Politique Internationale — How did the Paris Peace Forum initiative come about? What makes you unique on the international stage, which can sometimes seem very crowded?
Justin Vaïsse — The creation of the Paris Peace Forum six years ago, in 2018, was based on the observation that international coordination was inadequate: we were not managing to come up with the right responses to all the global challenges facing us. While dialogue between states at the UN is well established, it is far from always effective because of tensions between powers and the rigidities of formal multilateralism – each diplomat sticking to his or her own language. We wanted to propose a more flexible ‘multi- actor’ approach, involving civil society and the private sector when they are useful. This is the case not for the most burning issues of international security, but for most global problems such as climate change, global health, artificial intelligence (AI) and technology in general, or the ecological transition. No one is left out: our multi- stakeholder approach also demands North-South parity. If we want to move beyond the narrow definition of peace as the absence of war, we need to respond to the challenges that threaten peace and build an order that works for everyone. This is the title of this seventh edition of the Forum.
P. I. — Are there more conflicts today than there were ten or twenty years ago?
J. V. — There are more conflicts, yes, and they are particularly visible at the moment with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But beyond an always risky tally, there is indeed more conflict than at the beginning of this century, as multipolarity progresses and American superiority crumbles. The world’s policeman is being challenged, and is taking his responsibilities less to heart. Admittedly, it came to Ukraine’s rescue: the challenge was too blatant. But today, no one in Washington would dream of launching a military intervention, as America did regularly in the two or three decades following the Cold War. Above all, the conflict has gone underground and is becoming permanent: Thomas Gomart, Director of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), talks of ‘invisible wars’ between the major powers, particularly in cyberspace, information wars, intelligence wars, etc. In another recent book, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer puts forward the idea of ‘permanent war’, a war that is engaged in a process of de-specification, in other words a gradual reduction in what distinguishes it from peace: It is no longer confined to certain activities, carried out by certain people, in certain places, at certain times, he explains.
P. I. — What about economic warfare? Has it intensified in recent decades? Have certain companies become even more the armed wing of governments?
J. V. — Jeangène Vilmer and his co-authors analyse a situation in which the ‘weaponisation of everything’ prevails: the economy, energy, hunger, fishing, refugees, information, law, health, etc. They are right, even if companies have naturally been at the heart of economic warfare for …