How is the international system structured? Generally, people speak of polarization, polarization is now the key concept for comparing international systems and for considering its transformations, but I’m not sure that it’s the good key concept, for a very clear reason that is that world has not been ever polarized. Polarization in the history of the world is covering a very short period, from 1947 up to 1989, and the evidence of that is to be fund in the fact that now we are speaking of a post bipolar system. We are supposed to be in a post bipolar system, but what does it mean? What is a post bipolar system? Through this concept we know that we were in a bipolar system, but in which kind of international system we are? The problem of this difficulty is related to the concept of polarity, which is not really covering the diversity of the international system. What is a pole? First of all what is a pole? A pole is an attractive power, an attractive force which is able to organize and structure a coalition, it is not evident that in all the periods we can find a real attractive power in the international system. If we go back to 1947, at this time, we had several factors which were pushing to this polarization. First of all, nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons created a new order in the international arena, that’s to say if you are not protected by a nuclear power, you are really and strongly threatened by the nuclear powers. That’s to say, in a nuclear moment, camps are organized under the umbrella, under the protection of a super power, nuclear power was the main active factor for creating the conditions of the bipolarity. The evidence is to be fund in the fact that NATO was created in 1949, that’s to say the year when USRR was equipped in nuclear capacity, has its nuclear bomb. But nuclear weapon is not the only reason for triggering this polarization of the world. The second one is to be fund in ideology. For the first time in the human history, ideology after the Second World War was structuring, was shaping the international arena. Before, we can’t find ideological cleavages in the international system, and after 1989 it is not really clear that we have a real ideological fracture in our international order. And the third factor is connected to the second one, that’s to say the differentiation between two kinds of social structures, with its own opponents and its own dissidents, that’s to say dissidence in the Eastern Europe who were looking to the Western camp and expecting to transform the soviet social structure into a liberal one when the working class in western countries were looking into the socialist camp for expecting a new redistribution. And even with these three factors bipolarity was not perfect, even during the worst moment of the cold war. If we take into account the eastern camp, we have to observe the dissidence of China, and the cleavage between Beijing and Moscow, which was initiated around the 1960 and 1961, also after the dissidence of Romania, and also independence of Vietnam. Vietnam during the war was not really following the decision taken in Moscow nor in Beijing, and in the western camp, we have to consider the national independency policy of general de Gaulle who got out of the NATO in 1966. But however, bipolarity was really shaping our world between 47 up to 89. First, bipolarity was really mapping the world, that’s to say developing countries, what we called at this time third world, which plain to be independent, which claim to be sovereign, which claim to be independent from this west-east cleavage, however had to join either the western camp or the eastern camp. Gamal abd el Nasser in Egypt, Nkrumah in Ghana, or Sukarno and even Nehru, Sukarno in Indonesia and Nehru in India were joining the USSR camp in the international relations, when Iran or Morocco or Thailand were joining the western camp, and even the two superpowers were successfully containing the conflicts, and especially monitoring the southern countries conflictuality, even if they were not really able to decide instead of themselves. The second point, which is very clear about bipolarity is the kind of condominium, which progressively took place inside the international arena. We have for instance to take into account NPT, that’s to say this non-proliferation regime which was really decided by the two leaders of the blocs, or the SALT agreement, or even the Berlin agreement about the status of the formal capital of Germany. But what about today? When we say that we are now in a post bipolar world, we are in a post bipolar world for very obvious and clear reasons. First of all there it’s no more two opposing blocs inside the international arena. Second, as we observed, wars have changed, don’t have now the same meaning, and instead of inter state wars, we are observing more and more intra state wars, and instead of being the main battlefield of the world, Europe now is almost in peace, when wars and conflicts take place in the South. Third difference: interdependence decided, provoked by globalization. What does competition mean in an interdependent world? What does polarity mean in an interdependent, interplaying, interconnected world? Fourth difference: the decreasing influence of ideology. Some of the most distinguished scholars have spoken of the end of ideology. I don’t know if there is really an end of ideology, but it’s quite clear that ideologies are no more mapping the world, are no more structuring the main international cleavages, and the same for social structures. Another question is about hegemony as we observed. Is hegemony a relevant concept in a global world? Is there is now a clear hegemony, if hegemony is challenged how polarization would be possible? And the paradox is that even if sovereignty is decreasing, even if states have to interplay, however states pretend to be more and more autonomous, and especially among the weakest ones, especially among developing countries which are less and less controlled by the traditional powers and superpowers. This growing autonomy in this world of interdependence is triggering something very new, that’s to say poles are no more attracting followers as it was the case during the bipolarity. That’s why, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now in a very strange world that I would call apolarity. What is apolarity? First, apolarity is not unipolarity. We could observe in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in so many countries that the unipolar capacity of US is now over. But apolarity is not multipolarity, many middle powers were dreaming on a world of multipolarity in which they could be a pole among others. But what is the real attractive capacity of middle powers? of France, of UK and so on, of Germany, of Japan… Apolarity is not inter-regionalism, that would be a scenario, that would be a possibility, that’s to say a world which would be regionally integrated and which would be a kind of competition among three, four, five regional blocs, but now regional blocs are collapsing and don’t have any more the real capacity of attracting their members in a real integrated bloc. So inter-regionalism is less and less obvious. We are however in this very fragmented world in which there is no pole, but in which the main actors try to work together, in a more or less successful way. This is what we call the club diplomacy, or the conniving diplomacy, or even this oligarchic diplomacy through P5, through G8, through G7, or through G20. G7 was created in 1975 when US faced the first crisis of its hegemony, and it is now going on with rather weak results. But this conniving oligarchic diplomacy, is a kind of diplomacy of immobilism, that’s to say this apolar world is a world which is mainly structured by this conniving attend, with poor results and strong immobilism.
