Thierry de Montbrial is Founder and President of the French Institute of International Relations and the World Policy Conference, as well as a Member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. This essay is a faithful, uncut translation of the introductory chapter of his latest French-language book L’ère des affrontements (2025).

This book traces a long intellectual journey, running parallel to the often turbulent currents of international politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Its distinctiveness lies in its structure: it draws on the annual “Perspectives” I have written each summer for over four decades to introduce Ramses, the flagship global affairs report published by the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri). Like Ramses itself, this book is intended for anyone with an interest in geopolitics and international relations.

The era that led us to the world of today | Photo: SORA

Conceived as a kind of serialized narrative, each chapter opens onto genuine questions and possible turning points. In the realm of history, forecasting is best understood as a rational analysis of uncertainty—an approach useful for decision-makers and for all who believe in the power of thought grounded in reality, as rigorous as possible and free from the analyst’s ideological preferences. Following Max Weber, we refer to this as axiological neutrality.

I began this regular work five years after Ifri’s founding in 1979, having previously served as the first director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Center for Analysis and Forecasting (now the Center for Analysis, Forecasting, and Strategy). My thinking has naturally evolved over the years, but its orientation has remained constant: realism.

Foreign policies of political units—primarily states—can be broadly categorized into two types, though in practice they are never entirely pure: idealism and realism. This distinction tends to be more sharply drawn by commentators than by those who have wielded power. Western idealists judge foreign policy against supposedly universal principles: democracy, human rights, international law. Humanity, in this view, is subject to a Law that transcends even the sacred laws of major religions—a Law that unequivocally defines Good and Evil.

Realists are wary of political reasoning that treats Humanity as a single political entity. They argue that states conduct foreign policy based on interests, defined by their leaders in light of circumstances and historical experience. For realists, principles may inform the articulation of interests, but they do not determine them. Everything depends on proportion—and presentation—since, regrettably, hypocrisy is part of the art of governance.

Realists also tend, in varying degrees, to emphasize power dynamics, strategic calculation, and pragmatic disposition—traits rarely found at the core of idealist thinking. It is worth noting that realism should not be conflated with Realpolitik, which is defined by its exclusive reliance on power relations in the exercise of authority.

Naturally, discerning minds recognize the complexity behind these distinctions. In this regard, I refer readers to the memoirs of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a distinguished scholar and former National Security Advisor to President Carter. For a contemporary example of realist policy formulation, I recommend the writings of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. To illuminate the current divide between idealism and realism in international affairs, I point to recent works by Sylvie Kauffmann and Pierre Lellouche, both focused on the war in Ukraine. Kauffmann is a committed editorialist; Lellouche, a former Ifri think-tanker, brings genuine parliamentary and ministerial experience, having twice served as Secretary of State.

I will not dwell here on the many writings that fall into the category of propaganda—which, for that reason, play a significant role during wartime—or those that thrive on personal attacks.

As a guide, realism is nothing more than an invitation to grasp reality in all its complexity, especially when weighing the foreseeable consequences of a given decision against a well-defined problem. In my pursuit of foresight, I have read extensively and engaged with many remarkable individuals—intellectuals and practitioners alike—from diverse civilizations. I have also spent a substantial part of my life traveling through many of the key countries discussed in this book. I have met interlocutors from all walks of life, from grassroots actors to those at the highest levels of power and opposition. I have observed the terrain firsthand and sensed phenomena difficult to grasp from afar. I have also developed a long-standing familiarity with the world of international conferences devoted to the kinds of issues explored here.

Moreover, thanks to my scientific training and the years I devoted to economics, I have maintained a deep interest in the theoretical dimensions of international relations analysis—that is, in the modes of reasoning (figuratively, the “software”) that practitioners typically employ, often implicitly.

Realists are clearly in the minority in Europe, and naturally in France. Too many articles and books, shaped by ideological preconceptions—mainly about democracy, human rights, or the scope of international law—collapse into a caricatured dichotomy of Good versus Evil. Such works are of little direct use when it comes to sound forecasting. Yet for a state or a company, the consequences of poor forecasting are paid in full, and often painfully so.

Without delving further here into the fundamental epistemological question of reasoning forms, let me stress again that we are dealing with complexity: phenomena that cannot be confined within any fully specified mode of reasoning, such as a “system.” It is only by a stretch of language that one speaks of the “international system.” The more complex a phenomenon, the more the analyst is compelled to methodically consider multiple perspectives and to produce a synthesis that can only ever be intuitive. As in so many other fields—including physics—intuition plays an essential role. But intuition itself can never be fully dissected.

Thus the reader will always find here the uncertainties and questions of the moment. I do not write as a historian. Compared to the think-tanker’s account, the historian’s narrative is doubly biased: writing after the fact, the historian may have access to broader information than contemporary actors, but lacks the direct sensation—so vital to intuitive grasp. And above all, knowing the outcome, his heartbeat no longer matches the rhythm of events, since he speaks of an unknown that is no longer unknown.

At first glance, the think-tanker and the historian pursue different aims. The former seeks above all to guide real people who want to orient themselves more clearly in the present; he speaks of a genuine future, one charged with what Bergson called a “latitude of creation.” To borrow the philosopher’s language, this is not the false future of images unspooling in a film. The historian, by contrast, is primarily concerned with understanding the past as an end in itself.

Yet on closer inspection, their perspectives are less distant than they appear. To construct analyses and forecasts, given the complexity of the subject matter, the think‑tanker must look to the past for situations resembling those he faces, and to the ways historians have treated them. I am not speaking here of think‑tankers or historians as producers of ideologically driven narratives, but as objective discoverers of partial causalities. Can we then speak of the usefulness of history? One immediately thinks of Marc Bloch, the great medievalist best known to a wider public for Strange Defeat—an extraordinary testimony on the causes of France’s disaster in 1940. Like others, Bloch believed his specialty mattered above all in relation to the other human sciences. That is precisely how one can hope to draw the richest lessons from situations that resemble one another. For Bloch, the justification for studying the past lay ultimately in the quest to understand the present: understanding for the sheer pleasure of understanding, but also—and perhaps above all—in order to act more effectively. As with knowledge in general, there are always two aspects: the gratuitous and the useful. The two are inseparable.

In any case, I emphasize the importance of resemblance as a concept, but also the need to handle it with care. In action, nothing is more dangerous than false resemblances—such as superficial invocations of the Marshall Plan or the “Munich syndrome.”

This is why the reader of this book will encounter frequent references to the past, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union. One had to expect far‑reaching consequences, across space and time, from a fall that was not only that of communism and the Soviet external empire, but also—and perhaps above all—that of the Russian empire itself. It is in this perspective that the war in Ukraine must be situated, but even before that, starting in 1990, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the brutal war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The concept of resemblance is highly flexible. The history of any political unit unfolds as a succession of situations that individually resemble others in the past. And if one takes two narratives such as those discussed by François Furet in Interpreting the French Revolution, there is no doubt they address the same subject.

It was by reasoning through resemblance that I immediately joined those who consider the twentieth century a “short century”: from the end of the Great War (the “war that ended peace,” as Margaret MacMillan calls it) to the collapse of the USSR in 1991—or, if one prefers, 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, Europe’s situation was thrust back to that of the aftermath of World War I. Historians generally agree that the political nineteenth century ran from 1815 to 1914—that is, from the Congress of Vienna to the outbreak of the Great War. A “true century,” then, marked above all by peace in Europe, at least compared to the revolutionary era. Countless books and scholarly articles have been devoted to the “causes of World War I.” The subject is inexhaustible, as is any complex question in the precise sense I have given to that term.

The concept of complexity dissolves that of causality. In a chain of complex phenomena, one can only speak of partial causalities—reductions, yes, but never the abolition of uncertainty.

As for the causes of World War I, in my view a somewhat provocative thesis—precisely because it leaves details their accidental character—may be advanced from Margaret MacMillan’s book: it was the long peace of the nineteenth century that constituted, in itself, to borrow Thucydides’ phrase, the “truest cause” of World War I that followed, and ultimately of the Second as well. Simply because the very idea of a “great war” had vanished as an object of obsession. From this perspective—which is not necessarily at odds with MacMillan’s own (no war is inevitable)—without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, other “causes” within the inevitable multitude of “accidents along the way” would sooner or later have led to a similar situation. To push the argument to its limit: World War I might have unfolded in many different ways, not necessarily as tragically, but in a statistical sense it “had” to happen.

