Tag Archive for: Geopolitics

How world order changes

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and almost a year before the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, US President George H W Bush proclaimed a ‘new world order’. Now, just two months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, has declared that ‘the international order is undergoing changes of a magnitude not seen since 1945.’ But what is ‘world order’, and how is it maintained or disrupted?

In everyday language, order refers to a stable arrangement of items, functions, or relations. Thus, in domestic affairs, we speak of an ‘orderly society’ and its government. But in international affairs, there is no overarching government. With arrangements among states always subject to change, the world is, in a sense, ‘anarchic’.

Anarchy is not the same as chaos, though. Order is a matter of degree: it varies over time. In domestic affairs, a stable polity can persist despite a degree of ungoverned violence. After all, organised and unorganised violent crime remain a fact of life in most countries. But when violence reaches too high a level, it is seen as an indication of a failed state. Somalia may have a common language and ethnicity, but it has long been a site of battling clans; the ‘national’ government in Mogadishu has little authority outside the capital.

The German sociologist Max Weber famously defined the modern state as a political institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. But our understanding of legitimate authority rests on ideas and norms that can change. Thus, a legitimate order stems from judgments about the strength of norms, as well as simple descriptions about the amount and nature of violence within a state.

When it comes to world order, we can measure changes in the distribution of power and resources, as well as in adherence to the norms that establish legitimacy. We can also measure the frequency and intensity of violent conflict.

A stable distribution of power among states often involves wars that clarify a perceived balance of power. But views about the legitimacy of war have evolved over time. For example, in 18th-century Europe, when Prussia’s King Frederick the Great wanted to take the province of Silesia from neighboring Austria, he simply took it. But after World War II, states created the United Nations, which defined only wars of self-defense as legitimate (unless otherwise authorised by the Security Council).

To be sure, when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and occupied its territory, he claimed that he was acting in self-defense against the eastward expansion of NATO. But most UN members voted to condemn his behavior, and those that did not—such as China, North Korea, and Iran—share his interest in counterbalancing American power.

While states can lodge complaints against others in international courts, these tribunals have no capacity to enforce their decisions. Similarly, while the UN Security Council can authorise states to enforce collective security, it has rarely done so. The five permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) each wield a veto, and they have not wanted to risk a major war. The veto functions like a fuse or circuit-breaker in an electrical system: it is better to have the lights go out than to have the house burn down.

Moreover, a world order may become stronger or weaker because of technological changes that alter the distribution of military and economic power; domestic social and political changes that alter a major state’s foreign policy; or transnational forces like ideas or revolutionary movements, which can spread beyond governments’ control and alter public perceptions of the prevailing order’s legitimacy.

For example, after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the European wars of religion, the principle of state sovereignty became enshrined in the normative world order. But in addition to changes in the principles of legitimacy are changes in the distribution of power resources. By the time of World War I, the US had become the world’s largest economy, allowing it to determine the outcome of the war by intervening militarily. Although US President Woodrow Wilson tried to change the normative order with his League of Nations, US domestic politics pushed the country toward isolationism, which allowed the Axis powers to attempt to impose their own order in the 1930s.

After World War II, the US accounted for half of the world economy, but its military power was balanced by the Soviet Union’s, and the UN’s normative power was weak. With the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the US enjoyed a brief unipolar moment, only to overextend itself in the Middle East while permitting the financial mismanagement that culminated in the 2008 financial crisis. Believing the US was in decline, Russia and China changed their own policies. Putin ordered an invasion of neighboring Georgia, and China replaced Deng Xiaoping’s cautious foreign policy with a more assertive approach. Meanwhile, China’s robust economic growth allowed it to close the power gap with America.

Relative to China, American power did decline; but its share of the world economy has remained at around 25 percent. As long as the US maintained strong alliances with Japan and Europe, they would represent more than half the world economy, compared to a mere 20 percent for China and Russia.

Will the Trump administration maintain this unique source of America’s continued power, or is Kallas right that we are at a turning point? The years 1945, 1991, and 2008 were also turning points. If future historians add 2025 to the list, it will be a result of US policy—a self-inflicted wound—rather than any inevitable secular development.

Australia surveys volatile and unpredictable geoeconomics

The international economics of Australia’s budget are pervaded by a Voldemort-like figure.

The He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is Donald Trump, firing up trade wars, churning global finance and smashing the rules-based order.

The closest the budget papers come to hinting at Voldemort are two references to the ‘US administration’.

Last year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers worried about a ‘fraught and fragile’ world. This year, the anxiety is realised; what was fragile is in pieces. Chalmers mourned a ‘volatile and unpredictable’ global economy, telling parliament: ‘The 2020s have already seen a global pandemic, global inflation and the threat of a global trade war. The whole world has changed as a consequence.’

Surveying that changed world, the budget papers predict global growth will stay subdued for the next three years, because of ‘considerable uncertainty’ (hi, Voldemort). Treasury’s three-year estimate of global growth is 3.75 percent, ‘the longest stretch of below-average growth since the early 1990s’.

