Let us examine an excerpt from his latest book.
If we seek with trepidation to avoid the pitfalls of history, the key questions we must ask are: how do global governance frameworks that were shaped in the context of a very different world adapt to today’s changes?This is Babu English. History refers to stuff which has already happened. Its pitfalls no longer exist. We would only need to avoid them if we were time travelers.
There is no 'global governance framework' because there is no Global Government. There is a United Nations- but it is utterly useless.
What these cretin mean is- 'if we don't want to repeat mistakes we must ask in what ways International norms and procedures have become dysfunctional because the world has changed?' This too is stupid. It is obvious that we need to be aware that previous ways of doing things may not be equal to present tasks because the world has changed.
Technological and demographic shifts, rising powers, new geographic theatres, and balance of power politics are all moving with a velocity previously unknown to the world.This is nonsense. There have been no new 'geographic theaters' since the 'scramble for Africa' some 140 years ago. No period has seen such dramatic changes as that between 1914 and 1950. The pace of change has slowed down. The future holds no big surprises.
Can new countries assume leadership, and will this create a more representative international system?No. There are no 'new countries' which aren't less important than their predecessor. South Sudan isn't going to lead anything.
To be fair, attempting to evaluate the future of world order is an elusive endeavour.No it isn't. I just did it in a sentence. The future will be pretty much what markets currently predict.
For one thing, it is necessary to ask: who does a world order serve?Why? The thing is fucking obvious. Pax Britannica served Britain. The 'American Century' served America. China's belt and road serves China. A world order is a modus vivendi between super-powers.
The post-world war order served the Atlantic powers, first to stave off the threat from the Soviet Union, and then to expand their normative vision for democracy and free trade.Nonsense! The balance of terror served the Soviets and their allies better than it did the Atlantic powers. That is why Britain and America and even, to a lesser extent, France, embraced free markets and elected people like Reagan and Thatcher whose 'normative vision' was very different from that of Kennedy or the 'Butskellite' post-war British consensus.
However, this order failed to accommodate the voices and concerns of countries which found their independence after shedding the yoke of colonialism.But that's why those countries became independent. And they did too get accommodated. India received a heck of a lot of 'free money' from America, till it realized that the begging bowl was a poisoned chalice.
However, the West realized there was no point to accommodating anything. Only madmen listen to stupid voices.
Looking further back in history, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 helped end the Napoleonic wars and brought peace to Europe in terms of political stability and economic growth.Occupying France till it paid huge reparations and sending Napoleon off to a far away island was what ended the Napoleonic wars. Vienna only gained salience after Talleyrand was neutralized. It was the 'Holy Alliance' which preserved European peace. But economic growth was based on the resumption of market based reforms. In Prussia the 'liberalism of the officials' was based on the great love of Adam Smith which inspired Kant's successor.
Yet, that same period was marked by the colonisation of Asia and a burgeoning African slave trade.Rubbish! India's colonization began in the mid eighteenth century. The African slave trade, which peaked at about the same time, was abolished in the UK in 1807.
At the same time, ever since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, world order was primarily understood in terms of interactions between states; and the ideation of a “world order” itself was an Anglo-American conception.Completely false. This is a wholly exploded academic availability cascade. Westphalia had no special importance whatsoever. No 'nation state' signed anything there. 'Westphalian Sovereignty' is a legal fiction.
The 'ideation' of a 'world order' dates from the Papal bull dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal which led to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494.
Today, not only do we have multiple state and civilisational contenders for leadership in the international system, but such an international order must also accommodate or address international and regional institutions, multinational corporations and nongovernmental organisations, civil society movements, powerful city states and so on.This is utterly false. Trump does not want to create a 'New World Order'. The thing is anathema to his bedrock supporters. What Trump won't do, nobody else can do. Regional hegemons may exist but hegemony is contested at the margin. As for 'International institutions' and NGOs- everybody thinks those guys are wankers. As for MNCs, they are facing an existential threat on their own home turf. Warren could get the Presidential ticket. Even if she doesn't, K-Street may switch sides so as to shake down the plutocrats to enrich itself.
