IS THE US really in decline? Can China become a superpower?
Can Europe rebuild? How fast can the rest rise?
These are interesting issues, but today's world faces a more
urgent and important question: While we're figuring all that out, who will
lead? Unfortunately, the answer is no one. In this G-Zero era, no one is
driving the bus.
The United States and its European allies can no longer
drive the global political and economic agenda.
The scramble to produce a coordinated and effective
multinational response to the 2008 financial crisis made that clear, but the
growing leverage of emerging states like China, India, Brazil, Russia and
others was apparent years before US financial institutions began melting down
and the Eurozone descended into crisis.
Yes, America remains the most powerful and influential
country on Earth - and will for the foreseeable future. Its economy is still
the world's largest. No single nation can compete with its cultural influence,
and only America can project military power in every region.
But in coming years mounting federal debt and the domestic
political attention now focused on this issue will force the architects of US
foreign policy to become more sensitive to costs and risks when making
potentially expensive strategic choices.
At home, it will be harder for presidents to persuade
taxpayers and lawmakers that bolstering the stability of countries like Iraq or
Afghanistan is worth a bloody, costly fight. That means decoupling support for
a "strong military", an always popular position, from security
guarantees for countries that no longer meet a narrowing definition of vital US
interests.
Abroad, questions will arise about America's commitment to
the security of particular regions, encouraging local players to test US
resolve and to exploit any weakness they think they've found. Few want a global
policeman, but some will have second thoughts when they realise they lack
protection against a neighbourhood bully.
Yet, other countries aren't exactly lining up to fill this
vacuum. The ongoing battle to bolster the eurozone will discourage European
leaders from searching abroad for new ways to extend the influence of their
governments, and leading developing states have too many challenges at home and
foreign-policy plans for their immediate neighbourhoods to embrace the risks
and burdens that come with a larger share of global leadership.
China's leaders, in particular, already have their hands
full. They have already acknowledged that their country's growth model is
"unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable", and they
know that their ability to guide the country through the next stage of its
development is far from certain.
India, Brazil, and Turkey can continue to grow for the next
10 years with the same basic formula that triggered growth during the past 10.
The United States, Europe, and Japan can reinvest in economic systems that have
a long history of success. But China must undertake enormously complex and
ambitious political and economic reforms if it is to continue its drive to
become a modern, middle-class power.
China faces the added complication that today's international environment is fast becoming less friendly to China's expansion.
Higher prices for the oil, gas, metals and minerals needed to fuel China's
expansion will weigh on growth.
The rise of other emerging powers will add to the upward
pressure on food and other commodity prices, undermining public confidence in
government, the most important source of China's social stability. In addition,
as state-backed Chinese companies draw their government into the political and
economic lives of so many other countries, they face the same backlash from
local companies and workers that plagues so many other foreign firms doing
business far from home.
And because the Chinese government has such a direct stake
in the success of these companies, Beijing will be drawn into conflicts it has
never coped with before.
We can't know what the future holds for the United States,
China, or any of these countries. There are good reasons to bet on US
resilience, but that will depend on the ability and willingness of American
leaders to rebuild the country's strength from within.
Europe has advantages that will reinforce the strength of
its markets, and for all Japan's problems, it is still the world's
third-largest economy. Most emerging powers will continue to emerge, but some
will have more staying power than others.
G-Zero
We now live in a world without global leadership. The need
to prevent conflict, grow the global economy, manage growing demand for energy,
implement far-sighted trade and investment policies, and counter transnational
risks to public health demands leaders who are willing and able to shoulder
burdens and enforce compromise.
Leaders have the leverage to coordinate multinational
responses. They have the wealth and power to persuade other governments to take
actions they wouldn't otherwise take. They pick up the cheques that others
can't afford, and provide services no one else will pay for. There are many
countries now strong enough to block international action, but none has the
power to remake the status quo.
We can't expect global institutions to take up the slack.
The G7 group of industrialised democracies has become an anachronism, but the
expanded G20 doesn't work either, because there are too many players with too
broad a range of interests and values seated around its negotiating table to
produce agreement on anything more demanding than high-minded declarations of
principle.
