The 2008 financial and economic crisis accelerated the tendency toward a multi-polar redistribution of power, replacing American mono-polarism. Althou...

The 2008 financial and economic crisis accelerated the tendency toward a multi-polar redistribution of power, replacing American mono-polarism. Although the US remains the mightiest military power, it still cannot control world politics. In war the US may defeat all its enemies, such as the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, but it has proved unable to build the peace. This confirms Hegel’s remark regarding Napoleon – ‘‘the powerlessness of the winner’’ – and applies particularly to the asymmetric wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite the irreversible decline of its power, US behaviour continues to be inspired by the Westphalian principles of absolute state sovereignty and it is unwilling to recognize supranational authorities not subject to its control.

The current most significant proof of this attitude is its opposition to any thought of renouncing (to use Giscard d’Estaing’s famous expression) the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar as an international reserve currency. Thus the US carries on printing money to finance its colossal deficit abroad – brought about by excessive consumption and by wars – and in effect to devalue its debt with the result that the world is now paying the old declining power’s bills.

In world politics the US has increased the international disorder and monetary instability, and it is now clear that the power system called pax americana is approaching its end. Tomorrow’s map of world power will be shaped by a new international leadership not limited to the G8 countries, but including the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and other emerging actors in world politics and the global economy. The BRICs still belong to the Westphalian world and are naturally proud of their own identity and independence, but while eager to assert their influence in the world, they are nevertheless involved in regional integration processes through organizations such as MERCOSUR, the Eurasian Economic Community, the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation and the 2009 China-ASEAN Agreement on a 90% of tariff barrier reduction. Within these great world regions the development of federal arrangements following the EU model offers a political formula that can tame nationalism and avert the tendency toward the formation of dominant regional leaders such as Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Nigeria etc.

The EU is an example of how nation-states can change their way of settling disputes, by moving from power politics to the rule of law. Violence as an instrument for interstate conflict resolution has been abandoned and replaced by a mutually agreed legal order. European unification is the process of constructing peace through a progressive constitutionalization of inter-state relations. In effect, therefore, the EU can be defined as being a post-Westphalian community.

The possibility that the birth of a new global order could spring from another world war cannot be excluded. It would be in keeping with the constituent role traditionally played by warfare. Today, however, the resort to war is restrained primarily by the existence of weapons of mass-destruction which would cause such widespread devastation that it would leave neither winners nor losers. In effect, the use of such weapons would amount to collective suicide.

Secondly, the unbearable cost of the armaments race, worsened by the financial and economic crisis, has convinced the great powers to stop seeking military superiority and driven them instead to pursue security through cooperation rather than competition. Thirdly, globalization has exposed how powerless individual states and even international organizations are in their attempts to govern the world market. This realisation has triggered a concomitant tendency toward cooperation in their attempts to solve the financial and economic crisis without a reform of the Bretton Woods institutions: that is, without strengthening the international organizations.

Moreover, neither the old nor the new protagonists in world politics and economics seem fit to bear the burden of safeguarding world order alone. If history confirms this diagnosis, we will be able to assert that the cycle of the American monopolarism, begun after the collapse of the communist bloc, was not the latest but the final attempt by any single state to achieve world hegemony.

When power is distributed unevenly, the predominant states are inevitably inclined to violate international law. It is the balance of power that leads states to respect common rules. It follows therefore that this type of political mechanism – that is, the current evolution of world power relations toward multi-polarism – can open the way to strengthening and democratizing the UN. In other words, the rise of new actors in the world system of states can be the trigger for institutional change within the UN.

According to Modelski’s theory of long cycles, we can observe that the world today is going through a “coalition-building” phase. New global actors are emerging as protagonists of a new global order. Hence the need, through “macro-decisions”, to devise new institutions able to constitutionalize international relations and thereby take the first steps in the long-term process leading towards a World Government and a World Federation.

This new world order will take shape gradually and peacefully. The International Criminal Court is part of a project to extend the principles of the rule of law to the global level. The G20 affirmation shows that the emerging countries have acquired the power to qualify for a seat at the negotiating table where the economic global order will be reshaped. Already in the IMF’s Executive Board the emerging economies have increased their weight. By 2012, the top ten shareholders will be the US, Japan, four European countries and the four BRICs. The super-majority requirement for decisions (85% of voting power), hence also the US veto, still remains in place.

It was not the EU but the governor of the Chinese Central Bank who, in 2009, unexpectedly raised the problem of replacing the US dollar as the world reserve currency. In his proposal he quoted the “Triffin dilemma” – that is, the theory of a federalist economist who demonstrated the inherent contradiction of using a national currency, namely the US dollar, as the international reserve currency. He proposed launching a process which would lead to a single world reserve currency. If achieved, this would represent a giant step forward towards World Federation. It would have an impact similar to the creation of the euro as a forerunner to the establishment of a European Federation. To give an idea of the expected timeframe for a project of this complexity the creation of the euro took thirty years to achieve. Moreover, the European Union is still not a full federation though the institutional evolution towards this goal started in 1950. The establishment of a World Federation is likely to be similarly slow and difficult, but the aim is nevertheless essential for the achievement of world peace and prosperity.