Dr. Valentin Filip: „Superpolitik, a book about ordering, disordering or reordering the world”

The transformation of the international order: about Superpolitik with George Cristian Maior, is a detailed review by Dr. Valentin Filip of the superbook written by, we quote, „an erudite dedicated to politics”.

„In recent decades, international politics and the global economy have experienced tectonic shifts, associated with a wide and varied range of systemic challenges: rivalries between great powers, inter-state conflicts, energy crises, financial crashes, poverty and inequality, pandemics, natural calamities , political polarisations, dilemmas of artificial intelligence development, migration, social unrest, divergent cultural narratives to name a few.

The multitude and complexity of these crises, on any dimension and at any level of international security, have generated an increased degree of unpredictability regarding the evolution of the world in which we live, hence the formulation and consolidation of the diagnosis of the age of uncertainty.

Against this background, understanding the dynamics affecting the global political and economic order is a critical first element to guide the destiny of a community towards a stable and prosperous future„.

How to discern and, above all, how to choose where we are heading are questions that George Cristian Maior aims to answer in the volume „Superpolitik: Superpolitics: Triumph and strategic failure – leaders, great power ambitions and the logic of legitimacy in the order of states and in international relations” (RAO publishing house, Bucharest 2024), launched in July this year”, writes Dr. Valentin Filip.

„In the mentioned context, the approach to the theme of the international order, factual or conceptual – understood strictly sensu as a system based on rules, resulting as a result of the promotion of some values ​​through the use of force of any kind (soft, hard or smart) at the level of the whole or the majority of a the community of states – has experienced an acute proliferation in recent times.

So, we are dealing, including in the domestic landscape, with a whole series of governmental and non-governmental reports, scientific publications, political speeches, press articles, even opinions (more or less educated and/or informed) expressed in the virtual space that deals with the shocks to which the international order is subjected and imagines alternative futures of preservation or transition, fragmentation and even dispersion.

Few Romanian authors, in order to consider only the editorial environment in which these debates take place, dare to go beyond descriptive (what, where and when was it?) and explanatory (how and why was it?) approaches, without it did not detract at all from their merit in examining developments, policies and strategic actions and discerning correlations and causalities between them. Even fewer manage to move into a normative (how should it be?) or predictive (what will be?) register.

It is the area in which Maior also places himself by proposing an accessible and plausible model for dissecting and explaining the transformation of the state or international order which he uses to analyze different historical moments of disruption of this order. Without assigning the title of theory, because it does not aim to generate verifiable predictions, „Superpolitik” provides readers interested in the study and practice of international relations with an analytical framework that facilitates the process of interpreting systemic or state developments, but also of the behaviors of some actors.

It’s, in a more artistic language, a different lens through which to look at the world. At the same time, the volume constitutes a vast and deep historical incursion intended to offer a higher degree of understanding of some historical events. Even if it does not assume this ambition, the retrospective analysis, by its scope and thoroughness, but especially by outlining an analytical model, can pragmatically offer utility to steps to clarify the uncertainty of the present and future, if not by providing answers, then at least by identifying the right questions to serve this purpose.

A consideration worth taking into account for reading „Superpolitik” and understanding the author’s argumentation refers to the academic expertise and professional experience that underpinned the fine knowledge and penetrating observations found in the volume’s content. George, a diplomat with a long mandate as ambassador in the United States of America, currently accredited in Jordan and Yemen, George Cristian Maior was one of the first-rank architects of Romania’s accession to NATO, as secretary of state for defense policy and Euro-Atlantic integration at the Ministry of Defence. He was also director of the Romanian Intelligence Service, in which capacity he led the process of institutional transformation, as well as a senator in the Romanian Parliament, where he was active as a member of the defense and control commissions of the Foreign Intelligence Service.

From these positions, he had the opportunity not only to meet leaders from the political, diplomatic, military and intelligence areas, but also to be at the center of important decision-making processes, at the national or allied level. It should be noted that, permanently, his professional activity was doubled by the academic one, both formally, by designing and supporting some courses and research activities, including some international conferences, in disciplines related to international relations, and informally, by maintaining some solid contacts with prominent members of the academic world at home and abroad.

In fact, some of these personalities who no longer need any introduction for those initiated into the research of the International Relations discipline are mentioned in the lines of the volume: Edward Luttwak, Robert Kaplan, George Friedman, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Joseph Nye, Walter Russel Mead, Fred Kempe, Charles Kupchan. All this experience, of an erudite engaged in high-level politics and governance, is reflected in the pages of the book.