In the budget, Treasury estimates the effect of the United States imposing a 25 percent tariff on all imports of durable manufacturing goods, such as steel and aluminium. While the tariff may lead to ‘a reduction in the real GDP of Australia, China and the United States over time’, the total effect of the tariffs on Australia’s economy by 2030 is ‘modest’. The indirect effect of the tariffs is nearly four times as large as the direct effect, reflecting the importance of trade flows between Australia, China and the US.

Inflation in the US would persistently increase as imports become more expensive, Treasury notes, while Australia would see ‘a small temporary increase in inflation’ because of depreciation of the Australian dollar. Model in retaliatory 25 percent tariffs by all countries, including China and Australia, and ‘the loss in real GDP is amplified’.

Treasury lists the factors pushing against China: immediate pressure from its property downturn, trade conflict with the US and ‘longer term, structural challenges, including a shrinking workforce and lower productivity growth’. While China grew by 5 percent last year, the forecast for this year is 4.75 percent, falling to 4.25 percent by 2027.

Japan’s growth is expected to be around 1.25 percent this year, then lower in 2026 and 2027. India is expected to keep powering on at more than six percent over 2025–27, driven by ‘robustness in domestic consumption, increased government spending, easing of monetary policy, and an expansion of the manufacturing sector’.

Beyond China, East Asia is forecast to grow by 4 percent over 2025–27, with domestic demand in key economies bolstered by an easing of monetary policy. ‘However, escalating trade tensions could dampen investor confidence and weigh on growth.’

The Voldemort effect on Australia’s discussion of geoeconomics is the same on geopolitics. What Canberra thinks of Trump versus what Canberra publishes about the administration is the difference between night and day.

To give you a hint of Canberra’s dark reality, consider US international relations professor, Daniel Drezner. His writing on US foreign policy is always measured and carefully judged, but on Australia’s budget day he published an article titled: ‘American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive’.

Canberra shares the horror, even if it’d use more Australian-flavoured swearwords. The contortions this forces on policy statements is on display in Australia in the World – 2025 Snapshot, issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s foreword observes: ‘Australians face confronting signs that assumptions we have relied on for generations are less assured, with international security increasingly fragile. We live in a world of increasing strategic surprise—ever more uncertain and unpredictable.’

Any global scene-setter from an Australian foreign minister during the past 80 years would have had the US at its heart. Not this foreword. Perhaps there’s a Voldemort sighting in Wong’s lament: ‘Authoritarianism is spreading. Some countries are shifting alignment … Institutions we built are being eroded, and rules we wrote are being challenged.’

The text of the document drops the coyness to judge: ‘President Trump’s America First agenda envisages a different role for the United States in the world.’

The Trump reality is balanced by the paper’s traditional statement of what the US has been: ‘The United States of America is our closest ally, principal strategic partner and largest two-way investment partner. The Indo-Pacific would not have enjoyed its long, uninterrupted period of stability and prosperity without the United States and the security it provides, and it remains critical to a favourable balance in our region.’

Working for that balance, the DFAT strategy is to ‘prioritise region, relationships and rules’, focus on the Indo-Pacific and seek ‘unprecedented’ partnerships in the South Pacific while ‘turbocharging our economic ties with Southeast Asia’.

And hope that a volatile and unpredictable Voldemort doesn’t wreck too much.

The geography of American power

The United States is a secure power. Situated in a hemispheric citadel, and protected by wide oceans, the US could comfortably withdraw from being the arbiter of the geopolitical fate of Eurasia and still enjoy a significant margin of security. Such a US could still project power around the globe. However, it would do so selectively, in the pursuit of narrowly defined interests and objectives. It would need few, if any, allies.  It would remain a powerful global economic actor—fuelled by a massive domestic market, deep private wealth, leading edge innovation, and high population growth.

A locationally withdrawn US would have to be willing to accept the risk of the likely emergence of a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Such a hegemon would be able to establish strategic and military dominion over the population, resources, markets, infrastructure, and polities of Eurasia – from Vladivostok in Pacific Russia to Lisbon in Portugal, and from Nordkapp in Norway to Cape Town in South Africa. It could do so by way of intimidation, coercion, and leverage, where this was necessary. However, such sharp strategies would not be necessarily needed in significant measure. Many nations of Eurasia would probably resign themselves to a new strategic reality, as they came to accept, over time, the reality of economic and military overlordship.

Such a hegemon would become the leading global power. The goal of ‘making America great again’ would ring hollow in a world where a Eurasian hegemon dominated the heartland of the world, and where it could almost always deliver a ‘better deal’ to nations under its dominion—whether or not they were pleased with the terms of the deal.

If the US was not willing to accept its own subordination, it would have to continue to engage ‘forward’ in the affairs of Eurasia, including by way leveraging the significant economic and military resources of the European Union, Britain, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Canada, and others to contain the emergence of such a hegemonic power.

This would be a sound geopolitical strategy. Geopolitics is the intersection of geography and power. It is concerned with questions of world order, national power, and coalitions of power. Separately, and irrespectively of whether or not the US continues to engage ‘forward’, there is a related geostrategic issue that confronts Washington. Geostrategy is the intersection of geography and capability, and especially military power. Whether the US withdraws, or continues to lean forward, it must build a sea-air barrier around Eurasia. It has to do so for its own defence and security, and in order to project power into, and around, Eurasia, should it have to do so.