This line of reasoning gains force if one grants some weight to the emphasis—pervasive in this book—on the delayed effects of the collapse of the Russian empire, not least the reopening of wounds left unhealed after the fall of the Central and Ottoman empires in the wake of World War I. To this must be added the effects of China’s rise, comparable to Prussia’s ascent in the latter half of the nineteenth century. At the outset of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, many officials and commentators rightly stressed that, at least in the eyes of Western Europeans, “high‑intensity” wars had become almost inconceivable in Europe (in the broad sense).

Hence the question: since it ended in 1989–1991, might the Cold War itself—precisely because it was, in reality, at the scale of the world as seen from the West, a long period of peace (albeit under the shadow of nuclear weapons)—one day appear as the “truest cause” of a World War III? Having lost their sense of tragedy, Europeans, locked in an idealist vision, refused to see that the entire continent was being swept into a vortex they would quickly lose control of. Instead of facing reality, they took refuge in the comforting dream of the “end of history”: the irresistible spread of market economics and democracy would lead to perpetual peace; the age of wicked autocrats was definitively over.

Yet as early as 1990–1991, the first cracks appeared in Yugoslavia. Slovenia immediately declared independence, and Croatia sought to follow. Both common sense and treaties (the Helsinki Charter) dictated negotiating a comprehensive agreement to manage the legacy of the political unit created after World War I and reshaped by Josip Broz Tito, using Stalinist methods, after World War II; then held together with an iron hand by this nationalist, anti‑Stalinist autocrat until his death in 1980 at the age of 88. But the European Community (not yet called the Union), then twelve members strong, failed to rise to the occasion. The Federal Republic of Germany, under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans‑Dietrich Genscher, pressed relentlessly for immediate recognition of Croatia. It seems the two men, wary of the historic closeness between France and Serbia, saw Croatia as a kind of counterweight. Thus the memory of the past can resurface quickly when circumstances change. The Twelve proved unable to unite in the face of countries beginning to tear themselves apart. The excellent Carrington Plan of 1991, supported by France, therefore failed. Its central idea was to condition recognition of the political units emerging from Yugoslavia’s breakup on a comprehensive settlement, including minority issues.

The Soviets missed the same opportunity by allowing the disintegration of the USSR to proceed in disorder. In this sense, the Russians (Gorbachev and above all Yeltsin) were the first architects of their own misfortunes. The West was not blameless either: at the turn of the twenty‑first century, convinced that the winds were blowing toward the end of history, it dismissed the Kremlin’s request—once it had regained some strength—for a revision of Europe’s security architecture as a whole. In the West of that era, not a single statesman rose to the level of vision demanded by the circumstances. Certainly not among the American neoconservatives, nor among the Democrats who in practice resembled them on the question of regime change, seen as the solution to all problems.

Diplomatic failure in former Yugoslavia paved the way for a horrific war. Ultimately, faced with European and UN impotence, the United States took the lead—something that should never have happened. I will later discuss the destabilization of the Islamic world, and of course the rise of China, which at the time was not yet central to global concerns. But before turning to these subjects and revisiting the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, while reflecting on the geopolitical turning points since then—and noting that outside Russia, which was never seduced by the utopia of the end of history, no one bothered to update Europe’s security architecture—I must state my conviction: the current possibility of a World War III must be taken very seriously. If only to increase the chances of avoiding it, by resisting the return of the fatalistic atmosphere that marked the early twentieth century. That, in truth, is the deeper reason for publishing this book.

 

The Partial Causes of the Soviet Union’s Collapse and the Ideology of the End of History

Since we take as our starting point the fall of the Soviet Union, it is first necessary to consider the “causes” of this extraordinary event—so extraordinary that, until 1987, virtually no one apart from Emmanuel Todd had seriously contemplated its near-term possibility. Not even an analyst as lucid as Raymond Aron (who died in 1983). Faced with such a highly complex phenomenon, we can only speak of partial causes, bearing in mind that what happened might have occurred much later, and in very different ways. We must always beware of retrospective determinism.

It seems to me that at least four major partial causes can be discerned. The first two belong to the category of “truest causes,” the other two to “immediate causes.”

The first was the profound corruption of the Soviet state and society—a reality that contemporaries, abroad but perhaps even within the USSR, still underestimated in the early 1980s. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn denounced it with all the force of his voice, which contributed to his aura in the West during the 1970s and to the decline of Soviet soft power beyond its borders. In France, this was one factor behind the success of François Mitterrand’s Union of the Left at the turn of the 1980s. In recalling these facts, one should not forget that Solzhenitsyn also vigorously denounced the decadence of the West (his famous Harvard speech dates from June 8th, 1978). It is easy to imagine what he might have said about later developments, had he lived to witness the age of gender theory, “wokeism,” or the widening ideological divides at the heart of American society today. How would he have awarded good and bad marks in the contest of decadence? To what extent can we imagine the structural stability of societies without Law?

The second and third partial causes lay in the Soviet economic system’s inability to adapt to technological progress, particularly in the context of the arms race. This point was better understood at the time. One recalls President Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” of 1983 (the “Star Wars” program) and its intended effects. The Soviet inability to align their economy with the demands of innovation had already become apparent in the 1950s. Leaders feared losing political control. And indeed (the third partial cause), that is precisely what happened when Gorbachev blindly embarked on the adventure of reform. Disconnected leaders ran headlong into the wall of incompetence—both in conceiving and in implementing reforms. A situation radically different from that of China under Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s. Gorbachev, a likable but overwhelmed man, resigned himself to letting the Soviet external empire slip away, without seeking to tie his consent to guarantees for his country’s lasting economic and political security. In the aftermath, Boris Yeltsin facilitated the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, without seriously attempting to organize it in order to prevent inevitable consequences such as minority issues in the republics. Had he been someone other than himself, he would have demanded—and probably obtained—an adjustment of Europe’s security architecture. In short, Yeltsin left only time bombs behind.

Later, under the influence of countries such as Poland and Lithuania—who saw the moment as an opportunity to rid themselves forever of the eternal Russian threat—the Western alliance, increasingly emboldened as the path seemed ever clearer, gradually donned the mantle of a victor and de facto embarked on a policy of expansion toward the former Soviet socialist republics. Beginning, of course, with Ukraine and Georgia, where powerful nationalist movements existed, strongly supported by their diasporas. Certain influential geopolitical thinkers, the most famous being Zbigniew Brzezinski, strongly encouraged this direction and, more generally, the maximal extension of “Euro-Atlantic institutions.”

According to the dominant ideology of the 1990s and beyond—of which Francis Fukuyama quickly became the emblematic figure—such expansion was the most natural thing in the world, as if states possessed a kind of natural right to dispose unilaterally of their alliances. It is true that the Soviets themselves had supported this view in the Helsinki Accords, under the influence of a miscalculation. In any case, this assertion—still constantly heard today despite the evolution of the war in Ukraine—is a historical aberration. Henry Kissinger had already noted it perfectly in his doctoral thesis on the Congress of Vienna: states are interdependent for their security, just as they are for their economies; security is relative, not absolute. It requires both a balance of forces and a balance of interests. The diplomatic effort that leads to this requires from each party a deep understanding of the concerns of others—in short, empathy. It is also worth recalling that the concepts of “state” and “people” do not overlap, and that few principles are more ambiguous, and therefore more dangerous, than the “right of peoples to self-determination,” which stands in manifest contradiction to the postulate of the inviolability of borders.

The fourth partial cause of the Soviet Union’s collapse was the war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. It followed the Iranian revolution throughout 1978, which led to the Shah’s exile on January 16th, 1979, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini on February 1st, and the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was also at the end of 1979 that, after hesitation, the Soviet politburo decided to invade Afghanistan, whose already fragile communist regime seemed on the verge of collapse. The overthrow of the Shah, one of America’s major allies during the Cold War, was not in itself bad news for the USSR. But the rise of an Islamic regime in Tehran, with the risk of contagion to Kabul, was indeed bad news—because of its possible, if not probable, impact on the Soviet republics of Central Asia.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was to have immense consequences, far beyond the collapse of the USSR itself, by igniting Islamist ideology wherever possible, and with it Islamist terrorism. It was also at the end of 1979 that the seizure of hostages at the Grand Mosque in Mecca occurred, carried out by a group of anti-Saudi fundamentalists. The correlation between these two events—the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Mecca hostage crisis—against the backdrop of Shiite (Iran) versus Sunni (Saudi Arabia) rivalry, is striking. One may, with Gilles Kepel and others, regard 1979 as the pivotal year marking the failure of Arab nationalism and the emergence both of Islamist ideology and of jihadism, which would profoundly shape the early twenty-first century.

