Gloomy doomy
I made a presentation to colleagues this week on 'global trends' especially the shift in power away from 'the West'.
From a capitalist-communist duopoly, we briefly 'enjoyed' a monopoly of power but as the United States wanes (notwithstanding the Economist's rallying support this week) and China waxes, does this mean a new duopoly and what would that look like? A G2 rather than a G8 or G20 (or indeed the collective security mechanisms that the UN was meant to underpin).
A G2 would not be uncontested either by the EU (economically powerful but politically dysfunctional) or by Brazil, India and Russia (the remaining BRICs).
But neither would a G2 be necessarily stable - the US has not (and apparently cannot) face its fundamental financial long term instability and China (as one analyst friend said) may go 'phut' (I am not sure this is a highly analytical expression) given its political instability on the back of deepening inequality, a rigid political structure and an underlying history of centripetal forces.
So power is likely not to be concentrated but more diffused, with countries allying (and dis-allying) around shifting interests (a bit like the globe in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century) until two sets of powers briefly settled into one another and went to war! Not a happy prospect...
Throw into this mix climate change, gathering resource constraints and demographics (overall if stabilising expansion and some very quirky outcomes - China's rapidly ageing population for example) and by the end, I was thoroughly depressed - though I hope my audience were merely dosed with a realism to counter-balance their optimism. You cannot I think work in development without being fundamentally an optimist!
From a capitalist-communist duopoly, we briefly 'enjoyed' a monopoly of power but as the United States wanes (notwithstanding the Economist's rallying support this week) and China waxes, does this mean a new duopoly and what would that look like? A G2 rather than a G8 or G20 (or indeed the collective security mechanisms that the UN was meant to underpin).
A G2 would not be uncontested either by the EU (economically powerful but politically dysfunctional) or by Brazil, India and Russia (the remaining BRICs).
But neither would a G2 be necessarily stable - the US has not (and apparently cannot) face its fundamental financial long term instability and China (as one analyst friend said) may go 'phut' (I am not sure this is a highly analytical expression) given its political instability on the back of deepening inequality, a rigid political structure and an underlying history of centripetal forces.
So power is likely not to be concentrated but more diffused, with countries allying (and dis-allying) around shifting interests (a bit like the globe in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century) until two sets of powers briefly settled into one another and went to war! Not a happy prospect...
Throw into this mix climate change, gathering resource constraints and demographics (overall if stabilising expansion and some very quirky outcomes - China's rapidly ageing population for example) and by the end, I was thoroughly depressed - though I hope my audience were merely dosed with a realism to counter-balance their optimism. You cannot I think work in development without being fundamentally an optimist!