The crisis of the international

Conflicts of the future
Today we can observe the disintegration of the world system. After the ideological blocs of democracy and communism, which controlled the world for a half of the 20th century, have felt apart, the new political order based on the “international security” concept of UN is now loosing its authority as well. The justifications of this fact can be found in the impossibility of the new conflicts’ resolution – ethnic conflicts of the 20th-21st centuries.
This type of conflicts has always been one of the most difficult to resolve because the background these conflicts involved were often connected to the special social, ethnic, economic, political and other conditions. In many cases it is not so easy to understand the motivations of the parts involved in the conflict. While in the 18th and 19th centuries the diplomacy was only about power and the division of territories was a usual thing, nowadays the demarcation and delimitation of one’s state territory is practically very rare, if not impossible. Moreover, the ethnic conflict is a unique type of conflict because the division of the territory would not often solve all the problems for the conflicting parts. The most outstanding in this context would be the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has in its goals from the Palestinian side (its terrorist groupings) the complete destruction of the state of Israel; and the conflicts between the peoples of Caucasus, where the goal of the states’ sovereignty establishment transformed, together with the islamization of the region, into the war not so much against Russian control, but against Muslims of “traditional beliefs”, for establishment of Islamic Sate on the territory of Caucasus.3
The refugees’ settlement problem, political implications, possible economic default, and what is more important, the continuing ethnic confrontations, which cannot usually be stopped by peacekeeping missions, are only part of difficulties faced. It is also important to notice that the Mass Media influence is very powerful today and the views it creates have thousands of ways to be interpreted around the world…

International Law crisis
These “hearths of insecurity” (ethnic conflicts) now exist in different countries with different ethnic identities and socio-economic and political potential. Moreover, in conditions of today’s undermined status of the international law and the states that contribute to war in some regions, these conflicts will become impossible to deescalate. When speaking about the undermined international law I mean the latest events in South Ossetia and the process of reaction of different countries on it. In particular, the interpretation of the conflict as an aggression from the Russian side, supporting the Georgian position on Georgian territorial integrity with the people, whom the Georgians undertake a genocide (or so the mass killings of the people in South Ossetia by Georgians are called today) against. It is necessary to notice here also that the independence of Kosovo in February 2008 was supported by the Western countries (US, Britain, Italy, Germany, France, and some more), while in Georgia, the same states support the concept of “territorial integrity”. The conflicts, as the special representative of EU in the South Caucasus Peter Semneby stated, are principally different and one cannot draw parallels between Kosovo and South Ossetia and Abkhazia.4 However, what is the same about them, I would say, is the position of the West directed against Russia. The West now is trying to de-nominate Russia in world economics and politics. Economically strong with high political authority Russia is never a good thing for the West. The political leverage through NATO is, however, half successful. Baltic States, Poland and USA obviously share the position of isolation for Russia. This isolation following the comments of the position holders is to be implemented not only in the sphere of NATO cooperation with Russia, but also through European Union in economic direction. The most outstanding in the first days after the conflict was the idea of excluding Russia from G8. This however has already been reconsidered by some countries of EU. Even Britain, which considerably insisted on this measure against Russia, realized that the key aspects of cooperation on the world economic and political arena are too important to make them suffer in crisis. These spheres include, for instance, international security strategies, business with Russian companies all around the world (particularly in US), and many more. Now realizing these factors and having no concrete justification of Russian aggression, Europe and the United States despite all the threats and political leverage cannot isolate or “punish” Russia for its peacekeeping mission in Georgia.
Moreover, now the process of collecting justifications on Georgian aggression is in its active stage and Russia possibly very soon will present the European community and USA the official proof of the Georgian rude violation of the international law.
The analysis of the situation in South Ossetia given by the Ambassador Extraordinary Plenipotentiary and vice-president of the Russian International Law Association Oleg Khlestov looks more real than the estimation described by the United States. He suggests that the consideration and estimation of the armed conflict should come from and be based on the international law norms where the rules of states’ behavior are clearly written. As Mr. Khlestov5 notified, the involvement of Russian peacekeepers is stipulated by the UN Charter.
According to the Dagomis Agreement (or Sochi agreement of 1992), the contingent of Russian, Georgian and Ossetian peacekeepers has been established on the territory of South Ossetia to prevent the escalation of the conflict.6
This is just the most outstanding example of the weakening international law and its violation. There are some others, such as US’ invasion of Iraq. The world community that time in 2003 split on the view of this American “aggression”. However US troops are still there holding the country in the arms of the American “oil appetites”.
The system of the international law is undermined. The people that created it do not advocate it any more.
This picture will obviously have its implications on the world order