It’s true that Maior chooses a rather historical approach in an accessible language, but the argumentation is deeply embedded in a theoretical vein (visible not only in the studies which, according to the author, were the basis of the idea of ​​superpolitics, but also in the selective bibliography of over 120 titles) that synthesize the major trends in international relations theory, transgress the boundaries between them, combine them with elements from foreign policy analysis and spice them up with accounts from their own experience.

It assumes the stated intention of addressing a broad audience and conferring utility for the political field, both audiences being less attracted to the technical or arid style, as Maior calls it, typically present in academic research. Located in this area of ​​interpenetration between the governmental and academic sectors, between decision and research, the author can best be defined as a erudite political employee, like some of those whose works, as he confesses from the very beginning, inspired „Superpolitik”: Philip Bobbit, Francis Fukuyama, Paul Kennedy and Henry Kissinger.

Maior’s thesis, as explained in the introduction and conclusions of the volume, but also as it results implicitly throughout it, starts from the premise that the state and international order rests on three large dimensions – strategic (composed of all the material factors of power ; security in its hard sense), of legitimacy (understood as the set of rules and values ​​derived from morals, laws, ideologies and collective mentalities), respectively economic (which refers to both collective wealth and individual prosperity) – and advances the hypothesis that through superpolitics – a notion imagined by the author to qualify political thinking and action by which the (im)balance of the three dimensions of order is ensured, depending on the purpose – the human factor can manage the critical situations that appear in the evolution of order. In other words, through superpolitics, actors in the international system can assume to some extent the ordering, disordering or reordering of the world.

Order or disorder can therefore be politically exploitable, if not controllable. But managing historical forces of such magnitude and complexity requires acuity and wisdom to be able to balance, unbalance and rebalance them. Hence the author’s effort to break down the order as a macro-process at various historical moments into micro-processes much more approachable through decision and political action.

Even if it’s not visible from the table of contents, the argumentation is conceptually structured in four large parts, each of them being divided in turn into chapters and subchapters, in order to facilitate a reading that captures the coherence of the thesis. A first part is dedicated to the definition and clarification of the notion of superpolitics and its components, with a special emphasis on the dimension of legitimacy, the strategic one being dissected and treated in extenso in the literature in the field of strategic studies (chapters 1, 2, 7 and 11). A second part deals with cases in which political thinking and action approach legitimacy unbalanced, to the detriment of the strategic, respectively the strategic, to the detriment of legitimacy, or, in the words of the author, anti-strategic, respectively hyper-strategic visions and actions (chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6) .

Following italically and logically, the third part refers to the ideal situations in which the strategic-legitimate binomial is balanced or rebalanced, relative to the context of the era, to ensure order – they are textbook cases for the manifestation of superpolitics (chapters 8 and 9).

Finally, the last part is intended for the strategic culture present within several nations and communities, this being considered as a crucible in which certain preferences regarding hyper-strategy, anti-strategy or super-politics arise, as the case may be (chapter 10).

Superpolitics can be imagined as a manifestation against narrow political and public visions, tributary to historical determinism, which produce fatalistic perceptions, attitudes and behaviors that presume the inability of the human factor to face some macro-dynamics that shape the political and economic order.

It’s also a manifesto contrary to the theses of the dominant families in the theory of international relations (neorealism and neoliberalism) that put the structure of the international system in the foreground as a determining factor for its evolution. Without inflexibly contesting the structuralist ideas, whose role is nevertheless hard to deny, Maior states that there are situations in which the individual can be decisive in the dynamics of the balance that ensures the international order, in which the individual makes superpolitics. However, its manifestation requires several conditions that, in fact, define it. So the moment when we can speak of superpolitics is an eminently crossroad in international relations, one in which the political order is under siege.

Then, its development takes place only at the level of the strategic management of the state or community, having their leaders as agents and thus constituting a superior extension, through ramifications and implications that go beyond the national-international separation, of any other policy public. Last but not least, it must take into account the two dimensions that make up the order, strategic or security, respectively legitimacy, both supported by the economic side.
The use of the terms soft and hard is only intended to simplify the understanding of the concept, with notions much better defined in specialized terminology, but the reality is that Maior operates with broader concepts and of increased complexity, especially since both categories supports the economic dimension. Thus, in his view, strategic factors include any kind of material power or state authority at a certain historical moment, not just the armed one.

