“This is a time of geopolitical creative destruction, and it’s unprecedented in many of our lifetimes,” says Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group. The political risk specialist claims the days of US global leadership are over, and have left behind a power vacuum that is having a profound impact around the world, especially in the Middle East and Asia
In this World Economic Forum video, Dr. Bremmer says that the absence of global leadership is problematized by the lack of shared values between the US and China. Bremmer says the two strongest economic players have ‘incompatible’ views on national security, governance and financial outlook, and managing the relationship between them will be a key geopolitical concern.
Click on the link for the full video interview, or read key quotes below.
On Implications for the Middle East
The US led geopolitical order is gone, and it’s not being replaced. The emerging markets are now responsible for two thirds of the world’s growth. They are fundamentally different. They have different political and economic systems. They also have very different capacity to provide leadership. The implications of this absence of global leadership are profound around the world, but they are most important and problematic in two places: in the Middle East and in Asia. We see the metastasis of conflicts in the Middle East as a consequence of this growing fragmentation of governance and of ties, especially given the level of military conflict that we’ve seen historically there is clearly a destabilising force, and one that makes the absence of global leadership particularly problematic.
On Asia and the New World Order
One of the reasons we have such tensions in Asia, is because the perspectives of the two key players – the United States and China – are different and understandably different. We’ve never experienced a world where the two largest economies have fundamentally incompatible views that are core to their governance, core to their national security, core to their economic outlook. As China’s economic influence grows, so will their political influence. The old world order is gone, willing it back will not make it so. Don’t allow that to prevent you from developing the most durable, most significant, deeper ties economically that you can foster. That’s where cooperation must be.
Author: Ian Bremmer is the founder and president of Eurasia Group.
Image: A Chinese woman adjusts a Chinese national flag next to U.S. national flags in Beijing, July 10, 2014. REUTERS/Ng Han Gua