What truly matters in the brief analysis above of the causes of the Soviet Union’s collapse is a double observation. First, the immense failure of the USSR itself—unable to reform, ultimately responsible for its own downfall and for some of its most deadly consequences, both for Russia and for the international system as a whole. Second, the failure of the West, increasingly appearing as a single bloc, which—far from adopting a detached perspective at the level of History with a capital H—settled into self-satisfaction and the bourgeois comfort of the simplistic ideology of the “end of history.” Not Marx’s or Lenin’s end of history, but Francis Fukuyama’s. I characterize it as a kind of reversible chemical equation:

The mere collapse of the USSR would not suffice to justify choosing it as the endpoint of the twentieth century. Equally important was the ideological dynamic that accompanied it. I see this dynamic as a major aspect of the Cold War victory that the West gradually claimed for itself. It has two faces, which I deliberately sketch in schematic form.

The first is the reversal of crusades. In the Soviet era, the declared objective of Moscow was the worldwide extension of communist revolution, especially into Europe. It was, in a sense, Trotsky’s program carried forward after the unexpected triumph of “revolution in one country.” Now—without necessarily stating it so bluntly—the West, inflated with its good conscience, dreamed of extending democratic revolution across the globe, particularly to the former socialist states and even to Russia itself.

The second face was so-called liberal or neo-liberal globalization, already well underway in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which would dominate the international economy for at least two decades around the year 2000. This globalization was, of course, largely driven by American corporations at the forefront of the digital revolution.

Looking more closely at the “end of history” equation, one sees that none of its four terms is precisely defined. Democracy takes many forms, and many concrete democracies today suffer from an inability to identify relevant political-economic problems, let alone resolve them. This is the case in several European countries—alas, including France—or even the European Union as a whole. It is always useful to return to the sources of democratic thought. But the real contemporary problem is not about roots, but about effectiveness: under what conditions can a particular form of governance, considered democratic, foster the identification of internal or external problems facing a given political unit? Under what conditions can it resolve them? Can democracy survive when it becomes powerless? Democracy does not, of course, have a monopoly on this question. My point is simply that democracy is not an end in itself, but a type of means suited to certain kinds of ends.

As for the market economy, both the autopsy of the first wave of globalization and current experience show that it operates within power relations often far removed from the lessons of international economics textbooks. In this respect, Lenin’s theory of imperialism retains some relevance. Note also that, to this day, none of the Western (especially American) attempts to impose a democratic regime on a country lacking even a minimal tradition in that regard has succeeded. And if one accepts that by pushing Ukraine or Georgia toward entry into “Euro-Atlantic institutions,” the Americans aimed—or still aim, without necessarily framing it as a strategic goal—at Russia’s eventual conversion, the fact remains that they encountered a strong reaction in the land of the tsars. It is too simplistic to attribute this solely to the villainy of Vladimir Putin. As if, by relying on a thought experiment based on our knowledge of past dissidents or today’s small elite tempted by the West, it were self-evident that the Russian population, once well informed, could only unanimously endorse the thesis of the end of history.

One also thinks of the “democratic hope” supposedly embodied by the Tiananmen Square demonstrators, harshly repressed by Deng Xiaoping. Here again we encounter a way of thinking that is widespread, but based not on historical reflection, but on ideology. In reality, as this book recalls, by the end of the “dark decade”—the 1990s—the Russian population aspired only to escape chaos. To that end, it awaited a strong leader inspired more by a certain idea of national independence than by the Euro-Atlantic concept. One can at least credit Boris Yeltsin with not choosing his successor solely to protect his family from the consequences of his own corruption. Had he chosen poorly, that successor would likely have quickly failed, dragging his mentor down with him.

The concepts of peace and prosperity are no more precise than those of democracy and market economy. Peace, understood as the absence of war, only takes on full meaning when inscribed in duration. It then refers to the set of rules—implicit or explicit—accepted by all stakeholders, especially regarding their own revision when circumstances require, rules that make the structural stability of non-war highly probable. This set of rules must be compatible with international law, but does not derive from it. One cannot stress enough the importance of arms control and other procedures—such as peacekeeping measures—established after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, in the happy outcome of the Cold War (the absence of a real war). Nuclear deterrence was not the only factor. The concept of democracy is too imprecise to claim that, in combination with a market economy—which itself generates conflicts—democracies are inherently sources of peace without additional mechanisms. As for prosperity, it is inseparable from the distribution of wealth, which is itself a source of conflict.

In the end, I do not think I am mistaken in affirming that the time of the “end of history” has not been announced—though nothing prevents anyone from stepping outside reality and speculating in eschatological terms. Keeping our feet on the ground, we observe that globalization is currently fragmenting, for reasons analyzed in these pages as they reveal themselves.

 

The End of Peace Began in the Islamic World

To summarize, my view of the contemporary world stems from the fact that, at the height of liberal (or neo-liberal) globalization, the idea of a legitimate crusade to hasten the supposedly inevitable advent of democracy worldwide was very much in the air—at least in the atmosphere breathed by the West. As an ideological project, not explicit but revealed through behavior, this was in a sense the Western response to the collapse of the communist project. That project had itself reflected, in its own way, a crude secular transposition of the Christian proselytism that had accompanied European expansion since the early modern era. In various forms, this question of a crusade for “democracy” is omnipresent in this book, particularly with regard to the Islamic world.

It began with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which in retrospect appears as one of the major events of the latter twentieth century. That revolution reopened the game in Iran, which under the Shah had been a close ally of the United States against the USSR. Judging by its consequences, the victory of the mullahs was indeed a real defeat for the West—far more than was recognized at the time. This episode was immediately followed, during the 1980s, by two long wars: Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran to the west, and the USSR’s war in Afghanistan to the east, which I have already briefly mentioned. The first ended in a stalemate, as both the West and the Soviets preferred: neither had reason to choose between Saddam and Ayatollah Khomeini. They preferred a balance of power between the two. The second ended in the defeat of the USSR, to which the United States contributed greatly by supporting the mujahideen from western Pakistan. The mujahideen multiplied their followers. Yet after the Soviet defeat, Washington simply turned away from Afghanistan—and from Pakistan as well—allowing the Taliban to make their bed.

In the summer of 1990, Saddam Hussein—having failed to capitalize on revolution in his great neighbor—sought this time to exploit the fact that Western attention was focused on events in Eastern Europe. He invaded Kuwait. As ten years earlier, the aim was first to seize the neighbor’s resources. After some hesitation (I omit the details), President George H.W. Bush, prodded by Margaret Thatcher, assembled an armada—based in Saudi Arabia—to block the Iraqi dictator. Was it not said that, had he won in Kuwait, the strongman of Baghdad intended to invade Saudi Arabia? In any case, Bush senior had the wisdom to refuse to go as far as overthrowing the dictator, despite many urging him to do so. From then on, the Americans (and by extension, the West—though I simplify) found themselves with two clearly identified state adversaries in the Middle East: Iran, which had humiliated them with the hostage crisis throughout 1980; and Iraq, suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. Two poles whose mere existence encouraged the structuring and expansion of non-state anti-Western forces in the Muslim world, all the more so since the Soviet Union—or Russia—was (temporarily) out of the game. Meanwhile, the West, rallied behind the United States, saw itself more than ever as a united bloc destined to become the planet’s natural leader. Hence Al-Qaeda and September 11th, 2001, the cooling of U.S.-Saudi relations amid suspicions of terrorist financing, and so forth.

In 2003, George W. Bush’s war, the son’s continuation of his father’s story, followed directly from these events—disregarding international law, to which great powers generally refer only instrumentally. Bill Clinton’s successor decided to overthrow Saddam. In his eyes, his father should have done so in 1990. He was convinced he could easily install a democratic, and therefore friendly, regime in his place. Reading the history of this adventure, it is hard not to draw a parallel with the one Vladimir Putin would embark upon less than twenty years later. At the time, American neoconservative think tanks and others explicitly theorized regime change and nation building in all good conscience—as if nation-building were a matter of engineering! In practice, the occupying forces in Iraq handled matters so poorly that veterans of Saddam Hussein’s regime would later play leading roles in the future Islamic State (Daesh or ISIS). More than twenty years after Bush’s war—presented, of course, as a battle of Good against Evil—the Iraqi state is still not consolidated; while American forces withdrew ignominiously from Afghanistan at the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, leaving behind a disastrous situation in terms of human rights, especially women’s rights. In the West, who seriously cares today? The self-proclaimed guardians of Good prefer to look away.

