TEACHING ABOUT THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD: FOUR FUTURE SCENARIOS

DAVID SKIDMORE

DRAKE UNIVERSITY

Many students are predisposed to view the political world as random, arbitrary and unstructured. Unwittingly, we, as instructors, reinforce this sense that international politics is incomprehensible when we emphasize the complexity and uncertainty of the post-Cold War world. Student skepticism deepens when we confess that none of our vaunted theories of international relations anticipated the Cold War's demise beforehand. Unless we can convey to students that there is some structure to international politics and that the future is not entirely beyond our grasp, our credibility as guides to the new world order will suffer and many students will give up in exasperation.

There exist two dishonest ways in which we can attempt to appease student's hunger for intellectual security. One is to pretend to have all the answers. An instructor can pull out his or her crystal ball and simply announce that the future will bring this or that result. These pat visions often tend toward the extremes - either an apocalyptic Hobbesian anarchy or a

Pollyannish liberal dream world. The other objectionable route is to suggest that anything is possible and, perhaps, to add that it is up to the students themselves to shape the future (an unreasonable burden to place on anyone). Neither of these alternatives - the future as a hard wired, deterministic machine nor the future as an infinitely malleable creature of our will and imaginations - offers a satisfactory escape from the messy realities of contemporary or future world politics.

The most profitable and candid approach is to reassure students that, while international politics is indeed complex and its future uncertain, relations among nations are neither unstructured nor incomprehensible. The world is presently passing through one of those rare fluid moments in history when the old structures that regulate world politics have broken down but the new ones that will take their place have not yet been cast. This leaves open the possibility of multiple alternative futures. The alternatives are not. however, limitless and some are more probable than others. The key to thinking about these structures is to isolate a small number of crucial driving forces or dimensions of world politics and to contemplate the possibilities generated by combining these variables.

What follows is an attempt to outline a useful model for generating classroom discussion about possible future world orders. I begin by identifying two critical variables that will undoubtedly play a central role in determining the future of world politics: the structure of power and the structure of interests. Combining these produces a two-by-two table that yields four future scenarios: benign hegemony, coercive hegemony, a concert of great powers and regional rivalry.

The structure of power is a familiar concept to international relations scholars. It refers here to the number of great powers in the international system. With the waning of the bipolar Cold War system, two possibilities present themselves: a unipolar (or hegemonic) order revolving around the United States or a multipolar order in which power is distributed more evenly among a number of states.

The structure of interests is a less familiar concept, but is implicit in many discussions of the post-Cold War era. Here we are concerned not with quantitative measures of power but with qualitative conceptions of interest. There are, of course many different ways to conceptualize interests and states are not the only actors whose motivations are relevant.

Perhaps the most universal way of characterizing interests is to distinguish between actors who benefit from international interdependence, in its various forms, and those who are harmed by the maintenance or spread of interdependence. Borrowing from other authors (e.g., Barber, 1992; Gaddis, 1994), I distinguish between forces of integration and forces of fragmentation in the contemporary and future world system. The forces of integration consist of actors or processes that seek to break down cultural, economic and political barriers among states and to institutionalize patterns of inter-societal and inter-state cooperation and exchange. The forces of fragmentation on the other hand, seek greater autonomy or even autarchy from penetration by cultural, economic or political forces viewed as exterior to a given community. The structure of interests is defined by the multifaceted struggle between these two sets of forces. Neither the forces of integration nor those favoring fragmentation are likely to achieve any sort of complete or lasting victory over the other. Nevertheless, we can imagine scenarios where one set of forces or the other gains the upperhand.

A diverse array of forces work in favor of integration: the growth of economic interdependence and the spread of multinational corporations, the proliferation of functional international institutions at both the regional and global levels, the homogenizing effects of modernization, the spread of Western media and popular culture, the growing global embrace of shared standards of human rights and democratic politics, the international flow of scientific ideas, and the effects of cheaper and more efficient modes of transportation and communication. These forces take political expression in the form of actors who benefit from, welcome and seek to further the growth of political, economic and social interdependence.

