Under the influence of a political impulse (resulting, as a rule, from the behavior of other partners), doctrines are sometimes formulated that may insult with their obviousness. But masses of diplomats are involved in publicizing, propagating and interpreting them. Their main goal is simply to send a political signal. Without translating slogans into any specific action. Such doctrines include the concepts of “rules-based order” or “effective multilateralism” recently advocated by some Western countries. They are hard to challenge. They overwhelm with their rightness. But what could result from them is sometimes hard to find out.
“Rules-based order” has been a matter of course in the modern world, at least since the Peace of Westphalia. After all, international law has been developed over the centuries for this purpose. Its essence was to formulate the principles and rules of behaviour of states in their external relations. Of course, in recent years the West has wanted to send a strong political signal, above all to Russia, that violating the established norms (the annexation of Crimea or the current war against Ukraine), weakening them (denouncing disarmament agreements), and circumventing them (supporting separatisms) is tantamount to destroying the international order. Russia read the signal correctly and subjected the concept of “rules-based order” to biting criticism before invading Ukraine. It accused the West of claiming a monopoly right to formulate rules and hold other countries accountable for their application. And it has continued to violate insolently the established norms.
It is indeed a serious problem with the contemporary order that the West, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, have different ideas as to what principles should be the foundation of the order. Russia and China want to return the world to the beginning of the 20th century, the primacy of the paradigm of national interest and sovereignty, the absolute prohibition of interference in internal affairs, the right to practice Machtpolitik (assertive nationalism). Russian aggression in Ukraine has become irrefutable proof of these intentions.
The West does not want to give up the desire to base the world order on liberal values (human rights, democracy, the rule of law, market economy), and to sanction international interventionism in the name of these values. While the depressive conclusions from the failures of liberal models in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the world could discourage the West from intervening. But the West pursues its policy of values despite that.
Is order and predictability possible when the world is divided by the dispute over values and principles? It is rather doubtful.
Another point is that international politics has not kept pace with the attempt to devise rules that would help meet new challenges. This applies in particular to the behaviour of states in cyberspace, rules regulating migration on a global scale, restrictions on the possibility of conducting the so-called hybrid wars, the use of natural resources as a political instrument, states’ responsibility for cross-border pandemics and many other issues.
Indeed, the liberal faith of the West in the inevitability of the triumph of modern principles of the international order has clearly been shaken. It is not only Russia or China that are contesting the liberal order. But also the ruling elites in some Western countries. Orban’s Hungary, declaring that it would not pay for the costs of the Russo-Ukrainian war in the name of principles, undoubtedly broke from the philosophy of the West once again. But after all, Kaczyński’s Poland in disputes with European institutions, or Erdogan’s Turkey in disagreements with Europe or its neighbors, practically cultivate a Russian-Chinese vision of international politics based on unlimited sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, and the primacy of tribal interests.
Will the West give up its attempts to implement its vision of order in the world, stop taking humanitarian interventions, even in the most evident cases of genocide (as in Rwanda in the past), stop introducing sanctions against states violating human rights, abandon support to international tribunals? I hope not. The solidarity-based wide-spread attitude towards Ukraine is a source of optimism. Even if the West was sluggish in reacting to Russia’s war preparations for the invasion of Ukraine, even if it was too laborious to overcome its resistance to arms supplies, even if it introduced sanctions not decisively enough, it proved in the political and moral dimension that it had grown up to apply the principles of collective security, it understood that the clash with Russia has a strategic dimension, and its result will determine the shape of the future international order.
But the West also has to show that it is deeply faithful to the values in its own circle. The way in which the European Union reacts to the violation of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary takes on a systemically global dimension. So is the attitude of the US and the EU to Erdogan’s practices in Turkey. The ruling team of PiS hoped very much that the war in Ukraine and the status of Poland as a front-line state would force the West to look through its fingers at the violation of the principles of democracy and the rule of law in Poland. So far, luckily, in vain.
Another favourite political and international concept of the European Union in the last two decades has been the concept of “effective multilateralism”. It first appeared in the context of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It was inscribed, late in the editorial stages, into the European Security Strategy adopted in 2003. The political context was obvious. The European Union wanted to distance itself from the American policy of solving the nuclear problem with regard to the DPRK and Iran by way of unilateral sanctions, and above all, to show its different point of view on American interventionism, i.e. acting by fait accompli (invasion of Iraq), by way of fac et excusa. Multilateralism assumes conducting dialogue and consultations in a configuration consisting of at least three countries and on the basis of existing international institutions and sanctioned methods.