Legitimacy factors refer to a whole host of values, beliefs, norms, etc. which constrain and at the same time animate the strategic ones, again, at a certain historical moment. This emphasis on the context is very important because, if we can summarize the author’s solution for identifying these factors in a paraphrase, then it would be: contextualize, contextualize and contextualize again! Even if the model or framework of analysis has universal applicability, in the sense of balancing, unbalancing and rebalancing the two categories, understanding the composition and evolution of the two dimensions takes a lot into account of historical circumstances.
Although the logic of order (and implicitly the superpolitics aims to exploit it) is the same throughout history, in the sense that it resides on the mentioned dimensions, its nature changes from one historical era to another, from one society or community to another. It is also the reason why Maior insists on legitimacy, as he conceptualizes it in this volume, and on its main components.

Divergences of a theological nature are dissected – either between religions, or within religions, or between religion and secularism; ideological – between the great currents of modern history: nationalism, communism, fascism or liberalism or more recently: illiberalism, sovereignism, globalism and, again, liberalism or internationalism; cultural – conservatism versus progressivism or the exceptionalisms of some nations that become conflictual when they are in contact; and even deriving from technological progress, namely the ability to understand its impact, with concrete reference to artificial intelligence. The space given to this chapter and the nature of the argument only highlight the author’s emphasis on the importance of knowing what is or is not a factor of legitimacy in a certain community at a certain historical moment.

A confusion that must be avoided arises, in the conditions where both the strategic can create legitimacy and the legitimacy can create power, cases in which the sources of power and legitimacy are no longer autonomous and their calculation is no longer objective (that is, when power springs from legitimacy and vice versa or when, in the words of the author, one dimension „subordinates” the other to such an extent that it ends up determining it).

To illustrate the failures of superpolitics that lead to anti-strategy or hyper-strategy, Maior appeals to multiple historical examples through an incursion into the past that, even if it is not intended to be exhaustive, crosses ages and continents. It is a tasty piece of writing for any lover of historical reading not only because of the details that denote a thorough knowledge but especially for the interpretation which, according to the proposed analytical model, provokes and invites reflection.

As for the excessive concentration on the factors of legitimacy, the cases of statesmen are shown (let’s not forget that only they can be the depositories of superpolitics) who, prisoners of a value and ideational puritanism, subjected the strategic calculation to an exacerbated idealism, without succeed and without even being interested in achieving a balance between the two dimensions.

Until the end, this also includes the failed American experiments to spread democracy in countries such as Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. It turns out that only the conviction of an ideological superiority that can be applied universally, without taking into account the legitimate order or other strategic considerations characteristic of the respective societies, is insufficient even when it is doubled by a colossal military force, but exogenous and foreign to the specific local.

Regarding the diametrically opposite situation, leaders are presented who, relying only on strategic factors, most of the time in the form of the armed forces, ignore or neglect the moral considerations that are the basis of legitimacy. So, the author exemplifies through hyperstrategic models such as: Julius Caesar who, although he wins the civil war with Pompey, is assassinated because he does not understand the importance of the legitimacy of the republican origin; a series of Central Asian military leaders (Attila, Ginghis Khan, Tamerlane) who use formidable armies to pass through the vast conquered territories by fire and sword, but, mistakenly believing that armed violence is sufficient to restore order, only do to contribute to the ephemerality of empires born of war; similarly, Napoleon and Tojo whose militaristic policies, less than doubled by the precepts of legitimacy, lead to the collapse of the empires they had created by armed conquest.

Also mentioned here are the cases of strategic over-extension, Eden and the Suez crisis, respectively Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis, in which political leaders fail to understand the evolutions of strategic power and venture into experiences resulting in well-known failures. Last but not least, Ceaușescu and Tito, other communist leaders who, although focused on strategic and non-military calculations, succeed in ensuring an order that ends abruptly because they did not properly appreciate the considerations of legitimacy present in the societies they they were driving them.

Applying the same analytical filter, Maior demonstrates that when both the sources of strategic power and legitimacy are properly valued and used, state and international order can be transformed by the human agent. By extrapolation from the concept of superpolitics, one can therefore speak of superpoliticians, although the term may have an outdated resonance, that is, of statesmen who understand and operate both with strategic and legitimacy factors to balance, debalance and rebalance the state order and / or international.

From this perspective, the author emphasizes the cases of Cromwell and Lincoln as leaders who use strategic force to destroy the existing order (absolutist monarchy and, respectively, the constitutional and ideological cleavage that was the basis of the secession of the South in America) in order to rebuild a new order, on other legitimacy factors (monarchy based on the Bill of Rights and, respectively, a Union based on moral principles and new constitutional values).

