Preservers vs upsetters

A powerful way to frame history is to divide the shaping of international relations at any given moment into two sets of power. There is power that seeks to preserve and keep things the way they are. The utilisers of such power are the defenders of the status quo or the preservers. And power that seeks to bring about change and challenge the status quo is termed revolutionary, and those who wield such power are generally seen as upsetters. Historically, this division of power between the preservers and upsetters can be seen across many centuries. Had there been no such division of power, the world would not have witnessed any change, both for good and for the worse.

The Bourbons, the Habsburgs, the Ming, the Mongols, the Romanovs, the Mughals and the Ottomans were some of the dynasties that represented the idea of preservation. Yet, revolutionary influences stemmed from ideologies, events and circumstances that challenged these dynasties and their power structures and sought change both through violent and non-violent means. Global transformations and the profound shifts in the structure of international order that we witness today is a result of how two sets of power contested to imagine and create a different world. From monarchies to republics, from colonisation to decolonisation, from empires to nation-states, and from autocracies to democracies, the global journey on the pathway to progress and modernity has only resulted when change was driven by either the preservers or the upsetters.

History moves through tension between stability and change - preservers provide order, upsetters provide transformation. Without preservers, the system collapses; without upsetters, it stagnates. Karl Marx defined history as driven by forces that upset the existing order. States that drive such forces were described by Hans Morgenthau as either status quo, imperialist or revisionist. Contextually, and arguably due to mistakes committed by the US as a great power, the current world order has reached the point of its stagnation. The current upsetters realise that the global order is under deep strain, and the US domination of the world as the preserver of this order is gradually coming to an end. China and Russia represent the rising powers and, as upsetters, have a deep interest in challenging the established power of the US, the preserver of the international order, by miring the US in a simmering, low-intensity war against Iran that continues to consume US resources and undermines its international standing. Both Russia and China consider that any further degradation of US resources and power in this Iran War will only help accelerate the transition of the world towards multipolarity. As and when the global transition to multipolarity is complete, the big indicator of which would be the end of the US global dominance, a new order will literally set in, and both Russia and China will no longer remain the upsetters but together with other poles will become the leading preservers to defend and lead the new order.

The US, as a global power, already seems to enjoy a weaker international consensus and coalition, and fragmented global support, and so, the current US misadventure against Iran doesn't show the popular backing of the international community. The US always showcased itself as the champion and leader of the free world. Yet, today it is the very free world that questions the US authority and its reliance on unilateralism and not multilateralism for finding solutions to global disputes. How isolated the current US president is in waging the Iran War can be compared to how the world got together to support some of his predecessors. The President George HW Bush administration led a 41-country coalition that pushed Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991. President George W Bush organised a 51-country coalition to push the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001. President Barack Obama brought 85 countries into the Global Coalition to defeat ISIS (the Islamic State) in a process that began in 2014.

Given the argument, an interesting hypothesis takes shape, which states that if the preserver of the current world order is the US, the upsetters are China and Russia, with a regional revisionist Iran, who will in the end prevail? And would an end to this war lead to a multipolar world? The war has already accelerated the multipolar transition that is underway, but given the reluctance of Russia and China to fight this war, one can say that not the military multipolarity but economic and diplomatic multipolarity is what the world may end up witnessing at the end of this war. The military multipolarity can only be achieved if Russia and China start acting as active upsetters and not passive upsetters, which means greater trouble that nobody wants – another World War. The world will continue transitioning to multipolarity if the upsetters indulge the US in a prolonged conflict, distance the US from its allies, gradually shift the oil trade away from the dollar; China keeps getting the Iranian oil; and Russia utilises the American distraction to exploit its success in Ukraine. The kind of multipolarity that will emerge from this scenario will be that the US will continue to remain a global power, but with diminished influence and no longer decisive everywhere. This would mean more room and space for the upsetters to reconstruct the emerging international order in a multilateral mode with the accommodation of middle and emerging powers, moving away from the unipolar system towards a multipolar, diverse and pluralistic system.

This thesis for the construction of a multipolar order is plausible because the indicators on the ground support it. The real upsetters are China and Russia, who are not interested in fighting a direct war with the US. They are supporting a regional upsetter, Iran, to do their bidding. China and Russia are the like-minded collaborators needed by Iran, as it aspires to be a powerful player in the emerging new world order. So, Iran continues to receive financial, technological and military aid that could help counter American military pressure and degrade its power. A de facto multipolarity is already taking shape which can be seen by the running of parallel financial systems; ignorance of US pressure by more and more states; emerging regional security blocs; China-led mediation efforts; selective compliance of the US sanctions; and the mother of them all – the upsetters (China and Russia) forcing the preserver (the US) to fight not against them but against a regional upsetter.