were visible in regard to Russia and China. Both countries deployed missiles and other systems to deny access to their neighborhoods. The West completely destroyed what was left of its prominent role in international global governance. This was a period of international abdication.
The world order that came forth was fragmented and turbulent. As a result of the rise of China, the old geopolitical dilemma of the main maritime power, the United States, facing a new continental power, China, returned. Xi Jinping destroyed the last hope that trade would make his country democratic. Many Asian countries saw no option but to accept China as an inevitable partner. South Asia remained a waiting room of globalization, overshadowed by China. Africa became once again an arena of great power rivalry. Three important forces came to shape world politics: the relative decline of the West, a demographic explosion in a context of poverty in the South, and the rise of China. Amidst all this, regional powers, from Russia, through Turkey, to Saudi Arabia, hedged their bets. They reduced Western influence so as to protect their national interests more assertively. The new order was immensely fragile. There was strife between states and strife inside states. Thirty years after the world pulled down the Berlin Wall, new walls and fissures emerged everywhere.
Notes
1 1. Jenny Erpenbeck, Thomas Brussig, Kathrin Schmidt, David Wagner, and Sabine Rennefanz, 2019. Watching the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Guardian, November 9.
2 2. Thomas Friedman, 2005. The World Is Flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Martin Wolf, 2005. Why Globalization Works. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Jagdish Bhagwati, 2004. In Defense of Globalization. New York: Oxford University Press.
3 3. Richard Baldwin, 2016. The Great Convergence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4 4. Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde, 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. London: Lynne Rienner; Scott Barrett, 2007. Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods. New York: Oxford University Press.
5 5. Time’s cover of October 10, 1995 ran the following title: “Black Renaissance”; The Economist of December 3, 2010 was titled “Africa Rising”.
6 6. “Africa Rising,” The Economist, December 3, 2011.
7 7. Conversation with former South Korean minister, Singapore, March 24, 2018.
8 8. Lord Bolingbroke. Quoted in: Per Maurseth, 1964. Balance-of-power thinking from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. Journal of Peace Research, 1(2), 120–36.
9 9. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2019. World Happiness Report. Available at: https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/changing-world-happiness/
10 10. Abhijit Banerjee, and Esther Duflo, 2011. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. New York: Public Affairs.
11 11. Kenneth Waltz, 1959. Man, the State, and War. New York: Columbia University Press.
12 12. Linda Weiss, 1998. The Myth of the Powerless State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; John Dunning (ed.), 1999. Governments, Globalization, and International Business. Oxford: Oxford University Press; David Smith, Dorothy Solinger, and Steven Topic, 1999. States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy. New York: Routledge.
13 13. John G. Ruggie, 1992. Multilateralism: The anatomy of an institution. International Organization, 46(3), 561–98; John Mearsheimer, 1994. The false promise of international institutions. International Security, 19(3), 5–49.
14 14. Neither war nor peace. The Economist, January 25, 2018; Rory Cormac, and Richard Aldrich, 2018. Grey is the new black. International Affairs, 94(3), 477–94.
15 15. Conversation with military officers, Brussels, January 11, 2018.
16 16. Anatoliy Gruzd, and Ksenia Tsyganova, 2015. Information wars and online activism during the 2013/2014 crisis in Ukraine. Policy and Internet, April 27, 2015.
17 17. Thomas Piketty, 2014. Capital in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
18 18. Quoted in: Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, 1975. The Crisis of Democracy. New York: New York University Press. This report also discusses the dismal state of Western democracy.
19 19. Francis Fukuyama, 2014. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Francis Fukuyama, 2018. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Patrick Deneen, 2019. Why Liberalism Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; Steven Levitsky, and Daniel Ziblatt, 2018. How Democracies Die. London: Crown.
20 20. Daron Acemoglu, and James Robinson, 2013. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Business.
CHAPTER 1 PROGRESS
AFTER HAVING READ THROUGH THE INTRODUCTION, SOME READERS might have grown impatient. Why should we question the progress made during the decades that followed the end of the Cold War? In terms of trade, growth, and prosperity, this was a golden age! Indeed, it was so. Just consider figure 1.1. Between 1990 and 2019, world trade increased almost sixfold. Gross production grew fourfold. The number of people living in extreme poverty, below US$1.9 per day, decreased by 70 percent. In absolute terms, the number of very poor people decreased from about 1.9 billion people in 1990 to around 600 million in 2019. One can clearly recognize a few economic dips in the chart; in 2001, for example, in 2009, and in 2015. Yet, each time, the global economy recovered. For all the doomsday preaching, there was no global depression. Despite the dips, recent history remained an upward curve.
Readers might recall the arguments of optimistic thinkers. Steven Pinker described globalization as a cosmic force, born out of the age of enlightenment.1 With some dramatic charts, he argued that globalization improved health, prosperity, security, and wellbeing. This is also the argument that the late Swedish scientist Hans Rosling made in Factfulness.2 His data about receding conflict and advancing wellbeing pop up in numerous presentations of other opinion makers, politicians, and business leaders. Yuval Noah Harari is another acclaimed writer who made the argument that the world has still become a better and more peaceful place.3 This is the moment for humans, he wrote, to move beyond materialistic needs, to use technology to develop their talents, and to emerge like a godlike creature. These optimists are particularly compelling because they advance their case in a seemingly rational and scientific way, supported by loads of data.
Figure 1.1 World development indicators (%)
Note: Trade concerns world exports of goods and services, extremely poor people concerns the estimated number of people living below the US$1.9 PPP per day threshold.
Source: World Development Indicators (WDI).
The aim of this chapter is not to disregard progress. The aim is to put optimistic observations into perspective. We cannot relativize everything. Even if the poverty rate were to be reduced, still hundreds of millions of people would live in destitution. This is a humanitarian
