Our westphalian world is over, this world which was drowned during the 17 century, just after the 30 years war which took place in Europe. This world order was made of inter state competition, of power competition, of balance of power. It was also made by very few Western states. This world is now over because after the WW2 we had to face 3 major turning points. And we have to observe that the main powers, the traditional powers, that’s to say the Western powers, were not really able to take properly the bend. What are these major turning points? I would distinguish 3 major turning points which are structuring our post WW history. First, in the long term globalization. The second factor, the second major turning point is the crisis of the state which took place in a middle term, and in a short term the third main turning point was the collapse of bipolarity. First globalization. Of course there is no date for determining when globalization took place in our contemporary history, that why I mentioned a long term transformation of our world order. But we know that this globalization totally questioned the westphalian order for several reasons, at least for 5 reasons. The first one is inclusion. For the first time in the history of humanity all the states, all the people, all the societies of the world are included in the same system. And now at UN we have 193 members. This is quite different from an international system which was only composed of 10, even 8, may be 12 states as it was the case during the 19 century. The second transformation is communication. With the revolution of communication the new communication technology, now all individuals are able to communicate with each other. That to say territory is defeated as a principle of action. Now territory has nor the same meaning it had previously during the westphalian moment of our history. But it implies a new kind of governance which is questioning all the traditional principles of the international law and the main structures of the international institutions. Third globalization implies non state actors proliferating in our world order, now the world order is not only depending on states but also on non state actors: economic actors, social actors, cultural actors, religious actors, and so on, and this actors are not really integrated in this world as far as this world is westphalian he is not able to integrate, to include this new non state actors. Forth sovereignty. Sovereignty is challenged by interdependence. Sovereignty was the fundamental principal of the westphalian order. Sovereignty is not working in a world of interdependences, in a global world. Sovereignty is questioned by market, sovereignty is questioned by communication; sovereignty is challenged by transnational relations. But this new interdependence is not really managed in our present world order, that’s why this one is rather unstable. And of course, last point of this globalization is the increasing pressure of the international social issues. Now traditional political issues are no more the main issues in the international system. The main issues are maid of social issues, that’s to say hunger, health, economic development, environment and so on. This is the first brake in our westphalian order. The second one is related to the mid term, that’s to say the crisis of the state. Double crisis of the state. First, in the developing countries but also in the developed countries. Developing countries. We have to take into account that decolonization, which is one of the major events of our contemporary world, was badly run was nor really managed and was realized through a very dangerous postulate that’s to say it’s possible to export the Western state, to import the Western state inside the developing countries. This is not working, that’s why so many states in the South are collapsing, and that’s why there is a proliferation of failed states. This is also a grate change. And the other one is the crisis of the state even in the developing countries, crisis of the welfare state, crisis of the economic functions of the state, crisis of the very notion of security, which is no more working. Hobbes is probably dead by now, that’s why we have to rethink our old world order taking into account new parameters of regulation. But, at last there is a short term crisis. This short term crisis is coming from the end of bipolarity. Bipolarity was a clear principle, a clear way of regulation of our international order. In November 9 in Berlin when the wall failed down, or may be in Lavallette once month later when Gorbatchev met George H W Bush and said to him that USSR is not interested in a competition with Western countries, that was the end of bipolarity. But if bipolarity is no more working, what is now presently our international system? We don’t know that, it’s currently called “post bipolar system”, but we know when we say post bipolar system that previously we had a bipolar system but we don’t know which kind of system we are now facing. That’s the problem. But the real problem is that with the end of the bipolarity the world had to meat the crisis of the concept of enemy. Who is, where is the enemy? It is probably the main enigma of our post bipolar world. But it means also that the competition among equals, that’s to say among states which have the same level of development, is now over and if this competition is over, we have now to define new kind of competitions between weak countries or between weak and strong countries, it’s quite different from the traditional vision of war. And even alliances are now questioned, like NATO and so many others military alliances. What about this post bipolar world? Has it substitutes for taking these new functions and these new challenges into account? Or do we observe a kind of attempt to continue to maintain this traditional westphalian world in a real post westphalian moment? This would be a grave contradiction and this contradiction is probably the main feature of our present international order that we will investigate together.