Here too we are dealing with creators of order built on a careful balance between strategic and legitimate, in the sense of strategic victories doubled by the foundation of new legitimacy: Moses, maker of Jewish identity; Octavian Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire; Mohammed, architect of the Islamic order; Jean Monnet, pioneer of the European community order; Dean Acheson, builder of the Euro-Atlantic order.

There are also numerous examples of superpoliticians who introduced new considerations of legitimacy, supported by strategic factors, into the existing political order of their time, transforming it and adapting it to a new context: Wilhelm of Orania and the order based on the Protestant ethic ; Richelieu and order focused on state rationale; Akbar and the Mughal order of Islamic origin; Wallenstein and the order founded around the sovereign state; Kangxi and the Chinese imperial order refounded on Confucian and legalistic precepts; Castlereagh and Metternich and the post-Napoleonic European order based on a system of alliances; Bismarck and the European order founded on the constellation of power around a unified Germany; Kemal Ataturk and the modernization of order in the Turkish area; Marshall and the reconstruction of the European order.

Superpolitics is also manifested when political leaders manage, through resilience in the face of turbulence, to maintain the existing order, even though in some cases it undergoes transformations, Churchill and Charles de Gaulle in the case of the United Kingdom and France, components of the European order before -1939 and post-1945.

All these cases reveal, in the author’s view, the possibility of harmonizing strategy and legitimacy, through the thinking and action of super-politicians, in a new paradigm of the international order. In this context, superpolitik appears as more than a synthesis between realpolitik and idealpolitik, concepts consolidated in the jargon of those interested in the field of international relations, because it crosses their borders and exceeds their limits.
The last part aims to explore the background of strategic culture in the case of important actors on the international scene, since this, without being definitive in revealing concrete actions and measures, can at least be indicative of broader preferences towards certain strategic behaviors or values of legitimacy.

Maior explores the evolution of these worlds, so to speak, of their visions of domestic and international order, and especially of their perceptions of the factors that make it up. Of course, the same analytical framework that follows superpoliticians and the strategic binomial – legitimacy is used. It is perhaps the most attractive and useful reading for analysts and researchers who have access to a resource that facilitates understanding of the Russian, American, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Turkish worlds.

From a critical perspective, one can certainly debate concretely about several historical moments and personalities evoked in the volume. Considering such a generous supply of cases, as well as the interpretive nature of the historical approach, we would reach a point where the lines of a review would be insufficient for such an approach.

After all, the configuration of any historical process is generally the result of a selective interpretation in which, on the one hand, the omission of certain data and facts is omitted for the sake of brevity, and on the other hand, the absence of others is made up for by deductions, even plausible speculation. Moreover, such criticism, undoubtedly useful because it would perhaps lead to reinterpretations closer to reality, would only fit into the analytical pattern outlined by Maior.

For example, a figure of the complexity of Napoleon, around whom so many controversies gravitate, could be „sweetened” by his hyper-strategic character, considering the legacy of the civil code left in France and adopted by so many other European states, which by the way also mentioned by the author. Moreover, it can also be argued that the ideas of revolutionary France, despite the proclamation of the Empire, were spread through the Napoleonic wars that weakened, strategically and legitimately, the European empires that would face the „Spring of Nations” in 1848. Maybe he was a super politician before his time. At the risk of repetition, criticisms of this kind would perhaps refine the historical interpretation, but not the analytical filter.

Instead, the criticism of the analysis model would be much more constructive, especially since Maior does not propose it as a panacea, because each order and its components must be treated in its own strategic and legitimacy context, but rather as a conceptual outline of reality to allow its transformation according to the interests of the actor involved (ordering, disordering, reordering). In this regard, a first observation concerns the super-politician and its relevance in the transformation of the global order.

As a fine promoter and skilled observer of the role of the individual in the dynamics of history, the author claims that without statesmen we do not control the helm of our own destiny but rather let ourselves be carried by the waves of historical forces. Maior practically does not deny the relevance of other actors or factors that balance or unbalance the global order, but only emphasizes the role of the individual, somewhat forgotten and perhaps the most missing element in a careful examination of the architecture of the decision-making chain from us and not only.

It seems somehow that the super politician is on the way to extinction, but not because there are no longer individuals with the ability to understand and act at a strategic and legitimate level, but somehow as a result of the evolution of decision-making processes in liberal democracies. Except for exceptional cases, such as war (or the international order is not called into question only through organized armed violence), in what we generically call the West and to which we also claim our membership, there has been an intense concern to involve as many actors as possible in the decision chain.

