Global futures 2035

SETTING A CHAIN REACTION

Dr Andrey Kortunov

While plotting the trajectory to 2035, it would be appropriate to use an analogy from nuclear physics. There are two ways to extract energy from the elementary fossils. The first way would be fission, and the second is fusion. Fission implies you have heavy molecules, mostly molecules of uranium or plutonium, that you can split into smaller ones and release a lot of energy.In doing so, you launch a chain of action, and the chain of action will release this energy. The second way to get energy is through fusion, which means you take very light molecules like deuterium and merge them into larger combined pieces – nuclear. And these processes also release this energy, even more energy than fission.

Point of No Return?

We are currently at the stage of international relations that can be compared to fission.We see a very rapid disintegration of the old international order, and this process has already acquired the features of a chain reaction. The jury is still out as to when this transformation took place. Experts debate whether it was the global financial crisis of 2008 or the 2016 U.S. elections with Donald Trump taking power in the White House. The Russian and Ukrainian conflict is an important turning point, perhaps a point of no return.

It's not a regional crisis; the global implications of these fission processes are clearly visible. Arms control, at least in the traditional format, is almost dead. And there's not much going on between Moscow and Washington and not much at the multilateral level. Furthermore, there is a rapid complication in relations between China and the United States. Hopefully, the recent meeting between Chairman Xi and President Biden will positively impact the stabilisation of this increasingly adversarial relationship. However, some negative trends in relations are already irreversible, which may translate to other regional crises like the South Caucasus, the Sahel region of Africa and the Middle East. And finally, there was this sudden and dramatic escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Therefore, it seems the world is helpless in stopping these chain reactions. Even reversing the trends appears extremely difficult, if not impossible.

A Laundry List of Options

However, that does not mean that nothing can be done to limit the damage of this disintegration, even if it takes a couple of years to alleviate the damage and to pave the way for a new stage–perhaps three or even five years.

The international community will have little choice but to undergo the pains of this traumatic and dangerous phase in the international system. We should take a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach, considering specific incremental ways to fix problems that can be fixed today.

That implies that potential agreements should be anchored upon mutual interests rather than common values. Unfortunately, common values are not attainable at this given moment, and it might be counterproductive to focus on common values, especially given the crisis of liberal political thought being witnessed today.

It would also be fair to say that we should preserve the ambiguity.Ambiguity is not always bad. Ambiguity might help us to avoid issues that cannot be resolved at this particular juncture. We should try to explore opportunities for minilateralism since multilateralism is in crisis. Many multilateral institutions turned out to be not very efficient.

Ultimately, there is no alternative to multilateralism; even in its reduced form, it is a major asset that should be preserved and nourished. The current flux in the international system will not last forever, and we will see a new dawn of globalisation. The resurgence in globalisation will result from increasing common pressures on all the world's nations– climate change, biodiversity, deficit of resources, uncontrolled migrations, and many other issues that call for common action. And these pressures will increase over time.

Second, it is important to note that technological advances will create new opportunities for cross-border cooperation. Geography is important, but geography's relative importance is likely to decrease over time.

Finally, no nation is really interested in an uncontrolled arms race, in an uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons or multiple crises.So, there will be pressure on national governments to return to the diplomatic table to restart efforts and provide multilateral solutions to common problems.

A New Wave of Globalisation

The new wave of globalisationmight become a reality in a couple of years, maybe by the end of this decade. The new wave of globalisation will be very different from what we witnessed during the turn of the century.

First of all, it will have different drivers. It will not just be about global finance or global business; it will also be about global civil society. It will be about social movements that acquire a transnational and transborder character.

Second, the agenda of the new wave will be different from what we saw 20 years ago. Back then, it was mostly about individual freedoms. These days, it is likely to be more about social justice. The left movements worldwide, including the East and the West, to the North and the South, are also becoming very bullish.

Finally, the main problem that has to be addressed over the new stage of globalisation is not likely to be the problem between the East and the West, nor the problem between Russia, China and the United States.It is likely to be a much more fundamental challenge of fixing relations between the global North and the global South. That would require a major redistribution of global resources, a major development in all countries in the global South and major changes within the international ecosystem, including security and development dimensions.

We will all have to go through this very difficult period, but at the end of the day, we will be in a position to climb to a new level of global governance.