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Volgy says new global order still developing

An architecture for the new world order has not yet emerged in the ten years since the end of the Cold War, said Tom Volgy, UA political science professor and former Tucson Mayor in a speech yesterday.

Consequently, as the new millennium approaches, the new U.S. president will have to address this issue and determine how the United States can head the new world order.

"I'm trying to determine whether or not the United States is strong enough to be a global leader...and if the other major powers are strong enough to stop it," said Volgy.

Volgy, who specializes in international policies, was also a member of the Tucson City Council and ran for a congressional seat against Jim Kolbe, D-Ariz., in 1998.

He lectured to about sixty people on "The U.S. and the New World Order" in conjunction with the UA Speaker Series in the Center for Creative Photography.

Volgy's concerns are rooted in the ten-year absence of a global world order, which had existed during of the Cold War struggles between the former-USSR and the United States.

He said even though the desire is present in the United States to create a new world order, just like many other nations, there are fluctuations in the international systems.

"Ten years ago, the world of international politics...came to an end," Volgy said. "The Cold War...ceased to exist...[and] the way we saw the world, all our ideas of who were friends and enemies - those who threatened us and who didn't - ended...it occurred without a major, global war and it ended immediately."

The abrupt stop in the war introduced questions as to who emerged victorious since there "was no clear victory with a mandate to fashion the future," Volgy said.

When there is one winner, the winning state shapes international policies and sets the rules and relationships between states creating a hegemony, he said.

"Since, typically, it was a global war that ended the previous period, there was no problem separating the winners from the losers... but this time there was no war," he said, adding that it was difficult to distinguish the winners from the losers.

After the Cold War ended, President George Bush said he would try to create a new world order because Americans viewed the end of the conflict as their own victory, Volgy said. Bush's declaration led the way for new principles that meant to set the stage for the architecture of the new world order.

"Our strength meant that we could lead and create a new architecture for global politics [and] the opposite seemed to be equally true: if we didn't, no other country had the ability to do so," Volgy said.

In the absence of global politics during the past, for example, between World Wars I and II, the world has been stormed with chaotic conflict resulting in global war, he said.

"The danger lies in confusing relational power with structural power and in the evident belief... that the hegemon possesses enough of the latter to shape the structure of the new world order," Volgy said.

He said he believes that Bill Bradley, R-N.J., qualifies as the leading presidential candidate to help move the United States into a new world order, but there will be many bumpy roads along the way.

Because the strongest world power does not possess enough structural power it "poses critical challenges to whomever will be the next president running the U.S. government in the new millennium - challenges that may require that we move away from unipolar global leaderships," he said.