How Might a Functional ‘M12’ Grouping of Middle Powers Look Like?

As world order frays and old alliances falter, the search is on for new solutions to stabilise the international system while preserving at least some of the principles and aspects of the outgoing dispensation that have served Western powers well since the Second World War. The problem facing statesmen today is not simply practical – that is, related to the changing balance of power, especially in military terms, and the emergence of Tripolarity. An additional and perhaps more important challenge is the intellectual, or even philosophical, foundations which should underlie the next iteration of a global political architecture for peace and security.

In the modern world, at least, any such “system” requires some legitimising and organising principle at its core, in order to be viable for any significant period of time. The post-Napoleonic Vienna system was grounded in the idea of sovereign equality and restoration or preservation of traditional monarchies. After the First World War “collective security” combined with national self-determination to provide a new basis for world order, which failed. The post-1945 world introduced the UN system as a source of legitimacy, with the special authority of the veto-wielding “permanent five” members of the UN Security Council. Of course, in practical terms stability derived not from P5 consensus but from containment and nuclear deterrence – but the UN and the “international community” were a crucial factor in the political and strategic calculations of the two superpowers in an age of acute ideological confrontation. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union the authority of the UN and the system of “rules” was challenged including by the victors themselves, from Kosovo to Iraq. The consequences were not dramatic, from a systemic point of view, during America’s  “unipolar moment” because it was the sheer hegemonic weight of the United States, acting usually in concert with its Western allies, which kept the overall peace and provided a sense of order – indeed, for a while, even an illusion that history had ended. With the return of great power competition from around 2014, the underlying erosion of the legitimising principle of the UN-centred post-1945 order only accelerated. Now the process is effectively complete and the system has defaulted back to a quasi-“natural state” of a balance of sorts based purely on power, in various forms, still mapped, for now, largely on the vestiges of the last order. The question of legitimacy may no longer be of any interest to anyone, but this can only be temporary; it will require an answer if any kind of stable equilibrium is to eventually emerge over the coming years.