18 September 2008 : IRNA
The idealistic and entrepreneurial mode of Western foreign policy, formatted under departing US President George W Bush, is over, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
"There is an abiding sense that the age of ambitious democratisation agendas and regional strategic makeovers is behind us," said IISS director general John Chipman.
"How idealism and realpolitik will intermingle in the future will hugely depend on the personality of the future US president," Chipman said when launching the institute's latest Strategic Survey in London Thursday.
The survey, which analyses political-strategic trends, covers events of the past 12 months in which the world was said to be "preparing for a new start in international affairs that could occur with the arrival of a new administration in Washington."
"The leaders of major powers were mostly preoccupied by domestic and economic developments: the US with the presidential election, China with the Olympic Games, Russia with a leadership shuffle," it said.
Chipman said there had been an inward focus in many countries that was was "partly a response to the effects of the 'triple shock' in the markets for credit, oil and food."
Although the next few months will see many preoccupied with the US election, "much America's individual share of global power has been in relative decline," he said.
The survey referred to the world facing "a range of geopolitical uncertainties, as well as the gathering storm in financial markets and economies, as it waited to know the identity - and the foreign- policy approach - of the next president of the United States." "His arrival could help to repair the damage to America's standing in the world, but the decisions that he will have to take on the difficult strategic issues facing him will still tend to invite controversy as much as they could inspire revived cooperation," it said.
The director general said international diplomatic activity will be more plural as "America is unable now to shape the international agenda alone and needs international partners."
"Those prospective partners, in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or elsewhere, need to be more assertive in developing initiatives which the US can comfortably join, rather than merely react to proposals that may come from Washington," he suggested.
It was the quality of those initiatives that will "determine whether the post-unipolar moment will be more or less good for international peace and security," he said.
The survey recounts worrisome events in the past year in a number of troubled countries, and especially along what it called the 'arc of crisis' from the Maghreb to Pakistan.
While Nato was struggling to quell a growing insurgency in Afghanistan, Pakistan in particular suffered constant turmoil in which a former prime minister was assassinated.
IISS noted that ethnic and sectarian conflicts, as well as nuclear proliferation, cannot be fully dealt with by Western governments alone.
"Recruiting the active involvement of leading powers from other regions in combating such threats will require a level of comfort with policy approaches in Washington that has been missing for the past seven years," it said.
Preparation for the publication came before the Georgia crisis, which Chipman admitted it had not been able to predict the military conflict but said it would "not usher in a new Cold War" because neither side wanted and the stakes were too low to warrant one.
But that said, he was critical of the US and Nato's policy, warning that the transatlantic military alliance "must not transform its expansion policy into a game of Russian roulette."
"In time, NATO and Western countries need to sort out exactly what interests are worth defending and in what manner, and on what issues it may still be possible to collaborate with Russia in order to induce more congenial behaviour in other areas," Chipman advised.
"A strategic approach to Russia must acknowledge, without necessarily accepting, the nature of Russia today and focus Western influence and leverage where it most matters," he said, later clarifying he was opposed to Nato accelerating Georgia's membership.
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