Tag Archives: world order

It is Wednesday and just a collection of snippets today. I am trying to finish a major piece of work and so that is what I am mostly doing today. And learning to program Geojson formats in R, so I can overcome the decision by Google to abandon their fusion table facility, which my research centre has relied on for some years to display map layers. And I have some press interviews to deal with. But today we consider the claim by the Financial Times editorial the other day that “Radical...

What is going on? Is there some unifying thread connecting this sudden outbreak of widespread global tension? Of course all these conflicts have their separate background contexts. But why so many at the same time? Well, in a word, it’s all about change — about the recognition that we are at the cusp of major changes. The world is beginning to pre-position.... We are indeed at a point of inflection. Some westerners may muse that the status quo ante is somehow recoverable (if only Trump is...

History suggests that a global superpower in relative decline should aim for a soft landing, so that it still has a comfortable place in the world once its dominance fades. By contrast, US President Donald Trump's incoherent, confrontational approach toward China could seriously damage America’s long-term interests.... In my view, there are two major or core factors not usually mentioned that need to be considered along with the many others, central and peripheral. The first is that the...

When I was in the FCO, the rule on recognition was very plain and very openly stated – the UK recognised the government which had “effective control of the territory”, whatever the attributes of that government. This is a very well established principle of international law. There were very rare exceptions involving continuing to support ousted governments. The pre-1939 Polish government in exile was the most obvious example, though once Nazism was defeated Britain moved to recognise the...

The ascendence of China and multilateral trading blocks could eventually spell the doom of the G20 and U.S. global dominance, as Pepe Escobar explains. Consortium News On The Road to a Post-G20 World Pepe Escobar See also by Pepe Escobar at Consortium News Future of Western Democracy Being Played Out in Brazil (9 Oct 2018) Welcome to the Jungle (29 Oct 2018)See also Reminiscence of the FutureA Teaser Andrei Martyanov

Although the G20 still retains its potential to support the global economic stability, there is an impression that its mission is coming to an end. If this trend is not reversed, then, a summit or two from now, we might see the return of trade wars and competitive devaluations of national currencies. In that case, the current G20 format, built around the US leadership and hegemonic in nature, will not work at all. The nature of the G20 is that of an international forum, not an international...

Executive summary The high point of global governance was reached in the mid-1990s around the creationof the World Trade Organisation. It was hoped that globalisation would be buttressed by a system of global rules and a network of specialised global institutions. Two decades later these hopes have been dashed by a series of global governance setbacks, the rise of economic nationalism and the dramatic change of attitude of the United States administration. From trade to the environment, a...

The dramatic rise of China over the past four decades not only has rocketed China's economy to the top of the world (in terms of PPP - purchasing power parity), with no end in sight, but also is ending western dominance over the past 200 years, at least.What does that mean to the world? Everything, from politics (End of Democracy?) to economics (Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx)! To understand the profound implication of this change, we must truly understand the past, for which we must re-examine...

The colossal project to re-colonialize the world started with United States President Ronald Reagan eagerly backed by United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and over the next 20 years seemed to sweep all before it.… That would be neoliberalism, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, and finally colonization of the domestic populations of the US and UK. The later was a fatal mistake, from which the Anglo-American Empire as the successor to the British Empire post WWII may never...

It is enlightening to remember that at the Shangri-la Dialogue two years ago, Professor Xiang Lanxin, director of the Centre of One Belt and One Road Studies at the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, described BRI as an avenue to a ‘post-Westphalian world.’ That’s where we are now. Western elites cannot but worry when central banks in China, Russia, India and Turkey actively increase their physical gold stash; when Moscow and Beijing discuss...