Man at work outside the box – Bertrand Badie

Statue of Ferdowsi in Tus. Sculptor: Abolhassan Sadighi. Wikicommons/Mohammad Hossein Taghi. Some rights reserved.

Dürrenmatt’s
famous play The Physicists (1962)
relies on a key thesis: “Within the paradoxical appears reality”. This applies
perfectly to Bertrand Badie’s must-read essay, New perspectives on the international order: no longer alone in this
world, (2018) which constantly plays with multiple paradoxes in order to
expose the reader to reality. The author humbly promises only “considerations full
of common sense and aimed at re-examining our old political science”.

But this atypical
book delivers much more: a strong wake-up call, an appeal to acknowledge that history
has not come to an end and that the world has changed, so stop blocking out
reality:

“the more we see
the present through the lens of the past, the less we understand what we are
living and the more we take perilous refuge in a finite world.”

Badie’s persuasive
arguments and rhetoric put a nail in the coffin of outdated approaches such as
the Westphalian, the bipolar and unipolar narratives (discussed respectively in
Chapter One and Two). Based on three key norms – sovereignty, territoriality
and international negotiations –Westphalian ‘software’ still shapes today’s
political science of international relations. The following paradoxes remain
ignored: in spite of the sovereignty paradigm, the “temptation of empire”
remains vivid as is best illustrated by the colonialism that “never totally
left the European stage”; while the Westphalian order is supposed to mitigate
interstate relations (balance of power), a fetishized sovereignty principle accentuates
competition and power games following the motto “sharing when you must, but
excluding when you think you can!”

The non-aligned movement

Nevertheless, in
the shadow of the western powers, a “second rank” in the international system has
emerged: the Pan-Asian and Pan-Islamic conferences were both organised in 1926,
followed in 1928 by the Anti-Imperialist Congress — which paved the way for the
first largescale Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung (1955) and to the still
existing power bloc of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) established in Belgrade
(1961). Taken together, they signal three major – at that time unnoticed –
shifts: first, the club of five is no longer alone in the world; second,
East-West relations leave room for North-South relationships; and, third, the
balance of power between the first and second ranks may one day simply reverse.

Considering more closely
the non-alignment movement, the author highlights three paradoxes. First, various
NAM protagonists (notably Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Ceylon – the future
Sri Lanka), while proclaiming themselves neither East nor West, were
nevertheless following a logic of clientelization with respect to the two
superpowers. Second, “while demanding full acknowledgment of their sovereignty
from their former colonial master, they were appealing to the North to support
them in their effort at development”. And, third paradox: peripheral conflicts developed
in the South in spite of the vassalization and clientelization strategies of
the North with the result that “the more such conflicts developed, the more the
Northern countries’ capacities to control them declined.”

Discussing
further the contentious legacy of non-alignment, Badie draws a conclusion in
the form of a further paradox: “Admittedly, the non-aligned movement never led
to an institutionalized political order, but its heirs had a great deal of
influence in the world by participating more and more in defining the
international agenda. It is in their territories that the main conflicts are
developing in the world today, involving their key issues and the social
deficits burdening them.”

Afro-Asian actors
such as these were, on the one hand, outside the Westphalian order, “seeking an
order that would not stem merely from the universalisation of the Western
statist model but would introduce something quite different.” On the other hand,
they were busy overcoming the bipolar gap, and realising that “weakness creates
a realm of perilous freedom that is still underestimated to this day: too great
a gap in power kills power.” With the emergence of social and local dimensions
discussed in Chapter Three, weakness can win out “over power through its
aptitude for defining the new relationships governing the world stage.” Badie’s
examples are Osama bin Laden and Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi, both of whom have determined
the international agenda over the past fifteen years.

Weakness triumphant

Viewing politics
from the South, Badie here introduces the reader to a more subtle and complex
approach. We recognise the motifs of Badie’s next volume that targets the
North-South divide: Quand le Sud réinvente le monde (2018). Two key
paradoxes are here at work: first, power isn’t any more an essential determinant
of success or failure, weakness becoming a strength, and inequality not so much
a problem as an advantage; and, second, globalisation isn’t the negation of the
local nor does it eliminate particularisms, it “rather fuels the revenge of the
social versus the political.”

This new software
also nurtures “new conflicts that are no longer an expression of power, but the
exact opposite. For the first time, war is no longer the result of competing
powers but proceeds entirely from weakness, breakdown, and defects.” Against
this background, considering the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia,
Libya, Central African Republic and Mali, western powers are not in control of
this new conflictual world “where power has become powerless, while weakness
has given rise to power to the point of destabilising the agenda of the strongest.”

The ‘tectonics of societies’

“A cannon can
destroy a cannon, but has no hold over societies, and even less over tatters.” While
the entire Westphalian logic is hereby questioned, a new syntax emerges as “the
socialization of global issues has completely shaken up the familiar categories
of international relations” Badie systematically prioritises the social
dimension: social actors, their behaviour, culture and expectations matter. New
perspectives on international relations are therefore driven less by state
initiatives and more by social dynamics: “International relations must no
longer be merely an analysis of the configurations of power, it must also
establish itself as the science of the ‘tectonics of societies’.”