“Effective multilateralism” has become the doctrinal cornerstone of the European Union’s common foreign policy. And it did well in addressing the Iranian nuclear challenge, where the European Union, France, Germany and the United Kingdom were involved in negotiating an agreement reached in 2015, and where representatives of the European Union played a useful intermediary role. But the Union did not participate in discussing the Korean nuclear question. In the negotiations conducted in 2003-2009 (but in principle until 2007), no European countries or EU institutions were at the table. It’s as if the Korean problem is a local problem. When in 2015 I became the director of the Asia-Pacific Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I even put forward the idea of appointing a special EU representative for the Korean Peninsula. But it didn’t come to that. The European Union, an actor with global vocation, is visibly passive in the face of the Korean challenge.
“Effective multilateralism” did not cause the European Union to insist on its presence in the Normandy format on Donbas or in the Minsk group on Nagorno-Karabakh. The EU did not even insist that the European states that are present there (respectively – France, Germany and France) should properly inform or consult their actions in these fields with the rest of the EU. Both formats are effectively dead now. But I am happy to note that the President of the European Council has played recently a leading role in trying to mediate in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It should therefore be assumed that Europeans have different interpretations of what “effective multilateralism” would mean and what directives of action would result from it.
One thing is certain – it is a concept so obvious that it is difficult to disagree with it. Should it exclude the idea of unilateral actions? But the Union has not stopped practicing them. Knowing that there is no chance of any action against Russia in the UN Security Council, it adopts unilateral sanctions against Russia. And rightly so, although it is always better to have a mandate from the Security Council.
Over the years, German diplomacy promoted various idealistic doctrines, such as “Wandel durch Handel”, “Annaeherung durch Handel”. In the abstract dimension, it was difficult to argue with them. However, they became a cover for political appeasement towards Russia and cynical mercantilism towards China.
Such concepts look good in strategies and programmatic exposés. And I know it well. I myself tried in the past to formulate similarly valid concepts for the needs of my ministers. I participated many times in the process of preparing annual program speeches of foreign ministers delivered to the Sejm. I edited them from start to finish twice, both for Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz (in 2003 and 2004). I had a considerable contribution to the parliamentary exposé of Minister Rotfeld in 2005. I collected various thoughts and concepts at the end of 2004, without foreseeing that there would be a change of minister (from Cimoszewicz to Rotfeld), and I would become deputy minister myself. The new duties in January 2005 burdened me so much that I was unable to find the time and energy to support Minister Rotfeld with the editing of the text. A lot of my theses remained in the final version, but Minister Rotfeld personally shaped the speech.
I wrote the two drafts of parliamentary expose for Minister Cimoszewicz in one go (of course, taking into account the contributions of individual departments of the Ministry). At one weekend. I started Friday night and finished Monday morning. It was easy for me to write, because I knew the minister’s views well, I did not have to struggle with my thoughts as to whether he would like this or that formula. The minister, of course, made changes (i.e. corrections), but I was very grateful to him that he did not violate the style and rhythm of the proposed texts. Because, as experts say, the most important thing in any significant delivered text is rhythm and internal dynamics. Like any other significant text for the management of the ministry or the state, I wrote exposé listening to music. Exposé in 2003 was written while listening to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Exposé in 2004 to Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor.
I had great fun writing theses for the first exposé of Minister Skubiszewski presented in the Parlament in 1990, because it was possible to activate unknown areas of political imagination, although the proposed phrases, especially in the paragraphs that open the speech, found little reflection in the final version. As the Minister said: “For the speech to sound credible, I had to write everything myself, using my own words.” And he was totally right. He edited this part himself. But I also regretted that my then immediate superior smuggled immature concepts into the text (e.g. the proposal to establish a European Cooperation Council, which I assessed very critically), and some ideas were not used to signal our course on integration with the West.
The rule of PiS brought a previously unknown conceptual misery. Not surprisingly, the practice of annual foreign policy exposés has even been suspended. Another symptom of the total collapse of our diplomacy.
