Project Syndicate, Praga – 4.12.2010
The Case for a Quadripolar World
According to the conventional wisdom, the twenty-first century will be characterized by the global shift from American hegemony to Sino-American rivalry. But a bipolar international order is neither inevitable nor desirable, and we should start imagining and working toward alternative arrangements.
Daron Acemoglu
Cambridge - Having diminished America’s global role while refusing to accept China’s growing clout, Donald Trump’s presidency represents the last gasp of a unipolar epoch. But while many assume that the unipolar post-Cold War world is giving way to a bipolar international order dominated by the United States and China, that outcome is neither inevitable nor desirable. Instead, there is every reason to hope for, and work toward, a world in which Europe and the emerging economies play a more assertive role.
To be sure, as the world’s most economically successful autocracy, China has already achieved significant geopolitical influence in Asia and beyond. During the two most recent global crises – the 2008 financial collapse and today’s pandemic – the Communist Party of China quickly adjusted the country’s political economy in response to changing circumstances, thereby solidifying its grip on power. Because countries that do not want to toe the US line now routinely turn to China for inspiration and, often, material support, what could be more natural than China emerging as one of the two poles of global power?
In fact, a bipolar world would be deeply unstable. Its emergence would heighten the risk of violent conflict (according to the logic of the Thucydides Trap), and its consolidation would make solutions to global problems wholly dependent on the national interests of the two reigning powers. Three of the biggest challenges facing humanity would either be ignored or made worse.
The first challenge is the concentrated power of Big Tech.While technology is often presented as a key front in the US-China conflict, there is considerable congruence between the two countries. Both are committed to the pursuit of algorithmic dominance over humans, whereby digital platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) are used as tools by the government and corporations for surveilling and controlling the citizenry.
There are differences, of course. Whereas the US government has adopted Big Tech’s own vision and become subservient to the industry, Chinese tech giants remain at the mercy of the government and must abide by its agenda. For example, recent research shows how local governments’ demand for surveillance technologies shapes Chinese AI creators’ research and development. In any case, neither country is likely to strengthen privacy standards and other protections for ordinary people, much less redirect the trajectory of AI research so that its benefits are unambiguous and widely shared.
Likewise, advocacy for human rights and democracy would be a low priority in a bipolar world. With repression in China growing, the US may appear by comparison to remain an exemplar of these values. But America’s principled commitment to democracy and human rights is thin and generally not taken seriously abroad. After all, the US has overthrown democratically elected but insufficiently friendly governments in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. And when it has supported democracy in places like Ukraine, it has generally had an ulterior motive, such as the desire to counter or weaken Russia.
The third big issue likely to receive short shrift in a Sino-American bipolar world is climate change. In recent years, China has appeared more supportive of international agreements aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions than the US has. But the two superpowers are not just the world’s two biggest emitters; they also are both beholden to energy-intensive economic models. China will remain dependent on manufacturing growth, while consumers and growth industries (like cloud computing) will sustain high demand for energy in the US. And one can expect that both sides’ short-term interest in economic supremacy will trump everyone else’s interest in a swift green transition.
All of these problems would be more likely to be addressed in a world with two additional poles, represented by the European Union and a consortium of emerging economies, perhaps within a new organization – an “E10” – comprising Mexico, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, South Africa, and others.Such a quadripolar world would be less conducive to a new cold war, and it would bring more diverse voices to global governance.
For its part, the EU has already emerged as a standard-bearer for privacy protection and regulation of Big Tech, and it is well positioned to push back against algorithmic automation. Even though it is US and Chinese companies that largely drive concerns about privacy, consumer manipulation, and labor-replacing AI, the European market is so large and important that it can tilt the playing field globally.
But a strategic pole that speaks for emerging economies may be even more consequential. If AI continues to displace humans in the workplace, emerging economies will be the biggest losers, because their comparative advantage is abundant human labor. With automation already cutting into the supply of jobs that had previously been offshored to these economies, it is critical that they have a voice in global debates that will determine how new technologies are designed and deployed.
Europe and the emerging world also can form a powerful constituency against fossil-fuel emissions. While the EU has become a world leader in decarbonization, emerging economies have an acute interest in climate action, because they will suffer disproportionately from global warming (despite having contributed the least to the problem).