In order to explain the idea of such a sea-air barrier, we need to start with a map.  Specifically, the map projection that US geographer Richard Edes Harrison made famous in 1942, which is known as the ‘One World, One War’ map. Harrison argued that on the traditional Mercator projection of the world, the US appeared to be isolated from the two major wartime strategic theatres of Europe and Asia. Harrison argued that while the Mercator projection was useful in the age of sail and steam, with the advent of air power, an ‘azimuthal equidistant projection’, pivoted around the North Pole, was required to better depict the strategic position of the US in the 1940s. Such a spherical conception of the Earth, viewed from above the North Pole, would better reveal the strong points, the sea areas, and the lines of approach that the US would have to secure and protect for its own defence, as well as for broader strategic purposes. With the coming of the missile age in the 1950s, Harrison’s theories were proven correct.

At the same time as Harrison was working on his maps, Nicolas J. Spykman was coming to similar conclusions, which he laid out in his last book, The Geography of the Peace, in 1944. For Spykman, the geography of Eurasia and the Western Hemisphere was the engine room of history. He argued that history was the eternal process of great powers clashing with one another in the rimlands of Eurasia—that is, Europe, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, East Asia, and the littoral ‘inner seas’ of the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the East China Sea. The recurring question for US strategy would always be the same—how to control the rimlands and littoral seas of Eurasia, in order to contain and, if necessary, defeat emerging powers, and whether to do so from afar, or in close?

Adapting this thinking, we can today describe a modern sea-air barrier around Eurasia as a series of strong points and areas of control that trace a line around these contested areas. Control of this barrier would allow the US to protect itself from approaching threats, and to more securely project power, whether in its own defence, or for broader purposes, such as protecting its allies.

What line would such a sea-air barrier follow? Starting along the length of Canada’s Arctic coast, the line would run through Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands (which belong to Denmark), and Scotland, an area that forms the ‘GIUK Gap’ (to use its Cold War title).  The US needs to control the GIUK Gap, and have access to Svalbard (which belongs to Norway), in order to contain the threat of Russian sea power in the Atlantic.  From Britain, the line would run to Gibraltar and then to the British bases in Cyprus, so that the US could access the Mediterranean and protect the northern end of the Suez Canal. Through the canal, the line would run through the Red Sea to Diego Garcia, which is the most important US strategic base in the Indian Ocean, vital for projecting power into the Middle East, Central Asia, and eastern Africa.

From there the line would run to Cocos (Keeling) and Christmas Islands, which are Australian offshore territories.  The line would then run through Exmouth, Darwin, and Townsville (which are all in Australia), up to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, and then to Guam and other key US island territories in the Pacific, as well as the US state of Hawaii.  Finally, the line would run along the Aleutian chain, and then through the US state of Alaska proper, and before linking with the starting point of the line, Canada’s Arctic coast.

From the security of this barrier, the US could project power and protect its approaches, especially in the North Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean, protect its trade routes and its undersea infrastructure, secure itself in relation to space warfare and missile attack, launch military operations in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, rescue its citizens, and strike at its adversaries.

Control of the barrier would require the sustainment of a few trusted relationships, especially with Canada, Britain, and Australia (which would become the CAUKUS grouping), and with Norway and Denmark. The barrier would be built upon a global network of key points of presence, and would not require the US to hold significant amounts of territory, or maintain an extensive network of expensive overseas bases. Coupled with its nuclear forces, and its space and cyber defences, the barrier would render the US virtually invulnerable, outside of a massive, planet-destroying nuclear strike, which would also see the attacker destroyed.

Australia’s geography is an integral part of the barrier, as it provides a vital base for US operations around the rimlands and littoral waters of southeastern Eurasia, and a swing point for power projection from the Pacific Ocean into the Indian Ocean. The immense value of Australia’s strategic geography is better appreciated in Washington and Beijing than it is in Canberra. In any US-China military conflict, PLA strikes would be conducted against Australian bases and facilities, including in the southern parts of Australia, the latter of which would provide depth and security for US-led coalition operations in the Indo-Pacific region. The recent PLAN task group mission to waters off Australia would have had as its principal military operational objective the conduct of land attack rehearsal activities, targeting bases, facilities, and infrastructure across Australia.

The Western Hemisphere is also crucial for the US from a geostrategic point of view.  Even with the sea-air barrier in place, the US would not be fully secure were Mexico, the Caribbean (especially Cuba), Central America, the Panama Canal zone, northern South America (especially Venezuela), and Brazil to be in various states of dysfunctionality, or were they to be actively hostile to the US, perhaps to the extent of hosting significant Russian or Chinese forces, or both. Further south, the Falkland Islands are critically located for sea control in the South Atlantic, should the Panama Canal become inoperable. Hemispheric defence on the near side of the sea-air barrier would therefore remain an important task for the US.