Deep-pocketed emerging powers can't decide whether to push
for more power within existing institutions like the IMF and World Bank or to
try to build new ones.
In short, we are now living with a G-Zero order, one in
which no single power or alliance of powers has the muscle, the means and the
will to provide the leadership needed to tackle a growing list of transnational
threats.
Implications
What does this mean for relations among nations and the
future of the global economy? In the world's hotspots, regions where the United
States has long helped to maintain a delicate balance of power, problems are
now more likely than at any time since the end of World War II to become
crises. For traditional powers, the issues start at home.
US and European elected officials know that voters tend to
support costly, extended military commitments only when they believe that vital
national interests are at stake. That's why, from Yugoslavia to Rwanda and
Sudan to Syria, they tend to remain on the sidelines for as long as possible.
Given the current demand for austerity on both sides of the
Atlantic, we are likely to see both a larger number of local conflicts and an
even deeper Western reluctance to engage – particularly in the increasingly
complicated and volatile Middle East. In years to come, the Nato intervention
in Libya will look more like the exception, and the hands-off approach to
Syria's civil war will be the rule.
But conventional conflict is not the only source of trouble.
Given the market volatility of the past four years, governments of both
established and leading emerging powers are more worried than ever about
ensuring they have the means to create jobs and boost growth. That's why the
most important instruments of power and influence in coming years will be
economic tools like market access, investment rules, and currency policies.
In a variety of ways, governments will slow (in some cases
reverse) the free flow of ideas, information, people, money, goods and services
that we call globalisation.
Expect great power competition in cyberspace as
state-supported industrial espionage becomes a more widely used weapon in
competition for natural resources and market share. Some authoritarian emerging
players will find new ways to reestablish state control over information and
communication, both across and within borders.
Add the shared problem of climate change, the risk of food
price shocks, threats to public health and other transnational worries, and the
world will lack leadership just at the moment it needs it most.
Winners and Losers
This state of affairs won't be bad news for everyone,
because the G-Zero will produce its share of winners as well as losers.
Over the past 30 years, those states that best adapted to
the processes of globalisation thrived, but in an international order in which
no single country can afford to lead, those who still operate as if borders are
opening, barriers are falling, and the world is becoming a single market will
find themselves reacting to events they don't understand.
In years to come, governments that can build profitable
commercial and security relationships with multiple partners without becoming
overly reliant on any one of them will weather storms more effectively than
those that cannot or will not.
For example, Brazil has built solid political ties and
lucrative economic relations with the United States, China and a growing number
of other emerging market countries. Its economy continues to enjoy access to US
consumers, but ties with China, now its largest trade partner, ensure that it
isn't overly dependent on US purchasing power for growth.
A serious downturn in the US will still take a heavy toll on
Mexico. That's less true for Brazil, which emerged from the 2008 financial
crisis and 2009 US recession with much less damage than many other US. trade
partners. A set of countries as diverse as Turkey, Vietnam, Canada, and
Kazakhstan are actively developing this strategy to suit their own
circumstances.
This G-Zero era of transition will pose a unique set of
challenges for US policymakers. America will have to learn to do something it
doesn't do very well these days: invest in the future. In a country where
political leaders focus so much of their energies on winning the next news
cycle, and business leaders privilege quarterly profits at the expense of
long-term reinvestment, Americans need to look beyond the horizon.
Anyone who believes that American decline is inevitable has
chosen to ignore the entire history of the United States and its people. For
the time being, Washington can't lead as it did during the second half of the
20th century. The balance of political and economic power has changed
profoundly since 1945 – even since 1990.
But the G-Zero cannot last indefinitely, because tomorrow's
most important powers, whoever they turn out to be, won't be able to allow it
to continue. They will have to put out the fires that have begun to spread
across borders.
If Americans can rebuild for the future, the country's
underlying strengths – its hard power capacities and its democratic,
entrepreneurial values – will ensure that US leadership can again prove
indispensable for international security and prosperity.
The capacity to lead in a post-G-Zero world should guide
both America's foreign and domestic policies in years to come.
- Reuters
*Ian Bremmer is a Reuters columnist. This is an excerpt from
Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, published this
week by Portfolio.