The New Rules: The Race for Global Leadership in the Age of Anger
By Thomas P.M. Barnett | 22 Aug 2011
Ian Bremmer, the founder and head of Eurasia Group (for which I work as an analyst), has argued that we are living in a "G-Zero" world, or one in which there is no genuine great-power leadership. From the perspective of political science, it is hard to disagree, as anyone reading a newspaper these days can attest. Still, the historian in me says this situation cannot last for too long. My reasoning here has nothing to do with the global correlation of military force, since thanks to globalization's emerging middle class, "butter" will inevitably emerge as the winner over "guns."
Instead, pay attention to all the populist anger building up across the world system today, because it demands a progressive response from government elites in the global North, South, East and West. In this process, some states will dramatically succeed in addressing their citizens' grievances, while others will dramatically fail. The resulting internal political transformations will determine global leadership in the decades ahead.
The evidence is all around us.
The Arab Spring comes first to mind, where we see what the combination of college-educated youth bulges and calcified authoritarian regimes begets in terms of both pro- and anti-globalization movements -- or clashes within civilizations. Some might think it ludicrous to compare this epic struggle to the nasty political fights in U.S. states over public sector unions, but in both situations the core grievance is truly located in the nexus of jobs and identity. For what is populist anger if not a demand for the right to work and earn a decent wage and, when that demand is not met, the determination to agitate for the downfall of political orders that do not adequately provide both?
Viewed through that wider lens, the street riots recently on display in both Western China and downtown London aren't all that different. We may spot self-determination in one and hooliganism in the other, but the demands are clearly legitimate, even if the tactics cross the locally recognized lines of control. Political leaders blame it on bad elements and "lost generations," but there is plenty of ineffectual government to go around as well.
We've traditionally imagined globalization as a foreign policy subject, because it often appears to be happening between states. But in truth, globalization is the ultimate domestic policy subject, because it is actually happening to individuals. Some regimes seek to clamp down on it for purposes of political control, while others open the spigots -- we've often viewed that choice as the essential ideological dividing line. But in addition, every government naturally seeks to mitigate and moderate globalization's impact on individual citizens. It is there that Bremmer's diagnosis applies, because we can't locate any great power whose guiding formula now commands global "consensus." All of them seem deeply flawed, at least to their increasingly angry citizenry, for one reason or another.
Of course, the first instinct of any political order is to blame its internal problems on external sources. Thus we watch the diplomacy of mutual calibration, "rebalancing" and the like. On a macro level, this constitutes the death of traditional foreign policy, according to Philip Zelikow. Writing recently in the Financial Times, he argues that we've entered a new global era:
In the past, foreign policy mainly consisted of adjusting relations between states -- what they will do with or to each other. Now foreign policy mainly consists of adjusting the domestic policies of different states -- of what they will do with or to their own people.
The U.S. and the West have traditionally been accused of "meddling" in the affairs of other states, but pretty much every great power has gotten into the game now, with "sovereignty hawks," as Zelikow dubs them, equally numerous in both East and West.
When "meddling" with the West, outsiders focus mostly on demographics, or how aging populations are generating unbearable fiscal burdens. Thus, in the aftermath of the U.S. debt-ceiling fiasco, which revolved in large part around the future costs of entitlements as the Baby Boomer generation head into retirement, we were treated to arrogant Chinese lectures about "living within our means." Of course, the West returns the favor with equal amounts of hypocrisy when discussing the developmental flaws currently on display in the East, such as the stunning amount of environmental degradation. Both sides' governments naturally bristle at the unwelcomed advice, and yet common sense demands that they give it, because both paths are entirely unsustainable.
So while populist "insurgencies" of every conceivable stripe and tactic abound inside virtually all great powers, most political leaders have put off necessary reforms at home in favor of pestering other powers to "level the playing field." America has a particular genius for this: We can't control our demand for illicit drugs or cheap imports, so instead we want poor people in Latin America and Asia, respectively, to take the hit. But China is no slouch in this regard: By refusing to arrest its export- and investment-driven growth trajectory, it directly feeds America's debt addiction and then complains about our overspending. Collectively, it's a recipe for international stalemate interspersed with domestic explosions -- Bremmer's G-Zero at its worst.
Left unchanneled, such angry populism can segue into all manner of negative outcomes. As a reminder, when Europe processed its industrialization-era version of this malaise, we ultimately ended up with Bolshevism from the left and fascism from the right. The U.S. of that era managed to thread the needle. The angry populism of the 1870s and 1880s, when income inequality was at its worst, triggered the Progressive Era that carried on through World War I, with Teddy Roosevelt its best-known standard-bearer.
America could use a bevy of T.R.'s today, and in fact, many currently serve as mayors of our biggest cities and as governors of our best-run states. All indications are that the same sort of progressives, often masked by traditional rhetoric, are similarly located in the twin rising powers of China and India, where the vast majority of political innovation occurs outside the capital zones. That's good news, as Asia will urbanize a billion people over the next couple of generations.
In the context of a G-Zero world facing no shortage of urgent challenges, the race is now on for which nation's system can progressively reform itself most intelligently, with the contest including great and rising powers throughout the world. Nonetheless, it will in all likelihood remain a three-way competition between China, India and America for the top rungs of global leadership.
Our great advantage? We've been through such change-waves before -- several times, in fact -- while China and India are still running out the string from the initial reform campaigns that launched their recent rises. So while all three will struggle through the current age of anger and unrest, bet on America to process it all the most quickly -- at least once those contentious Baby Boomers finally leave the political stage.
Thomas P.M. Barnett is chief analyst at Wikistrat and a contributing editor for Esquire magazine. His forthcoming eBook serial is "The Emily Updates: One Year in the Life of the Girl Who Lived" (September-December 2011). His weekly WPR column, The New Rules, appears every Monday. Reach him and his blog at thomaspmbarnett.com.
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