Adnan R. Khan is a writer and analyst based in Istanbul.
Perhaps the most important lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that alliances built on long-term strategic goals are more necessary today than ever. We build our personal relationships around trusted individuals, and make sacrifices for them in the short term knowing that their loyalty over the long term is an asset – so shouldn’t relations between nations work the same way?
But in the post-Cold War era, international relations have drifted inexorably toward transactionalism, where alliances are less about shared values and visions and more about cynical, cost-benefit calculations. A transactional worldview was behind British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s push to drag Britain out of the European Union; transactionalism formed the entirety of Donald Trump’s politics; it drove Emmanuel Macron’s desire to make France Europe’s new enforcer.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, then, served as a reminder that alliances built on a “you scratch my back” mentality can be easily exploited. He’d hoped that, in the absence of U.S. leadership, the trend toward transactionalism had come to define European and trans-Atlantic relations, and that as a result, Western powers would be incapable of mounting a united response to his aggression.
He was wrong – mostly.
Western nations, Canada included, rallied around Ukraine, making the hard decisions and policy shifts necessary to collectively aid the Ukrainians and punish Russia. Germany shifted its entire foreign policy and military footing; Britain acted as if it had not, just a few short years ago, abandoned the European continent in a fit of self-righteousness. Countries across Europe agreed to suffer short-term economic pain for the good of long-term alliances.
And yet, transactionalism continued to lurk behind the scenes, in both the European Union and NATO. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban went on praising Mr. Putin and refused to sign off on banning Russian oil imports to the EU – Russia’s primary source of income – until it received an exemption. Turkey’s leaders, meanwhile, refused to back sanctions (because the NATO member depends so heavily on Russian tourism) but continued to sell armed drones to Ukraine (because, well, there’s money in that, too).
Turkey did agree to close its airspace to Russian flights and ban Russian warships from transiting the Bosphorus Strait into the Black Sea, but both moves were mostly symbolic. The airspace closing only applied to Russian flights to Syria, where Bashar al-Assad’s regime has largely won the war and Russian military involvement has been scaled back. And the Bosphorus ban meant little strategically because Russia had shifted much of the naval assets it needed into the Black Sea before the Ukraine invasion began.
Turkey’s latest moves have gone even further. Its President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently refused to agree to open up NATO expansion to Sweden and Finland unless Sweden concedes to some hefty demands, including the extradition to Turkey of upward of two dozen Swedish citizens of Kurdish origin who Turkey considers terrorists, and a lifting of arms embargoes. Last week, the opportunistic Mr. Erdogan also demanded the demilitarization of Turkey’s Mediterranean rival, Greece, and added another threat to his transactional mix, announcing plans for a cross-border operation in Syria targeting the U.S.-backed YPG militia.
This is not how allies are supposed to act. But among Turkey’s current leadership, the idea that they are the ones acting badly flies in the face of historical realities. The post-Cold War order, they agree, was supposed to be about multilateralism and international co-operation; that was the promise the U.S. made to Russia, and indeed to the rest of the world. But American exceptionalism simply could not resist the urge to have its way, they argue. Indeed, as the years passed, U.S. foreign policy has looked increasingly like U.S. hegemony, prompting not only authoritarian leaders such as Mr. Erdogan, Mr. Orban and Mr. Putin to embrace transactionalism, but also putative democrats, including Mr. Johnson and Mr. Macron.
“Transactionalism was the inevitable response,” said Ilter Turan, professor emeritus of political science at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. “Even during the Cold War, the Americans unilaterally defined strategic policy for NATO. Everyone accepted it because everyone realized the U.S. was necessary to guard against Soviet aggression. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, American hegemony became progressively less tenable. In recent years, countries like Turkey have begun to question why they should simply acquiesce to U.S. demands. They have begun to demand things in return for their co-operation.”
This transactionalist turn does not bode well for the future of international relations. That’s particularly true for countries such as Canada, which doesn’t have a lot of geopolitical heft to throw around. For Canada, a consensus-building zeitgeist offers the best chance to have a say in how the world order is shaped.
There was some hope for such a multilateral world during the heady early years after the end of the Cold War. And some semblance of that world coalesced again briefly, right after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February. But as the war drags on, that sense of collective purpose is fading fast, and a new world disorder is again emerging as our most likely future.