Today’s problem is that the structural preconditions that allow major powers to enforce their normative visions no longer exist.Major powers could not 'enforce their normative visions'. America learnt this in Vietnam. The Soviets did so in Afghanistan. The 'structural precondition' for doing something impossible is that pigs have wings and spend most of their time flying around shitting on people's heads.
Control over technology, finance, and trade allowed Europe to spread its “civilising mission” and colonise the world.Very true! Portugal was technologically very advanced which is why it still had a big Empire at the end of the Nineteen Sixties. The truth is 'civilizing missions' involve missionaries who get savages to put on clothes and stop head-hunting. It's tough work.
A booming post-war economy and new political ideals allowed America to dominate the second half of the twentieth century.But it could have dominated the world in the Twenties as well. It chose not to. The reason America felt it worthwhile to build up offensive force projection was because Japan had attacked it and Hitler had declared war on it. As for 'new political ideals'- America found no such thing in the Fifties. There was incremental progress on issues which had been around from before the Civil War.
These factors of comprehensive national power no longer reside in one geography – instead they are dispersed between states and within them; and all this takes place in a global economy that does not respect borders.Utter rubbish! NATO is just the tail of the big American dog. Trump has been very clear about this. Warren is now threatening the Tech Titans. It is now obvious that mythmaking about 'globalization' was tendentious shite of a Tharoor level of imbecility. All Economic power is National.
No two powers can agree on a common set of rules.Sure they can- if it suits them and if stupid shitheads and idealogues are disintermediated.
At the same time, transnational corporations and powerful city states are increasingly functioning in parallel to national government policies and international regulations.Where? Hong Kong? But those students will end up surrendering after receiving one beating too many.
American cities, for example, have been the front-runners against climate change despite President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.So what? This hasn't changed anything.
Moscow and Beijing – most widely considered to be at the forefront of subverting the international order – are challenging the rules and norms that do not support their world view.When has this not been the case? Did China restore Tibet to the Tibetans? Does it have a vibrant multi-party Democracy? What about Russia?
Even the Transatlantic alliance is under pressure – over terms of trade, rules for the digital economy, political values, and security concerns.It was under pressure when Obama was President. Now it has Trump's boot lodged so far up its ass that it can taste his shoe polish.
Other regional powers, such as Japan or Australia, do not have the normative vision, economic resources, military might or political will to determine the outcome of events in global politics.So, America is the only big dog on a global scale. But it wants to go back into its kennel and sleep peacefully. Thus Tharoor and Saran have been wasting our time writing nonsense.
Clearly, not everyone has benefited the same way from the post- war order; and it is for this reason that they do not seek to defend it.But those who have benefited won't defend it either. Why? They would have been even better off if this fraud had never been allowed to engross resources. Reagan told UNESCO to go fuck itself. Dubya rejoined in 2002 because everybody was falling over themselves to kiss his ass. But Trump has told them to fuck off once again.
This is not to say, however, that this order did not benefit anyone at all. If anything, today’s rising international power – China – was the primary beneficiary of the international liberal order.Fuck off! It was the beneficiary of having smart leaders and a large very hardworking and entrepreneurial population. It single-handedly removed inflationary bias from the world economy. In other words, it more than paid its way.
No other country has gained from integrating with the global economy in the manner that Beijing has. From a GDP of $92 billion in 1970 to $13.6 trillion in 2018, China has steadily enmeshed itself in global value chains and is creatively moving up the industrial production ladder.But China would have done this in any case with or without trade agreements. Why? Markets find ways around trade barriers. That's why sanctions don't work.
Already, it is the second largest economy in nominal terms, and the largest in PPP terms. So why is it that it is China that is at the forefront of subverting this order?Because there was never an order. There was only expediency and Ricardian 'gains from trade'.