Whether the US remains forward, or it consolidates itself in its citadel, it has to secure this sea-air barrier.  Being forward makes more sense, as it allows the US to create more favourable strategic positions of strength, to the benefit of US trade, technology, and investment, and for its own security and defence. Being forward is in the interests of the US. However, being forward means that the US has to rely on more partners, most of whom have not been willing, until recently at least, to take on a greater share of the common burden of defence and security. Most have instead preferred to expand social benefits for their own citizens, and pursue economic development, while selfishly consuming US security.

Put another way, the US would be more secure if it were able to control the rimlands and littorals of Eurasia on the far side of its protective oceans—in places such as Japan, Taiwan, The Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, and the Nordic countries. However, such a grand strategy would require constant alliance management, and a willingness on the part of US allies and partners to be prepared to significantly enhance their military capabilities, and to do more to counter the emergence of a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Were the US to decide one day that it could effectively secure itself behind its sea-air barrier, withdraw from Eurasia’s contested zones, and partner with a handful of geostrategically critical allies, many of these beneficiaries of US security would long for the glory days of US primacy and preponderance.

Gradually, then suddenly: in geopolitics, decades can happen in weeks

Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises (1926) that bankruptcy occurs gradually and then suddenly. This should be treated as a rule of geopolitical affairs.

For centuries, political structures and hierarchies of power that once were thought to be unchanging often suddenly vanished. Demise was gradual but collapse was sudden.

The Russian Empire (abolished in September 1917) and the Soviet Russian empire (dissolved in December 1991) both exhibited permanence—until they did not. So did the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (abolished in October 1918) and the Ottoman Empire (abolished in November 1922).

Only last month we witnessed the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Rulers in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana and elsewhere nervously understand the Hemingway rule, even if they have never read him.

There is another way to express this rule. After decades when nothing happens, decades can suddenly happen in weeks (a saying that is attributed to Vladimir Lenin). While we expressed hope on New Year’s Eve for a more peaceful and less chaotic world, one senses that as 2025 unfolds we will see decades suddenly happen in a blaze of geopolitical twists, turns and transformations.

The scene is bewildering. What will happen in the Russo-Ukrainian war? Will a peace deal be reached? Will Vladimir Putin keep his grip on power? Will Israel go to war against Iran? Will Iran recover from recent setbacks or will the regime start to unravel? Will it make a dash for nuclear weapons?

Will a dramatic Middle East peace deal, and a Palestinian homeland, emerge as a result of a regional realignment involving the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other key players and a freezing out of Iran? Will Islamic State or al-Qaida (or both) manage to galvanise supporters into launching a new wave of terrorist attacks in the West, perhaps by mobilising Muslim anger over the plight of the Palestinians? Will the India-China border remain quiet? What is Kim Jong-un plotting? Does he sense opportunity in South Korea’s political crisis?

What will happen in the seas of the Western Pacific, especially around Japan, Taiwan and The Philippines? Or in the next phase of US-China strategic competition? What of China’s calculations about its objectives and timelines, especially given the return of Donald Trump to the White House? Will China’s economic and social fragility combine with internal political tensions to shake Xi Jinping’s hold on power? Will Trump’s second term dramatically transform the role of the US in the world?

In the grey space between peace and war, will we see an acceleration of cyber attacks, sabotage (including against undersea infrastructure), covert disinformation and propaganda campaigns, and other forms of intimidation by Russia and China against the democracies of the West, in a bid to throw them off balance, to fracture their social cohesion and undermine the national confidence of their populations? At the other end of the spectrum, will nuclear weapons be used for the first time since 1945?

On some of these issues, there will be still months and years to play out. Some, however, will play out within weeks.

As Henry Kissinger often said, in the face of a wide range of uncertainties and imponderables, often action has to be taken when the opportunities and threats are only incompletely glimpsed, and when the probabilities and consequences cannot be calculated precisely. If we wait for time to play out, we are likely to be surprised when things happen suddenly.

As Australia grapples with this bewildering range of contingencies, it will need to focus its efforts on that which matters most. For Australia, the gradual and then sudden establishment of Chinese hegemony and a US strategic withdrawal from our region (whether by choice or through military defeat) would be the most adverse geopolitical occurrence in our history.

Everything else listed above matters. This would matter most. A hegemonic China, technologically dominant and militarily unchecked, with the US looking on from its hemispheric citadel, would be for Australia a more demanding overlord than Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or Soviet Russia would have been had any one of them managed to achieve mastery in Eurasia. A dominant China would expect to get its way, and resisting would incur high costs.

Australian policy must be constantly directed to the challenge of working with others to prevent such an outcome.

In part, this will mean intensifying and accelerating our military, civil defence and national cyber defence preparations.

In the months and years ahead, there is a significant chance of a US-China military crisis in Asia, similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

If China continues to pursue a course of preparing for a blockade of Taiwan, the odds of this are likely to be at least 50 per cent. In the worst possible case, war might break out, gradually in the grey space between peace and war, and then suddenly with weapons being launched with little or no warning. The odds of this occurring between now and 2030 are likely to be about 10 to 20 per cent.