Compared with George W. Bush, Joe Biden has been a perfect representative of American democratic proselytism in its softer version. In the meantime, there was also the disaster of the “Arab Spring,” to which I remain astonished that so many hopes were attached. One always returns to the dialectic of idealism and realism. By provoking Libya’s collapse, the elimination of Gaddafi paved the way for jihadism into sub-Saharan and West Africa. As for Syria’s atrocious civil war, it too massively accelerated migration flows toward Europe.

Faced with this chaos and the post-Soviet redistribution of power, we find geopolitical stakes that resemble those of the nineteenth century more than those of the twentieth. And even in this rapid overview, I have not mentioned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly since the Oslo Accords of 1993, which collapsed after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4th, 1995. The main source of hope in a region that broadly constitutes Europe’s southern flank—at a time when Europe’s weight there continues to diminish—is that several major Arab states now seem tempted to play a constructive role in escaping the maelstrom. One thinks first of Saudi Arabia since the accession of King Salman. The kingdom seeks to show that it can and wants to enter modernity without severing itself from its roots—the most important of which, by far, is Islam. By “entering modernity,” I mean: engaging with the world, but maintaining a critical distance from others.

The fundamental issue, underlying the broad landscape I have just sketched, concerns Islam itself in international politics—at a time when Islamist attacks have multiplied and, in many respects, reshaped the world since September 11th, 2001. To gain some clarity, one must once again return to World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The Muslim Brotherhood emerged in Egypt at that time. In reality, the states of the region were governed through League of Nations mandates; monarchies (the histories of Saudi Arabia and Jordan are particularly instructive, as are those of the Gulf Emirates, whose independence is much more recent); military regimes that succeeded one another, as in Egypt after King Farouk’s deposition, in Iraq after the fall of the Hashemite monarchy, or in Syria; single-party regimes inspired by the Soviet model, as in Algeria since independence, and so forth. None of these regimes was democratic in the Western sense. Some were legitimate. Few possessed the means of true independence. All were subject to near-constant shocks. Over time—and very clearly since the fall of the Soviet Union—Western countries ceased to inspire would-be revolutionaries, as in Africa too.

In these conditions, the only credible ideological resource that seems to remain for now is Islam. From a sociological perspective, this religion has unique characteristics at the most basic level. It is simple to access and to practice; it claims to provide precise behavioral keys in earthly life that guarantee or forbid access to paradise; it does not distinguish between worldly affairs and those of heaven. The Prophet was, objectively, a great military leader. The speed of his conquests and the persistence of their imprint are striking. Hence, for example, the stabilizing role of the “Commander of the Faithful” in Morocco’s monarchy and the “Guardian of the Holy Places” in Saudi Arabia’s. I do not know to what extent Karl Marx specifically considered Islam as the “opium of the people.” This sociological aspect of religion will not dominate indefinitely, but for now it can play both negatively and positively.

As everyone knows, the magnificent Arabic language is that of the Qur’an, and the Kaaba is in Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. Yet it is often Cairo’s Al-Azhar University that is seen as the “Vatican” of Islam, though nothing equivalent to the papacy exists there. Politically, Egypt also competes with Turkey, to which Erdoğan has restored Ottoman colors. Atatürk had drawn closer to the West; Erdoğan distances himself from it. As for Persia—today’s Iran—it has succeeded, through Shiism, in creating a national Islam that radiates into Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Since the Iranian Revolution, this entire regional space—which covers Europe’s southern flank and extends beyond, notably toward Asia—has been in ferment.

From a civilizational standpoint, it positions itself against the West, where the sociological and political figure of Christendom is disappearing, which could in time also bring about the decline of Orthodox civilization.

China is often cited as a case that, according to Régis Debray, “has no need of God.” Politically, however, China is de facto under the grip of a single party that stifles religious organizations it perceives as threats, with slogans reminiscent of the old Soviet Communist Party. They seem drawn from a catechism in which the abstract figure of “the People” replaces that of God—“People, thy will be done”—and the Communist Party stands in for the Church. That spirituality itself is repressed does not mean it has disappeared. In another context, the West does not reject spirituality, but it grants it little place in the political sphere, now openly dominated by libertarian currents. By contrast, in the Islamic world there exists a common substratum in the way politics is conceived—very far from the “progressive” conception of democracy as it continues to evolve in the West, especially since the explosion of information and communication technologies, one of the defining markers of the early twenty-first century.

Does this mean that confrontation between the West and Islam is inevitable, as one interpretation of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis would suggest? I do not believe that is the right way to frame the issue. One of the themes that will recur, explicitly or implicitly, throughout this book is that, to preserve peace in an interdependent international system, each political unit must understand and respect the identity and fundamental interests of the others—as they themselves conceive them—within a framework of shared rules, wisely interpreted for the common management of externalities. That, one might say, is what good governance truly means.

In truth, the governance of today’s world rests on several nested frameworks, beginning with the various multilateral organizations at global or regional scale, more or less directly linked to the United Nations system, whose Charter forms the foundation of international law to which, in principle, all international relations are subject. There are also less formal institutions that have gradually emerged, such as the G7 or the G20. In a world in flux, the composition and functioning of these governance bodies naturally provoke fierce debate. Yet beyond this issue, particularly in the realm of security, international law gives rise to a wide range of interpretations—so wide that even the notion of aggression can be relativized. Above all, it suffers from the absence of an enforcement authority independent of states. This is the inevitable consequence of the fact that the world does not exist as a political unit. In practice, in matters of security, many UN resolutions remain dead letters unless a “group of principal nations” commits itself to enforcing them.

In any case, both in principle and in reality, there is no justification for proselytism—whether of democracy or of Islam—other than through natural influence or within the aforementioned frameworks, for example in relation to human rights. In particular, nothing prevents a state, in principle, from refusing the activities on its territory of foreign non-state organizations that campaign for actions perceived as harmful to its identity or security (two concepts closely linked).

Thus, Western countries should in principle respect regimes whose identity-based principles—linked to Islam, for example—do not contradict the obligations those regimes have otherwise undertaken. Conversely, in the example given, states whose political regimes claim Islam as their foundation should refrain from supporting Muslim proselytism (such as the Muslim Brotherhood), especially through refugees or citizens of other countries holding dual nationality (Turkish and French, for instance). Yet with such issues, the greatest difficulties lie in the space of interpretation of law or rules, even within states supposedly defending themselves against threats to their own identity. And interpretation itself is a political act, open to manipulation.

Internationally, the gravest cases are not those of states strong enough to control activities on their territory when such activities risk harming others. Faced with proliferating interferences, such states often have authoritarian regimes—which does not necessarily mean they are not states governed by law. More complex are the cases of quasi-states or failed states, or intermediate situations where illicit operations at home are deliberately ignored.

With the unilateral increase in refugee flows and migration—toward Europe especially, as after the “Arab Spring”—the risks of destabilization grow. It must be emphasized that everything related to Islamist terrorism or jihadism stems from actors who thrive in the cracks of local or international governance—cracks that opened or widened after the fall of the Soviet Union—and in the ambiguities of interpretive spaces around rules.

The relationship between democratic West and political Islam also reveals contradictions that are, in some respects, salutary. On one hand, it is in the nature of Western democracy, with its libertarian tendency, to leave the door wide open to all winds. Yet one understands that if a European democracy, in order finally to protect itself, were to give way to an authoritarian regime, this would be perceived as an oxymoron. And indeed, the quest for authority is often the easiest response to a multifaceted danger. On the other hand, after the war following the October 7th, 2023 raid, it seems that—driven by their aspiration to a measure of modernity—some Islamic regimes remain drawn to cooperation with Israel and increasingly willing to support a peace plan in the spirit of the Oslo Accords (the two-state solution, Jewish and Palestinian). Meanwhile, until the fate of the Islamic Republic of Iran is resolved, they continue—though with diminishing credibility—to let it appear as the champion of the Palestinian cause in the Muslim world. Each side thus reveals a contradiction between principles and interests.

