May it be auspicious… and not a Cold War but a Balance of Power

The 1 November elections, held as a second round of the 7 June elections, gave voters, through what happened in five months, the opportunity to rethink the state of Turkey and the world and to review their decision. We have all learned together at these hours how voters assessed this decision. At the hours this article is being written, this decision has not yet emerged with full clarity. But it is very clear that the voters have put forth the will to revise in the AK Parti's favor the picture that the 7 June results revealed. Let us continue with our unfinished subject, to assess these election results later. In fact these election results are very closely related to our subject, the Cold War issue in the world, in its possibility or reality.

After the end of the Cold War, a number of theories were put forward to analyze the international system. The classical theories trying to analyze the system of international relations were also renewed with "neo" suffixes.

Two of the theorists who tried to work out what form the system would take after the Cold War brought serious debates in the following period as well. Of these, Francis Fukuyama, just before the end of the Cold War, with the excitement of the anti-regime demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in China, proclaimed the End of History. According to Fukuyama, liberal Western democracies had won an irreversible victory in the struggle between the poles.

Another theory that was the subject of heated debate throughout the 1990s was Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis. Huntington claimed that the struggle between the socialist and capitalist poles would turn into a struggle of civilizations in the following period. One of the striking details in Huntington's thesis was that the Orthodox world had somehow been left on the other side in the lines of this circle of civilizations. The most important point of Huntington's theory was that the Islamic world was othered as a circle of civilization.

The common point of these theories that should be taken seriously is that they were put forth right after the Cold War with Cold War logic. Given that the United States emerged with a serious surplus of power after a long and exhausting experience of 45 years, it is seen that international relations researchers who developed some system theories to analyze international relations could not break away from Cold War logic while developing these approaches. This has also seriously affected the following period; in situations where the US could not steer the system alone, it has brought to minds the question "Is the Cold War coming back?"

In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech he gave at the Russia-European Union Summit in 2002, said that the funeral of the Cold War had finally been held. This statement was also a result of the mechanisms for managing the cooperation and competition that developed between Russia and NATO in the 1990s. Indeed, in the process leading to the Helsinki Final Act signed in 1975 too, statements that the Cold War had ended were made several times.

However, the speech the same Putin gave in 2008 at the 43rd Munich Security Conference began to make Cold War discourse prominent again. In his speech at the Munich Security Conference Putin had said: "In today's world, I am convinced that a unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible. And not only because if there was individual leadership in today's world, then military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is not and cannot be any moral foundation for modern civilization."

The interventions Russia carried out in Georgia and Ukraine in the post-2008 period, the stance it has taken particularly recently on Syria, and the appearance of camp formation emerging in international relations have brought with them claims that Russia will lead again in a Cold War that may be renewed.

However, three points overlooked while these claims are voiced can be underlined. The first is that Russia has no potential to lead such a struggle. For leadership of a pole requires producing a number of public goods (grant money aid, investments, etc.) within the pole system. But it can be said that Russia's influence in this context is more military than economic.

Second, it must not be forgotten that the Cold War was above all a struggle between economic systems. The Cold War was a struggle between two blocs, communist and capitalist. Both poles had different promises as economic systems. Today there is no incompatibility of any kind between Russia and the US in terms of economic system. For example, the biggest economic partner of China, which in such a Cold War design could be foreseen to remain in Russia's camp or is claimed to form a camp with Russia, is the US. On the other hand, Russia's economic relations with the EU countries are also of vital importance.

Third, rather than two great states with the capacity to steer the system, just as in the 19th-century world, there are more than two important actors, though their capacities of influence differ. For example, it does not seem very possible for China to be hitched to the same cart as Russia. It can be said that Germany, which has seriously overcome the limitations after the Second World War, has also turned into an effective actor in Europe; and that it has begun to liquidate the US sphere of influence in Europe. On the other hand, it appears that there also exist regionally important actors resembling the Prussia of the 19th century.

In the end, the system seems to be shaping up toward a Balance of Power system rather than a new Cold War.