The forces of fragmentation are just as varied. They include: ethnic, religious and nationalist cleavages, the backlash of local cultures against modernization and Western penetration, conflicts generated by resource scarcities or environmental strains, economic protectionism, and the struggle between the haves and the have nots. States, groups or actors harmed by various forms of interdependence will seek to thwart or even reverse its spread.

Why focus attention on these two variables? Because this approach serves to capture and combine the essential underlying characteristics of the international system as specified by the two most important contemporary research paradigms in the field: realism and liberalism. Realism treats the structure of international power as the key to understanding the behavior of differently positioned states as well as the propensity of the system as a whole toward conflict and war. Liberalism, on the other hand, suggests that the critical variable for understanding international cooperation and conflict is the level of global interdependence and the potence of the contending interests that are engaged by these mutual ties. By combining these two variables in a single table, it becomes possible to explore the relationships between the critical variables identified by these two theories. By considering the two together, it becomes clear that the impact of the structure of power on the international system depends on the existing configuration of interests. Likewise, the interaction between the forces of integration and those favoring fragmentation will have different consequences depending upon the distribution and concentration of power among states.

Combining these two variables, we arrive at four possible future world orders, each embodying a different configuration of power and interests. Before describing how these four scenarios can help stimulate classroom thought and discussion, let us briefly inspect each in turn.

Benign Hegemony

It is sound mathematics to suggest that if we subtract one superpower from a bipolar world, we are then left with a unipolar system. Some have indeed argued that the U.S. is the world's sole remaining superpower and will remain so for some time (Nye, 1990). No other country possesses as impressive an accumulation of resources across the three major dimensions of national power: political, economic, and military.

Accepting this premise, however, only moves us partway toward filling in a picture of the future of international politics. The interests of the dominant state, or hegemon, generally lie in furthering the cause of global integration and in suppressing fragmentationist impulses. An integrated world order provides the widest scope for the exercise of hegemonic power and facilitates the maintenance of global order through the influence of common rules and institutions of the hegemon's own design (Kindleberger, 1973; Gilpin, 1981).

Yet other countries and non-state actors, even if they do not rival the hegemon in power, can accept the latter's leadership voluntarily or attempt to resist the will of the dominant state. Which attitude the majority of the world's significant powers adopt will greatly affect the flavor of the hegemonic order.

A unipolar world where the forces of integration are stronger than the forces of fragmentation would provide a doubly favorable environment for the United States, the presumed hegemon of the present and future. The United States would oversee a world in which the structures of power and interest both worked to its own advantage. Other states similarly sympathetic to global integration would welcome U.S. leadership. This leadership would be exercised on behalf of an open economic order, the spread of democracy, and the promotion of Western culture. U.S. power would be filtered through a growing number of institutions that would serve to disguise its origins and enhance its legitimacy. I refer to this sort of order as benign hegemony.

Despite its lead in such assets, the United States would rely relatively little upon the exercise of hard power, consisting of military resources and economic size or leverage. Facing little outright resistance from others, the United States could instead turn principally to the use of soft power, which flows from the attractiveness of its political, cultural and economic example and the deference gained by its diplomatic experience and wisdom.

The main leadership challenge that would persist in a world where the majority of significant actors share an interest in integration consists in the need to overcome collective action problems, such as free-riding, and in coordinating the behavior of multiple players. The United States would still carry disproportionate leadership burdens in paying for collective goods, though the benefits would outstrip the costs. Coordination problems would be resolved through both formalized consultative institutions and bilateral ties between the United States and other governments.

This scenario is not altogether unfamiliar. It represents a universalization of the U.S.-led Western alliance that together faced the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. The principal difference is that the former communist countries would be gradually integrated into this liberal world order, rather than stand in opposition to it, and that mutual interest, rather than the presence of a common enemy, would constitute the glue underlying cooperation.