But the reality of international politics, compared with neat models of good governance such as the one I sketched precisely to highlight the need for a kind of non-aggression pact between countries with different political and economic systems, presents itself rather as a tangled knot—difficult, if not impossible, to cut. In any case, while the most critical knot in the Islamic sphere seems to be the rivalry between Sunni and Shia worlds, it is remarkable that the first attempt at rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran took place under Beijing’s auspices (March 10th, 2023). It must also be noted that, as a consequence of the war that began on October 7th, 2023, Iran’s position has been considerably weakened.

 

Russia and China

At the beginning of this century, despite September 11th, 2001 and its aftermath, the global political context of globalization could still serve as a source of inspiration. China’s rise—then deploying all the charm it could muster—did not yet overly alarm the Americans. The strongman long awaited by the Russians, elected president in 2000, was the unknown figure appointed prime minister the previous year by Boris Yeltsin: Vladimir Putin.

Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin, this man, a product of the KGB, had nothing to appeal to the West. He was chosen not to establish a democracy alien to Russia’s history, but to restore the state from the debris left by the collapse of the communist regime. His two priorities were the restoration of the “vertical of power” and the reestablishment of order within the Federation, notably in Chechnya. The way he carried out this plan immediately earned him the hostility of Western intellectuals, especially within the think-tank community in both the United States and Europe. At the level of interstate relations, however, there was initially some accommodation. The Kremlin was far too weak to oppose NATO’s expansion into the Baltic states. At the same time, the West—more imbued with the hope of the “end of history” than with its lessons—worked to establish a partnership with its former adversary, which had joined the G7 in 1997 (becoming the G8 the following year).

Some may even have sincerely believed in the possibility of Russia joining NATO, while also questioning the organization’s long-term viability. Yet Russia’s second president observed America’s highly aggressive activities—not necessarily state-led—particularly in Ukraine and Georgia, countries openly fractured since the Soviet Union’s collapse. To a lesser degree, in Central Asia as well. He judged these activities increasingly anti-Russian, especially during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” at the end of 2004, and the unabashedly pro-American and pro-European stance of Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president since the beginning of that year. Most experts agree on dating the new East-West rupture to 2005—that is, the start of George W. Bush’s second term in the United States, with its neoconservative embrace of regime change. Since then, the new history of East-West relations has been one of slow deterioration, made inevitable by the absence in the West of a true leader capable of facing Putin.

On the military front, the end of the first decade of the century was marked by the “little war” in Georgia in August 2008 over South Ossetia, and the middle of the second by the annexation of Crimea in 2014, following Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and the ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Two “special military operations” before the “real one,” namely the invasion of February 24th, 2022. Regarding the first, I note above all that Saakashvili made the fatal mistake of underestimating the Russians and overestimating the Americans. Regarding the second—which was immediately followed by the outbreak of war in the Donbas—I note first that it provoked no immediate reaction other than sanctions. Naturally, both operations had been prepared by the Russians as possible options. Moreover, from the mid-2000s onward, U.S. policy increasingly and openly pushed for the maximal eastward expansion of Euro-Atlantic institutions. Thus, at NATO’s Bucharest summit in 2008, Germany and France failed to prevent the final communiqué from mentioning Ukraine and Georgia’s “aspiration” to join NATO. But it was only in 2019 that Ukraine enshrined this objective in its Constitution.

Reflecting for many years on the failure of the post-Cold War settlement, I have continually asked myself about Vladimir Putin’s objectives. At least I feel compelled to pose the question, while so many colleagues, politicians, and commentators endlessly repeat that his aim is nothing less than the reconstitution of the Soviet empire. Such a judgment, unrealistic given the state of Russia’s economy, is unfalsifiable in Karl Popper’s sense, since no one can inhabit another’s mind. Moreover, “All that is excessive is insignificant,” as Talleyrand and others have said. What is not insignificant is what this judgment conceals: it is a way of cutting short all strategic reasoning, all data analysis, all effort to understand the interests of the various political units involved. In short, it is a way of sweeping aside realism in the name of morality.

In the case of the war in Ukraine, it is too easy to claim that, since Putin intends to conquer Europe, Ukrainians are fighting to save it. Ergo: European support for Ukraine must be unlimited. More deeply, by attributing to Putin such absurd objectives, and implicitly opposing him to Russian citizens by insinuating that they aspire to democracy overnight, one justifies the proselytism of democratic ideology analyzed earlier, and thus the idea of a natural confrontation—Good versus Evil—with its corollary: as in good films, Good can only triumph.

That is not my view. After restoring the vertical of power and reestablishing order, Putin’s third realistic objective could only be to prevent at all costs the emergence on Russia’s borders of governments claiming Western (especially American) support, and therefore, in the eyes of the Kremlin, threatening Russia’s national interest. One may be American or French and react emotionally against this mode of reasoning, but it is the reasoning of any normally constituted state. In fact, the United States has never renounced the Monroe Doctrine, and Western Europeans reacted no differently to the communist threat after World War II, despite “fifth columns.” Realism requires us to look at political units as they are, and not to make international law say what it does not. And when, in the course of a war, the time comes to prepare for peace, one must think objectively about the balance of forces and interests.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, alongside the world that is unraveling or struggling to remake itself—sometimes violently—there is also the world that is being built, and first of all, China. From the rise of Mao Zedong in 1949, and with him the restoration of strong authority in the Middle Kingdom after a long period of dormancy and submission to foreign powers, Western observers speculated about the consequences of its awakening, particularly in the economic sphere. By the mid-twentieth century, it was already commonplace to predict that the twenty-first would belong to China, and more broadly to Asia. In France, Alain Peyrefitte’s book Quand la Chine s’éveillera… le monde tremblera (“When China Awakens… the World Will Tremble”), published in 1973, was a massive bestseller. And yet, Mao’s great failure was the economy. Like most leaders of the “Third World” after independence, the “Great Helmsman” thought exclusively in political terms, while perhaps dreaming of a prosperous society founded on a socialism “with Chinese characteristics.”

After Mao’s death, the reformist faction led by Deng Xiaoping prevailed—not easily—thanks to the downfall of the “Gang of Four,” which it helped provoke in the wake of Zhou Enlai’s death. Mao himself died in 1976. From then on, a new era opened, comparable to Japan’s Meiji era beginning in 1868. This brings us back to the fertility of the idea of historical resemblance. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Manchu dynasty was still standing, and there was indeed a reformist faction in Beijing. But it missed its chance. A little more than a century later, by seizing power within the Communist Party as the Japanese reformers had done—thanks to the emperor’s support within the strong shogunate system—the Chinese reformers accomplished a work comparable in scope to that of their Japanese predecessors, and in roughly the same time frame. That alone is a subject for reflection.

The moment at which this book begins—when the Soviet empire was visibly cracking on all sides—was also the moment when the first encouraging signs of Chinese reform began to appear, along with signs of popular relaxation. Hence the Tiananmen Square events of spring 1989, harshly repressed due to Deng Xiaoping’s adherence to the hard line. In that circumstance, Deng conformed to the principle that reform can only be undertaken with clear ideas and from a position of strength. As Tocqueville observed, a regime in difficulty is never so vulnerable as when it undertakes reform. I have no doubt that, faced with a comparable situation today, Xi Jinping would act the same way. At the time, Sino-Soviet relations were abysmal. Fate had it that, in an effort to improve them, Mikhail Gorbachev was physically in Beijing during those famous events in May. His visit was somewhat disrupted. The detail is symbolic. Gorbachev failed in Russia because of the conceptual weakness of his small circle of reformers around Alexander Yakovlev, the weakness of what the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had become, and the weakness of his own support within the party. And the situation did not improve after his ouster by Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s.

In China, by contrast, both the line and the power consolidated under the authority of successive presidents after Tiananmen: Jiang Zemin (1989-2002), Hu Jintao (2003-2012), and Xi Jinping since 2013. Jiang Zemin, a shrewd and subtle politician, managed to foster conditions favorable to reform domestically—which was far from obvious—but also abroad: it was necessary to create a climate of trust solid enough to transform China into a subcontractor and importer for Western companies, while multiplying information-gathering missions around the world to draw useful lessons for China’s transformation; and to secure accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), without which the grand strategy could not fully unfold. Among the prominent Chinese figures of the time, Zhu Rongji, prime minister from 1998 to 2003, is particularly remembered for playing a decisive role in WTO entry. This was the era when China’s economic growth rates approached 10 percent per year.

