Global Discord – Values and Power in a Fractured World Order

This sweeping book could hardly be more topical in view of the changing geopolitical landscape moving in the direction of multipolarity in spite of US attempts to maintain unipolar hegemony – the strategic aim to weaken Russia is a significant factor in the current Ukraine war and was recently explicitly challenged at the BRICS meeting. The book discusses the history of international order, frameworks of international institutions, geopolitics in relation to what the author calls geoeconomics, legitimacy in terms of values and principles, and potential reforms to the international economic system. He sees a series of concentric circles representing degrees of cooperation and, hopefully, peaceful coexistence.

The looming major conflict – historically typical in terms of tensions between the existing major power and a rising power – is between the US and China, and it is deeply ideological; although it seems to me that there is a strong technocratic drift towards authoritarianism in so-called democracies, which are de facto oligarchies, even plutocracies. With respect to China, the author highlights the importance of ‘Document 9’, which provides the blueprint for the total domination of an increasingly militarised national security state with five specific injunctions ‘instructing Chinese people not to promote or even discuss the values and institutions associated with liberal democracy.’ The conundrum for the West is well formulated by Elizabeth Economy: ‘China is an illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal order.’ (p. 234)

The author argues that our bedrock objective should be to hold on to the distinctive way of life that characterises the constitutional democracies, though even this, as I mentioned above, is under threat as governments seek control information narratives. As a number of commentators have observed, while the US has military bases all around the world, China has pursued geopolitics through geoeconomics with its belt and road initiative. Geoeconomics is defined as the use of economic instruments to promote and defend national interests, and to produce beneficial geopolitical results.’ Countries indebted to China are understandably very reluctant to criticise their domestic policies. The author discusses various competing approaches to international order, proposing four potential scenarios for the next 25 years: lingering status quo, superpower struggle, a new Cold War, and finally and most desirably, a truly reshaped world order. The book is essential reading for understanding the complex prospects for constructive international relations in an ultimately independent world.