From Ukraine to Gaza to the South China Sea, the world is littered with crises. International cooperation is paralyzed by diplomatic rivalry; techno-optimism has given way to a pervasive techno-anxiety. The sole superpower is limping toward an election with fateful consequences, as its rivals feverishly arm themselves for wars present and, perhaps, future. Each of these challenges, in turn, is symptomatic of a deeper historic shift underway.
“The current international environment is in turmoil, because its essential elements are all in flux simultaneously.” Henry Kissinger wrote that in 1968, as a whirlwind of change — decolonization, domestic protest, a changing balance of power — was roiling the arrangements that had emerged after World War II. But Kissinger’s assessment is also a good starting point for understanding a disordered globe today.
For a generation after the Cold War, the world was structured by a set of verities: the triumph of democracy over autocracy, the virtues of globalization and innovation, the prospects for great-power peace, and the stabilizing role of American power. Those verities underpinned a world that was remarkably favorable for the US and its allies. They were also historically propitious for global finance and trade. The reason today’s world seems so chaotic is that those old verities are crumbling, as the contours of a new era take shape.
The emerging order is one in which geopolitical blocs are back, and strategic rivals wage vicious ideological and technological fights. The international economy is a battleground, as interdependence and insecurity go hand in hand. Global governance and problem-solving increasingly look like artifacts of a happier age. International violence is intensifying, as the risk of major war — even global war — ticks higher. US power still looms large, but America’s behavior grows more erratic as its politics become less stable.
All this turmoil could still produce a decent future. But first, policymakers and dealmakers must understand the age of fragmentation underway.
Globalization’s Golden Age
The post-Cold War world had its insecurities, its injustices, its outrages. But the world that emerged after the opening of the Berlin Wall still felt like a time of unique progress and promise.
Democracy was trouncing autocracy: The number of democracies increased from around 40 in the early 1970s to 120 by the year 2000. Globalization was running riot: World trade increased roughly fourfold between 1989 and 2019, while flows of foreign direct investment grew eightfold between 1992 and 2000. Economic openness was raising living standards around the world. It was also, the thinking went, deflating international tensions by creating a common prosperity that only the most vicious rogues would disrupt.
Globalization was propelled, in turn, by the digital revolution, which facilitated trade and boosted productivity. Information technology also seemed to favor freedom: Social media fueled protests that toppled repressive governments in Egypt and Ukraine in the early 2010s.
Progress had its dark side, of course. Catastrophic terrorism, of the sort the US suffered on 9/11, showed how weak actors could exploit the ease of international travel, communications and finance to strike with global reach.
In general, however, a world that was supposedly being pacified by economic integration seemed ever-more conducive to great-power peace. And as the threat of major war receded, the leading powers would channel their energies into initiatives and institutions — from countering violent extremism to building the World Trade Organization — meant to tame transnational threats and strengthen global rules of the road.
All this progress was underpinned by the US. American alliances locked in peace and stability in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. Washington championed democracy and globalization; it catalyzed collective action against nuclear proliferation and other problems. American tech firms fostered innovations that powered the digital age. The post-Cold War order, as one Pentagon strategy document put it, was “ultimately backed by the US.”
It was also a wonderland for firms and investors that rode globalization’s wave. Multinationals could reap new efficiencies in an open, integrated world economy. They could trade and invest in a climate of security provided by Uncle Sam.
Globalization helped keep inflation low, in part by allowing developed economies to tap bargain-basement labor. Not least, the dilemmas of doing business with repressive regimes, or even potential rivals, seemed negligible given the expectation that trade itself would make problematic actors become responsible stakeholders.
In this sense, the post-Cold War era was a golden age. But now, its key elements have come undone.
War of Ideas
In hindsight, post-Cold War progress was more fragile than it appeared: Many new democracies were weakly consolidated, which left them vulnerable to autocratic reverses. Other features of the era were double-edged swords. Globalization brought prosperity but also inequality and cultural insecurity — effects that fueled a neo-populist moment that has yet to end. Information technology gave dissidents new tools for critiquing repressive rulers, but also gave those rulers better ways of tracking and stifling their critics.
Most fundamentally, a post-Cold War order that rested on US and Western dominance encountered trouble once that dominance began to wan.
Russia revived, and China grew explosively, in the flourishing global economy. Washington and many allies neglected their military budgets because they had grown too comfortable in the protective cocoon of American hegemony.
