“Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So you think before
you break ‘em.”
Sir Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time
From London
to Munich…
Alphen,
Netherlands. 15 February. It is an interesting week. I have just returned from
an excellent conference at RUSI in London on missile defence, and I am about to
depart to speak at a Munich Security Conference meeting. Perhaps it is a mark
of Europe’s self-obsessive introspection but Russia’s 1 February decision to
follow the US and abrogate the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) received
surprisingly little coverage in the European media. There seemed more interest
in the US where a February survey of American voters by the University of Maryland
found some 77% of those asked opposed the decision of the Trump administration.
Europeans should take note.
The world of
which Europeans are meant to be a part, but too often pretend they are not, is increasingly
a world in which Europe’s beloved rules are being binned. It is a world in
which those who believe in rules don’t like power, most notably Europeans, and
those with power don’t like rules. So, does the death of INF also mark the
beginning of the end of the rules-based system? If so, what should Europeans do
about it?
A brief
history of rules
The rules-based
system was in part America inspiration and European perspiration, and of
expiration at the end of World War One. It was created to constrain the anarchy
of unfettered state power. Its roots date back to the many treaties that over centuries
shaped Europe by moderating first extreme royal and then state behaviour. The
system as we know it today began in the form of voluntary regimes rather than
legal instruments and began to take shape in the late nineteenth century. It
was The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which established the principle of
international law, which in turn was a product of an era when some Europeans,
France and Britain to the fore, had the power to make the rules but sensed that
power could soon be eclipsed by the rise of more autocratic powers in which
rule was not constrained by either law or mandate.
Post World War
One the League of Nations was born in 1923 mainly at the behest of the American
President Woodrow Wilson and his creed of Idealism. Wilson’s impetus also revealed the nature of early
American internationalism which in part continues to this day. With its sense
of Manifest Destiny many Americans convinced themselves they were above the
base instincts of European nationalists and that constraint upon state action
was really for others. Post World War Two another American-led attempt was made
to promote an ideal vision of international relations through the 1945 creation
of the United Nations, albeit more embedded in the reality of the time –
overwhelming American power. American
power, or rather American money, was also the ethos of the 1944 Bretton Woods
conference which pretty much established the enshrining principle of democracy
and free markets for money which defined the post-war US world order.
Critically, Moscow and the Soviet Union never accepted the primacy of rules
made elsewhere and never have. Beijing certainly did not.
Equally, the
European allies always saw American rules-based Idealism through the lens of
European Realism. The 1950 European Coal and Steel Community, whilst promoted
by European integrationists like Jean Monnet, was first and foremost a means to
prevent the re-emergence of an aggressive Germany and thus another war between
France and Germany. The subsequent European Economic Community, European
Community, and the latter day European Union, were and are all part of
continental European attempts to smother power with law. Today, power in Europe
has become so smothered in law that there is little room for it to breathe at
all.
INF?
INF? INF always
sat somewhere between American ideas of power and European ideals of law. The
Americans never accepted the European concept of law as power in and of itself,
and Machtpolitik Moscow rejected such
ideas completely. Arms control for the Americans and the Soviets was thus not
law, but rather regime and as such part of power – its generation and its
application. Indeed, whilst the Europeans have often talked disarmament the
Americans, save for a brief moment, have always talked arms control. From the
mid-1960s on a series of treaties such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Strategic
Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1), Anti-Ballistic Missiles Treaty (ABM), SALT 2, the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), INF, Conventional Forces Treaty Europe
(CFE) and then START 2 were all designed to balance military power rather than
consign the balance of power to history.
The December
1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty must be seen very much in the light of
power and its balancing and thus the tradition of American and Russian ideas of
arms control. It rid Europe of a whole raft of dangerous nuclear missile
systems that threatened to decouple the defence of Europe from the US nuclear
deterrent. INF also came to be seen as a bulwark of European security and thus
a vital tool of power that helped to create the political space in which the post-Cold
War rules-based system could again flourish in Europe and in its embrace the EU
could emerge and evolve.
