Global Stasis as a Party System, or Welcome to World Civil War I

While agreeing with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri that the state of the modern world can be characterized as a “global civil war,” the author elaborates and expands this judgement. Using the ancient Greek notions of ‘stasis’ and ‘polemos,’ he shows that these two modes of war can merge and produce not only negative but also positive effects. Limited and controlled violence between “one’s own people” (stasis) proves to be less destructive than violence between “strangers” that is unlimited and uncontrolled (polemos). The author argues that actors involved in stasis can justifiably be identified as political parties. Therefore, some known ways to moderate party disputes and gear them towards the common good can be used in a global stasis. The best-known way is to create a relatively stable party system. Stability and predictability are best achieved in isolating systems that fix the qualitatively unequal status of individual parties and isolate them from the processes of coalition-building and political decision-making. This strategy consolidates all other actors according to the “all against one” model. The author shows that this strategy is increasingly being applied to Russia as an object of isolation, where the necessary conditions—moral connotation of the claims and their sufficient but not excessive measure—are met successfully. The author sees no realistic scenarios either for ending the “global civil war” or for its participants to renounce the policy of isolation.