Successes continued in the same direction during Hu Jintao’s decade. But already by the end of Jiang Zemin’s presidency, reforms had entered a more delicate phase (transformation of major conglomerates, demographic issues, etc.). As a middle class began to emerge and expand, popular expectations grew more demanding. From then on, the social contract was clear: the future legitimacy of the Party would depend on its ability to meet these expectations, and naturally on the international context. That context gave the regime room to maneuver by allowing it to play the nationalist chord. But by the end of his term, Hu Jintao was regarded as a weak leader.

His successor Xi Jinping quickly established himself as a strongman, even authoritarian. Faced with looming difficulties, the era of collective Party leadership was over. In 2018, Xi abolished the provision introduced by Deng Xiaoping that limited the presidency to two terms. His “thought” is now inscribed in the Constitution, as Mao’s once was. He relies on his relentless fight against corruption and a muscular conduct of foreign policy, increasingly nationalist in tone. In 2019-2020, the regime brought opponents to heel in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, whose status has been de facto normalized nearly a quarter-century before the legal deadline of 2047. It displays an uncompromising policy domestically in Xinjiang (with the Uyghurs) and Tibet; externally in the East and South China Seas, and naturally toward Taiwan. Let us recall in passing that the objective of Taiwan’s “reunification” (then called Formosa) was declared by Mao from the outset. Xi Jinping has also brought the oligarchs to heel without, for now, overly affecting the national economy. On that front, the greater peril came from COVID-19 and Western reactions to China’s practice of dumping.

The rapid emergence of a new great power within the international system often leads to war, as the American political scientist Graham Allison reminded us in his book The Thucydides Trap (2019). In the euphoria of liberal globalization and the ideology of the “end of history,” Western nations—though fully aware of the stakes at the close of the twentieth century—nonetheless chose to support China’s rise. The Middle Kingdom was to provide them with cheap mass production and expanded markets. This process also fueled a long period of global growth without inflation. Perhaps, at the time, Western corporations preferred not to imagine the extent to which the Chinese would seize the opportunity to appropriate their technologies and prepare themselves, when the moment came, to become formidable competitors.

Did we commit a colossal error of judgment in adopting this strategy, whose symbolic value was displayed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics? I do not believe it would have been wise to attempt to block China’s development head-on. And above all, I certainly do not claim here to rewrite history. The question now is to fully acknowledge that we will not convert the Middle Kingdom into a libertarian democracy, and to attempt instead to redefine constructive relations with it within a framework of global governance that remains to be shaped. The other branch of the alternative—confrontation—would lead to an escalation of uncontrolled crises, as with Russia, but with far greater stakes.

Over the long term, we will all continue to evolve, each with our good and bad moments. The urgent objective we must set ourselves is to learn to co-manage an international system that is increasingly complex, inevitably heterogeneous, while striving to keep it reasonably open. One of China’s advantages, in this respect, is that it is not driven by any ideological proselytism, unlike the West or Islam. Its leaders may be very tough negotiators, but they are better prepared than anyone else to approach common problems with realism—and therefore to seek compromise.

 

From the Third World to the Global South

I now turn to North-South relations. In this respect too, the collapse of the Soviet Union marked an important transition. During the first three decades of the Cold War, people spoke of the “Third World,” a term coined by the French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952, inseparable politically from the concept of non-alignment (Bandung Conference, 1955). Most of the states concerned were engaged in the process of decolonization. They were caught in the nets of East-West rivalry, exposed to the soft power of Marxism-Leninism—particularly Lenin’s theory of imperialism—and, as a model for development, the economic practices of the USSR. In reality, as I recalled in relation to Mao Zedong, most of the great leaders of this Third World thought only in political terms, like the best-known among them: Mao in China, Nehru in India, Sukarno in Indonesia.

It was in East Asia that change first began to manifest itself, from the 1960s or 1970s depending on the case, with the “tigers” or “dragons” of the time: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea—four states whose size and history predisposed them to development outside both democracy and Marxism–Leninism. The success of the vast PRC also benefited greatly from the experience of the overseas Chinese. But it was only from the early 1990s, with the disappearance of communist soft power and the rise of liberalism, that India, for example, began to take off (under the impetus of Manmohan Singh). As an expression, “Third World” survived for a time, especially since China continued to claim membership for sound economic and political reasons. Underdevelopment does not vanish overnight in a country of 1.4 billion people. But since the terminology was tied to the idea of two dominant worlds—a Western bloc and a socialist bloc—people soon stopped speaking of the Third World. When distinctions are not pushed—between least developed, underdeveloped, emerging, or developing countries—the customary term now is “South,” or even “Global South.”

My aim here is to highlight certain underlying ideological aspects of great importance. To this end, I begin with the acronym BRIC, coined in 2003 by Goldman Sachs analysts and immediately adopted by a wide public. I discuss it in Chapter 19 of this book, which already foreshadows the Global South. These four letters designate the two communist giants of the Cold War era (Russia, China), the largest Third World country of that time (India), and the largest country in Latin America—“a country of the future, and always will be,” as Clemenceau and de Gaulle said (Brazil). The four original states, to which I wrote in 2010 one might add Turkey among others, were at once strong and poorly developed. None was, or is today, truly close to the United States. They reject the West—or rather the hegemonic pretensions they attribute to it—as a bloc. They do not claim non-alignment (with respect to whom?), but insist on their national independence, particularly their right to cooperate among themselves in a logic of “multi-alignment” (India) or “multi-vectoriality” (in the words of Kazakhstan’s current president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev). As far as possible, of course. All believe they have an important role to play in global governance. I was struck, in November 2009, by a joint trip of Lula and Erdoğan to Tehran, intended to influence Iran’s nuclear policy—an initiative that seemed perfectly incongruous to many at the time.

It seems to me that the “Global South” can be thought of as an informal extension of the BRICs, beyond its own members, mainly to middle powers that share this way of thinking. Without necessarily defining themselves in opposition to individual Western countries, they are increasingly perceived as opposed to “the West” as such—that is, as it continues to claim the right to define Good and Evil, to sanction those who do not share its choices, thereby politicizing international economic relations and distorting multilateralism, as in the case of the war in Ukraine.

On this subject, as on many others, they refuse to have their position imposed upon them. I reproduce a few lines from my 2010 text: “At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the novelty does not lie in principles, but in the unprecedented importance of what I have called heterogeneity. Since the dawn of the modern era, Europeans, and then those we have come to call Westerners, have ruled the world. It is probably a five-century cycle that is ending.” What is rejected today, far more openly than at the creation of the BRICs, is precisely the claim to rule the world. Formerly colonized peoples are naturally sensitive to this theme, but paradoxically so too are former colonial powers, insofar as they sometimes indulge in postures of repentance. Behind political trends lie societal ones, which risk obstructing the common pursuit of good governance—since, for example, when one denigrates oneself, it becomes impossible to demand restraint from others, especially when they use one’s own arguments to reproach you.

In the utopia of happy globalization lay the idea of a universal empire without an emperor, thanks to ideal democratic governance. In the digital age—after the web, social networks, and the rise of artificial intelligence, which led Ray Kurzweil to say that “the singularity” is approaching—the degree of global interpenetration risks making the world ungovernable. A catastrophe would then become inevitable. Is complete openness among nations, George Soros’s “open society,” a philosophically desirable goal? Observing the world, I believe it wiser to adhere to the idea I often invoke of a “reasonably open” world, in which interactions are sufficiently contained to remain comprehensible and therefore manageable. I want to believe we have not yet reached a point of no return—but who can be certain?

A scaled-down model of a reasonably open world—that is precisely what the founding fathers of the European Economic Community sought to build, later transformed into the European Union by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. In words that were not theirs but capture their intent, I would phrase their project thus: to weave ties increasingly difficult to unravel, even on a purely practical level, beginning with shared interests such as coal and steel in the early 1950s. Jean Monnet and others relied on what was not yet called the “spillover theory”: once the process had begun, each success would thicken the web of shared interests and render it increasingly irreversible. The aim of this spillover was the creation of a kind of positive Gordian knot—the true foundation of Europe as a political unit.