INF died for
several reasons – some immediate others more structural. The first reason is
that with the deployment of the SSC-8
9M729 Novator missile system Moscow drove a large coach and horses through
INF and then, in that time-dishonoured manner of Russian cynicism, denied it.
In spite of Moscow’s denials the SSC-8 has a range of at least 2500km thus
breaking the prohibition on any missile in Europe with a range between 500km
and 5000km. The second reason is that
after a short period during which a broke Russia (sort of) obeyed the rules to
which it was nominally committed, Moscow is now again locked into a policy of
defection from such rules for short-term strategic gain. Given that the Russian
formal abrogation of INF, whilst legal, is really because the Americans called
Moscow out over the deployment of a treaty-breaching weapons system. As such, SSC-8
must be seen in the same light as Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine and
the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK - the actions of a great state that has
chosen to go ‘rogue’ against rules it believes were made by others for others.
Technology
and control
The other
reasons why INF died imply structural change is underway in world power. A
revolution in military technology is underway which is making all past arms control
look increasingly archaic. The Trump administration also harks back to past American
internationalism which was always and necessarily underpinned by American Realism. The paradox for Europeans who complain about
the Americans is that their beloved rules-based system would simply not be
credible without American power.
The other
factor which is accelerating the demise of the rules-based system of which INF
was a pillar was the rise of China. China obeys few rules even if it claims it
does. In a sense, China is the mirror image of America. America breaks rules to ultimately ensure international
rules are imposed, China breaks rules to ensure its ‘rules’ are equally
imposed. Like it or not, America is the posse-forming sheriff of international
relations, China is the spaghetti western outlaw. The illegal seizure of islands
in the South China Sea is but part of a pattern of state behaviour that ignores
all and any ‘law’ if Beijing deems it necessary in the national interest. Such
behaviours extends from human rights to systematic industrial and other forms
of espionage, to breaches of intellectual property law to unfair trading
practices and cyber-war. With such power
now so determined to ignore the rules-based system it is thus hard to see how
it can survive unless such rules are enforced.
Europe?
The Gathering
Storm
Rules matter,
but rules must be also defended. A storm is gathering in the deep depression
where the rules-based system once stood.
Europe’s strategic vacation is finally over, even if those that pass for
European ‘leaders’ these days simply refuse to acknowledge it. Rather, Europeans
have become all too expert at making vacuous statements about the need to uphold
‘international law’ and the rules-based order as if talking is doing. A ‘Europe’ that too often wills the ends without the means. At the same
time, it is a mistake for the Administration to have abrogated INF. Washington should
have taken the lead in trying to expand and update INF, i.e. by making
negotiation the centre-piece of power not just rearmament. This is because a principle
has now been established by which the power unprincipled in Beijing and Moscow
will exploit as they see fit to replace law with power.
The death of
INF matters precisely because it could mark the beginning of the end of the
rules-based international order unless those who were its architects reinvest
it with the political capital and power needed to ensure ‘law’ triumphs over anarchy.
Both China and Russia have shown they have the capacity to be extreme states
and both will need to be turned and, yes, contained if needs be. Self-containment through law is the basis of
any functioning community. Clearly, neither China nor Russia see themselves as
part of any community that they do not define or dominate. For them the
rules-based order is a Western imposition rather than globalist stability in
which their people can flourish. Russia is simply a strategic hooligan but the paradox of China is that it is precisely
the order they are eroding that has enabled China to flourish. The autocrat’s
penchant for unconstrained power is clearly too hard for Beijing to resist
reaching for likes some forbidden apple.
As Thomas
Hobbes once famously wrote, “Covenants without the sword are but words, and of
no use to any man”. In other words, power and law are two sides of the same
coin. Indeed, rules without power are a
bit like my golf swing – it looks superb in practice but collapses under all or
any pressure. The death of INF is thus a victory for might that claims right by
might and for those that claim Machtpolitik
and Realpolitik is the way
forward. It maybe the way forward for Spartans, but history would suggest it is
also the way downwards towards hell.
Julian
Lindley-French