To be sure, a quadripolar world would not be a panacea. With a wider array of voices and the possibility for more opportunistic coalitions, it would be much more difficult to manage than was the unipolar world of the recent past. With Brazil, Mexico, India, and Turkey all now led by authoritarians intent on silencing their opponents, independent media, and civil-society groups, Europe inevitably would find itself at odds with this bloc when it comes to human rights and democracy.
Yet, even here, a quadripolar world would offer more hope than the bipolar alternative. Bringing these countries to the international table might make them more willing to countenance opposition at home. Moreover, emerging economies can cooperate as a united front only if they abandon their most authoritarian, nationalistic, and destructive behavior. Ushering in a quadripolar world may thus yield unexpected dividends.
Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics at MIT, is co-author (with James A. Robinson) of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty and The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.
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Los Angeles Times – 8.12.2020
Biden faces a changed world from when he last held power, and not for the better
Chris Megerian and Elis Stockhols
When Joe Biden left the vice president’s office four years ago, the United States was a champion of the Paris climate accord, the architect of the multinational Iran nuclear deal and the leader of a 12-nation free-trade pact in the Pacific Rim region intended to limit China’s growing influence.
None of those things is true anymore as he prepares to be inaugurated as commander in chief next month.
Even as he will be preoccupied by the deadly coronavirus crisis at home, Biden faces a daunting array of global challenges, frayed alliances and emboldened adversaries. And he must confront these issues even as the country he’s set to lead has increasingly become skeptical of interventionism and a robust leadership role internationally — especially after President Trump’s inward-looking “America first” approach.
“As much as there are a lot of people who just want to say, ‘We’re back,’ you can’t erase the last four years. And we’ve been heading in this direction for a long time,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk assessment firm. “Everything Trump represents is symptomatic of something deeper in the American body politic.”
Biden, who will represent a sharp break from Trump’s caustic presence on the world stage, is likely to enjoy something of a honeymoon with transatlantic allies, eager as they are for the United States to return to its traditional role as a pillar of the international democratic order. And his preexisting relationships with many leaders — as senator, vice president and the longest-tenured U.S. member of the 57-year-old Munich Security Conference, where he spoke last year — will help to soothe the jangled nerves of those from Ottawa to Berlin to Seoul.
Even so, some allies have expressed a resigned determination to continue relying less on Washington, as they were forced to do under Trump. And repairing the diplomatic achievements that Trump abandoned won’t be easy.
Sanctions on Iran and tariffs on imports from China, two key pieces of the current president’s agenda, could remain in place as Biden plots his own strategy and seeks new negotiations. Moreover, having opposed troop surges in Afghanistan over a decade ago, Biden may opt not to reverse Trump’s troop drawdown to bring that 19-year-old war to a close.
The president-elect’s team, many of them veterans like him of the Obama administration, knows the pieces won’t fit together the same as before.
“This is not about going back to the world as it was,” said Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice for secretary of State, in an interview earlier this year. “It’s about dealing with the major transformations we’ve seen since — in power among nations, the diffusion of power away from states and the cratering of trust of governance within them. Your policies have to account for that.”
Some of the most drastic changes have occurred in the Middle East. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the multilateral deal the United States had brokered three years before with Iran, European allies, Russia and China, under which Iran agreed to greatly limit its nuclear program through 2025.
Instead of diplomacy, Trump pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign to squeeze Tehran with sanctions, and he ordered the killing of Qassem Suleimani, the powerful Iranian general who died in a U.S. drone strike Jan. 3. The heightened tensions have emboldened hard-liners within Iran, a barrier to getting the country’s leaders back to the negotiating table.
“It’s very unrealistic to talk about just rejoining an agreement that was crafted in 2015,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “That was then, this was now.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his country’s longest-serving leader, could remain an obstacle as well. He opposed the Iran nuclear deal and now opposes revisiting it.
“When Arabs and Israelis agree on something, I think it’s critical to pay attention,” Netanyahu said in an interview Thursday with the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. “We’re in this region, we know it very well.”
Iran is now closer to a nuclear weapon than when Trump took office. Its “breakout time” — an estimate of how long it would take Tehran to build a bomb — has dropped from one year to a few months.
The challenge hasn’t deterred Biden from his plan to revisit the Iran nuclear deal. “It’s going to be hard, but yeah,” he told Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, in a recent interview.
European allies may be more eager to collaborate with the new administration in containing China, given its growing economic might and increasing assertiveness abroad.
“The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our — or at least what used to be our — allies on the same page,” Biden told Friedman. “It’s going to be a major priority for me in the opening weeks of my presidency to try to get us back on the same page with our allies.”
