With the presidential elections in the USA that will take place on 5 November 2024, this “year of elections,” in which half the world population went to the polls and on many occasions surprised pundits, incumbents and other luminaries, will have its grand finale. Much has been written about the consequences of these elections for transatlantic relations and the world order. Between isolationist impulses and unilateralist primacy-seeking, a Trump administration will have the potential to further upend the already weakened, delegitimized, and institutionally eroded “liberal world order” that safeguards Western hegemony. The equally primacy-oriented but more multilaterally inclined Harris administration will try to contain the erosion of that order and reconstruct it in a more inclusionary fashion, albeit with American preeminence as its stated goal.
Restoration of that preeminence––whether in its more aggressive unilateralist or more benign-looking internationalist-primacist version––will be difficult, however. The shift of economic power towards Asia, with China as the chief geopolitical challenger for the USA, changes the dynamics of the world order from its post WWII and certainly from its post-Cold War configuration. The formation of ad hoc axes of revisionist or subversive powers and alternative organizations such as BRICS or SCO that attract rising powers as well as hedging ones before the emerging asymmetrical multipolar order stabilizes challenges the paradigm of a Western- or specifically American-led order in the future.
The role that regional or middle powers can and will play in the shaping of that order is one of the intriguing questions for international relations scholars. What role a Europe that will be a more complete middle power as a collectivity can and should play to contribute to the shaping of that order is a question of critical importance, both for the balancing of the two great powers and the preeminent revisionist power, Russia, and for displaying a new (perhaps non-existent) capacity to deal with former colonies on an egalitarian footing. Discussing such issues and the role of moral criteria, however hypocritical by definition these usually are in the making of a world order, will also necessitate a discussion of the war in Ukraine and the assault on Gaza.
Soli Özel holds a BA in Economics from Bennington College (1981) and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (1983). Özel was a Europe’s Futures Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) in 2021–2022. He taught at UC Santa Cruz, Johns Hopkins SAIS, University of Washington, Northwestern University, Hebrew University, Boğaziçi University, Sciences Po (PSIA) and its Menton campus, Yale University, and American University of Central Asia (AUCA). He is a non-resident senior fellow at Institut Montaigne in Paris. Elite Origins of Development and Democracy (Routledge, 2023) is his co-authored book with Michael T. Rock. He is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
IWM Rector Misha Glenny moderated the colloquium discussion.