Over time, countries that disliked a system rooted in liberal values and US leadership grew more aggressive in their challenges: Russia invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine, China claimed and incrementally conquered much of the South China Sea; Iran sowed chaos in the Middle East. This onslaught occurred just as America’s commitment to that system was, itself, coming under strain.
Failed efforts to transform Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of America’s post-Cold War influence led to demoralization and retrenchment. The global financial crisis of 2008-09 scrambled America’s politics and sapped its strategic energies. The presidency of Donald Trump, when Washington declared competition against China — but also seemed to be at war with many of its allies — epitomized how uncertain America’s trajectory had become.
By 2022, when Vladimir Putin tried to destroy an independent Ukraine after sealing a remarkable “no limits” alliance with Xi Jinping’s China, the post-Cold War era was unmistakably over. Several features define the era that has begun.
China Rises in Tech
First, blocs are back. Not so long ago, geopolitical dividing lines were fading. Now, rival coalitions are squaring off across the globe.
In Ukraine, a cohort of Eurasian autocracies — North Korea, Iran, and China — is aiding Russia’s effort to shatter the norm of non-aggression. They confront a group of advanced democracies — from North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific — who support Kyiv to sustain a larger system that has served them well.
These alignments are not all-encompassing — many countries in the Global South seek to play both sides — but they are unmistakably hardening as international tensions rise.
A Russia alienated from the West is tripling down on ties to fellow revisionists: Witness Putin’s recent treaty alliance with Pyongyang. The US, for its part, is strengthening, expanding, and interlinking its alliances to contain the Eurasian autocracies.
The resulting confrontations spill across regional boundaries. Since 2022, the US has pushed allies in Europe and Asia to choke off the supply of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, an illustration of how geopolitical divisions are reshaping economic and technological ties.
Second, the battle of ideas is on again. Russia and China didn’t get the memo about the irresistible triumph of democracy. They are rewiring international norms and organizations to make autocracies more secure. They believe their illiberal systems can produce greater discipline, effort, and strength than decadent democracies. To prove the point, they are coercing and destabilizing states that stand in their way.
Russia has used disinformation, cyberattacks, and sabotage against democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. Beijing employs an array of weapons — friendly media outlets, bribes, cyberattacks, economic sanctions — to stifle criticism and sow discord in Taiwan and other liberal societies. Technological innovation is fueling political warfare: Moscow and Beijing can now wield AI-enabled disinformation against their democratic foes.
Third, the fight for techno-primacy is raging. A generation ago, America’s technological lead was simply commanding. Things aren’t so lopsided anymore.
China has made huge strides in cyberweapons and hypersonic missiles. It is investing massively in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other technologies of what’s being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Throughout history, geopolitical competitions have been technological competitions. If China dominates key emerging technologies, it may dominate this era.
This means industrial policy is here to stay, as geopolitical rivals invest in, and put up protective barriers around, strategic sectors from semiconductors to clean energy. It also means that economic warfare will become commonplace, as both countries wield subsidies, export controls, investment curbs, tariffs, and other tools to accelerate their innovation and hold the rivals back.
Fourth, cutthroat competition is killing global problem-solving. Transnational challenges are getting more severe, but geopolitical tensions have impeded US-China cooperation on issues from Covid to climate change. The great powers can’t even collaborate on keeping vital trade routes open.
The US and China once worked together to suppress Somali pirates. But Beijing is now cutting deals with the Houthi militants shooting up the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, while Iran equips them and Russia urges them on. In the years ahead, expect seemingly fundamental norms, like freedom of navigation on the seas, to become more contested. And expect cooperation to tackle transnational problems, whether climate change or management of advanced technologies, to occur primarily within groups of likeminded countries — for instance, the Group of 7 — than across them.
Fifth, amid cold wars, tech wars, and trade wars, the shadow of real war has become inescapable. Ukraine is being ravaged in Europe’s largest conflict since 1945. The Middle East is being roiled by multiple, interrelated clashes. The overall number of state-versus-state wars is higher than at any time in decades. Don’t expect that trend to turn around anytime soon.
However the war in Ukraine ends, Russia will emerge from it with an experienced military, a mobilized economy, and an epic grudge against the West. Iran is inching closer to a nuclear capability that would underwrite its sponsorship of violent instability across the Middle East.
