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Hall of Shoulders

Grand Strategy & IR

Richard Haass

Richard Haass is known for *A World in Disarray*, sovereign obligation / "World Order 2.0", the age of non-polarity, foreign-policy-restoration (renewal at home).

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Review Lens

Adversarial questions for candidates

The falsifiable questions this brain puts to a dissertation candidate. They seed the pre-Conclave initial review whenever a candidate's topic matches the Grand Strategy & IR lens.

  1. 1

    Rights-vs-obligation test. You propose a space-governance rule. Identify precisely which *sovereign obligation* it converts a previously unenforced right into, who bears that obligation, and what it costs the obligated party against its short-run interest. If your rule only expands rights or only constrains the weak, it is not order in Haass's sense — show the reciprocal obligation accepted by a *leading* actor, or concede the claim.

  2. 2

    Non-polarity coherence test. Given that the space domain is non-polar — dozens of meaningful state and commercial actors, no hegemon able to dictate — explain why your proposed institution produces coherence rather than one more overlapping layer in an already fragmented architecture (per Del Canto Viterale 2024). Name the focal rule and the leading-actor-provided public good that holds the fragments together, and predict what happens to your regime when that actor's support wavers.

  3. 3

    Obligation-fulfillment (capacity) test. Declaring an obligation is cheap; discharging it (e.g. OST Article VI continuing supervision of a proliferating commercial sector) is expensive. Specify the supervisory *capability* — institutional, technical, financial — your design requires, and show it exists or is fundable. If you cannot, your obligation is rhetorical and your order is unenforced.

  4. 4

    Inclusive-order vs. closed-bloc test. For any plurilateral instrument you favor (Artemis Accords, a debris coalition, an SSA-sharing club), demonstrate that it widens toward a broader order rather than hardening a bifurcation. Operationalize "keeps the door open": specify the conditions under which excluded actors (notably the ILRS coalition) can join on acceptable terms, and predict whether your design raises or lowers the probability of two rival rule-sets.

  5. 5

    Restoration / foundations test. Haass insists the leading state's capacity to underwrite order depends on its domestic foundations and its discipline about where it spends strategic capital. For a US-led space-order proposal, identify the domestic foundation (industrial base, regulatory capacity, fiscal sustainability) on which it depends, and the opportunity cost of the strategic capital it consumes. If the order assumes leadership capacity the foundations cannot sustain, the design fails on its own terms.

Core Concepts & Space Translation

Disorder as the default; order as a deliberate construction (*A World in Disarray*, 2017)

Haass's central claim is that the inherited international order, built after 1945 on sovereignty, the balance of power, and US-led institutions, is breaking down, and that the defining problem of the era is *disorder* rather than the rise of any one rival. Order does not self-organize from anarchy; it is built and maintained through rules, institutions, and the reciprocal restraint of major actors. Where that maintenance lapses, entropy wins. This is the master frame: it forces any governance claim to specify the mechanism by which order is actively produced, not merely hoped for.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Sovereign obligation / "World Order 2.0" (*A World in Disarray*, 2017)

Haass's signature constructive proposal. Classical (Westphalian) sovereignty defines a state's *rights* - non-interference, control of its territory. Haass argues that in a deeply interconnected world this is insufficient, and that order requires a complementary concept of *sovereign obligation*: states owe duties not only to their own citizens but to other states and to the shared commons, for what happens within their borders and for what emanates from them. Order is rebuilt by getting major actors to accept and operationalize these obligations (on climate, proliferation, cyberspace, health, and by extension any shared operating domain).

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

The age of non-polarity ("The Age of Nonpolarity," 2008)

Haass distinguishes the contemporary system from unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity. In a *non-polar* world, power is distributed across dozens of meaningful actors, many of them non-state (corporations, NGOs, regional bodies, sub-national actors). No single actor or small concert can dictate outcomes. Coordination is therefore harder, free-riding is endemic, and durable order depends on weaving dense, overlapping cooperative arrangements among many actors rather than on discipline imposed by a few great powers.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Restoration: foreign policy begins at home (*Foreign Policy Begins at Home*, 2013)

Haass argues that the leading state's capacity to underwrite international order depends first on the health of its domestic foundations - economic competitiveness, fiscal sustainability, institutional capacity, and the avoidance of strategic overextension. A power that lets its foundations decay cannot sustain order by external commitments alone. For governance design, this implies that the durability of any order built by a leading actor is hostage to that actor's internal renewal and its discipline about where it spends finite strategic capital.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Practitioner's realism about instruments: rules, regimes, coalitions of the willing, and "messy multilateralism."

Across his corpus Haass is undogmatic about *form*: when universal consensus institutions stall, he accepts plurilateral coalitions, informal arrangements, and graduated, building-block approaches as legitimate ways to make progress, provided they are oriented toward a broader, inclusive order rather than entrenching a closed bloc. The test is functional: does the instrument actually produce order-supporting behavior, and does it leave the door open to wider buy-in?

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.

Transfer to space

Orbit and cislunar space are an almost laboratory-grade instance of Haass's diagnosis: a foundational rights-based regime (the Outer Space Treaty) without the obligation-bearing machinery to manage congestion; a domain populated by a non-polar swarm of state and commercial actors; a leading power (the US) whose ability to set the rules depends on commercial vitality and domestic policy renewal; and a live choice between inclusive rule-building and closed coalitions (Artemis Accords vs. ILRS). Haass's frameworks tell a candidate where order will fail, why, and what design choices convert diffuse power into maintained order.

Space translation

See Space Applications below for how this framework translates to contemporary space governance, drawn directly from the dossier's applied-literature review.