According to what he has published on his personal page on Instagram and Twitter, the emerging new world order will no longer be unipolar, but post-unipolar.
The twelve insights of Mohammad Javad Zarif are as follows:
After some 40 years of practice in diplomacy—coupled with teaching and writing in international relations—and two years of reflection and full-time teaching away from the spotlight of global politics, I have come to some preliminary conclusions regarding the current global order. Here, I offer some food for thought:
1. The transitional phase of international relations has been over for some time now;
2. The emerging global order is post-polar. It is not unipolar, bipolar, multipolar, or any combination thereof;
3. The 3-decade quest for a unipolar hegemonic order through forever wars, securitization, and economic coercion has failed while exacting tremendous suffering, unforgivable human loss, and a huge waste of resources;
4. “End of history”, “clash of civilizations”, manufacturing of enemies, or similar theoretical and political constructs have failed to produce their intended outcomes;
5. War has fully lost its utility as a tool of foreign policy; almost all initiators of wars in the 20th and 21st centuries have either lost the wars they started—even their existence—or at least have failed to achieve their stated objectives;
6. There cannot be any zero-sum games in international relations; interactions will be either positive-sum or negative-sum;
7. The age of permanent alliances has been coming to an end;
8. Temporary issue-driven coalitions are increasingly gaining prominence;
9. Many state and non-state actors cooperate, compete, and network simultaneously in multiple- issue areas;
10. Networks, with state and non-state nodes, will be the dominant feature of transnational issue regimes;
11. Global structures have become fluid and will no longer dictate outcomes;
12. Human agents—despite all the great advances in technology and artificial intelligence—make all the difference.
I will elaborate these points in a forthcoming essay.
Your Comment