New World Order
James Baker, director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, was not even on the list of participants at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi. But his takeaways from the meeting could find their way into policies that shape the world.
New World Order
The new railroad is expected to handle 50% of freight from Mombasa to the border with Uganda, compared to just 4% taken by the old British colonial-built railway, according to Alexander Wang, an associate professor at the Shanghai International Studies University, who has conducted field work on the railroad.
China supplies 2,322 troops to UN peacekeeping efforts worldwide -- by far the most of any UN security council member -- and has pledged 8,000 for a fast-response force. The US has just 42 troops but fronts the largest share of the UN peacekeeping budget -- although US President Donald Trump wants to cut that by half.
Western-based donors, INGOs and the UN provide only part of the answer. Already, new donors and NGOs from around the world provide a significant share of humanitarian aid. Future humanitarian action will rely on them, and on the governments and civil society of crisis-affected countries even more. The UN and INGOs will be vital, but their contribution will increasingly be measured by how well they complement and support the efforts of others, and encourage every humanitarian actor to uphold humanitarian principles.
The pandemic and war in Ukraine have heightened concerns over national security in different fields, including food supply. Increasingly, we expect local and regional self-preservation instincts will come to underlie policy decisions, with three main tenets leading to a new multi-polar world of blocs of economic influence.
We expect that deglobalisation, the second-order effects from high energy prices and climate change impacts will keep food prices elevated. In a multi-polar world of more fragmented trade flows, countries highly dependent on food imports (many low-income countries) will be most exposed to disruptions to supply chains. Agricultural insurance can be a key tool in maintaining food security: we forecast a near-doubling of global agricultural premiums by 2030.
Emphasizing not only that things ought to change but also revealing how to change them, Monbiot develops an interlocking set of proposals that mark him as the most realistic utopian of our time. With detailed discussions of what a world parliament might look like, how trade can be organized fairly, and how underdeveloped nations can leverage their debt to obtain real change, Manifesto for a New World Order offers a truly global perspective, a defense of democracy, and an understanding of power and how it might be captured from those unfit to retain it.
Conclusions: It is imperative that greater efforts be directed towards exposing the colonial and neocolonial forces which have undermined food security and health status in East Africa. Heightened awareness of these forces is essential for proposing genuine solutions to the nutrition transition and related NCD epidemics throughout this region and, indeed, worldwide.
Fierce independence, assertion of uniqueness, and willpower for autonomy characterize indigenous expression and spill over into the global public square creating greater diversity and cross-cutting tensions. These countervailing forcefields now ripple through global forums and international institutions, issues, and challenges, and define the new global order. The tensions between the West and the non-Western world are central, significant, and involve many countries.
The way to manage the global agenda in a multivalent world order is to accept complexities, contradictions, and contrariness as realities; delink issues from one another to prevent singular difference from overwhelming other functional relations; decentralize global negotiating forums from one another; devise diverse ways to work on issues that are distinctly different; encourage varying clusters of country officials to lead on different issues; nurture plurilateral leadership groups by rotating their composition from issue to issue; embrace variety; avoid blocs; invite innovation; focus on substance; and dial back on polemics.
This new era of complexity, contradiction, and multivalent forcefields invites new approaches which are characterized by greater openness to diversity, difference, and eclecticism and driven more by practical details, substantive understandings, knowledge-based policymaking, and a keen sense of global imperatives to address systemic challenges and existential threats. In a multivalent world, these approaches would be more effective and functional than using global forums to try to advance values, political preferences, and polemical differences.
In this dramatic moment with the global order in flux, the key issue is whether the G-7 plus 3 can prioritize the G-20 as an important platform both for working through these crosscurrents and for addressing existential and systemic threats despite the turmoil and tension. For this to happen, G-7 plus 3 and the five BRICSAM countries need to commit to moving forward together, bridging the divides within the G-20 and, by extension, the tensions within the global community.
The G-7 plus 3 countries need to seize this moment as an opportunity to use the G-20 to work out functional working relationships with China. China, too, is crucial in creating new dynamics within the G-20 and could benefit from contributing to strengthening the G-20 as a means of strengthening global governance. All G-20 countries need to support the Global South as Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa assume the G-20 presidency over the next four years. These shifts in behavior are extremely important. Otherwise, the G-20 could dissipate as a significant forum for global governance due to lack of effort, and the world could well divide into two global orders, between the West and non-Western countries.
Leaders and governments will need to use these behaviors and practices to project to the world an inclusive, eclectic, practical, respectful, and responsible strategic vision of convergence toward a new era in the global order that can tolerate not only diversity and difference but also complexity, contradiction, and even contrariness as central dynamics that must be managed to reestablish a single international community for all.
During his presidency, President Bush devoted much of his time to foreign affairs, an area over which Presidents generally have more latitude than they do with domestic affairs. In his first inaugural address, Bush spoke of unity between the executive and legislative branches in foreign affairs, presenting a united front to the rest of the world and referring to a time when "our differences ended at the water's edge." He also put together a team of advisers, including National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, who generally worked well together. President Bush approached foreign affairs with his characteristic conservatism and pragmatism. He did not rush into new actions or policy changes but gave himself time to consider the administration's policies. When he acted, he did so with firm conviction and determination. His past experiences gave him significant experience in foreign affairs, and he relied on the many contacts within the international community he formed as ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. envoy to China, director of Central Intelligence, and Vice President.
Following the loss of Noriega's puppet candidate in the May 1989 Panamanian presidential election, Noriega nullified the results and his supporters attacked the opposition candidates. President Bush was appalled by Noriega's thwarting of democracy and began to focus on removing him from power. In October, information about an internal coup reached the U.S. military in Panama but the Bush administration chose not to get involved because the plan seemed sketchy and unorganized. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recounted that, "The whole affair sounded like amateur night." The coup failed, and Noriega's forces executed the coup leader. Reaction in the United States was harsh, and many critics took the President to task for missing an opportunity to remove Noriega. After the attempted coup, President Bush and his advisers realized that they had to do something definite about Noriega. He then ordered his foreign affairs team to put together a plan to remove the dictator from power.
When Bush became President in 1989, the United States had already begun to see a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union. As vice president, he attended the December 1988 summit between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Bush spoke of softening relations in his inaugural address, claiming that "a new breeze is blowing," and adding that "great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom."
When East Germany opened its borders and Germans tore down the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin in early November 1989, it marked a symbolic end to Communist rule in Eastern Europe. In the minds of many, the Cold War was over. Bush offered a muted response at a press conference on November 9: "I'm very pleased." When the press questioned his lack of enthusiasm over the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Bush responded by stating, "I am not an emotional kind of guy." In retrospect, many people recognized that by refusing to gloat or declare victory over the Soviet Union, Bush probably helped avoid a backlash by hardliners in Eastern Europe. He also did not want to endanger future negotiations with the Soviet Union. Still, Bush's restrained response to the collapse of Communism in Europe, while diplomatically deft, cost him dearly at home among his conservative supporters who argued that Ronald Reagan would have celebrated this historic development with some type of public address. 041b061a72