China is stockpiling food and energy; mass-producing ships, aircraft, and ammunition; and intensifying its push for supremacy in the Pacific. Hotspots from the Senkaku Islands to Second Thomas Shoal could serve as the trigger for a Sino-American clash.
The stability of the international system has long been closely related to the stability of the key regions of Eurasia: Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. War or the threat of war pervades all three areas at once.
This makes a final feature of our era more sobering: a still powerful, but less reliable, America. US advantages, economic and military, remain substantial, and American commitment remains indispensable to a decent world. Unfortunately, at a time when many Western countries face political paralysis, instability, or some mixture of the two, America’s own internal dramas could be uniquely damaging.
Yes, the near-term danger is a second Trump presidency that could weaken US alliances and spur frontline states like Poland or South Korea to build their own nuclear weapons — or, alternatively, a second Biden presidency in which America is led by a visibly declining commander-in-chief. But the problems run deeper.
Lurking behind Trump is a larger America First movement that would just as soon leave the world to itself. Lurking behind Biden is a potentially potent form of progressive neo-isolationism. The political foundations of American internationalism are thus unstable. Rising polarization and domestic tensions could leave the US distracted, even consumed by its inner demons — just as surging global volatility makes the price of that distraction higher.
World War III?
Eras of turmoil can bring happy endings. The Cold War birthed the liberal international order, which eventually delivered more freedom, peace, and prosperity than humanity had ever enjoyed before. Today, realism need not be synonymous with despondency, because the US and its democratic allies still have long-term advantages over their foes, including their free governmental institutions. But for political leaders and business leaders, navigating this age of fragmentation will require keeping some core principles in mind.
First, there is no return to “normal.” Today’s crises in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other hotspots aren’t freak occurrences. They are symptoms of deep, ongoing shifts that are changing the basic rhythms of global affairs.
Particular crises may come and go; particular tensions may rise or fall. But leaders in government and business must prepare for an era of persistent vitality, competition, and conflict. Levels of risk, both strategic and economic, will be elevated for years to come.
Second, you can’t have it all. After the Cold War, the US and its allies could enjoy a world that was phenomenally congenial to their interests and values at a very low price. Multinationals could exploit the efficiencies globalization offered without worrying too much about the vicissitudes of global politics. Neither approach is sustainable today.
As the leaders who attended this month’s NATO summit can attest, the cost of national security, and of safeguarding democratic values, is rising as autocratic powers make their moves. Meanwhile, Western companies that had to choose whether to stay in Russia after it invaded Ukraine — or are wondering how to protect their assets, operations, and reputations if China invades Taiwan — are discovering that the dilemmas of operating in a hothouse environment can be severe.
Third, take worst-case scenarios seriously. Responsible American officials need to consider not just the possibility of a US-Russia clash or a US-China conflict — as cataclysmic as either would be — but also a global war, in which conflicts in multiple theaters erupt at once. International corporations also need to grapple with scenarios that would have seemed outlandish not so long ago.
What if the security of vital sea lanes suffers because the Houthis have set a precedent that others follow? How might their operations be affected by a Sino-American war that causes a decoupling more violent, precipitous, and far-reaching than nearly anyone envisions today? We can hope these situations won’t come to pass. But grappling with them is how one builds the resilience, whether military or intellectual, needed to thrive in a tumultuous world.
Fourth, as geopolitics and geoeconomics become inseparable, the West needs to invest in new knowledge. In government, national security is no longer so thoroughly dominated by diplomats and defense nerds. Understanding investment patterns, financial and technological choke points, and private sector decision-making has become crucial to prevailing in modern rivalry. The private sector, for its part, is entering a moment in which geopolitical illiteracy is simply negligent, given that few firms are wholly insulated from the disruption — or opportunity — national rivalries can cause.
This relates to a final precept: Find the upside of adversity. Yes, the world is getting nastier. But an age of fracture creates chances for the US to build deeper connections with like-minded nations in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, to catalyze a historic burst of innovation in critical technologies, and to demonstrate that liberal societies can still outperform illiberal ones.
It creates chances, as well, for firms to craft more resilient supply chains; to reap the benefits of the new industrial policy; and to forge stronger partnerships with a US government that desperately needs private-sector creativity and innovation to master a new set of economic, intelligence, and military challenges.
We’re in the opening phase of a brutally contentious era. The task is to make the most of it.
Hal Brands is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US foreign policy and defense strategy. Concurrently, Dr. Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
Reprinted with Permission from AEI.org – By Hal Brands
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