Behind the ideal lay an unspoken assumption: that national sentiment would quickly fade under the force of the project, eliminating the risk of historical memories resurfacing to unravel the web. Except that even a Gordian knot can be cut from the outside, or unravel from within, since the threads that bind it are made of living, and therefore corruptible, material. Brexit has already happened. Could Jacques Delors’s vision of a federation of nation-states then be an oxymoron? At the same time, one can understand the necessity of some form of variable-geometry association among European states, in exchange for commitments based on a genuinely shared conception of their common interests. Yet one must admit that nations endure longer than the generations that succeed one another. If proof were needed, the entire post-Soviet history discussed here demonstrates it. This is what Charles de Gaulle meant with his constant distinction between “the French” and “France.” In the life of nations, few external commitments can be considered irreversible. In other words, from a human perspective, any form of European construction based on the idea of a general and definitive transfer of sovereignty from member states to the Union—even conceived as a new type of political unit—is sooner or later doomed to fail. This is the fundamental question of European integration after its many twists and turns since the fall of the Soviet Union. At the heart of the difficulty lies what jurists call the hierarchy of norms, and thus the question of the supremacy of European law over national law.

The process of European construction, strongly encouraged by the United States after World War II, was launched in 1957 under the name European Economic Community (EEC) with the Treaties of Rome (after the failure of the European Defence Community, which must never be forgotten), among six states of very unequal weight: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Institutionally, the most innovative idea was the executive body, the Commission, composed of personalities appointed by the member states (two each), expected to detach themselves—even emotionally—from their countries of origin to embody collectively the general interest of the Community. Over successive enlargements, this founding idea was lost. Commissioners today appear as representatives of the states that appoint them.

For the founding fathers, the Community was meant to expand step by step, without haste, and in accordance with a kind of precautionary principle: each enlargement (geographic or in competences) was to be followed by a phase of digestion or consolidation (called “deepening”) before moving on to the next. In this way, they hoped to build very gradually a new type of political unit, just as in the modern era the nation-state had emerged from the family traditions of the Middle Ages.

Let me recall, in broad strokes, three other key aspects of the Community’s history. First, the fact that it survived the return to power of General de Gaulle in 1958, shortly after its birth. He clearly saw the value of common decision-making processes on certain economic issues. But in the political realm, he conceived only of intergovernmental cooperation. Since the Lisbon Treaty, confusion has arisen between the two levels. It has become manifest in institutional practice, especially since Ursula von der Leyen’s presidency, and one must expect heavy reactions sooner or later. In fact, the Commission’s competences have expanded considerably, both de facto and de jure, over time—at the expense of member states’ sovereignty. The Community, transformed into the Union, has continued to enlarge without regard for the precautionary principle. There were three new members in 1973, one in 1981, two in 1986 (the “Europe of Twelve”), three in 1995 (“Europe of Fifteen”), ten in 2004, two in 2007 (“Europe of Twenty-Seven”), and one in 2013. The United Kingdom withdrew in 2020 (Brexit). We are thus back to a “Europe of Twenty-Seven,” but now once again on the threshold of a new wave of enlargement, with a list of highly heterogeneous states, reflecting the international system as a whole. The current list includes nine candidates: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo (potential candidate), North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Five emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia. The decisions of principle were taken under the sway of emotion, without any historical reflection, and frankly on the basis of the ideology of the “end of history.” More seriously still, this occurred at a time when the technological gap between the United States and Europe continues to widen to our detriment, and when the effects of the war in Ukraine—particularly the dizzying rise in energy costs on the continent—translate into a massive further decline in competitiveness.

Up to the Europe of Fifteen, enlargements had been decided before the fall of the Soviet Union. Only one case had provoked major controversy: that of the United Kingdom. General de Gaulle opposed it radically, with reasoning that touched the deepest roots of European history. Subsequent events largely proved him right. I have recalled that, at the Community’s beginnings, according to the General, it should not pretend to deal with politics. But he perfectly understood that it was a construction of political essence. After him, Georges Pompidou—who saw things more from a business perspective and got along well with British Prime Minister Edward Heath—wanted to leave his mark in this domain. He lifted the Gaullist veto. A less generous interpretation is that he yielded to strong pressure from his partners. The smaller states preferred to face three large member states rather than two. For the notion of balance of power has always remained relevant within Europe. And all were sensitive to the voice of the United States, which reasoned in terms of “Euro-Atlantic institutions” conceived as a whole under its leadership.

Behind a debate that has now been unfolding for more than half a century—quietly outside France—lies a question to which no convincing answer has ever been given: does a sufficiently strong European identity exist to ensure that the new political entity we claim to be building can truly act as a unit vis-à-vis the rest of the world, under all circumstances? Under all circumstances: meaning in the face of the prospect of a real war, one fought at home. Over time, the answer has become less and less obvious. It is true that with the Europe of Fifteen, three neutral countries were added—Austria, Sweden, and Finland—and today only the first has retained that status. As Austria has mastered the art of discreetly safeguarding its interests, it is doing quite well.

But with the enlargements that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, matters became far more complex. Initially, the immediate national interest of the new members was, of course, to benefit from the extraordinary economic and security protection offered by Euro-Atlantic institutions. At the same time, these states were fiercely attached to their newly regained national independence. They were even clearer about their national interest than the older continental states of Western Europe, still burdened by guilt from World War II. Poland or Lithuania, for example, view the war in Ukraine through the lens of long historical time. By contrast, the relationship to Russia in the countries of Southern Europe—including France—is profoundly different. Yet let us repeat: the EU is not a state, nor is it likely to become one. It cannot currently have a genuine foreign policy. And although nearly all of its members are also members of the Atlantic Alliance, the Union itself is not. The Alliance has only one leader: the United States of America. No one would dare speculate on the consequences of a possible U.S. withdrawal from NATO. And since the EU is not a state, it cannot even use trade policy or monetary policy as strategic weapons, as the Americans do. In fact, it has no strategy other than continuing to inscribe itself in the vision of the “end of history.”

I have spoken of the sense of national interest among the EU’s new members. Beyond Germany and France—entangled in transformations amplified by the war in Ukraine—I observe a slow drift toward “each for his own interests” within the Union, a phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the changing spirit of the Commission. It is no longer possible to claim that the Commission defends the “general interest” of the Union. Questions about its legitimacy are likely to grow. More serious still: one may reasonably think that the election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage and the principle of co-decision are, de facto, little more than a democratic façade. Can one seriously maintain that the Strasbourg parliamentarians represent voters who, in a country like France, neither know who they are nor what they do? Likewise, the processes of appointment to positions of responsibility in Brussels appear opaque to public opinion.

The question of the EU’s legitimacy would be less troubling if its decision-making machinery, even if not transparent, at least appeared effective in the eyes of its populations. By effectiveness, I mean the ability to identify clearly the problems to be solved in the common interest and then, having identified them, to resolve them fairly—in both senses of fairness and justice. Yet on many issues—immigration, border protection, and of course defense—the Union falls far short. The record of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements appears mixed. If commitments to further enlargements seem irresponsible, it is not because they lack good intentions. The problem is that they are not thought through on any level.

I believe the time has come for a thorough audit of the European Union in all its aspects, well beyond the Draghi report. Economic questions will inevitably command attention, for in addition to the structural difficulties already mentioned, common burdens are set to increase massively (climate, security, reconstruction of Ukraine, etc.). We must take our time and, in the meantime, devise new formulas to draw closer to the countries knocking at our doors. Until now, the EU has weathered shocks reasonably well, but always in haste, without regard for lasting consequences—as in the case of Ukraine. And even then, the shocks the Union has endured have never been immediately vital to its survival.

I see at least two cases where this could change, regardless of the effectiveness of past spillovers. The first is a questioning of the rules of the game within the Atlantic Alliance: increasingly—already now with Trump—the United States will want Europe to pay the price of its protection. The second would be an implosion of the euro. The ants will not indefinitely pay for the grasshoppers. The viability of a single currency and a single market requires mechanisms of solidarity and transfers accepted as much by those who bear them as by those who benefit from them. Such conditions imply legitimate common institutions, whose emergence and consolidation constitute a unique historical process, in which the successful crossing of each stage can never be considered certain in advance. After the enlargements that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, it was the euro that saved the Union. It would be a mistake to consider it definitively secure, without taking great care of it.

The EU must adapt profoundly and strengthen itself, while respecting the sovereignty of its members to avoid divorces—or worse, decay. This will be all the harder as the United States distances itself. The Union will need to acquire both a head and legs, even to play the role it should vis-à-vis the Global South. It must learn to identify clearly its concrete interests (for example, in relation to Russia and China), and to devise means to defend them. The worst outcome would be for it to continue expanding until it becomes a Gordian knot condemned to rot.

I will conclude with a very brief reflection on the Franco-German relationship. Those who lived through the adventure of European integration in the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the very beginning of the twenty-first know how much it was dominated by Franco-German hope—built on the twin ideas of reconciliation and of a construction that, for the first time, would not be imperial.

