Prominent French politician and former minister of foreign affairs and presidential advisor on international relations Hubert Vedrine could not have sounded more skeptical about common understandings about the path of international relations, at least on the medium and short terms, as he did during a recent lecture in Cairo.
Speaking at the French Institute in Mounira on Wednesday evening, Vedrine shared his assessment of a complicated map of international relations that has been developing since a few years after the end of the Cold War, when some leading Western countries assumed that the end of the war signaled ultimate victory for the West.
At the well-attended seminar in Cairo, Vedrine argued that today, while it still holds most of the power, the West does not have the upper hand completely in international relations. This lack of full control also applies to the US, which cannot be expected to be impose its visions or ideas on the world – neither in conflicts nor in peacetime.
Vedrine argued that if US President Donald follows through on his promise to launch strikes against Syria over the use of chemical weapons against civilians, such strikes would not resolve the situation in Syria; “the situation there is simply far too complicated.”
According to Vedrine, the situation in Syria goes beyond Bashar Al-Assad and Daesh, and involves the complexities and entangled relations and interests of the leading players there: Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Vedrine suggested that the confusion in Syria, as well as in Libya for that matter, is a sign of the inability of the UN Security Council to assume an instrumental role in managing such major conflicts. It is also about the lack of a consensus, or even general agreement, among leading regional players Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.
The new conflicts in the Middle East have added to the tension that had already existed for decades with the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli struggle, which Vedrine said stands testimony to the inability of the US, the West and the “so-called international community” to introduce and support a settlement that would allow for even a “nascent” Palestinian state.
Vedrine argued that the conflicts of the Middle East are unlikely to usher in any serious revision of the Sykes-Picot agreement – which defined the borders of most of the countries of the region at the end of the colonial era by the two leading powers of the time, France and Britain.
And just as it is hard to predict the next phase of conflict management for the Middle East, Vedrine suggested that it is equally difficult to propose a valid forecast for the management of global differences. According to Vedrine, it would not be accurate to suggest that the world is living through another cold war, “even if it looks like it at times,” simply because there are no parties there for a cold war.
According to Vedrine, Russia is regaining its power, but is not at a place where it could participate in a cold war, much less a world war, as some have been suggesting of late.
International relations today are not at a place that allows for a major war, nor for one block to control the rest of the world, Vedrine said. The call of globalisation, he suggested, has not been really fulfilled and there are emerging players that are starting to grab a share of world power – with China, especially in its relations with the US, being an example.
The world, he added, is also not living under an order where the US is the sole superpower. Meanwhile, the international organsiations, predominantly the UN, are falling short of their mandate, which was effectively decided by the winners of World War II.
“This is why we need to build new [international] relations,” Vedrine argued. Those new relations, he suggested, should take into considerations the new balance of power around the world and the changing modes of the world. This, he added, could allow for better management of today’s exploding conflicts.
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