Ask a stupid question and you are bound to think of an even stupider question.
This question begets another question: what purpose does a world order serve?These cretins don't remember that they had already asked this question. They are just going round in circles.
Collective peace, hegemony, or mutually beneficial multilateralism, or something else?Markets could be viewed as exhibiting 'spontaneous order'. The purpose served is Ricardian 'gains from trade'. That's it. That's the whole story. No doubt, when inaugurating something useful- like a Public Toilet- you may wheel out some Tharoor type cretin to make a speech about how not shitting all over the place promotes collective peas and helps disabled cabbages.
As we have shown, Beijing believes, whether or not it will say so in so many words, that a twenty-first-century revival of the East Asian tributary system in which China’s economic, political, and cultural superiority is recognised might bring harmony; and it is willing to enforce this world view through force and coercion if need be.This is foolish. The 'tributary system' was about reducing, not increasing, access to Chinese exports. Barbarians brought jade or horses or rhino horns and gave them to the Emperor who then let them buy Chinese silk or paper or whatever.
America, often contradictorily characterised as a “liberal leviathan”, sees value in a “rules-based order” – albeit rules that are infused with American norms and power structures.Do these guys really not know that Trump is President? Why write such nonsense?
At the same time, it seeks to bring the American way of life to every part of the world through global communications and trade and finance networks.I suppose one could say this of USAID or the Peace Corps. But that backfired. In Afghanistan, a guy the Americans sent to Columbia to study journalism turned into a rabid Maoist. He, more than anyone else, destroyed the country.
Everyone agrees, in principle at least, that great power wars are undesirable.Why don't they agree that it is undesirable in practice? What is wrong with them? Do they think a Nuclear Apocalypse would make for a welcome change of pace? Are there people who say 'what a shame Kennedy didn't nuke the Soviets and they didn't nuke America in retaliation. The world would be a so much better place if it was only inhabited by radioactive cockroaches. I mean, in principle I am opposed to a war which would annihilate our species. But, in practice, you must admit the thing is highly desirable.'
But today’s world requires managing complex challenges that go well beyond stability or hegemony, and just like the global economy, these challenges do not respect sovereign boundaries.If this is true, when was it not true? Sovereign boundaries are only respected if not doing so gets you killed. What is the point of writing such nonsense?
Climate change, internet governance, artificial intelligence, space missions, human trafficking, tax evasion, international terrorism, the proliferation of drug trafficking, health pandemics, and many more such challenges are all issues that require international cooperation.No they don't. These are things which can only be tackled locally. Governments can sign treaties saying 'everyone must be nice. No one should be naughty.' but if they don't punish transgressors then naughtiness will still exist.
No twentieth- century framework, or any other historical point of reference, gives an adequate idea of how to responsibly manage these tensions in a world that is more interconnected and interdependent than ever, but suffers from a leadership deficit.Then why the fuck have these two cretins written this book? What the fuck do they know about the Twenty first or Twenty second century? Are they science nerds who have made billions in high tech industries? Have they discovered the secret of time-travel? Are their PhDs in 'futurology'? No. They are shittly little I.R majors- i.e. verbose imbeciles.
Moreover, if today’s international system is best characterised as an extension of the Atlantic system, where will new orders be constructed?How does characterizing something in one way help predict the future? Suppose I characterize the weather today as 'cold but sunny', how does it enable me to know that tomorrow will be 'warm but rainy'. The weather- at least in England- is a complex system. Correctly identifying the current configuration does not enable us to predict the next configuration. That's why a lot of money has to be spent on weather forecasting.
Geography is central to building international systems.No shit, Sherlock!
