Global Security and Democratic Governance Falter as Historic Rivalries Re-emerge

The world is shifting from a brief period of democratization and global economic integration since 1989 toward nationalism and mistrust. Security expert Richard Weitz suggests that evidence of this shift was apparent during the July summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the response to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and the international court’s rejection of China’s claims, and Japan moving toward lifting self-imposed restraints on using force. The increasing tensions Weitz describes interfere with rallying domestic and international opinion to resolve other pressing concerns like the war in Syria. “Although Western economies are generally performing better, their political systems have experienced greater instability and turbulence, with the electorates voting for extremist parties, perhaps as a reaction against the perceived negative effects of globalization such as immigration and job instability,” he writes. Russia and China take actions that drive wedges in the countries of the West, ironically because the allies are so close. The allies would be wise to collect themselves, overcome petty national differences, and rely on openness and democracy to forge a new history around more lofty common goals.

NATO's Dynamic Mongoose anti-submarines exercise in the North Sea, off the coast of Norway, on May 4, 2015. Marit Hommedal/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—Soon after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet empire, there was talk of end of history. However, after two decades of democratization and global economic integration, history is resurgent. Cultural and economic nationalism and historical grievances have raised their ugly heads to challenge the generally unifying tendencies of economic and technological globalization.

The deliberations at the July summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Warsaw offered dramatic evidence of the sea-change in Europe since the celebrations at the Berlin Wall. At the meeting, the allies decided to rotate thousands of additional U.S. and West European forces into Poland and the Baltic states to counter any cross-border military threats from Russia. They also took additional steps to strengthen the Ukrainian armed forces and reaffirm the alliance’s nuclear security guarantees.

Russian officials attacked NATO’s moves as threatening Russia’s security and a new Cold War. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the alliance of “focusing its efforts on the containment of a non-existent threat from the east” and aiming to “change the existing balance of power” at the expense of regional security.

In East Asia, too, celebrations around the rise of China as the great engine of world growth have given way to fear about Chinese expansionism and military might. Beijing’s harsh denunciation of the July 11 ruling of The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on China’s expansive claim of virtually all of the South China Sea has pitted it against nearly all its neighbors. As China rattles its saber, there is growing concern about armed conflict with the United States and its Asian allies.

The topic of South China Sea will likely dominate the upcoming meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos. The bloc’s potential is continually vitiated by the divisions among members over how to manage China’s territorial claims, which Beijing exploits. 

On July 10, however, Japanese voters gave the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition the two-thirds majority it needs in the upper house of the Japanese Diet to initiate a constitutional amendment that could relax post-WWII constraints on Japan’s military activities.  

In both regions, the Western democracies announced new augmentations to their regional ballistic missile defenses (BMD). NATO leaders declared that their BMD network had attained initial operational capability, while South Korea decided to host an advanced U.S. BMD system. Although the two systems’ modest capabilities are directed against Iran and North Korea, respectively, Russia and China still denounced the deployments for allegedly threatening their own nuclear forces.