Fernando Alcoforado *
How to build a scenario of peace and cooperation between nations and peoples around the world? This is an old challenge and thought by many philosophers as is the case of Immanuel Kant when approaching this theme in his work Perpetual peace. In 1795, Kant released this booklet that had great success with the educated public of his time. It was a project aimed at establishing a perpetual peace among the European peoples, and then spreading it throughout the world. It is an Enlightenment manifesto in favor of permanent understanding between men. Kant’s primary goal was to eliminate the war that was always seen by him as something that distorted mankind’s efforts toward a decent future for human beings. How to achieve this goal?
Kant proposes in Perpetual Peace the foundations and principles necessary for a free federation of legally established states which would not adopt the form of a world government because in his opinion it would result in unlimited absolutism. Kant also considered that there should be no sovereign power to interfere in the internal affairs of the nation-states. Kant defended the thesis that there should be a federation of free national states in which all had republican constitutions. The ultimate aim of this federation would be, for Kant, that of the promotion of the supreme good, which is the true peace among the nation-states, ending the disastrous war, to which all national states would always return their efforts as the main purpose.
Kant sought to end the “state of international nature” that characterized international relations until then. It should be noted that the concept “state of nature” was defined by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan. According to Hobbes, in the “state of nature”, the absence of law reigns, so there is no room for justice. In this context, all seek to defend their rights through force. In the “state of nature”, therefore, as Hobbes had conceived, the war of all against all reigns. The state of nature is therefore the state of freedom without external law, that is, no one may be obliged to respect the rights of others, nor can he be sure that others will respect their own, let alone be protected from acts of violence of others.
In practice, even after the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 that put an end to the disastrous Thirty Years’ War in Europe, the international relations of Kant’s time did not differ fundamentally from the present. At that time like today we were experiencing the “state of international nature” with the upsurge of international political violence. Peace has already been defined as the absence of war. In the 6 thousand years of human history; there were only 292 years of peace. Clausewitz’s formula (war as a continuation of politics by other means) is replaced today by the inverse formula: politics becomes the continuation of war by other means. At that time we were living as today the “state of international nature”.
Historically, the relations between the great powers presented three characteristics: the empire, the balance and the hegemony. In a given historical space, the forces of the great powers are in equilibrium or are dominated by one of them to such an extent that all the others lose their autonomy and tend to disappear as centers of political decision. It gets this way to the imperial state, which holds the monopoly of violence. The United Kingdom was an excellent example of an empire that by force imposed its will in the international sphere until the First World War.
From the beginning until the middle of the twentieth century, the world presented as a characteristic a situation of balance between the great powers resulting from the decline of the British empire. This situation paved the way for Germany, Japan and Italy to try to redirect the world among the great powers. To prevent the outbreak of a new world war, the League of Nations after the First World War and the United Nations after the Second World War were institutionalized in accordance with Kant’s thinking to establish a federation of nations whose result has been frustrating. After World War II, the equilibrium situation came to exist between the United States and the Soviet Union that resulted in the Cold War until 1990 when the Soviet Union came to an end. Historical experience shows that, in a situation of balance in the relations between the great powers, the result is the outbreak of war. With the end of the Soviet Union, we are confronted with the hegemony of a great power: the United States that lasted from 1990 to 2004 when its decline began as a hegemonic power.
It should be noted that the hegemonic power does not seek to absorb the units reduced to impotence, does not abuse its hegemony, and respects to some extent the external forms of independence of the national states. The hegemonic state exercised by the United States does not aspire to empire as did the United Kingdom. Hegemony is, however, a precarious form of equilibrium between the great powers. At the present time, we are in a state of equilibrium with the presence of three giants on the world scene: the United States, Russia and China. If historical experience prevails, humanity is threatened with a new world conflict with the situation of balance between the great powers. There is already a new Cold War between the United States and Russia and also between the United States and China in the economic and military spheres.
After the end of the Soviet Union, the geopolitical recovery of Russia was made possible by the affirmation of a nationalist project for the recovery of the Russian state by Putin. Russian leaders have decided to focus their efforts on reconquering a geopolitical domain over the area of the former Soviet Union. But the biggest concern of Russians in terms of security comes from NATO’s role in the former Soviet bloc. Thus, Russia vigorously opposed in 2007 the missile shield project that the Americans wanted to install in Central Europe (Poland, Czech Republic), through NATO. China is building a large naval force to control the Pacific Ocean with the immediate aim of curbing US military power in the western Pacific. The Chinese are building a defensive force, which includes weapons that can hit US military targets. Chinese military spending will surpass the combined budgets of the twelve other major powers in Asia-Pacific. According to The Economist magazine, China will surpass US military spending by 2025.
From the year 2000, Russia decided to develop a strategic partnership with China. Russia considered that China could help it in its resistance to the geopolitical ambitions of the United States in both Eastern Europe and the Caucasus or Central Asia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established in 2001 to establish an alliance between Russia and China in military terms to be a counterweight to the United States and NATO military forces, among other goals. The partnership between China and Russia also exists in the arms sector. Russia continued to be China’s largest supplier of modern weapons in the 2000s and there was more recent transfer of Russian military technology to the production of new Chinese weapons. Finally, the strategic partnership between China and Russia is so fundamental to the two countries that differences in the energy issue or other divergences of interests between two powers, however important, have not been able to threaten collaboration between the two countries with regard to the attempt to limit the power of the United States.
In a scenario where the great powers are fighting for world power, what would be the strategies to be adopted by countries that do not fall into this category? In the military sphere, a strategy consists in the development of nuclear weapons to dissuade any great power from attacking it. Another strategy would be to establish an alliance with great powers with which they share the same goals in world terms to obtain the necessary protection in case of external threat. In the economic sphere, one strategy would be to promote economic development strongly supported in the domestic market and limited insertion into the world economy to reduce the country’s vulnerability to the threats resulting from global economic crises that tend to become more frequent. Another strategy would be to establish bilateral and multilateral relations with major powers with which they share the same economic goals in world terms. Finally, the strategy that would bring together all the countries of the world would be to implement a democratic government of the world to equip humanity with the necessary instruments to avoid war and promote economic progress. This is the only means of survival of the human species.
Humanity walks inexorably towards complete economic integration, initially, and, later, between countries politically. Economic integration will inevitably force global political integration. From the primitive village, humanity is already constituting a “global village”. For this global village to succeed, there must be a world government to have a globalized right as well. The constitution of a world government would not only address the economic order on a world scale, but above all, create the conditions to face the great challenges of humanity in the 21st Century which consist of: 1) economic and financial crises; 2) revolutions and social counterrevolution around the globe; 3) cascade wars; 4) world overpopulation; 5) deadly pandemic; 6) extreme climate changes; 7) organized crime; and, 8) threats from space, whose global actions to neutralize them are impossible to be carried out by national states alone and by current international institutions.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 13 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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