Exploring the new
world (Chapter Four), Badie focuses on the main characteristics of the twenty–first
century: on the one hand, depolarisation – the end of bipolarity augmented the
weakening narrative of protection and alliance linked to various polarity
models of the past (essentially bipolarity) – and, on the other hand, significant
devaluation of power and sovereignty.

A twofold rush
characterises the new international relations: first, “a rush toward
self-rule”, thus toward autonomy, and, second, to compete – not for power, but –
for acquiring or regaining status and recognition. This applies to Kosovo as
well as, albeit at another level, to the frustrated Russian empire.

Chapter Five
emphasises how the word today is hostage to failed decolonisation in Africa as
well as in the Middle East — even if most of the countries of the Middle East
did not have the official status of colonies, they were nevertheless victims of
an oppressive system of trusteeship. The Westphalian order was unable either to
welcome the new incomers in a suitable way, or to understand their own specific
histories – that would not follow down the Western path of nation-building.
Hence, the flaw in nation-building, the great weakness of development policies,
and, last but not least, the failure of imported states “done in the name of
universalism, exalting a bit too quickly the Western model of statehood as its
most consummate expression in the history of humanity.”

Badie reprises here
the main theses first exposed in his 1992 publication, The imported State: “In order to truly support independence without
failing back into neo-colonialism and clientelization, it would have required
accepting that automatically importing the Western model of statehood could not
be a substitute for designing a new state. For political institutions to be
legitimate and functional, they must fit in with local historical trajectories
to the greatest possible extent, and they must be designed as much as possible
with the people’s involvement.”

Alas, recent
interventions, notably by France in the Ivory Coast, in Mali and in the Central
African Republic, are only “preserving the neo-colonial framework and
contributed to atrophying the political development of these societies.” As
Badie notices, while neo-colonial trusteeship policies die hard and nurture the
seeds of more conflicts, China, Russia and Brazil (basically the BRICS
countries) interestingly follow other strategies and propose a diversification
of the protection and cooperation on offer. We may ask here if this doesn’t
also apply to the current Europeanisation process of the Balkans?

Moving beyond state-centricity

Badie’s
book highlights sharp breaks with the history of international relations, all of
which mark a significant shift away from the Westphalian world order: the
double defeat of hegemony and of colonization amounts to the checkmating on the
one hand of power and sovereignty, and, on the other hand, of territoriality.

Indeed,
a hypertext or multiplex world order made up of “more complex and more fluid
political finalities” moves beyond a state-centered understanding of power and
territory in order to include multi-actor, multi-level and multi-scalar processes.

Rethinking,
updating, or lazily formulating “a few paltry new ideas” (such as
multipolarity, superpower, rogue states, new turmoil etc.) will not deliver new
perspectives on the international order. New thinking – in the author’s words a
“conceptual tsunami” – is here required. The way out of the labyrinth requests
a new compass focusing on changes, rifts and key issues:

“I am
convinced that we can see clearly to describing the current international
system, if we can place it in a historical context instead of fossilizing it
there, describe the rifts rather than deny them, understand the real issues by
looking beyond appearances.” 

This
is what the book delivers, insisting on a world that has changed and, consequently,
on concepts such as “territory”, “border”, “sovereignty”, “national security” that
“ have lost their meaning dating back several centuries.”

Diplomacy

In the concluding section,
the essay becomes a manifesto. Opposing economic liberalism, Badie suggests a
politics of alterity, notably by rebranding diplomacy. Against the background
of globalization, diplomacy must first articulate “the equality of human
destinies, an equal right for all to participate in world governance.” Second,
it must reform a world social order that suffers from socioeconomic
discrepancies.” And third, target common economic, social and environmental
resources which the survival of the planet is dependent on.”

Badie’s politics of
alterity is further based on a redefined and regenerated sovereignty, on the
prohibition of unilateral intervention, and on the action of local actors and
proximity networks. A manifesto that ends surprisingly on a philosophical note,
quoting Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Our relationship to truth is through others.
Either we move toward the truth with them, or else we’re not moving toward the
truth.” (from Merleau-Ponty’s inaugural lecture “In praise of philosophy” at
the Collège de France on January 15, 1953)

While Badie often
suggests reloading the great founders of social sciences including Durkheim,
Weber, Marx and Tönnies (see for example, p. 10 and p. 50), the tunes he plays
in this essay have some acquaintance with Axel Honneth’s critical theory,
notably his recurrent studies on the critique of power (1993), recognition
(1996 and 2012) and disrespect (2007). This is perhaps not so surprising for an
author thinking outside the box, one who loves to quote the Persian poet Hakïm
Abol-Ghäsem Ferdowsï (935-1020): “I
will never die and I will live forever because I sowed the seeds of speech.”