POL 5032 WEEK X

Back to the Future: The End of History, trouble in paradise, the price of oil, BRICS and other areas of economic turmoil.

Questions:

 a). Now, 70 years after Bretton Woods, how would you position the United States in terms of your original thoughts on Hegemonic Stability Theory and Ruggie’s Regime Theory.  Where does the United States fit into the international system, both in terms of its power and its financial leadership?

 b).  Given that the arc of uncertainty in the Middle East just seems to grow and grow, will the Middle East still dominate the energy market, or will the world wash its hands in the area and acquire fossil fuels from other potential regions?

 c).  Where in your opinion will the oil price bottom out?

 d). With growth destined to slow within the BRICS, are these nations still the main drivers of the world economy or will we see a new generation of aspirant developers on the world bloc?

 I want to change the focus somewhat in my discussion this week as I feel that the negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme have now overtaken events.  But before I begin this last week’s blog, may I say that I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching you this year, as our discussions in the seminars have been very interesting and rewarding.  I always say that the more one puts into a seminar, the more the reward and you have certainly demonstrated this axiom with your enthusiastic and often robust debates.  My thanks too must go to Thomas Isbell, who not only speaks with such eloquence when delivering his summaries, but who has also been such a stalwart supporter in my endeavors to make this course memorable. 

 I know I have asked you to assess the position of the United States in terms of Hegemonic Stability Theory, but I wish to change tack and open our discussion for the week with my thoughts on Dame Veronica Wedgwood’s seminal work The Thirty Years War, first published in 1938.  I am also indebted to Dr Henry Kissinger who published his World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, in 2014.  Veronica Wedgwood wrote her book in the 1930s when the depression, the Hitler regime in Germany and the Spanish Civil War made the plight of the hungry, the displaced, the persecuted, and the exiled an ever-present concern.  The suffering caused by the Thirty Years Was was beyond all reckoning and as Wedgewood avers, ‘was an unmitigated catastrophe.’ For Kissinger, the war represented the core national interest of France, epitomized by France’s chief minister from 1624 to 1642, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu.  

 We have to ask ourselves whether the Thirty Years War is relevant today, or whether the Treaty of Westphalia can prove to be a blueprint for peace in the Middle East.? Undoubtedly the clash between Catholics and Protestants in the period that some historians describe as ‘The Age of Reason’, dominated the landscape with its incredible brutality. Over 25 percent of the population in the German states, the Low Countries and the Kingdom of Bohemia succumbed to death, destruction and disease.  And now we see similar barbarity in the Middle East as Sunni and Shiite Muslims tear each other apart.  But there is more than just religion in this mindless pursuit of death and destruction.  Saudi Arabia and Iran are squaring off against each other.  The Kurds are developing the capacity and will to carve out their own national state.  ISIS, with visions of a Caliphate, dominates a large swathe of Syria and Iraq.  Thus just as the war in Bohemia began as a religious war, and then degenerated primarily into a battle over the national state interests of France and Hapsburg Austria, so too will this new general war in the Middle East degenerate into a fight over the national interests of various participants in the region.  We can argue that the Treaty of Westphalia succeeded finally because the combatants on all sides simply fought themselves to a standstill. Will this be the case in the Middle East?

 In this mindless context of war, a dramatic breakthrough occurred as Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Great Britain, China, Russia, France plus Germany) reached on Thursday April 2nd, a comprehensive framework to curb Tehran’s nuclear programme while gradually easing international sanctions.  Should the outline agreement hold in the coming weeks, it could pave the way for an historic, final, and comprehensive deal between Iran and the world powers before an end-June 2015 deadline.   To my mind this historic agreement, if successful, will be more significant than President Richard Nixon’s visit to China.  

 For starters, in terms of the Iranian economy, billions are up for grabs.  Andrew Torchia, writing in the Khaleej Times argues that Iran’s $420 billion economy will experience up to an 8 percent growth in GDP once Tehran rejoins the global economy.  Iran’s trade with the European Union, which totaled $8.3 billion last year, could balloon 400 percent by mid-2018.  Moreover, Iran could increase oil output by 800,000 barrels per day to a full capacity of 3.6 million barrels per day within three months of the sanctions being fully lifted. No wonder that happy citizens mobbed the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on his return home.

 Consider President Obama’s diplomacy at the moment, by comparing his optimistic speech in Cairo at the start of his presidency with his current policies.  No more fluffy ideas on acceptance.  Obama has become a Realist, and in my opinion, the Foreign Policy of the United States has shifted markedly.  No more of this ‘city on a hill, whose values have universal validity’ stuff.  No more idealism.  No more export of democracy. Obama now has a strategy, which excludes ethics and looks more at order. 

 The Treaty of Westphalia ushered in the notion of nation states acting in their own national interests within an international system governed by anarchy.  Morganthau added a slight twist in that he believed that diplomacy could be useful in mitigating the trend to war.   And here I believe we are seeing the development of the new US Foreign Policy.  The United States has a history of becoming best friends with its foes.  Take Japan, Germany and more recently Vietnam as examples.  Now after 40 years, Iran may ‘Come in from the Cold’ and the obvious new Balance of Power within a Concert of Middle East nations is a bi-polar balance with the United States, Iran, and India ranged against China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  There will of course be revisionist powers skulking in the outlying areas.  Where for example will Russia go?  Will it stay aloof behind its nuclear arsenal?  With Iran sitting on fourth place in the oil reserve stakes along with second place in the gas reserve hierarchy, Russia is in for a beating if a gas pipeline ever gets the green light from Iran to Europe.  And what of the Kurds and their relationship with Turkey?  And who will really defeat ISIS?

 There are always winner and losers.  Within the United States the Republicans are having their usual heart attacks.   Senator Mark Kirk, for example, absurdly declared that ‘Neville Chamberlain got a better deal from Adolf Hitler.’  He was obviously alluding to ‘appeasement’, which next to ‘liberal’ is almost an expletive in Republican Party circles.  And of course the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now looks even more ineffectual and far from reality with his senseless ranting. 

 Who says international politics is not interesting?