India’s foreign policy is being shaped into a new contour, right from Act East to Neighbourhood First, there is a new outlook for the traditionally globally reticent aspiring superpower India. But traditional international relations theorists have lamented that India with its growing economy and global diaspora will be a great presence more than a great power.
We face a conundrum when trying to understand and manage this new world. We must avoid the temptation to simply rely on past practices and institutions to deal with emerging challenges. We must also recognize that these changes, though destabilizing and occasionally frightening, have brought profoundly positive changes to the world. The remarkable global revolution of the past few decades has generated wealth and massively reduced poverty, helped eliminate disease, increased individual tolerance and freedom, provided access to unimaginable levels of communication and information, and dampened the dark cloud of war and violence.
Beijing’s decision to quarantine Wuhan in central China to try to contain a deadly disease outbreak presents unprecedented challenges as it is dealing with a city about five times the size of London. The central government imposed the lockdown to stop the spread of a newly identified coronavirus that has killed 17 people in the area, infected hundreds more across the country and is spreading overseas.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
Also Read: Could China’s New Coronavirus Become A Global Epidemic?
At a time when many countries are finally trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, the world is suddenly awash in oil and gas discoveries. But for the countries with the newest finds, many of them in Africa and South America, mineral wealth may not be the bonanza it was in decades past.
The current White House runs a foreign policy with irreconcilable objectives, no internal coherence, and no pretense of gaming out critical decisions before they are taken. Maximalist objectives are set with little thought to what might be required to achieve them.
The world’s great rising power, the People’s Republic of China, is headed for a demographic crisis. Like the United States and most developed countries, China has a birthrate that is well below replacement level. Unlike most developed countries, China is growing old without first having grown rich.
Under Donald Trump, geopolitics is back with a vengeance. For him, the United States has enemies and contingent, interest-based allies. In Trump’s world-view – more systematically articulated by him than usual in the 2017 US National Security Strategy – his predecessors forgot the hard reality that international politics is a contest for power.
Innovation is built upon an ecosystem that takes decades to mature. Yet, China has already made substantial advances in computer science, chemistry, engineering, and robotics, all of which pose a direct challenge to U.S. technological supremacy. However, the U.S. will remain dominant and largely unchallenged in biotech and medicine for the foreseeable future.
China and Myanmar agreed to accelerate several joint infrastructure deals and projects during President Xi Jinping’s historic visit to the country, giving new impetus to commercial relations that have revived under Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Xi visited Myanmar on January 17 and 18, marking the first time a Chinese leader traveled to the Southeast Asian country in nearly two decades and coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the two sides establishing formal diplomatic relations.
The good news, then, is that the world in 2030 will be more prosperous. Indeed, the middle class could swell to over 5.5 billion people, predominantly in Asia. But it will also be significantly more unequal in individual countries. The European and North American middle class may not get much relief given current growth and policy trends. Rich people in those countries will continue to prosper, but that raises the question of whether such trends are politically and socially sustainable and, if not, what kinds of new politics and new policies will arise.