Coercive Hegemony

It is possible, however, that U.S. hegemony could persist in a world that is, nevertheless, tending strongly toward fragmentation. In this scenario, other states and non-state actors resist, rather than willingly accede to, U.S. leadership. Insofar as the United States succeeded in salvaging an integrated world order of sorts, it would rest upon coercive imposition, instead of consent. The costs of exercising hegemony in this sort of environment would escalate considerably.

The United States would be compelled to resort to hard power in a world of coercive hegemony. The label of "world policeman" would aptly describe U.S. behavior. The United States would force open protected markets through hard ball trade tactics, hunt down terrorists and drug traffickers, struggle to constrain or counter local arms races and weapons proliferation, intervene in civil disputes and cases of cross-border aggression, support friendly but often unpopular leaderships abroad through military and economic aid, aggressively counter religious and nationalist movements that took on anti-American overtones, and rely upon the threat of force or economic sanctions to insure secure access to critical raw materials.

Instead of a single great power foe, the United States would gear its foreign and military strategies toward coping with a more diffuse, but cumulatively just as daunting, set of smaller threats to its security, prosperity and values. While countering and containing the forces of fragmentation, the Unites States would seek to identify and nurture the surviving forces of integration in hopes that the structure of interests could gradually be wrested in a more favorable direction.

Concert of Great Powers

A third possibility is that mulipolarity could coincide with the dominance of integrationist forces. Unlike scenario one, there would exist no hegemonic power to pay for collective goals or to oversee interstate coordination. Instead, cooperation would rest more upon mutual burden-sharing and decentralized coordination would be managed through more autonomous and more elaborate multilateral institutions. Cooperative ties would be looser and more fragile than under benign hegemony, but the impetus toward mutual accommodation would remain strong. A modern-day concert of great powers would in many ways resemble the nineteenth century Concert of Europe.

Global or regional systems of collective security would counter threats to peace posed by the remaining forces of fragmentation. Military transparency and an emphasis on non-offensive defense would each help to soften security dilemmas. Both formal and informal regimes would manage the politics of economic interdependence. The losers from global integration would be bought off through side payments and provisions for their future integration into the global order. Incentive structures designed to reward cooperation would lessen the temptation for some countries to backslide and seek an exit from an integrated world order. Non-state actors, such as multinational corporations and transnational social movements, would play growing roles in international politics, often setting the agenda to which states are compelled to respond.

This scenario depends heavily upon the lasting triumph of political and economic liberalism over competing systems and the extension of Immanuel Kant's "Pacific Union" to encompass much of the world system (Doyle, 1986; Kant, 1994). The principal challenge to cooperation would arise from the difficulty of adjusting international rules and institutions to accommodate shifts in the relative power of various major states.

Regional Rivalries

The final scenario assumes that multipolarity and fragmentation each triumph. The combination of the two could take a number of forms, from John Mearshiemer's (1991) state-centric, Hobbesian war of all against all, to Samuel Huntington's (1993) clash of civilizations, to Robert Kaplan's (1994) Malthusian vision of environmental degradation, resource scarcity and crumbling structures of social and political authority. Here I choose to focus on the possibility that a combination of multipolarity and fragmentation could lead to the emergence of multiple and competing regional blocs.

Some scholars maintain that declining hegemony tends to undermine the basis for an open and stable international economic order (Krasner, 1976). Others argue that the trilateral alliance among the United States, Western Europe and Japan during the Cold War rested upon the presence of a common enemy and the dependence of the latter two partners upon the Unites States for protection. With the decline of the Soviet threat, former allies will eye one another with greater suspicion and the emphasis on absolute gains in their relations with one another will give way to the pursuit of relative advantage (Mearshiemer, 1991).

According to some observers, these processes are being accompanied by the regionalization of corporate investment strategies and the concentration of trade within, rather than across, the regions of North America, Western Europe and, to a lesser degree, East Asia. Large imbalances in trade and investment between Japan and its United States and Western European partners intensify strains. Moreover, the major countries in each region exemplify differing and, to some degree, conflicting models of capitalism: consumer-oriented, free market capitalism in the United States, labor-oriented, social market capitalism in Germany and producer-oriented, developmental capitalism in Japan.