Jake Sullivan, the incoming national security advisor, is considering expanding the China team inside the White House National Security Council, to underscore that the issue is a foreign policy priority and that Biden wants to work with allies, according to a person close to the president-elect’s team. Also, because the White House advisors, like Sullivan, would not require Senate approval, Biden could avoid confirmation fights with Republicans who might control the chamber when he takes office.
Hammering out his own trade strategy will prove complicated. Obama was pushing to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the free-trade agreement that would have linked the United States with other Pacific-fronting countries while leaving out China. The deal was on life support, however, even before Trump took office because of opposition from some Democrats and unions as well as Republicans.
Now China has reached its own trade deal, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, with many of those same countries, leaving the United States on the sidelines.
“It strengthens the continued growth of an Asian supply chain in which China is the hub. It poses a real challenge to the United States,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Another shared — and even more immediate — global priority is addressing the ongoing pandemic. Distributing newly approved vaccines will require coordination among countries in the near term, and cooperation in the longer term to stabilize markets and mitigate broad economic fallout. The crisis provides an opportunity for Biden to rebuild relationships, but it could also prevent the 78-year-old president-elect from making a symbolic visit to Europe early on.
Rejoining the Paris climate accord will be among the easiest steps. All he needs to do is submit paperwork — something he’s pledged to do shortly after he is inaugurated, possibly on his first day— and wait a month to rejoin.
The challenge will be showing the rest of the world that the United States can make progress on global warming, said Robert Stavins, who leads the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.
Each signatory to the Paris deal must submit “nationally determined contributions,” which are the country’s plans for meeting certain targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Putting together a credible plan will be difficult, Stavins said, because of domestic political opposition in Congress.
“It’s not just conservative Republicans,” he said. “It’s moderate Democrats and Democrats from coal states. So true climate legislation will be extremely difficult.”
Obama sought emissions reductions through regulations, such as his Clean Power Plan and stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars. That may be more difficult now that Trump’s administration has been unraveling those policies and stocking the federal judiciary with more conservative, anti-regulatory judges who could prove to be an obstacle.
Biden chose John F. Kerry, his former Senate colleague who was Obama’s secretary of State when the Paris accord was signed in 2015, to lead international efforts on climate change.
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Foreign Affairs, Nova York – 8.12.2020
The United States Must Marshal the “Free World”
Together, Democracies Can Counter the Authoritarian Threat
Alexander Vindman
At noon on January 20, 2021, Joseph R. Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. He will confront a daunting domestic agenda: the legacy of outgoing President Donald Trump will include a rampant pandemic and a host of unresolved social, cultural, ideological, economic, and administrative problems. Having committed himself to being the president of all Americans, Biden will need to contend with the grievances of millions who did not support him and who even question the legitimacy of his election. These domestic concerns will understandably consume the preponderance of the president’s time and energy.
But Biden’s de facto leadership of the “free world” beyond the United States’ borders will be equally important. China, Russia, and other authoritarian states, which have long seen democracy as an existential threat, are on the offensive, deploying all means of statecraft—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—to advance their ends. The “un-free” world seeks to undermine international norms, Western liberal values, and democracy itself in order to enable the ascendancy of autocratic governments and permit their exercise of raw power. Biden will need to marshal the very strengths that define democratic government if he is to both mend domestic wounds and temper the threats that face democracies globally.
RIVAL GREAT POWERS
For two decades, a distracted United States neglected the reemergence of great-power competition, and China and Russia reaped the benefits.During its moment of unipolarity, the United States narrowly focused much of its energies on the Middle East and on immediate concerns, to the exclusion of emerging and long-term national security interests. China took advantage of the United States’ distraction and effectively marshaled its strengths to surge in power at a moment when the United States should have held the edge.
Under Trump, the United States disengaged from global affairs, and China and Russia took advantage of its absence to act with impunity and accelerate China’s climb toward preeminence. If the United States further retrenches or shifts to such strategies as offshore balancing, a void will expand that autocratic states will fill.
For decades, Russia has been using the well-honed tools of the Soviet security apparatus to assault democracies. Inside the United States, Russia has unleashed information warfare to exploit divisions and magnify inequities. In Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, Russia is even less constrained and draws on a broader array of tools. There, the Kremlin attacks democratic values not only through illicit financial and organized crime networks and information and cyberwarfare but also with energy coercion, assassinations, and military force. In this zero-sum game, Russia’s objective is simple: magnify discord, divide societies, and weaken democratic institutions in order to subdue opponents and thereby shift power to Russia.