A new world order (the result of two tendencies)
The two tendencies of the international law crisis and the ethnic conflict activation during the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries are giving way to the new international order that is to become multi-polar world with the two major centers in Beijing and Moscow. The USA-led world constructed with and based on the support of the powerful international organizations such as NATO and UN, is now destroys itself from within. There is a tendency not only of Russia and China becoming world economies and political powers, but also of a multi-polar world’s self-construction the examples of which are now Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia and in the near future might be Tibet, and finally Palestine! We are only to hope that Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh and other ethnic groups of the Caucasus would not lead their people to independence in such a bloody way.
The authority of the United States was undermined in Iraq in 2003, the authority of EU and USA was undermined in Kosovo, it was also the case in South Ossetia this year. The mass media war between the Western “allies” of Georgia from one side and the people, who desperately needed to uncover the “real deal” of this war from the other, has been a clear picture just the days after the conflict. What we see as a result of it, is that the most important actors of the international relations — Russia and USA (excluding China, but not decreasing its international strength) are now confronting each other and heating the world for the different types of conflict escalations. In this process, however, America has the leading and initiative role.
Together with this, China increases its economic power in world economy. It has concluded the deals on the energy projects with Central Asian countries, deals with big Russian companies, has become a security guarant in the region in the frames of international regional organizations. It has very well demonstrated its internal security during the Olympic Games in Beijing. All these factors are key conditions for China to become a real superpower in the next 10 years, as many experts predict.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia are to insist on their sovereignty. Russia would not, in my opinion, be the last and only country that recognized these states. One should not forget about the Middle East and some Latin American countries (Venezuela and Cuba) that have supported Russian resolution of the conflict. There is, however, a great probability of other conflicts’ revival in the Caucasus, such as Nagorno-Karabakh. But the possibility of the III World War is a low one, because the people today have too much to loose in this war. A fragile and sensitive system of world economic relations and interdependence is a major factor that would not allow realist appetites of the leading politicians transform in such total conflict. Along with the Western crisis of democratic values and international law and the Chinese rising, the increasing economic and security ambitions of Central Asian states in the frames of integration organizations, the most active of which are the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and Shanghai Organization for Cooperation (SCO), as well as probable reorientation of the oil and gas transportation networks to China and the countries of South and East Asia, reflect rising importance of the Eurasian continent. Thus, the active part of the world will move from West to East. Now the center of the Earth, in Mackinder’s theory “heartland”, becomes not only strategically important, but active and authoritative as well.

Conclusion
The conflicting notions of modernization and globalization from one side, and the traditional values of the states from the other, a complex structure of the ethnic composition, and the increasing power of one day minor components of international life, nowadays make politicians, sociologists, and economists take them into account. This creates a structure of IR in which the ethnic conflicts become one of the most complex realities. Due to these conditions and the conditions of a uni-polar world, the international organizations, such as UN with the leading states in it, can no longer objectively and adequately define and resolve these conflicts. However, it needs to be noticed that without its humanitarian and peacekeeping initiatives, as well as different programs on Millennium Goals’ realization all around the world, the situation would probably get worse. But the fact is that the uni-polar world is now realizes not only its economic plans, but also political ones. Moreover, it realizes them in the harshest way – war. As the president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev said recently on the First Forum on security and cooperation problems in the Central-Asian-Caspian region in Almaty, “the states in their contradictions with other countries now more often use force and radical rhetoric, which strengthens mutual distrust and tension.” 7
Thus, today we can see the weak positions of the international law, as well as the state, as the main unit of the international relations (Waltz’ definition). However, this weakness now is not enough to destroy the “state system” of IR completely. But what we can observe is that the things are going to change if not in the system of IR then certainly in the world order from the “USA-Europe” format to the “Russia-China” one with the intensified attempts of the minor not-yet-recognized states on their self-identification. This, of course, will affect the whole world. For the states of Central Asia, in particular, the perspectives of Shanghai Organization for Cooperation (SCO) interaction become more attractive in this context.

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