What strikes me most is that this period (extended into the early twenty-first century) was shaped by two pairs of statesmen: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, then François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl. In both cases, alliances were forged between personalities with a genuine sense of history, whose tenacious commitment to grand visions enabled the Community, and later the European Union, to surmount decisive stages—under immense pressure of destiny in the second case. Neither Mitterrand nor Kohl was intoxicated by the utopia of the “end of history.” After them, things evolved in a far more muddled and ideological fashion, and no longer did we see Franco-German “pairs” who, over the long term, shared the two essential qualities that make a statesman—whether diplomat or, more simply, entrepreneur in the most fundamental sense of the word: a vision, and the will and capacity to bring it to life by inscribing action in duration. Such a conjunction has become exceedingly rare in democratic countries, in an age dominated above all by communication, and by the carousel of leaders swept in by elections, often without experience.

But that is not all. From the fall of the Berlin Wall and Europe’s reopening to the wider world, the best West European thinkers and practitioners of international relations—particularly Franco-German ones, including, as I can testify, within think tanks recognized by their peers—turned away from European affairs to focus on China or what we now call the Global South. On the Western side, they concentrated far more on the United States than on the other component of the transatlantic sphere. And, as encouraged by the Americans, they focused on the former “countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” which it was decided the European Union must immediately enlarge to include. Some of these countries, such as Poland or Hungary, have acquired real weight within the Union. The role of the Franco-German “couple” or “engine” began to decline, no longer animated by pairs of statesmen who no longer existed.

As the past resurfaced, and as the economic gap between Germany and France widened to the latter’s disadvantage, the question of Europe’s lack of leadership (I speak of deeds, not communication) became increasingly pressing. Then the war in Ukraine, combined with the incomparable economic fragility of the former “great nation,” powerfully undermined European competitiveness. Today, states such as Poland and the Baltic countries occupy the forefront within the Union. It is no longer certain that Germany and France share a common vision of their continent’s future as it approaches a great turning point. If there were a genuine bifurcation to fear in Europe, it would be around Germany and France. For France, the task is first to accomplish at last the economic reforms expected of it for several decades. One measures the magnitude of its responsibility before History: that of France, of course; but also—and some will say above all—that of this small promontory of the Eurasian continent whose destiny is at stake: Europe.

 

Toward a Second Cold War or World War III?

From the preceding pages it emerges that the new era—into which we visibly entered on February 24th, 2022—results from the convergence of three currents whose origins take us back to the late 1970s.

The easiest to identify is the consequence of the reformers’ victory in China. At first, the West wagered—before the phrase existed—on the “end of history,” an ideology that unfolded in the form of so‑called neo‑liberal or, more simply, “happy” globalization. It culminated around the year 2000 in the vision of a “flat world,” described by the star journalist and essayist Thomas Friedman. China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Yet already by the end of the previous century, especially in the United States, concern was growing over the inexorable rise of the Middle Kingdom—even if its leaders were still smiling sweetly at the West.

The second current, which disrupted the first on September 11th, 2001, had already come into the open in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Political Islam gradually supplanted the various expressions of nationalism—mainly Arab—that had marked the era of decolonization. Its pathological form appeared at the same time: Islamist terrorism, or jihadism if one prefers, of which September 11th was the most dramatic turning point. The collapse of the towers in New York temporarily diverted Washington’s attention. In that sense, it facilitated China’s continued takeoff, relatively untroubled until it began to encounter endogenous difficulties—natural for the stage of development it had reached. Then, gradually, Washington began to obstruct Beijing’s wheel, as China’s geopolitical ambitions soon expressed themselves with increasing clarity.

The third current is the one that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which became effective at the end of 1991. This too has its source in the late 1970s, in the confluence of several streams fed by the arms race—intensified by technological advances, especially in the digital domain—along with corruption and poor governance. This current then intersected with rising unrest in the USSR’s Muslim republics, which partly explains the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That invasion was itself a fundamental partial cause of the process that culminated in the disappearance of the USSR.

From a Western perspective, the most decisive event marking the end of the Cold War was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the final decade of the century, Russia sank into immense difficulties, while China continued its ascent. In my view, it was in those years that attitudes began to take shape within the transatlantic sphere—attitudes that would soon lead to the rejection of the West from outside itself, and perhaps partly from within. In earlier pages I spoke of the “end of history equation” and the militant spread of democratic faith as the summary of Western ambitions for resolving conflicts. The most caricatured expression of this non‑strategy will remain George W. Bush’s war in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. All things considered, I am increasingly convinced that the crusade—always presented as a battle of Good against Evil—was the most fundamental cause of the failure of the post-Cold War era, evident from 2005 onward.

This brings us back to the fall of the Soviet Union, which was both the collapse of the communist regime and of the Russian empire. For anyone with a sense of history, the fall of a great empire—even if it appears relatively peaceful at the moment it occurs, as was the case with the USSR—is likely to produce considerable effects for years, if not decades. Obsessed with the spirit of crusade and the rejection of heterogeneity, Western leaders failed to grasp the necessity of negotiating a new European security architecture as a whole, if only to settle minority issues peacefully. After the restoration in Russia of the “vertical of power” under Putin, the matter took on the colors of an arm‑wrestling contest with the West over NATO’s expansion. All the more so since classical geopolitical ideas—propagated notably by Zbigniew Brzezinski—presented, with excellent arguments, Ukraine as the central stake in the future of the Eurasian continent as a whole. The dialogue of the deaf between the West and Russia continued in vain, and on this point, responsibilities are shared. In 2014, Putin succeeded in annexing Crimea, but in 2022 he played the sorcerer’s apprentice and miscalculated badly. At that stage of deterioration, the West could only support Ukraine. I leave it to historians to decide whether the conflict could have been quickly ended. Instead, I will conclude with a few very brief reflections on the future.

As I write these lines in late November 2024, with Donald Trump’s entry into the White House imminent, the war in Ukraine may have entered its terminal phase, and one hopes that no major accident will occur. Subject to that crucial caveat, what broad political and economic balance sheet can already be drawn from this horrific slaughter? First, the war has indeed been between Russia and the West, and it will continue to carry consequences for European interests, which may divide more or less rapidly over the issue. Russia will likely have regained a buffer zone, but in return, so to speak, Ukrainians will have won their right to a nation‑state—probably within borders different from those of 1991. Both direct belligerents will have suffered immense human losses, and their economies will need rebuilding. As a bloc, the West will have finally lost whatever legitimacy it still retained in the eyes of others in managing world affairs. The Global South will not have chosen a side. The transatlantic relationship will enter a more difficult phase. Economically, the United States will have gained much over Europe, whose weakening appears considerable, as we have seen. NATO will have expanded—perhaps even to include the new Ukraine—but at this stage it is difficult to speculate on future security guarantees for that country. The arms race will continue, until the virtues of diplomacy aimed at controlling it (arms control) are rediscovered. In all cases, Europeans will be asked to pay for their defense and for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The failure of the post-Cold War settlement will also have resulted in a rapprochement—nuanced, but in the long term unnatural—between Russia and China. This rapprochement will last as long as the parameters of international politics remain unchanged. Russia will remain a major actor in Middle Eastern affairs, in which the Chinese will increasingly involve themselves—not to mention Africa.

From even a cursory reading of these lines, one can see that the failure of the post-Cold War settlement will sooner or later lead to an end of the war in Ukraine that will not resemble the pseudo‑global peace to which Europeans had grown accustomed since the end of World War II. Rather, one must expect a second Cold War. Its principal actors will be the United States and China. It will be more complex than the first, during which the “Iron Curtain” had a simplifying effect. If a true World War III has not erupted from Ukraine, it could, by contrast, erupt from Taiwan. This is not China’s wish. They are playing a game of go with the Americans that they fully intend to win. But no scenario can be excluded.

In these conditions, it is very difficult to speculate on the future of “global governance,” at a time when the reality of global commons such as climate and health is manifestly evident.

Raymond Aron characterized the First Cold War with his well‑known formula: “impossible peace, improbable war.” The contemporary British historian Niall Ferguson today summarizes it by describing it as “a peace that was not peace.” For him, the Second Cold War will be “a war that will not be war.” This is indeed the most plausible hypothesis—one for which Europeans are wholly unprepared. At the very least, one can hope they will not wallow in the ideological errors of the past, and that they will multiply efforts to rebuild security in Europe and to better understand their collective interests.

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