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Population relativities play little part in the international system. A nation's economic and military power is influenced by population size, but as one factor among many. Formal relations among states exclude population from consideration by the principle of sovereign equality. Three sources of possible change in this situation are explored, in which states would be "population-weighted" to a greater degree than before. Convergence of productivity levels around the world, expected by many, would bring the economic and population rankings of states more into line. Such convergence is occurring, but selectively and for the most part quite slowly. Anticipation of its effect, however, influences the international order well in advance. A second source of change is the necessity to allocate among states the use of global commons, particularly the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases. Acceptable remedies for this and perhaps other global threats are likely to involve at least in part a per capita allocation. And third, population weights are implicitly more prominent in futures in which states are less important-envisaged in scenarios of global civil society.

A visitor from another, more advanced, planet would find many extraordinary paradoxes on earth, but surely the most extraordinary would be the fantastic destructive potential of nuclear weapons which contrasts starkly with the primitive and near-impotent institutions of global peacekeeping. He might marvel that a breed capable of producing the wealth for a $185 billion armory of lethal devices, let alone the technology for killing several hundred million humans in a single exchange of nuclear weapons, had not also produced a workable international order capable of regulating such apocalyptic man-made power.

The feeling is widespread in the West that the post wwii normative international order has been under severe challenge since Russia's seizure of Crimea, now exacerbated by statements from the American president casting doubt on the institutions that underpin that order. Is there a future role for osce mediation as this order erodes? Study of the Ukraine crisis in light of other protracted conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union shows that the same challenges have existed for a generation. Because the conflicts were small, however, the international community chose to accept a fiction of convenience to isolate them from an otherwise functioning international order: the narrative that the separatists sought independence, not (as in reality) a re-drawing of post-Soviet borders. This isolation is under pressure both from the new experience in Ukraine and from the extension of ever-greater Russian control over the separatists, amounting to crypto-annexation, despite a backlash from Moscow's clients, including in Armenia. There is little likelihood of a resolution to the Ukraine crisis, including Russia's annexation of Crimea, and prospects for mediation to resolve the conflicts remain dim. However, continued talks may resolve some humanitarian issues and provide a release valve to prevent pressures boiling over into renewed open warfare.
In 2015 the present author published an article outlining some effects of the Ukraine crisis on protracted conflicts in the osce area and on osce mediation in those conflicts.
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He has been asked to revisit his assessment of that time in light of subsequent events in world politics (in particular the advent of a new administration in the United States) and in the region. The new developments give little cause for optimism that settlement in any of the conflicts is closer. Rather, the question for the osce is whether the international community, in view of the challenges posed by the Ukraine crisis, should continue to engage in the fictions that have allowed it to manage the conflicts since their beginnings in the collapsing Soviet Union.

Relative population sizes play little part in the international system. A state's economic and military power is influenced by population size, but as one factor among many. Formal relations among states exclude population from consideration by the principle of sovereign equality. Three sources of possible change in this situation are explored, in which states would be "population‐weighted" to a greater degree than before. Convergence of productivity levels around the world, expected by many, would bring the economic and population rankings of states more into line. Some convergence is occurring, but selectively and for the most part quite slowly. Anticipation of its effect, however, influences the international order well in advance. A second source of change is the necessity to allocate among states the use of global commons, particularly the atmosphere as a sink for greenhouse gases. Acceptable remedies for this problem and perhaps for other global‐level threats are likely to involve at least in part a per capita allocation principle. And third, population weights will tend to be more prominent in futures in which states are less important—as envisaged, for example, in the more benign scenarios of global society.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Preface -- Contents -- Tables -- Summary -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Chapter One: Introduction -- Defining the International Order -- Methodology and Approach -- Chapter Two: China's Interests and Ambitions -- China's Core Interests -- Xi Jinping's Report at the 19th Party Congress -- Differing Views of China's Intentions -- Chapter Three: China's Views of International Order -- Support for Institutions That Grant China Influence -- Appreciation for Rules-Based, Multilateral Mechanisms -- Contestation of Western Values and U.S. Military Power -- Criticism of U.S. Exceptionalism -- Criticism of Military Interventionism -- Chapter Four: China's Behavior Toward the Order -- China and International Institutions -- China and International Norms -- China's Compliance with the Order's Rule Sets -- China's Role in Shared Security Issues -- Emerging Wild Card: The "Long Arm of China's Influence" -- China's Behavior Toward the Postwar International Order -- Chapter Five: The Future of China's Interaction with the International Order -- Geostrategic Trends and Changes to International Order -- Growing Chinese Dependence on International Order -- How China Seeks to Reform the International Order -- Restructuring the Asia-Pacific Region: A Foretaste of the Future? -- The Intensifying Competition for Political Influence -- Which Parts of the Order Is China Likely to Challenge? -- Conclusion: A Modified or Subverted Order? -- Chapter Six: Three Trajectories for China and the International Order -- A Spectrum of Futures -- Implications for U.S. Policy -- Preparing for a Range of Possible Futures -- Chapter Seven: Conclusions and Recommendations -- Toward a Stable Competition in the Context of a Shared Order -- Putting China's Approach to the Postwar Order into Perspective

AbstractThe project of international development involves the reordering of states (or at least attempts to do so), it sits at the intersection between transnational forces and bounded political entities and it is a manifestation of the will to order of powerful states. It would seem then to be closely connected to practices of intervention. At times, the practices of development agencies have taken on a more interventionist character, but in recent years their relationship to many developing countries has taken on a more intricate, subtle, and everyday form. It has in important respects moved 'beyond' intervention. This has significance beyond international development. Development agencies have been recruited to wider projects of international ordering, especially the construction of regimes of global governance and the 'development' of post-intervention states.

The international order, denoting in a very general sense the manner of the organization and functioning of the international environment in a given period of time, is a dynamic construction that evolves. e feature of the present stage is a transition from its earlier form called the Westphalian order to the future form with qualitatively new features, sometimes called the post-Westphalian order. This process does however mean that the "parameters" of the Westphalian international order are to be replaced by the parameters of the post-Westphalian order. The qualitatively new features of the organization and functioning of the international environment "coexist" with those characteristic of the Westphalian system of international relations. This "coexistence" determines the distinctive feature of the present stage of international relations, which is a hybridity or combining of solutions, o!en opposing in their logic, relating to the organization and functioning of the international environment. Hence it seems appropriate to term the present stage of dynamics of and change in international relations as the late Westphalian order.

How the ideal of national self-determination has been compromised by demands of the international system; some focus on the post-1945 period.