Aside from intensifying preparations for such eventualities, the other arm of policy that needs to be mobilised is our regional diplomacy. Australia last faced such dire prospects in the 1930s. In the face of the growing menace of Imperial Japan, it chose not to re-arm in time and as a result was defenceless in 1941, when John Curtin was forced to ‘look to America’. Neither did Australia act confidently and effectively enough in terms of its statecraft, even though it was more seized than was the British government of the growing threat posed by Imperial Japan.

We can learn the lessons of the ’30s. In the 90 years that have since passed, we have built a deep store of regional connections and we go to the region as a different Australia, independent and confident. We should engage with our neighbours on the need to stand together against Chinese coercion and aggression.

In doing so, we would not be seeking security from Asia but seeking it in Asia.

Our neighbours are highly attuned to geopolitical realities. Almost without exception, even if they do not say it, they are not keen to see China emerge as a hegemon. Equally, they would prefer to see the US remain engaged in the region, knowing that any regional power arrangement that had China at its head would be a vehicle for China to dominate.

However, most are not ready to tackle directly the question of China’s aggression and coercion. They see no need to do so—not perhaps until Chinese naval and coastguard vessels appear off their shores to assert Chinese sovereignty in disputed waters.

Short of them being directly threatened, attempts to enlist most of our neighbours into an anti-China coalition will not work. Here is where astute Australian foreign policy could have a significant impact. No one in the region believes that Australia is seriously trying to navigate US-China strategic competition. That it is trying not to choose a side.

Most believe Australia has already made its choice without being vocal about it. Australia’s presumed choice can be seen in our longstanding alliance with the US; the hosting of US strategic facilities in Australia; the basing arrangements that have been put in place for US military operations from Australia; Australia’s plan under AUKUS to acquire long-range nuclear-propelled attack submarines; and our participation in the growing US-led system of regional deterrence to counter China. While we have stabilised relations with China in recent years, our neighbours believe we are still working to thwart China’s rise as regional hegemon.

That certainty regarding Australian policy is credit in the strategic bank. We should leverage that credit. Instead of sliding and hedging, our message in the capitals of Asia and the Pacific should be a confident one of strategic solidarity. We should declare that we will stand with our neighbours in the face of Chinese aggression and coercion. This Australian pledge of solidarity should be extended to the following: Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Brunei in Southeast Asia; farther afield to Japan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, New Zealand and East Timor; the sovereign nations of the Pacific Islands Forum; and possibly others in the Indo-Pacific region. In a carefully couched and suitably adapted form that recognised current Australian policy on its status, the pledge even could be extended to Taiwan.

We would not ask any regional partner to take sides in US-China great power competition or in an anti-China coalition. Neither would the pledge involve or require the agreeing of a military alliance with Australia, although in some cases that might be considered as well and especially so in the case of Indonesia.

Specifically, Australia would pledge that were Chinese grey-zone aggression and coercion to occur in relation to the territorial integrity or national sovereignty of a neighbour, we would consult immediately with them on the best ways in which assistance might be provided by Australia in terms of diplomatic, economic, technical, intelligence and material support. Subject to there being in place a military alliance between our nations, this could involve defence assistance.

Australia would be pledging to deploy all elements of power to assist its neighbours.

In making this pledge, and by not taking the easy road of cowering in our sheltered land, relieved that the dragon was breathing fire on someone else, Australia would be undertaking its most significant independent strategic initiative in the region. The pledge would remove from the table the possibility that Australia might sit back and calculate the advantages for itself in silently acquiescing in, or even tacitly condoning, Chinese aggression and coercion against our neighbours.

The pledge would commit us to doing no more than a resolute and confident Australia would be likely to do in our own interests in the applicable circumstances. By making an explicit declaration now, before the eruption of a sudden crisis, Australia would be signalling that it was serious about contributing to collective security and resilience in the region, and that it was prepared to forgo hedging and ambiguity. With those neighbours that desired it, discreet planning could take place that would save time in a crisis.

Were others in the region to make similar and hopefully mutual pledges to their neighbours, Beijing’s calculations would become vastly more complicated. This would not be an act of altruism on Australia’s part. A more resilient region that was better able to withstand Chinese aggression and coercion, preferably through a web of mutual pledges of solidarity, would make for a more secure Australia.

Australia has long had a strong Asia consciousness. For instance, in 1934 the government of prime minister Joseph Lyons dispatched the first ministerial goodwill diplomatic tour of China, Japan, the Netherlands East Indies, French Indochina, Malaya, Hong Kong and The Philippines. It did not yield useful results, for reasons already mentioned, but it showed that we were at least willing to act on identifiably Australian interests in the region.

After World War II, a more distinctively Australian approach to the region began to be fashioned. By the ’90s, the Keating government was speaking of Australia finding security in Asia.

Building on this tradition of engagement, we should now make starkly clear that, amid all the flux, we are deeply committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific, where all nations are free to make their choices within rules that everyone has agreed. The Australian pledge as described here would give force to this commitment.

In today’s chaotic geopolitical world, the actions that we take now will echo for decades to come.

Hemingway wrote of bankruptcy. In our region we are strategically solvent after decades of engagement. Will we use our credit to help to build a more secure region, even as events unfold at a dizzying pace?