The institutional manifestations of regionalism are well advanced in Europe (e.g., the European Union), somewhat less so in North America (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement) and only incipient in East Asia (e.g., the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council). Even in the latter region, however, Japan has adroitly used foreign aid, investment and trade to place itself at the center of a dynamic and growing regional economic web.

Integration within each regional bloc is, ipso facto, discriminatory against goods and foreign investment, originating outside each bloc. If this trend produces growing economic friction and eventual closure among the three blocs, then economic tensions could easily spill over into political and security affairs. Each bloc would continue to expand into nearby regions: the United States into the Caribbean, Central and South America, the European Union into Eastern Europe and parts of Africa and Japan into South East Asia. Some marginalized countries in the world would be excluded from any of the three blocs. Other regions, such as the Middle East, could be the subject of fierce rivalry for influence among the bloc leaders.

If the distribution of power under this scenario were to take a roughly tripolar form, the consequences of regional rivalry could be dangerous and unstable. No bloc would welcome isolation and each would likely seek to insure against this by developing an alliance with one of the remaining two against the third. This could lead to much jockeying for position and potential imbalances in power.

Stimulating Class Discussion of the Four Scenarios

This simple model helps to organize and focus the way in which students think about possible future world orders. It imposes structure and narrows the alternatives while avoiding determinism. From a pedagogical standpoint, the most useful aspect of the model is that it raises many questions which students can profitably discuss and debate. Among these are the following:

- Which scenario is most plausible? Which is least plausible? Can we identify "leading indicators" in today's world that help us to predict future trends? Is it possible that the world will pass through more than one of these configurations of power and interest over the coming decades? If so, then what is the likely sequence?

- Can policy makers in the major powers, either singly or collectively, effectively steer events toward their preferred outcome? Or is the direction of world politics governed by underlying historical forces that are beyond the voluntary control of statesmen?

-From the standpoint of U.S. interests and values, how should we rank order these possible alternative scenarios? What are the implications for U.S. policy of these differing configurations of power and interest?

- Do there exist historical precedents for one or more of these scenarios? What lessons can we learn from using the past as a guide to the future? What are the limitations of such analogies?

- What critical or complicating factors does this model leave out? How would their inclusion make a difference?

More specifically, the model can be incorporated into a course on international relations or foreign policy in many different ways. Several possibilities include:

(1) Introduce the four scenarios in an initial class session. For the next meeting, break the class up into small discussion groups. Ask each group to rank the four scenarios according to the liklihood that each will approximate the actual structure of world politics ten to twenty years into the future. Compare and discuss the various conclusions reached by different groups.

(2) Assign readings representative of each scenario (for suggestions, see endnotes and references) across a stretch of four to five class meetings. Examine a different scenario in each class session, using the readings and the list of questions given above as starting points for discussion. Encourage students to probe underlying assumptions, examine points of relative plausibility and weigh the implications of each scenario.

(3) Divide the class into five teams. The first four teams should each correspond to one of the four scenarios. Ask each team to prepare a class presentation designed to establish the plausibility and liklihood of their assigned scenario. Each group would conduct research with the purpose of identifying supporting evidence in the form of trendlines, leading indicators and historical precendents. Each group would also draw upon relevant theoretical arguments and critique the logic or evidence associated with alternative predictions. The role of the fifth group would be to serve as a sounding board. In a final class presentation, this group would draw comparisons among the four sets of arguments, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each and explain which they found most persuasive and why.

Conclusion

World politics can be a complex and elusive field of study, especially as we look toward the future of the post-Cold War world order. Complexity, however, need not equate with confusion or incomprehensibility. It is possible to guide students through the tangle of questions they have about the direction of international relations in a coherent and illuminating manner.

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Endnotes