The End of the Post-Cold War Era and the Catch-up of Dictatorships
From Ukraine to Gaza to the South China Sea, there is a crisis virtually everywhere you look. Diplomatic competition stifles international cooperation; techno-optimism is replaced by a critical techno-paranoia. As its rivals arm themselves to the teeth for the wars of the present and perhaps the future, the last superpower limps toward election decisions that may be fateful. And each of these crises is, in turn, a reflection of a broader historical change currently occurring. "Today's international setting is in disarray since it has so many basic components transitioning in unison," according to a 1968 quote from Henry Kissinger.
earlier: Will the South China Sea dispute between China and the Philippines trigger an Asian conflict?
Even better, this was written as a hurricane of change, encompassing everything from decolonization and domestic revolution to a recalibration of the balance of power, which has thrown the post-World War II system into disarray. Several scholars have used Kissinger's phrase as the basis for a book, but it remains a great place to start when thinking about a chaotic globe in 2021. For the last two generations, the national system has been organized on various truths: democracy is superior to monarchy, globalization and technology are virtuous, great-power conflict is improbable, and the United States is a civilizational anchor.
Globalization without conflict
It can all still produce a decent future. However, first, policymakers and dealmakers must understand the age of fragmentation that is underway. Globalization's Golden Age The post-Cold War world had insecurities, injustices, and outrages. However, the world that emerged after the opening of the Berlin Wall still feels like a time of unique progress and promise. Democracy was stomping autocracy: the number of democracies shot up from roughly 40 in the early 1970s to 120 by 2000. Globalization was running riot: between 1989 and 2019, world trade roughly quadrupled, and between 1992 and 2000, foreign direct investment (FDI) flows increased eightfold.
Economic openness sullied living standards high and low. It also fostered peace on the frostiest border and ended international tensions altogether. For the first time in human history, the theory went, creating common prosperity was squashing a cause of states' squabbles. This stampede to prosperity was hypercharged, in turn, by the digital revolution, which made trade easier and more productive. Yet information technology favored freedom, too: social media helped oust repressive governments in Egypt and Ukraine. It also helped gather terrorists into an ill-defined global jihad.
The US also made all this progress possible. American and Europe preserved the peace and stability of Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific. Washington had been the global leader in democracy and globalization and collective action against nuclear proliferation, among other issues. US tech companies spawned innovations that have driven the digital age. As a Pentagon strategy document explained the post-Cold War order, it was "ultimately underwritten by the United States.
It is also a wonderland for firms and investors capitalizing on the globalization boom. Open, integrated world economy multinationals will be able to exploit fresh efficiencies in an increasingly open world economy. Those underpinnings allowed them to trade and invest, completely reassured by Uncle Sam.
Inflation stayed low, and one reason was globalization: most of the cost increases in a typical US household are over basic needs or services where Chinese products had zero impact (but imports from developing nations such as Bangladesh certainly did) - so if you profess to hate inflation but also trade tariffs remember that. Finally, concerns about trading with authoritarian countries - or even future adversaries - were largely brushed aside since the assumption was that by engaging in commerce per se, troublesome actors would be transformed into responsible stakeholders.
In that regard, the post-Cold War era was a golden age. However, it has all fallen apart now.
War of Ideas
Looking back, the post-Cold War gains have been more shallow than they seemed: most new democracies were fragile and had only a thin layer beneath to prevent autocratic recapture. However, other aspects of the time were a double-edged sword. Globalization lined the pockets of many, but it also generously produced explosively escalating social inequality and cultural insecurity, dynamics that decisively spawned an indefinite neo-populist phase. The other, information technology allowed dissenters new tools to express their grievances against repressive rulers. At the same time, it permitted those rulers mechanisms for monitoring and silencing criticism.
More fundamentally, a post-Cold War order premised on US and Western dominance began to break down when that dominance disappeared.
The Russian bear and the Chinese dragon are both natural species in a thriving global economy, where China has rapidly grown while Russia has largely recovered. In the lead-up to 2014, Washington and many of its allies were guilty: They had all allowed their military muscles to turn to fat as they nestled inside America's protective cocoon.
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