The Ides of March

The Franco-German search for a common approach to the use of military power, whether in the context of a common European defence, or the creation of a European military force, were signs that foretold the changing dynamics.

But the new trans-Atlantic faultlines hardly qualify as a new polarisation among great powers, or even new emerging alignments. What we may be witnessing is the emergence of a world that is less aligned in military-political terms.

The expansion of NATO with the induction of smaller states was itself bound to influence the nature of the alliance, as much as the transformation the UN underwent after 1950, with newly-freed nations like India rapidly increasing its membership and altering its character. On the face of it, the war might indicate the triumph of the military solution over the diplomatic one. But it would be premature to write an obituary of the UN simply because the US was not certain of getting a Security Council resolution to sanction war and decided to launch it on its own.

The UN, contrary to conventional wisdom, is not an instrument for collective security like the League of Nations was, but one for preventive diplomacy. And preventive diplomacy has its limits. No wonder the US has emphasised the right of self-defence in waging the impending war on grounds that preventive diplomacy has been given more than a fair chance.

The Ides of March have come; but it is not clear how they would go. For example, it is possible that many regimes would draw lessons — right and wrong — from the apparent contradiction between the options of war to disarm an IAEA-certified non-nuclear Iraq, on the one side, and the near kid-glove handling of a North Korea that has virtually declared possession of nuclear weapons derived through clandestine proliferation, on the other.

As it is, the traditional arms control measures and non-proliferation regime have either lost their relevance, or are falling into disuse. Limits of denial regimes have been known for a long time.

But a new paradigm has yet to emerge. Whether this would be based on the US philosophy of self-defined, unilateralist, pre-emptive use of force, or the evolution of a new approach based on co-operative security remains a central challenge to effectively deal with the type of threats posed by Saddam’s Iraq or Kim’s North Korea.