Great changes unseen in 100 years—but not the ones Xi is thinking of

In October 2017, Xi Jinping declared that the world is experiencing ‘great changes unseen in a hundred years’. He often uses this signature phrase, the century-ago events being the tumultuous ones at the end of World War I, which saw the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the crumbling of European empires and the emergence of the United States as a great power, manifested through its decisive intervention in the war. In the century that followed, the US dominated the international system, defeating threats to its primacy from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union.

For Xi, world history is currently undergoing a similarly momentous shift. As he sees it, the decline of the United States, its political ‘dysfunction’, the changing structure of world power and the rise of China are all irreversible and intertwined trends that can be explained by the laws of the Marxist theory of history.  His worldview is superbly analysed in Kevin Rudd’s new book, On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist nationalism is shaping China and the world, which should be read by specialists, the public and incoming Trump officials alike.

Xi believes that the tide of history is flowing in China’s direction and that a new world order can be fashioned with China at its centre, due to the ‘rise of the East, and the decline of the West’. This will be a new epoch. This is not to say that China will seek world domination as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. Rather, it will seek to refashion globalisation and multilateralism such that they serve its interests and the interests of those who align themselves with China.

Xi is wrong. His theory of history is flawed. His thesis that the West is in decline is optimistic ideation, not informed analysis.  His ideological and analytical rigidity prevents him from seeing the trap that he is setting for China in relation to the economic underpinnings of its power.

China cannot prevail economically over the aggregate weight of the US, Europe, Japan, India, Britain, Australia, Canada, South Korea and others, if they work together. This will be especially so as they increasingly deflect the ongoing surge of heavily subsidised Chinese exports of manufactured goods, components and materials. Creating manufacturing overcapacity has been a deliberate strategy to concentrate industrial power in China.  It has stunted the development of a services-based economy in China, distorted global trade, hollowed out Western industrial bases and disrupted industrialisation of the Global South.

China’s hold on global manufacturing could be broken if US partners leverage Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs by imposing similar tariffs and other forms of market access restrictions and by countering Chinese subsidies, dumping and predatory pricing strategies. Trump’s tariffs will work best if they are coordinated with friends so China cannot circumvent them by flooding other markets. This will require enhancing supply chain tracking so that China can’t get around these trade shields through third-country workarounds.

Through a concerted strategy of industrial, investment and financial coordination, global trade could be re-balanced such that China could be economically pressured into divesting its overcapacity into the above-named countries. Some would also go to less developed countries, such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Argentina, Mexico and Turkey. By sitting on the runway of global manufacturing, China is blocking the development of such countries from taking off. The US could reshore higher value and nationally critical manufacturing while helping to spread lower value manufacturing across more economies.

The US and likeminded countries should also ensure that China does not get easy access to, or steal, the critical new technologies that will boost and sustain higher productivity, such as AI, robotics and quantum computing. US financial power, including the global status of the US dollar and US treasuries, further challenges China.

China’s internal situation is perilous, due to population decline, structural economic problems (such as its massive debt overhang and the stifling of the dynamism of its own private sector) and its dependence on imported energy, resources and food. China will more likely collapse than it will ascend to global primacy.

For the US, seeing off the China challenge, including by way of trade warfare, is a pre-requisite for greatness in the second American century.  If it can pull off such a strategy, it will re-industrialise its economy and reconfigure the structure of global trade so that others also benefit, at China’s expense.  There are great changes underway, unseen in a hundred years—but they are not the ones that Xi Jinping thinks are occurring.

To get the Global South on board with sanctions, understand its priorities

As Western policymakers seek to implement financial and trade sanctions on Russia, one thing is clear: engaging with the Global South is essential.

Without fostering dialogue and building trust through consistent engagement, sanctions become less effective. As things stand, many Global South countries are just not complying.

The reasons for non-compliance are complex. They include longstanding historic relationships, maintaining strategic autonomy, domestic challenges from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change, and economic disruption from the Russia-Ukraine war. These priorities can outweigh concerns about secondary sanctions applied on non-compliers. Yet, they remain poorly understood by Western policymakers, and consequently unaddressed.

As a result, growing ties between Russia and the Global South and their effect on Western sanctions remain overlooked.

Russia has recognised this divergence between the West and the Global South and is attempting to exploit it. It is expanding economic and diplomatic relations with the Global South and working to mitigate effects of Western sanctions. Russia has adopted this strategy before, following the annexation in Crimea.

In Africa, for example, it is exploiting rising economic opportunities and anti-Western sentiment to expand its influence, in part with arms exports. In 2019 to 2023, Russia was the largest arms exporter to sub-Saharan Africa. Its partnerships in the region also extend to energy exports, help with regime security in return for natural resources, and cooperation in information security and fighting terrorism.

Russia encourages Global South countries to use currencies other than the US dollar in oil transactions, so they can to some extent insulate themselves from secondary sanctions. Recent examples include the use of the UAE dirham and the Russian rouble for sales of Russian oil to India and China, respectively. Furthermore, discussions in the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, also reignited debates on alternatives to dollar-dominated oil payments. Among them was creating cross-border payment systems to promote local-currency financial transactions between BRICS.