The Middle Kingdom’s tributary system flourished in East Asia, the Westphalian system thrived in Europe,why not the other way around? Please Dr. Tharoor, explain why Nigerians are ruling in Nigeria, not Sweden.
and the post-world war order simply added America plus Japan, Australia, and South Korea to “globalise” what was already a somewhat coherent European order.What is wrong with these cretins? Do they not understand that the Soviet Union and its allies controlled half the globe little more than a half century ago?
Today, it is clear that the twenty-first century will be defined by the collision of three geographies: the Eurasian landmass, the Indo–Pacific maritime system, and the Arctic Ocean.Fuck off. America will remain top dog. Trade is a decreasing component of China's GDP. Thus its interest in maintaining the 'belt and road' will decline as will the enthusiasm of small countries to take on debt for this purpose. As China evolves into a service based, high value adding, knowledge economy it won't be interested in any sort of 'collisions'. They will discover they don't want Muslim immigrants clogging up their 'silk roads'.
The interaction of global economic and migratory flows, the adoption and diffusion of new technologies, and geopolitical imperatives are eroding the artificial geographical boundaries between Europe and Asia and turning these regions into one fluid and dynamic unit.No they aren't. Europe is turning into a fortress against immigration. Higher taxes to finance increased social care costs for ageing population would, in any case, have the same effect. We will get 'Tiebout sorting' with contiguous areas offering different fiscal mixes and regulatory environment. Economies of scope and scale in resource extraction, transport and manufacturing will have less and less salience. Localized knowledge effects will have increased salience. This is why Europe is cracking up. If it can't be a 'fluid and dynamic unit' (based on higher mobility of physical capital) how the fuck will it integrate with Russia and Uzbekistan and so forth?
The Indo-Pacific was catalysed by China’s rise and expanding maritime influence but was given shape and definition by other powers in the region – namely the US, India, Japan, and Australia (who collectively make up the Quadrilateral Initiative).But, India is backing out. Anyway the thing is exactly as silly as it sounds.
Simultaneously, communities and markets from Asia and Europe are virtually driving the once separate continents together to create on contiguous supercontinent: Eurasia.These idiots think there was a time when Europe was separated from Asia. They have never heard of the Tzarist empire which included Alaska and Poland.
The Arctic, meanwhile, is being reborn as an unintended consequence of climate change. And as it continues to melt, it will merge the politics of the Atlantic and the Pacific, as actors in these once dispersed geographies find their interests overlapping.Utterly foolish! Russians aren't going to invade Canada.
None of these regions should be thought of as separate units – instead, there is a matrix of interdependent drivers that are merging the political, economic, and security relationships in these regions.No there isn't. If you construct a matrix to represent a Structural Causal Model you disallow interdependent vectors. Otherwise your theory is 'anything goes'. It doesn't explain anything except 'cascading failures'- but that is an engineering problem of an idiographic sort.
What 'merges' political', 'economic' and 'security' relationships is 'overlapping consensus' featuring independent formulations of National interest. The reverse may appear to happen because of availability cascades but the thing is not robust. It falls apart quite quickly. That is why 'overlapping consensus' is required such that everybody has their own reason for agreeing to a thing- so long as the thing does what it is supposed to do.
There is, accordingly, an immense amount of friction and contest between a plethora of powers to define and then manage these geographies.No there isn't. The game is not worth the candle.
And yet, these parts of the world are nothing like what Europe and America – or the Anglo-Saxon community – were in the twentieth century.But they are what they themselves were like at that time. Why mention the matter? Has something changed. Do Norwegians wake up in the middle of the night only to discover they have turned into Nigerians or Nicaraguans?
The political and cultural diversity from Japan to Nigeria, and China to Greece, are enormous.But this diversity existed two thousand years ago!
The geographical boundaries that the Europeans arbitrarily drew during colonial times have allowed ethnic and religious differences to escalate.Where? Tribes and Nations fought each other before the Europeans came. They continued to do so after the Europeans left. So what?
