Drifting Apart: International Institutions in Crisis and the Management of Dissociation Processes

Under Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran was one of the most important partners for the West in the Middle East, connected through multiple political, economic and institutional links with the US and Western European states. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, international relations between Iran and the rest of the world changed fundamentally.

Existing structures of cooperation with Western states were dissolved according to the revolutionary slogan "Neither East nor West" and increasingly turned into confrontation. However, Iran’s path towards a pariah of world politics was less straightforward than one could assume. “The West”, even in terms of diplomatic conduct, was far from acting as a monolithic bloc as well.

Daniel Walter at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF) studied these processes of Iran’s international and institutional dissociation and reorientation.

After the end of the Cold War, Russia and Western states and institutions spoke of a  “Europe, whole and free” or a “common European home”, committing themselves to the goal of a pan-European order of peace.

In joint documents such as the Paris Charta, both sides agreed on the principles of such an order, but interpreted their respective importance differently. Disappointment on both sides about the implementation and consequences of this order led to a gradual estrangement and Russia’s step-by-step withdrawal from the joint institutions, ultimately causing the failure of the project of a pan-European peace framework. The resulting tensions represent one of the biggest challenges for the current European security policy.

Mikhail Polianskii of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) reconstructed and analyzed this process of dissociation and the level of tensions between the involved states.

The Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955 under the leadership of the Soviet Union as a defence alliance. In the 1980s, the abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine, the perestroika reforms, and especially the democratic developments in the Central European states increasingly put pressure on the alliance.

While initially a majority of member states backed a reform of the organisation, the looming withdrawal of the GDR put membership into question for the other non-Soviet states as well. The attempt to transform the Warsaw Pact into a purely political organisation failed and the alliance dissolved in 1991, even before the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The end of the Warsaw Pact is an example of the dissolution of an international institution through the member states. The case study reconstructed attempts at reform and expectations for the future of the alliance as well as the gradual process of dissociation, looking at interests and tensions between the member states and focusing especially on the Soviet Union. It was led by Susanne Maslanka of the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ)/Berlin Center for Cold War Studies (BKKK).

China’s dissociation from the global financial architecture represents a case of alternative institution building.

Time and again the People’s Republic has voiced its criticism of the existing order and demanded institutional adjustments that would lead to better Chinese representation and a fairer distribution of power.

Since these calls for reform remained largely unheeded, China co-founded two international banks, the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) while remaining a member of the institutions of the World Bank and the IMF. The new banks have been viewed particularly by the US as tools to enhance Chinese institutional influence and as competitors of key institutions of the post-war liberal order. 

At the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Dr. Sinan Chu explored how this process of dissociation influences the US-Chinese relationship and contributes to the tensions between the two rivals.

The United Kingdom is the first country to negotiate its departure from the European Union.

Among the different case studies of “Drifting Apart”, Brexit is the only case of a formal revocation of membership of an international organisation and the only case in which the conflict lines run through a group of Western states. The EU is an institution with a high level of integration marked by a high significance of shared values. The negotiations of the last years have shown how decidedly difficult the dissociation from such an institution can prove. 

Dr. Dirk Peters of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) traced the level of tensions between the UK and the EU as well as selected member states and examined the discourse both on the international level and in the British society.