Donnerstag, 17. Mai 2007

Weltunordnung und Souveränität

Zu dem in diesem Blog regelmäßig erörterten Thema der internationalen Ordnung sind zwei neue, hoch interessante Texte anzuzeigen. Im ersten geht David Ignatius der Frage nach dem Übergang von der relativ stabilen Welt zu Zeiten des Kalten Krieges hin zu einer multipolaren Welt nach und diagnostiziert dabei aktuell chaotische Zustände:

"[...]

The "neighbors" meeting is an example of the kind of cooperative problem solving that everyone favors in theory. The difficulty is that nobody today has any real experience with how a genuinely multilateral system might work. And the more you think about it, the more potential obstacles you begin to see in the passage from unilateral hell to multilateral heaven.
The nuclear strategist Herman Kahn pondered this problem in a 1983 essay on "multipolarity and stability." Kahn made his name by "thinking about the unthinkable" - namely, the consequences of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he recognized that the bipolar world of the Cold War had an inherent stability. The two superpowers understood the rules of the game, and because the dangers of conflict were so great, they learned to discipline themselves and their respective allies.

A multipolar world eventually would be stable, too, Kahn argued. He hypothesized that by 2000, there would be seven economic giants - the United States, Japan, the Soviet Union, China, Germany, France and Brazil - and that they would gradually work out orderly rules. The problem was the transition. The moment of maximum danger, Kahn warned, would be in moving from a bipolar to a multipolar world.
We are now in that process of transition, and it's proving just as volatile as Kahn predicted. American power alone is demonstrably unable to achieve world order; we can't even maintain the peace in Baghdad. But no multilateral coalition has emerged as an alternative. The United Nations, the nominal instrument of collective security, allowed itself to be run out of Iraq by a terrorist bomb in the early months of the war.

The multilateral world is disorganized on several levels. First, it's not clear what the "poles" of the emerging order are or how they will align. Is the Muslim world a pole? If so, who will lead it - Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan? Can the Muslim nations of the Middle East put aside their traditional rivalries and act responsibly in resolving a crisis? That's what the meeting of Iraq's neighbors this week is testing. An exhausted America finally seems ready for a multilateral exit strategy from Iraq, but are the neighbors able to deliver it?
Does Russia intend to organize a new pole of its own? President Vladimir Putin certainly sounds like he wants to regain a share of Moscow's old influence. But listening to an acrimonious debate last weekend at the Brussels Forum among diplomats from nations that once made up the Soviet bloc, it's obvious that this pole would be anything but stable. While a Putin ally was enthusing about the new Russia, someone in the back of the room - a Georgian? an Estonian? a Pole? - shouted out: "Liar," and you wondered for a moment if punches would be thrown.

The disorder goes deeper. Most of the major nations are on the cusp of political change. The United States is the most obvious example: [...] The only certainty about the next president is that he or she will represent an America that is angry and unpredictable.

[...]

I listened to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say during a news conference in Tehran last year that the post-1945 world order was ending. All of its institutions,
starting with the United Nations, were becoming irrelevant, he argued. A new world would be shaped by rising powers that would create new rules of the international game.
At the time, I thought it was more of Ahmadinejad's crazy rhetoric. But I suspect that this vision of a world in transition may be correct: We're all multilateralists now, but we inhabit a world that makes the Cold War seem like the good old days."

Der zweite Aufsatz ist unter der Ägide von Anna Simons entstanden und im März/April-Heft von The American Interest erschienen, aber leider online nicht vollständig greifbar. Hier der Anfang des Textes:
"The Sovereignty Solution

[...]

Within the next decade the United States will find itself handling terrorist attacks and other violations of its sovereignty very differently than it does today. Having exhausted other approaches, we will find ourselves with no choice but to respond to attacks against U.S. citizens, particularly those on U.S. soil, with overwhelming force. If we do so with forethought and as part of a broader policy, we can change for the better how the world polices itself. If not, and if we continue to respond in an ad hoc manner to security challenges, often promising ourselves and others more than we deliver, we will find ourselves locked into an ever tighter spiral of attack and response, expending ever more blood and treasure in places we can neither master nor change.

As time passes and the preemption plank of the Bush Doctrine generates more problems than it can solve, “new” strategic approaches are being bandied about. Some proposals, arguing for both more realism and less unilateralism, urge the building of a new great power concert. Another proposal, laid out by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay in the last issue of this magazine, argues for a Concert of Democracies to do for international security what the United Nations has not done and cannot do. What all such proposals have in common is their appeal to multilateralism and their advice that the United States limit its decision-making autonomy by accepting more or less binding obligations to others. But one need only look at the recent record of international crisis decision-making - take NATO when it was smaller than it is now, confronted by the crisis in Bosnia, for instance - to see that there is nothing timely or effective about international military operations.

[...]

Sovereignty represents the most useful double-edged sword in the international communities arsenal. Sovereignty implies that every state has the right to order its society according to its own preferences. In return, every state bears the responsibility to prevent its citizens from transgressing the sovereignty of others. We advocate strengthening sovereignty on a global scale as the key foreign policy component of a new national strategy.

[...]"
Die Autoren plädieren also im Kern für die Stärkung der Souveränität von Staaten bzw., wo solche nicht vorhanden sind, von anderen Herrschaftsverbänden. Damit sollen einerseits die USA von ihrer Rolle als "Weltgendarm" befreit werden (die sie ohnehin überfordert), andererseits sollen die tatsächlichen Herrschaftsverhältnisse auf dieser Welt anerkannt und zum Anknüpfungspunkt der Außenpolitik gemacht werden: jeder Staat hat das Recht auf eine eigene Entwicklung, muß aber auch dafür sorgen, daß von seinem Hoheitsgebiet aus nicht in die Sphäre anderer Staaten eingegriffen wird (z.B. durch Terroristen). Sollte es dennoch dazu kommen, könne der angegriffene Staat energisch reagieren, ohne etwa für einen allfälligen Wiederaufbau sorgen zu müssen.

Dieser Aufsatz ist, trotz des einen oder anderen diskussionswürdigen Punktes, einer der besten, die ich in den vergangenen Monaten gelesen habe und es ist ihm eine breite Rezeption zu wünschen. Die Autoren versuchen, die Instrumente des klassischen Völkerrechts an die Verhältnisse des 21. Jahrhunderts anzupassen, erkennen aber gleichzeitig, daß die diversen Welteinheitsträume, in deren Namen seit Jahrzehnten an der Aushöhlung des Souveränitätsbegriffes gearbeitet wird, nicht aufgehen werden - genausowenig wie der Traum vom weltweit Ordnung stiftenden Amerika. Mit ihrer betont defensiven und anti-interventionistischen Position - die freilich eventuell notwendige Strafexpeditionen nicht ausschließt - erscheinen sie irgendwie 'unamerikanisch', weshalb es nicht verwundert, daß sie in der dortigen Blogosphäre eher kritisiert werden (siehe hier und hier). Gleichwohl ist es ein Ansatz, der funktionieren kann und nur vergleichsweise wenige Variablen hat, vor allem bedarf es keiner Umwälzungen im geltenden Völkerrecht.

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