pirates and the international order
Just some quick piracy news before I run out the door….
Pirates also hijacked an Indonesian tugboat used by French oil company Total off the coast of Yemen and a Turkish cargo ship on Tuesday, Mwangura said.
“For African countries, especially those that are isolated, the cost of transporting imported products already represents 70 percent of the final consumer price.”
So now ships from Russia, India, the US and the EU will be joined by ships from China, and everyone’s got free reign by land or sea. These countries- we’ll pretend the EU is a country for the moment- these countries are arguably the Great Powers in the world today. They have some shared goals, but also some competing interests.
I’m racking my brain here, and I can’t come up with any modern precedent for this situation. After WWII, most conflict was locked into an alliance system we called the Cold War, and after that dictated by an unspoken western hegemony. Now neither model seems to apply. There’s a UN resolution authorizing action, but no suggestion of how five powers go about it in the same place at the same time.
This could go a lot of different ways. For good or ill, we’re seeing the first steps at building a new international order. Or rather, a new global order.
Poli sci nerds are advised to keep an eye on this one. It may be a small conflict, but it’s also the first solid indication of how the new system will shape up. The little compromises and tactical positions could have implications for a long time to come.
