Fireside Chat, Interview, Conference Presentation
Talks at GS - Dr. Richard Haass: “World Order 2.0”
- Global power distribution is expected to increase among autonomous actors, making international order harder to structure and potentially shifting the world from disarray to chaos within a couple of years.
- The Middle East will likely remain in a state of high disorder or chaos, with at least four states experiencing significant failure, while ISIS is projected to lose its territorial base in Mosul within a few months and concentrate in Raqqa for a more difficult campaign.
- Events in the Middle East will continue to have global repercussions through refugee flows, terrorism, and oil prices, yet efforts to completely remake or stabilize the region are predicted to fail, with a radical Sunni force potentially replacing ISIS if stability is not achieved.
- Europe will face a return of populism, nationalism, and uncertain election outcomes driven by internal flaws, the refugee crisis, Brexit, and Russian geopolitical actions in Ukraine, leading to prolonged instability and a shift toward a system of "multiple Europes" with variable membership.
- Germany is expected to expend significant resources to preserve a European monetary union, though the successful future of the EU will likely be defined by the avoidance of wide-scale dissolution rather than further integration.
- Great power relations with Russia and potentially China will continue to worsen, with Putin likely pursuing an active foreign policy aimed at preserving his position through a mix of respect and fear, and possessing increased freedom of action due to deinstitutionalization.
- Russia under Putin remains a significant risk for military action against NATO countries such as Lithuania or Estonia without a clear mechanism to stop him, as his position is unlikely to be inhibited by checks and balances.
- North Korea is predicted to deploy nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States sometime during the current U.S. presidential tenure.
- The future of the 21st century is expected to be written in Asia rather than the Middle East, while cyber domains remain new areas of international relations where solutions have not yet been determined.
- A return to operating conventions among superpowers will require a 21st-century approach to international order, emphasizing an obligation for sovereign entities to prevent activities within their borders that cause adverse consequences for others.
- The strategy for U.S.-Russia relations should focus on reducing destabilizing behavior rather than seeking a friendly relationship, with a warmer relationship possible only if Russian behavior improves.
- The Iran nuclear agreement is expected to be maintained in the short run to avoid isolating the U.S., though quantitative limits on Iranian nuclear capabilities will end within a decade, requiring a successor arrangement.
- A two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unlikely to occur in the near future due to missing prerequisites, with the primary goal shifting to keeping the equation calm rather than immediate resolution.
- A strategy to counter Iran will likely involve cooperation with Sunni countries and Israel to push back against Iranian influence without breaking the Iran nuclear agreement.
- Achieving these outcomes requires thinking about international order differently than 19th-century geopolitics, acknowledging that the European project faces uncertainty from the return of geopolitics and internal structural flaws.