As conflict escalates in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war shows no sign of petering out in Europe, nations, large and small, are accumulating hard power like never before. With geopolitics firmly in the saddle driving international politics, the lure of military accoutrements is too hard to resist. In many cases, it is a veritable necessity to pursue vital priorities. From great power politics to multiple regional crises, inter-state relations are turning back to the seeming normalcy of balance of power and concomitant building up of military capabilities. This is hardly surprising if one understands the underlying forces that shape global politics. What is remarkable, rather, is that for some decades, the world could actually have been lulled into believing that hard power was in retreat.
The ‘unipolar moment’ after the end of the Cold War was viewed by many as an inflection point in the global order—an “end of history" moment where liberal democracy and free-market capitalism would transform the world into a more benign place, where the very nature of power was expected to undergo a change. It was also a period when a spurt in regional and global institutions saw a newfound appreciation for the ability of global norms, rules and principles to reconfigure inter-state behaviour. The European Union (EU) was seen as an exemplar. Here was a geography which had led the world into two world wars, but was trying to reimagine itself as a collective. It sought to emerge as an empire of norms which would overcome conflicts among its constituents in a more civilized manner.
Where there were conflicts, they were seen as a response to primordial instincts of human nature, to be managed by effective institutions and governance structures. The belief that great power wars are a thing of the past led to its corollary that all that remains are small fires that can be managed without doing much.
Charles Krauthammer, an American journalist, captured the zeitgeist of those times as one “of domesticity, triviality and self-absorption" and a function of “our holiday from history, our retreat from seriousness, our Seinfeld decade of obsessive ordinariness," referring to an American sitcom of the 1990s that was described as “a show about nothing."
This self absorption and retreat from history had a particularly debilitating impact on the West. The EU did win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, but increasingly found itself unable to tackle growing security challenges of the time. For one, the threat of terrorism and social disintegration grew; for another, challenges stiffened on the external front as China and Russia emerged as key disruptors. The United States did deploy its firepower in Afghanistan and Iraq after the shock of 11 September 2001, but the never-ending nature of those wars generated a backlash at home, where the American middle classes started questioning the very basis of the post-Cold War global economic and strategic order that was created by the US in the first place.
Today, as the US reconfigures its global footprint and the EU, surrounded by an arc of instability, comes back to geopolitics, it’s back to the basics. A shadow of violence has always defined the parameters for inter-state interactions. But the ferocity with which hard power is making its presence felt is also a reflection of the complacency with which certain actors were engaging with global affairs. As China was accumulating hard power, Europe was dismantling its military structures. The EU’s struggle to emerge as a relevant actor in global geopolitics today is a reflection of its desire to give up on hard power. And as America’s global adversaries are joining hands, the formidable US military machine is also finding it hard to balance them in multiple theatres.
Not surprisingly, most nations are today trying to fend for their own security by relying on their own capabilities and the Indo-Pacific region is the critical theatre where the centre of gravity of global politics and economics has shifted. It is here that military expenditures are booming and defence forces are trying to adapt to new strategic realities. It is in the Indo-Pacific where the EU has been forced to come to terms with its own inadequacies in shaping the regional and global balance of power. Even Germany and Japan have started re-assessing their strategic choices with a single- minded focus on their hard power capabilities. This is a testament to our changing times.
Yet, it is also true that brute application of hard power is unlikely to achieve desired outcomes in today’s environment, where interdependence continues to be the norm, despite all the talk of decoupling and de-risking. The nature of power remains diffuse even as underlying power competition gets intensified. Non-state actors continue to exercise influence, and information is key to dominating even the battlefield.
For all the debate, the emerging challenges underscore the fact that the nature of power and the underlying forces shaping global politics never really changed. It was hubris among a section of policymakers and strategic thinkers that led them to start believing their own rhetoric. Now, as the world starts displaying the anarchy that has always defined it, perhaps it is time to accept the limits of our own imagination.
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The return of hard power: Naive approaches were bound to fail
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29.10.2023
As conflict escalates in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war shows no sign of petering out in Europe, nations, large and small, are accumulating hard power like never before. With geopolitics firmly in the saddle driving international politics, the lure of military accoutrements is too hard to resist. In many cases, it is a veritable necessity to pursue vital priorities. From great power politics to multiple regional crises, inter-state relations are turning back to the seeming normalcy of balance of power and concomitant building up of military capabilities. This is hardly surprising if one understands the underlying forces that shape global politics. What is remarkable, rather, is that for some decades, the world could actually have been lulled into believing that hard power was in retreat.
The ‘unipolar moment’ after the end of the Cold War was viewed by many as an inflection point in the global order—an “end of history" moment where liberal democracy and free-market capitalism would transform the world into a more benign place, where the very nature of power was expected to undergo a change. It was also a period when a spurt in regional and global institutions saw a newfound appreciation for the ability of global norms, rules and principles to reconfigure inter-state behaviour. The European Union (EU) was seen as an........
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