In summary, Putin advocates national sovereignty and opposes liberal internationalism and liberal interventionism based on as another form of imperialism. The West, the reverse. More broadly, Russia is traditional while the West is liberal. This basis of the broader conflict between the East and West, Global North and Global South. This conflict is dialectical. The economic basis is capitalism versus socialism. Both capitalism and socialism are internationalist. This...
Read More »Michael J. Mazarr — Summary of the Building a Sustainable International Order Project
The growing threat to the rules-based postwar order has become a defining feature of current discussions about world politics. Over the last two years, a RAND project team, working with outside experts, has sought to understand the existing international order, assess current challenges to the order, and recommend future U.S. policies to advance U.S. interests in the context of a multilateral order. This summary report of that project, Building a Sustainable International Order, outlines...
Read More »Paul Robinson — Asymmetrical rules
Back in September I presented a paper at a conference in Moscow on the topic of ‘Human Rights Reasoning and Double Standards in the Rules-Based Order.’ In this I pointed out that both Russia and the West claimed to be in favour of a ‘rules-based order’ and that each accused the other of breaking that order. The problem, I conjectured, derives from differing understanding of what the rules are and how they should be applied. Russia believes in a traditional, Westphalian, order in which...
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