Moreover, Russia is deepening ties with other sanctioned states, such as North Korea and Iran. Imposition of sweeping restrictions on Russia has led it to seek alternatives for supporting its military-industry complex. It has acquired military equipment from North Korea and one-way attack drones from Iran, and supplied oil to North Korea in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

Russia’s growing relationship with North Korea is a particular worry for the world, but not a prominent one for the Global South. Yet some Global South countries risk hosting activities from financial transactions or even supplying dual-use materials that Russia could trade with North Korea.

This is where Western policymakers can intervene. Developing countries would not want to violate UN Security Council sanctions and facilitate the development of weapons of mass destruction. The West can help with capacity-building programmes to strengthen public and private capacity in adhering to international obligations and disrupting evasion.

The West still has strong diplomatic ties with the Global South, providing an opportunity to initiate dialogue and establish a shared understanding of issues. Multilateral platforms such as the G20 serve as forums for promoting collaboration, where the Global South actively participates.

The West should also consider Russia’s limitations in boosting its relations with the Global South. Its ability to maintain long-term support in Africa is debatable. Low attendance at the Russia-Africa summit held in St Petersburg in 2023 suggests its influence has no deep roots. The West cannot take this for granted, however. It must work to displace Russian influence, and in doing so needs to understand and respond to African countries’ priorities.

Finally, the West must focus on bolstering the confidence of Russia’s trading partners to resist de-dollarisation. This could include providing assessment reports and briefing policymakers and business stakeholders of the Global South on the political compromises and economic risks associated with decoupling from the US dollar.

The Covid-powered challenges to come in 2022

After a year in which people longed to get back to ‘normal’, it’s now clear that Covid-19 will not make this possible. The pandemic, now in its third year, has profoundly affected individuals, communities, countries and international cooperation, creating four tough challenges for 2022. Rebuilding trust will be critical to confronting all of them.

The first challenge is that people’s relationship to work has changed. In some countries, lockdowns, the deaths of loved ones, and the general uncertainty of the pandemic have prompted or accelerated a rethink. In the US, the number of workers quitting their jobs exceeded four million in each month from July to October 2021. Many young Chinese are joining the ‘lie flat’ movement by opting out of long working hours, doing the bare minimum to get by, and striving for only what is absolutely essential for survival. The pandemic has highlighted the divide between those who can work from home and the many who cannot.

In 2022, people need to trust that going back to work will genuinely improve their lives. Getting to that point will require action by both governments and companies. Investment to help remedy the disruption in education caused by Covid-19 is crucial. Some 1.6 billion students in 180 countries were kept out of school as a result of the pandemic. Establishing programs to help students catch up—and gain the skills and training needed for the 21st-century economy—will help them get better jobs.

Governments cannot do this alone, but they can at least set standards for education and training. They also can create or strengthen firms’ incentives to invest in their workforces by requiring decent pay and working conditions. For their part, employers will need to re-evaluate the workplace, demonstrate trust in their employees, invest in professional development, and accommodate new work patterns.

The second challenge in 2022 is to stem the global trend towards authoritarianism. According to Freedom House, the pandemic has weakened checks and balances on government power in at least 80 countries, both rich and poor. Government surveillance, police brutality and detention have increased, and in many countries free media and expression have been threatened or curtailed. Vulnerable groups such as ethnic and religious minorities and migrants have suffered disproportionately.

Political corruption is flourishing, too. In Mauritania, according to the Freedom House report, ministers of the ruling party misused Covid-19 funds. In 2020, the prime minister and entire cabinet resigned. In the UK, Conservative Party members and supporters were given special ‘fast-track’ access to bid for contracts to supply personal protective equipment.

In dozens of countries worldwide, elections have been postponed or cancelled, or certified results have been questioned. In 2022, citizens will need to find ways to hold their leaders accountable and to rebuild institutions and public trust. In some countries, this is already happening, reflecting how well governments do five things: provide or regulate public services; anticipate change and protect citizens; use power and public resources ethically; consult their citizens and explain their decisions to them; and improve living conditions for all.

The third challenge the world faces in 2022 is another pandemic. Although it’s easy to think that Covid-19 will eclipse all other public-health emergencies in our lifetime, our current focus must not blind us to other threats from infectious diseases. Earlier this month, for example, the UK’s chief veterinary officer warned of a ‘phenomenal level’ of avian flu, with ‘huge human, animal and trade implications.’

In 2021, the world failed to distribute vaccines, treatments and therapies for Covid-19 equitably or efficiently. The Covid-19 vaccine access facility called COVAX was created to ensure immunisation for all, thereby containing mutations of the virus and its spread. But wealthy governments instead competed to secure access to the vaccines for their citizens first.

Trust and cooperation among governments is not an impossible ideal. The key is to design rules, institutions and policy implementation in a way that assures countries that everyone is (mostly) complying. A deep flaw at the heart of the Covid-19 response has been a lack of transparency about how much governments are paying for vaccine doses—and to whom. In 2022, the world must urgently redesign and improve the global arrangements for vaccine research, distribution and financing in order to ensure the minimum level of trust needed to make international cooperation possible.

