the individual. Most noticeably, these agreements look to undercut the ability of the individual to defend himself and his family from statists, of both the national and international variety.

This is cause for grave concern for the individual who believes his life should be his own to lead, but not reason for despair. We should be motivated to action, not inaction. Alliances have come and gone throughout history, from the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, to the Congress of Vienna, to the Congress of Berlin, to the League of Nations, to the laughable outlawing of war by the Kellogg-Briand Pact, to the threatened EU of today.

What seems to happen throughout history is that megalomaniacs are attracted to concentrated power, and when arrangements seem to be set, one narcissist stabs another narcissist in the back. This is what Hitler did to Stalin after they agreed to separate spheres of influence and jointly invaded Poland, for example. The two of them could have taken over and split Europe, but their megalomaniacal personalities made such a power-sharing arrangement impossible.

But with all these caveats in mind, the current international environment is decidedly hostile to the individual. It appears to be not only ‘America Alone,’ but “the tea party alone.” It all boils down to this: the statist and internationalist busybodies have way too much time on their hands. For the die-hard individualist the message is clear: Pray for a major war.

See also related articles:

US Consider Removing Tactical Nukes From Europe (Aerofutures)

World Peace: An Imminent Threat to Mankind (RogueOperator)