Booming populations are young in these parts of the world, but states simply do not have the capacity to address their aspirations.Nonsense! They have the capacity. What they lack is the smarts. South Korea was once as poor as India. Look at it now. India was a little ahead of China thirty years ago. Imagine the chaos that will prevail if the BJP loses next time round and we are back to the shifting coalitions of the mid Nineties.
This very diversity will require a different framework altogether, one in which countries will have to work together despite differences in their governance frameworks and capacity, and despite absolutely no agreement on civilisational norms.This already happens. But the pretense that it happens for normative reasons has to be given up.
The authors conclude by highlighting all the reasons their book is worthless. But this is otiose. We knew that already.
At the same time, one has to acknowledge the diminishing appetite for world order approaches in a number of states.Rubbish! War ensues when a symmetry in offensive capacity is lacking. That's what happened in both World Wars. France didn't have an offensive doctrine because of internal political reasons. The German general staff decided to roll the dice. They lost both times and then Germany was occupied and forcibly disarmed.
As one commentator put it: “The United States has made it clear it continues to oppose the creation of a treaty to govern cyberspace. China has reportedly been reneging on its legally binding commitment to ban ozone-depleting substances, diminishing the Montreal Protocol’s claim as the ‘most effective treaty in the world’. It appears highly unlikely that the United States, Russia and China will come together to craft a regime for the governance of the Arctic, interested as each is in the economic possibilities that will open up after its ice melts. The WTO has struggled in recent months to incubate negotiations on global e-commerce rules, and localised rules for national and regional digital economies look set to become the norm.”
The international system, which created a vast network of laws, treaties, and institutions that underpin the world we take for granted today, finds itself stagnating and rudderless, without patron or protector. It seems to be heading towards “each nation for itself”.
This may even be the right place to start considering the possibility of the absence of any world order at all, or what Bremmer calls a “G-Zero” world. In this much at least history is certain: when international politics become zero sum and transactional, putting the absolute interests of one state above another, war ensues.
The absence of any rules, institutions, principles, and leadership inevitably creates a trust vacuum and military might dictates every relationship.Nonsense! Both sides having adequate threat points suffices to keep War in the Icebox.
While an international order might create a stable balance of power, combining legitimacy and enforcement capacity, by no means does it guarantee peace and development.International Orders are the product, not the creators of a Balance of Power featuring comparable threat points. Nothing guarantees 'peace and development' except being able to kill invaders and robbers and doing so in no stinting spirit.
The absence of any order whatsoever almost guarantees tragic outcomes.Rubbish! The UN has always been as useless as the League of Nations and the elaborate alliance systems of the Crowned Heads of Europe half of whom were related to each other.
The first half of the twentieth century, when a fledgling international order existed and collapsed,
What are these cretins talking about? The first half of the twentieth century saw two world wars. There was no fucking 'international order' whatsoever.
is testament to this inevitability: great power conflict unleashed unspeakable violence and chaos – and the world must be all the more wary today because of the presence of nuclear weapons, deadly tech-enabled tools of mayhem, and the proliferation of state and non-state actors committed to upending stability and order.These cretins don't get that Hydrogen bombs and ICBMs have made the world safe from all but the mischief of I.R mavens like themselves. Disintermediate these shitheads. Abolish the UN. No. Don't. It is a useful dumping ground for utterly incompetent diplomats. Look at the mess they have made of Libya. Also the UN has 'special rapporteurs' who are guaranteed to say the funniest thing possible. One such, an expert on food security, said Scottish women don't have sufficient access to arable land to grow turnips for their kiddies who therefore are forced to subsist solely on deep fried Mars bars. Quite properly, the Modi Govt. has told these Special rap artists to go fuck themselves.
No doubt, according to Tharoor & Saran, this will lead to war. But, who pays attentions to wars of words? Anybody can write any old tosh. I suspect that Tharoor and Saran used an A.I to cobble together this book. But it was a really shitty A.I. Still, no great harm has been done. Nobody will read it.
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