Given the overwhelming complexity of the modern global economy and international order, it is natural for policymakers and pundits to grasp for simple historical narratives to make sense of it all. But such frameworks are poor guides for current policymaking.
MUNICH – Behind today’s global disorder are two related narratives about countries’ relative strengths and weaknesses in the competition for global power. One is about the long-term rise and fall of nations and civilizations, and the other is about much shorter-term conjunctures.
From the Western standpoint, the first narrative regards China as a threat because of its extraordinary strength, whereas the second narrative presents it as a threat by dint of its inherent weakness. At the same time, Chinese leaders view America as a threat because it is structurally feeble and dominated by a gerontocratic political elite, but also because it remains extraordinarily powerful and determined to cut off any rivals in the near term. As Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, speaking on behalf of President Xi Jinping, recently put it, “some country, obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries.”
The first view of the future relies on the simple – and therefore apparently compelling – analytical lens of geopolitics. Geopoliticians are in the business of sketching out long-term scenarios of rise and fall. Their plot lines are always clear: one country dominates the world for a century or so before suffering a reversal as it becomes exhausted and discredited.
MUNICH – Behind today’s global disorder are two related narratives about countries’ relative strengths and weaknesses in the competition for global power. One is about the long-term rise and fall of nations and civilizations, and the other is about much shorter-term conjunctures.
From the Western standpoint, the first narrative regards China as a threat because of its extraordinary strength, whereas the second narrative presents it as a threat by dint of its inherent weakness. At the same time, Chinese leaders view America as a threat because it is structurally feeble and dominated by a gerontocratic political elite, but also because it remains extraordinarily powerful and determined to cut off any rivals in the near term. As Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, speaking on behalf of President Xi Jinping, recently put it, “some country, obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries.”
The first view of the future relies on the simple – and therefore apparently compelling – analytical lens of geopolitics. Geopoliticians are in the business of sketching out long-term scenarios of rise and fall. Their plot lines are always clear: one country dominates the world for a century or so before suffering a reversal as it becomes exhausted and discredited.