1/7: We are now in a transitional moment: as was the case internally for people in the Soviet system c.1980, most people in the West who today are involved in or thinking about the int’l system realize that the warm & fuzzy things that are said about this crumbling system are BS.
2/7 Many Western commentators are nonetheless holding onto the hope of somehow restoring the old order — the “rules-based order,” they call it — because that world, even if its principles were mainly honored in the breach, is the only one they can imagine without fear & trembling
3/7 Of course, that old, dying int’l order wasn’t (even in its heyday) nearly as sincerely rules-based as the nostalgists like to claim. The emerging new “transactional” world order in some ways is just making more explicit what was before cloaked in legalistic hypocrisy.
4/7 To understand how the transition may unfold, we must try to get as precise as possible about exactly what will be the same & what will be different, as well as what sort of chaos is likely during the transition to a “new equilibrium” (if we believe that is going to emerge).
5/7 To reiterate the post-Soviet analogy, it’s obvious now, 25-35 years on, that there are many continuities in terms of internal governance between the Brezhnev era (I.e. the old equilibrium) and the Putin era (I.e the new equilibrium)
6/7 But there are also some massive differences between the Soviet system and Putin’s system, including a significantly different set of winners and losers. And the transition was chaotic & bloody.
7/7 Forecasting analogous transitional dynamics for the international system as the old order crumbles, including possible new equilibria as well as likely losers & winners along the way, is the most pressing analytic & theoretical of the moment.
