Right now, we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union, and maybe the end of the liberal world order as we know it, writes Anne Applebaum.
Critical events of early 2015—cheap oil and Middle East violence—will probably continue to take their toll as the year goes on, according to a new projection of geopolitical hot spots. Lower overall prices for commodities may hurt the economies of resource-rich nations.
Realpolitik made a comeback in 2014. In the immediate post-Cold War-era, during those years when America enjoyed its unipolar moment, international politics as it had been usually understood seemed to have been eclipsed. The world began to focus more on the liberalization and globalization of the world economy, the spread of democracy, and the threats posed by non-state actors.
In the 1930s travellers returned from Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Russia, and Hitler’s Germany praising the hearty sense of common purpose they saw there, compared to which their own democracies seemed weak, inefficient, and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and despondency. Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant confidence.
The United States’ new rivals and enemies all lack the element that made the Soviet-American struggle so consequential during the Cold War.
Resource security is now a priority for governments the world over. Markets for many resources are likely to remain tight and unstable as demand growth outstrips production and stocks struggle to recover. Government interventions in resource markets, such as biofuel mandates and export controls, often make things worse. In the medium term, climate change will create local scarcities in vital resources such as food and water, increase market instability by disrupting production and trade, and by fuelling conflict.
Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.