Paradoxically, a much clearer vertical of power and which would allow a better visibility of the political leaders who manifest themselves on the line of superpolitics is present in rather illiberal, if not downright autocratic, regimes. Instead, the decision-making framework in liberal democracies has been built on the principles of sharing, separating, balancing and mutual checking of decision-making power. Therefore, in the field of foreign policy analysis, actors appear such as the elites around the leaders, the organizations they belong to (political parties or even think-tanks), the bureaucracies on which the act of government is supported, the media and even public opinion , elements that diminish the somehow romantic vision of the providential leader.

In this light, the analytical model either becomes more complicated, by adding new actors who behave differently and are in a continuous relationship that can be concordant but also frictional, or the ability of the super-politician to obtain consensus and support should be emphasized domestically for his thinking and action in matters of strategy and legitimacy (it is perhaps, to return to the reinterpretation of historical casuistry, the example of Woodrow Wilson who failed mainly domestically – with an America willing to remain in Europe, perhaps the other chancellors European countries would have responded differently to the implementation of Wilsonian principles in the new international order after the Great War).

On the other hand, it is no less true that, including in the landscape of liberal democracies, the role of the leader can be decisive in view of the fact that the decision-making cycle or spiral involves wider collectives in certain phases (of initiation and evaluation), which are restricted to the level to smaller collectives (bureaucracies and organizations in the formulation and implementation phases) to reach the leader at the time of the final choice regarding the foreign policy decision.

And again we return to the author’s emphasis on „strategic leadership”, regardless of whether it refers to one or several statesmen, without whose capacity for knowledge and understanding, creativity, persuasion and mobilization, foreign policy analysis would not be complete.

Perhaps, the reason why Maior emphasizes the role of statesmen is also because he feels, with his vast experience and expertise, their absence from the decision-making chain. Given that the decision seems to depend more and more on politicians corrupted by power and wealth or limited in moral and intellectual scope, it is somehow ironic that it somehow arrogates the superpolitics of the individual at the top level of politics, who should prove himself above circumstances or prejudices and to chart the destinies of the communities they govern, to navigate, in continuation of the aforementioned metaphor, the troubled waters of global (dis)order.

Another dilemma regarding the presented analytical model concerns the difficulty of identifying, understanding and operating with legitimacy factors. In fact, it is a problem that the author also aims at since he gives this subject a generous space to capture its complexity. Beyond the contextualization of legitimacy on multiple levels: historical, cultural, technological, political, economic, social; the actions and measures of hostile entities, amplified by technological progress and the existence of multiple social networks with serious limitations in terms of limitations and control, would seem to deserve special attention.

In these circumstances, the basis of legitimacy, as a component of the state or international order, is much more susceptible to undergo rapid and deep mutations, which would make the exercise of superpolitics considerably more difficult. Technology greatly complicates the equation of legitimacy.

Maior shows a special enthusiasm for an exhaustive thinking that includes political, economic, military, cultural and social arguments to outline this binomial of strategic forces – moral considerations on whose (im)equilibrium depends not only the international order but also the individual’s attempt to transform it.

Using mainly the historical method, but also borrowing from other disciplines, it produces an argument, closer to foreign policy analysis, even if it often juggles realist, idealist or constructivist precepts. It deliberately moves away from the theoretical area, starting from the conviction that international reality cannot and should neither be subject to rigid dogmas, specific to the „strong” currents in the theory of international relations, nor to be described in their technical language. It results in a comparative approach to foreign policy analysis from which a generalizable and accessible analytical framework is outlined.

Nowadays, talking or writing about the crisis of the international order has become almost prosaic, which is both gratifying and encouraging because it denotes a legitimate interest in a reality and offers multiple perspectives of knowing it. However, there is also a flip side of the medal because all these debates, without counting the impact of the false or fake ones, greatly amplified thanks to social networks, have the potential to produce oversaturation, even confusion, in terms of the causes and nature of the turbulences that affect the international order , implicitly to procrastinate, stagnate, or even misdirect decision-making processes aimed at government policies and actions.
Moreover, through frequency and tone, it risks fueling a sensation that is already increasingly significant, namely that the succession of crises we face will culminate in transformations of a scale and magnitude that will affect the (geo)political order and society of the world even to the tragic end.

In fact, from beneficial concern to exacerbated fears, even more or less intentionally induced panic, is not such a long distance, and the transition from the rational to the emotional register would only alter the efforts of political decision-makers to identify a drama of coherence, consistency or even purpose in the dynamics of local, regional or global changes. From this point of view, the volume „Superpolitik” written by George Cristian Maior brings calm, lucidity and a new breath that refreshes the Romanian publishing market„, according to Dr. Valentin Filip.