Rethinking international order after September 11: some preliminary reflections

Abstract

The new "post-September 11 era" will retain some similarities with the past, but these September 11, 2001 marked the end of the "post-Cold War era" in international relations. will be outweighed by differences. In the altered global climate, we need to rethink our understanding of security, order, change and emancipation. This paper is a preliminary attempt to do that. Although there had been a wide-ranging debate about the strategic consequences of the end of the Cold War, three were especially important in shaping our thinking about the fundamental sources of order and change in international relations. Whether there would be a "clash of civilizations". Samuel Huntington's thesis defined the new paradigm of thinking about the sources of conflict in the international system. Some likened it to George Kenan's famous "X" article on the Soviet Union at the onset of the Cold War. Whether the end of bipolarity would lead to greater chaos and instability in the international system. John Mearsheimer's "back to the future" argument about Europe returning to its pre-Cold War disorder found much appeal in assessments about international security at large, with popular beliefs about a "decompression effect" or "coming anarchy" in the Third World. But this debate, which assumed multipolarity, was overtaken by a unipolar "moment" (following the US victory over Iraq in 1991), which now has turned out to be a fully-blown unipolar "era." Hence, the issue of order and change is now closely bound up with that of US strategic primacy and the attendant potential/reality of American unilateralism.