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.
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.
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.
While the trade war between China and the United States has hogged headlines and driven market anxieties over the past year, an equally large threat to the global economy has gotten little attention: a looming tax war. Since the early twentieth century, countries have largely agreed on how to tax income earned by multinational corporations that conduct business across borders. But this long-standing regime is coming apart, imperiling the broader international economic order.
When Russians woke up last Wednesday morning, most had likely never heard of Mikhail Mishustin, the head of the country’s tax service. But by the time they went to bed that night, Mishustin had been named as Russia’s new prime minister after a day that included a flurry of proposed changes to the constitution and a series of dramatic shake-ups that saw the government resign en masse. It was the first real inkling of the power transfer to come, with President Vladimir Putin set to reach his constitutionally imposed term limit in 2024.
Local conflicts serve as mirrors for global trends. The ways they ignite, unfold, persist, and are resolved reflect shifts in great powers’ relations, the intensity of their competition, and the breadth of regional actors’ ambitions. They highlight issues with which the international system is obsessed and those toward which it is indifferent. Today these wars tell the story of a global system caught in the early swell of sweeping change—and of regional leaders both emboldened and frightened by the opportunities such a transition presents.
In keeping with the adage that history does not repeat but rhymes, the decade from 2010 to 2020 ushered in a new age of disorder and distrust, just as the 1810s and 1910s did. Each era shows how unmet promises and unrealized hopes inevitably lead to disillusion and cynicism.
A stable world order is a rare thing. When one does arise, it tends to come after a great convulsion that creates both the conditions and the desire for something new. It requires a stable distribution of power and broad acceptance of the rules that govern the conduct of international relations. It also needs skillfull statecraft, since an order is made, not born.
Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.
Trade disputes with the US, concerns about Chinese interference in Hong Kong, and ethnic tensions in Xinjiang all preceded Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012. Their escalation in the last year is a direct result of China’s shift to authoritarianism under Xi.
