The Missing New World Order

Since the end of World War II, some government officials have called for a "new world order." A team of political scientists at the UA have spent years researching why it hasn't happened yet.

As some analysts debate the possible emergence of a new cold war, a team of University of Arizona researchers is working to publish articles and a book based on research about issues surrounding the decades-old failed attempt to usher in a United States-led new world order.

Much of the discourse begins with the Cold War-era intergovernmental organizations created to calm the post-World War II conflict.

Many definitions exist for how this new order would look, but some U.S. policymakers have long called for an order that promotes more justice-oriented international relations and multilateral diplomacy that would ideally break from Cold War tensions.

For years Thomas J. Volgy, a UA political science professor, has worked with graduate students and international colleagues to study why the world’s most powerful and influential nations have failed to introduce a new way of handling global political issues and other challenges related to economics, the environment, national security and conflict.

“Despite a stated preference for a new system or some sort of new order, nothing has really emerged,” said Keith A. Grant, a doctoral degree candidate in the UA’s political science department.

“I do think there are some overarching sets of norms that are close to being universally accepted,” said Grant, who has also co-authored a number of publications with Volgy. “There’s got to be some balance between the new goals and the collective good, which can minimize risk.”

Grant and other members of the UA team along with their colleagues at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, one of the UA’s many international partner institutions, have already published books or articles with more going to press this fall.

Another member of the team, James E. Rogers College of Law doctoral degree candidate Stuart Rodgers, has also spent nearly five years on the project and has published with the team.

A major part of the work has involved building a database of intergovernmental organizations and studying their budgets, key connections, number of paid staff and other factors while evaluating the effectiveness of such organizations to influence global politics.

The team argues that having more strong organizations focused on global affairs would be the tell-tale signal of an attempt to introduce a new world order. But studying organizations in 1975, 1989 and in 2004, the group found that the organizations tend to have far less power and control over global issues, said Elizabeth Fausett, a doctoral degree candidate in the UA’s political science department.

“There isn’t a whole lot of new birth going on and there doesn’t seem to be a major push by one point in the world to create these organizations,” said Fausett, also a co-author on several of the upcoming publications. “In truth, most states are muddling by with what they have.”

The team suggests that, among other things, the problem has been in the inability of post World War II-era organizations to adapt to new challenges and shifting structures.

The researchers also suggest that the refusal by the U.S. to accept a number of reformist suggestions made by other nation states is also holding up the effort toward a new world order. Also, a number of nations do not believe that the U.S. should be at the helm of the new order.

“You probably need a whole new cluster of organizations to address post-Cold war problems,” said Volgy, also the executive director for the International Studies Association.

Volgy said examples have included the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an organization comprised of China and Russia and several other countries, and also the Group of 7, a coalition of governments that include Japan, France and the United States.

But many international organizations have proven to be inefficent when handling current challenges, such as environmental cooperation, violent conflict and international terrorism.

Another challenge is the declining “structural strength” in the U.S., he added, noting that the idea refers to a nation’s ability to influence global political power and change.

“You have to create not only a global architecture about how the world is going to be governed, but also either through persuasion, coercion or a variety of other inducements, a way to get all the key players to agree to this kind of governance,” he said.

But the world is so vastly complex and more nation states exist with additional key players working globally, Volgy added.

Relative to the issue, the priorities in the United States have been more domestically focused and since the Sept. 11, 2001, less focused on the new world order that was meant to arise shortly after the Cold War ended, said Volgy, a former Tucson mayor and city councilman.

“You have to make an almost Herculean effort to take all the resources you have domestically and spend them on external purposes,” he said. “It means taking very precious resources – and we have those resources. But it’s a constant issue of priorities.”

The suggested solutions are varied, but they won’t come easy, Volgy said.

The United States could focus on building new structures, but this would take attention and resources away from domestic concerns. The nation could work with other states to build a massive like-minded coalition with the same end in mind. Or a major crisis might occur that would force the nation into action.

“The crisis may come in security, in the global environment – and some argue that the environmental crisis is already here,” Volgy said. “It may come in economic relationships, and some say it’s already here and that we’re just not seeing it. It may take something like that for a coordinated effort to happen."