The Times January 20, 2007
Assume nothing: power plays today will have unexpected outcomes tomorrowDavid
Rothkopf and Jonathan Schmidt
Current affairs may mask events of greater importance
The issues and the people
So much is written so often about power that it is surprising how little we
seem to understand it. Important shifts in power often take place in the
shadows, beyond our view. As a consequence, sometimes we fail to understand
them as they are happening and it takes decades or centuries before we truly
grasp what has transpired.
In 1991, the news story of the year was the fall of the Soviet Union. The
Cold War was over and the geopolitical balance of power of the world had
shifted profoundly. Yet that same year, the recent brainchild of a
self-effacing English physicist named Tim Berners-Lee, something that he called
the world wide web, was made available to the public. Certainly, the collapse
of the Soviet Union represented a sea-change in the global distribution of
power, but 100 years from now, which of these events will be seen as touching
more lives, empowering more individuals, changing the world in more ways?
Indeed, even today it seems clear that one reason among the many for the
downfall of Soviet communism was the impossibility of closed societies
competing in the information age. Obviously, 1945 is remembered for the end
of the Second World War, but, following our reasoning above, might it also be
remembered perhaps more than it is for the publication of an article in Atlantic
Monthly by the prescient Vannevar Bush describing some of the core ideas that
ultimately led to the internet? At the time, computers barely existed. Who
could imagine the power of his ideas, or the power that his ideas would create
or shift? There are countless such examples throughout history. Could anyone
have foretold that the ascension of Augustus as Romes first Emperor would have
been transcended in terms of lasting impact upon the continent on which he was
the greatest ruler ever by the birth of an obscure Jew somewhere in far off
Judea? Or that with the death of Zheng He, the Muslim admiral who led Chinas
age of exploration, in 1433 that the Emperor of China would choose a course
of isolation that ultimately would result in the decline of the Ming Dynasty
and forestall Chinas engagement in the world as a great power by almost six
centuries? Part of the reason that predicting the consequences of power
shifts is so difficult is that power flows from so many
sources. Political and military power may be pre-eminent in our thinking, but
religion, science, technology, the environment, social trends and countless
other drivers shape the fate of rulers, trigger conflicts and lead to the ebb
and flow of the power of states, economic entities and peoples. In fact, the
power structure of the world is much like that of a complex atom, whirring at
many levels, with events at one often triggering changes at the others. So it
is today. Speaking about the changing global power equation, as participants
will do at the upcoming annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, it is natural for thoughts to turn first to questions about the
sustainability of a unipolar world and the limitations we have all learnt that
constrain the sole superpower that survived the end of the Cold War the
United States. One can also wonder if a focus on the upheaval in the Middle
East masks other developments of greater importance in the
long term, distracting us from the rise of emerging Asia and Chinas ultimate
assumption of the role as the great power balancing the US. Or should we be
looking at the interdependence of the US and China or the rise of India or the
rise of the entire emerging world, likely to be the source of the worlds
fastest growth and home to the vast majority of its people throughout the
century ahead? Perhaps an even more significant question is whether it is
old-fashioned to continue to think in terms of nation states as the primary
global actors when they are, after all, derived from ideas that are more than
350 years old and may be reaching obsolescence given the fading of borders and
the rise of non-state actors from al-Qaeda to the corporations that now
outnumber countries in the list of the worlds largest economic entities. Or is
it more important to note that hierarchical corporate, traditional political
entities and long-standing media powers are themselves already
fading in influence as virtual networks can gather and recombine and mobilise
action or translate new ideas into actions and beliefs more rapidly than ever
before and do so without regard for borders and even without the need for
significant financial resources? For decades it has been a given that being
an oil-producing nation granted great power. While demand for oil is growing
and will do so for decades to come, reaction to high prices, global warming and
unreliable supplies is fostering investment in innovations that have the
potential to grant greater energy-producing power to the possessors of
agricultural, wind, geothermal, wave and other resources. Indeed, if global
warming is not reversed, how will that redistribute power, impact low-lying
nations or increase the likelihood of natural disasters? What might be the
consequence in terms of the distribution of power of enhanced global
transportation networks? Or in terms of flows of immigrants and the reaction to
them? Or in terms of the way that they might accelerate the spread of global
pandemics? In such a pandemic, who might have the power? Those with vaccines?
Those with secure borders or with advanced medical resources? As
thought-provoking as such questions are, taken together they offer at least one
answer. The tectonic plates on which the global power structure is founded are
shifting today, rapidly in some areas, imperceptibly but perhaps profoundly in
others. And just as few could have seen that European power plays of the last
century would assure Americas rise, we also know that the shifts of today will
likely produce unexpected consequences that will be jarring and perhaps
dangerous for the unprepared or the complacent.
David Rothkopf, former Deputy Under-Secretary for Commerce in the Clinton
Administration, is president and chief executive of Garten Rothkopf and
visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Jonathan
Schmidt is director and head of global agenda at the World Economic Forum.
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