From the American Century to the Competition Century

Editor’s Note: In the second part of our recently completed Editorial Plan we spent a week looking at the grand strategies of the United States, China, Japan, India, Pakistan and Iran. However, the emerging powers in this list are not the only ones that will shape the international system in the near-term. The likes of Brazil and Mexico, for example, are also preparing to wield power in newly prominent ways, as are reemerging powers such as Russia and Turkey. And yet, just because a state achieves the status of an emerging or reemerging power does not necessarily mean that it has the current wherewithal to develop a coherent and effective grand strategy.

Indeed, of all of the states that we will be looking at this week, only Russia appears to have the bureaucratic capacity and near-term memory to build a viable grand strategy at this time. Turkey’s geopolitical memory lies too far in the past while in the case of Brazil, Mexico and others, they’re ‘first-timers’ when it comes to developing grand strategies that will have meaningful international dimensions to them.

Given these developments, the ISN Staff thought it would be appropriate to spend this week considering how Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Turkey are trying to develop grand strategies and what they might actually look like. To help set the scene, today we present two articles that predict the future shape of the international system and how it might impact the grand strategies of our respective powers. In the first article, Charles Kupchan argues that while the West’s dominance of the international system is coming to an end, no single power or concept of global ordering will take its grand strategic place. Indeed, in the last case, “alternative conceptions of domestic and international order will [come to] compete and coexist on the global stage.”

Our second article then demonstrates one reason why this coexistence will be the case – i.e., the world’s emerging or reemerging powers have only just begun to formulate their grand strategies, which the article’s author, Krishnappa Venkatshamy, argues will be costly and challenging. And while Venkashamy’s five-step prescription for developing an effective grand strategy specifically focuses on India, it nevertheless provides a valuable foundation for the case studies we will present over the next few days.

If the world's emerging powers enjoyed a consensus among themselves about the nature of the post-Western world, they could drive the debate about the shape of the coming era. But rising powers are far from arriving at a shared view of the rules of the next order.

They know what they do not want — a world under the continued hegemony of the West. But they do not have a coherent vision of what should replace the Western order. Indeed, with the exception of China, which has well-funded ministries and think tanks tasked with mapping out the country's grand strategy, other rising powers are just getting in the game.

India's diplomatic service is still less than 1,000 strong. By way of comparison, the United States employs roughly 12,000 diplomats. Brazil is fast seeking to expand its diplomatic presence abroad (it has recently opened some 16 embassies in Africa alone). Turkey's more assertive foreign policy and its deepening engagement in the Middle East are new and still evolving.

Rising nations need additional time and resources to develop the ambitions and institutions that will mark their arrival as major powers.

As power becomes more broadly distributed across the globe, the diverging interests and strategic visions of emerging powers will ensure that the next world will be "no one's world." The global turn will bring to an end the era of the West's material and ideological dominance. But what comes next will not be the Chinese century, the Asian century, or anyone else's century.

Rather, "no one's world" will exhibit striking diversity. Alternative conceptions of domestic and international order will compete and coexist on the global stage.

For the first time in history, an interdependent world will be without a center of gravity or global guardian. Previous eras were, of course, home to a multipolar landscape and a broad array of approaches to governance and commerce. But prior to the advance of globalization during the 19th century, centers of power rarely interacted with one another.

In the 1600s, for example, the Europeans, Ottomans and Chinese had little to do with each other. Forging a common set of rules across Christian, Muslim and Confucian societies was thus not an issue.

Not so today. In a world in which both markets and security are global in nature, the Washington Consensus (to the degree it still exists), Brussels Consensus, Beijing Consensus, New Delhi Consensus, Brasilia Consensus — and other developing conceptions of order — will regularly interact with each other.

The globe's main centers of power are highly interdependent, meaning that developments in one region have a major effect on developments in many others. Indeed, economic policies arrived at in Beijing can sometimes have a greater impact on the U.S. economy than decisions taken in Washington. As a consequence, global governance will require compromise and consensus among competing conceptions of political and commercial life.

The spread of democracy and economic interdependence, some analysts contend, has the potential to ensure that this coming transition in global order will be pacific and cooperative. But such arguments do not hold up under scrutiny.

The next world will be populated by major powers of many different regime types, not just by democracies. China may eventually become a democracy — but, if so, it will surely do so well after its emergence as a country of the top rank

Moreover, emerging powers that are democracies may well align themselves with their rising compatriots rather than with the West. And even if all the world's countries were democratic, it cannot be taken for granted that the relationships among them would be reliably cooperative.

Unable to direct their competitive energies against non-democracies, democratic great powers may engage in geopolitical rivalry with each other. After all, great-power rivalry is often the product of competition for prestige and status — a yearning from which democracies are hardly immune.

The peace-causing effects of commercial interdependence are similarly illusory. Economic interdependence among Europe's great powers did little to avert the hegemonic war that broke out in 1914. Geopolitical competition made short shrift of economic ties. And when lasting peace does break out, deepening economic ties are usually a consequence rather than a cause of political reconciliations.

The stability afforded by Western predominance will slip away in step with its material and ideological primacy. Accordingly, the West must work with emerging powers to take advantage of the current window of opportunity to map out the rules that will govern the next world.

Otherwise, multipolarity coupled with ideological dissensus is likely to bring back to global politics balance-of-power competition and dangerous jockeying for position and prestige.