China, as the world’s most populous nation and its second-largest economy, poses an even more potent and pernicious threat to the United States than Russia does. The Chinese Communist Party’s “hide and bide” doctrine helped mask the danger until recently. Like Russia, China uses statecraft and malign influence to advance its interests and undermine democracies. More menacing, however, is its use of economic coercion against the United States and its closest allies. China has seized on the inequities of globalization and the perceived failure of the U.S.-led international financial system effectively to market the notion that state-led capitalism provides the better path to economic prosperity. China’s success in modeling an alternative, authoritarian, state-commanded capitalist system bolsters autocrats and lures some forces within struggling democracies.
Although there is no clear consensus as to whether China and Russia are collaborating to undermine democracies or simply advancing their independent interests, their common efforts are bearing fruit. During the Trump administration, nationalist populist movements blossomed globally, while many democracies backslid. The United States did not respond to these trends, but authoritarian states did—with support. Under a new administration, the United States must organize a concerted effort, by democracies and for democracies, to counter the rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism. The United States must host a democracy summit.
SHARED PURPOSE
A multipolar world—even one in which the United States remains disproportionally powerful—calls for a level of burden sharing to which democracies are not accustomed. In 1992, the democracies in what is now the G-20 accounted for nearly 90 percent of the group’s GDP. Today, those same democracies account for only 73 percent of the G-20’s GDP. Their economic influence has diminished, but the problems they seek to solve in common have not, and the United States is no longer able or willing to carry the whole load. The sharing of burdens will be essential if democracies are to remain united in the pursuit of common interests and in the face of common threats.
Uniting the democratic world against the clear and present danger of rising authoritarianism is not an act of idealism but of realism. China and Russia already hold similar interests and perceive similar threats, such that they are inclined to view the world in terms of “us versus them.”To convene a summit of democracies will not therefore drive authoritarian states together so much as it will acknowledge the stark reality of a world bifurcated into authoritarian and democratic camps. The project of supporting democracies and advancing democratic values, in this context, is continuous with past U.S. policy.
The idea of a democracy summit is not new, but the need for one has never been greater. Together, the world’s democracies can devise cooperative solutions to their most vexing domestic problems by collectively addressing such shared issues as demographic shifts, social polarization, and growing inequality. Such shared efforts will make democracies more internally cohesive and collectively resilient.
At the same time, democracies can help protect one another against external attacks, including those that take the form of information warfare or economic coercion. Democracies must deter bad actors from interfering in their internal affairs by making clear that those who seek to exploit the openness of democracies by sowing discord will face reciprocal responses. Forewarned in this fashion, authoritarian states will accept the new ground rules, and all powers will benefit from the elimination of one area of increasingly serious conflict.
The summit should be a forum in which democracies can exchange best practices for addressing many areas of common concern. For instance, participants could share ideas for protecting important industries and technologies from foreign influence or for countering China’s economic exploitation. They could coordinate efforts to promote media literacy, expose information operations, and buttress civil society. And democracies could seek collaborative solutions to such global problems as climate change—and the authoritarian subversion of international norms.
Ultimately, the summit should include all the world’s democracies. But it might begin as a kind of “coalition of the willing,” setting forth a democracy compact that identifies the shared objectives of its participants and pledges institutional, technical, and financial support to those who join.Democracies that are insecure or backsliding may then find themselves attracted to the summit consensus, whether in principle or because they don’t wish to be labeled as holdouts. They would have the opportunity to sign on to the principles. The summit should not tolerate free riders: it must take extreme care to be sure that all burdens are shared.
The United States, in concert with the world’s democracies, can resist the coercion of authoritarian regimes without forcing a direct confrontation between the two systems. In fact, in a multipolar world, democracies must both cooperate and compete with authoritarian powers. Countries of both descriptions see climate change, nuclear proliferation, and transnational terror as threats: to counter these forces, among others, will require the United States to cooperate with China, Russia, and emerging powers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The United States once ushered in an era of new democracies, giving those states succor and benefiting from their allegiance. Today, authoritarianism is once again on the rise, and it poses an existential threat to that order. The United States must lead the democratic world in defending itself from a reversion to historical patterns that could well lead to democracy’s demise.
ALEXANDER VINDMAN, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army and former Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, is a doctoral student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Pritzker Military Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, and the author of the forthcoming book Here, Right Matters: An American Story.
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