A New World Order
Notes from Stockholm China Forum 18.
The changing tides of the global order are not just about the election of Donald Trump, struggles in the European Union or China’s rise. Globalization and digitization have fundamentally changed the way the world works and how people relate to one another. We are at the beginning of a transition from the industrial age to the digital age. America is in relative decline and global power is becoming more diffuse. If Chinese GDP and defense spending continue to grow as predicted, China’s defense spending will match that of the United States in thirty years. Africa will be home to 40% of the world’s working population.
In the midst of all of that change, are we now in a period that is less about global order and instead about “global gain” — competition for power? Who will have what power as the world evolves? Are there any powers or forces willing and able to defend the liberal elements of the liberal order?
The United States has been the unilateral guarantor of the liberal international order over the last twenty-five years. While some here have asserted that the election of Donald J. Trump could just be a blip (one U.S. analyst: “we are already 1/8th of the way through his presidency”) with the U.S. poised to return to a more sensible approach to the world once he leaves office, the longer term trends almost certainly preclude another period of unilateral U.S. leadership.
As an illiberal power domestically, can China really be expected to sustain the liberal international order?
There seemed to be some consensus in this room, at least, that China will carry forward certain elements of a globally cooperative agenda. It is committed on climate change and on the maintenance of multilateral institutions. It is essentially committed to an open global trading order, despite the country’s role in unravelling that order. It is less committed on international rule of law in the South China Sea. But, as an essentially illiberal power domestically, can the country really be expected to sustain the liberal international order going forward?
For the EU’s part, there is more optimism in Brussels than there has been in a decade — but it may be mis-founded. An alliance between Macron’s France and Merkel’s Germany will disquiet Eastern Europe, establishing a Western dominated European Union. The refugee crisis is unresolved. While EU growth is presently stable, the structural issues that led to the Eurocrisis have not been resolved. The EU is in a strong position vis-a-vis Brexit, but if Brussels overplays its hand and seriously damages the British economy, Europe too will feel the effects. Europe also has limited bandwidth for a global agenda. Instead, it is obviously and understandably focused on its own neighborhood: an authoritarian, revisionist power to its East and an unstable neighborhood to its south, both of which could unravel the European Union in its entirety.
Perhaps we are moving beyond a superpower-centric liberal international order and are instead moving toward a liberal international order with non-state actors and coalitions at its heart.
Perhaps, however, we are moving beyond a superpower-centric liberal international order, and are instead moving toward a liberal international order with non-state actors and coalitions at its heart. It needn’t necessarily be the case that the liberal elements of the international order need superpowers to sustain it. In this, the reaction to the Trump presidency is illustrative: a large number of Trump’s policies are not coming to fruition, and those that do are being counteracted by other forces. The U.S. Senate will not cut the U.S. aid budget as Trump has proposed; the U.S. port authority is fighting the travel ban; the “wall” will be built, but only in small parts. When Trump signed the global gag rule, the Netherlands organized twenty countries to step in to fill the gap in funding for family planning. On Climate change, cities, businesses, and the rest of the world have stepped up to the plate. On internet openness, other countries are carrying the torch: Japan and Germany among them. And, while the Chinese state may be illiberal, this does not mean that China is fundamentally illiberal in its entirety: there are very liberal elements within Chinese society, on the net, in education, in Chinese culture.
If there is any consensus on this subject at Stockholm China Forum, it is that we are in a midst of a tectonic shift. The global order as we know it will not exist in 10, 15, 20, or 25 years. The question going forward is whether that order will become less liberal, less international, and/or less ordered.
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