Finally, Covid-19 is transforming the economic rulebook for 2022. Economic nationalism is rising, accelerated by countries’ experiences trying to procure equipment, treatments and vaccines. Add to this the desire to achieve net-zero emissions and the result likely will be a proliferation of industrial policies, more protectionist trade measures and greater scepticism towards foreign investors—all against a backdrop of tighter monetary policy and rising government debt.

These trends are heightened by geopolitical alliances and rivalries, which are spilling over into economic deal-making. India and Russia recently stepped up their cooperation by signing 28 agreements in areas ranging from military cooperation to trade. And the European Union is now self-consciously adopting a defence and military planning term, ‘open strategic autonomy’, to frame its new approach to trade. Taiwan is a good example of how security concerns are being blurred with economic objectives. Its sovereignty has become bound up with a competition for control over the much-sought-after high-grade semiconductors it produces.

The global economic challenges for 2022 are sobering. But even at the height of the Cold War, basic international agreements and institutions of mutual restraint were possible thanks to patient negotiation and arrangements that gave assurances to both sides. Trust is not a panacea for rising international tension, but a modicum of it, backed by broadly credible institutions, will be vital to contain that tension.

There will be no return to the status quo ante after Covid-19 because the pandemic has changed too many things. The challenge for 2022 is to move forward by redesigning and reimagining our rules and institutions with an eye towards re-establishing trust in the domains of work, politics, public health and economic policy.

The connectivity war

Many observers have long assumed that the future of geopolitics will be decided in a sea battle over the Taiwan Strait or some rocky outcrop or atoll in the South China Sea. Yet we could probably learn more by examining the treatment of a few thousand desperate refugees in the 21st century’s geopolitical backwaters.

Start with the English Channel. Once the site of some of the most dramatic confrontations in history—from the Spanish Armada and the Napoleonic Wars to the Normandy Landings—it is no longer a theatre for great-power politics. Instead, the recent deaths of 27 civilians whose inflatable boat capsized after leaving the French coast has turned the channel into a site of humanitarian tragedy.

Rather than working with France to root out the migrant smugglers responsible for the deaths, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson immediately sought to play to a domestic political audience by blaming the French in an open letter published on Twitter. Far from just another juvenile political stunt, Johnson’s dereliction of leadership will most likely have dreadful and far-reaching consequences.

Facing re-election in the northern spring, in a campaign where migration will be a sensitive issue, French President Emmanuel Macron pushed back against Johnson’s boorishness and disinvited the British home secretary from a gathering of European interior ministers in Calais. Owing to a lack of trust on both sides of the channel, each government believes that the other is using the conflict as part of a bigger power play that extends to trade, defence and foreign policy.

While migration has become a political football in Western Europe, it has been fully weaponised in an obscure strip of land between Belarus and Poland. Hardly a popular destination for travellers from the Middle East, Belarus has been flying in migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and then funnelling them to the border with the promise of entry into the European Union. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s motive is clear: to pressure European governments to relax the sanctions that were imposed on his regime following last year’s fraudulent presidential election and tightened after he forced down a commercial airliner to arrest one of its passengers.

Lukashenko is under no illusion that a few thousand migrants would be enough to overwhelm Poland, or even Lithuania. Rather, he understands that the most important battleground nowadays is people’s minds, not territory. Aiming to recreate the images from the EU’s 2015 migration crisis, his use of migrants is ultimately an act of information warfare.

Political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has shown that Lukashenko is far from the first to turn migrants into a tool of government policy. She documents more than 75 occasions when governments—including those of Morocco, Russia, Libya and Turkey—forced civilians from their homes (or encouraged them to flee) in order to achieve some political, military or economic objective. The weaponisation of migration has become a frequent complement to other forms of pressure such as sanctions, information and cyber warfare, and trade and infrastructure policies.

In this context, both the Belarusian campaign and the tussle over the English Channel are symptomatic of a changing foreign-policy environment in which wars are being replaced by new forms of aggression. The connections between people and countries are the new preferred currencies of power.

The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously described war as the continuation of politics by other means. But in a nuclear age, war is often an unfathomable option, so global politics had to be continued by still other means—what I call ‘connectivity conflicts’. Governments are manipulating the very things that link countries together: supply chains, financial flows, the movement of people, pandemics, climate change and, above all, the internet.

While the coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against a single contagious disease, another pandemic is being fuelled deliberately from the shadows. Toxic behaviours are becoming contagious as national leaders respond to the weaponisation of connectivity by reciprocating it.

The resulting downward spiral will be difficult to reverse because connectivity conflicts tend to play out under a cloud of hypocrisy and plausible deniability. Lukashenko can argue, however unpersuasively, that migrants from the Middle East travelled to Belarus of their own accord. Similarly, the EU can claim that its decision to suspend the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany directly to Russian gas supplies was made on procedural grounds that have nothing to do with politics.

The informal nature of such conflicts makes it difficult to work out why certain decisions were made. Governments and companies have yet to find the right frameworks for evaluating even their own choices. For example, when it comes to decisions about migration, how should a government prioritise international law, human safety and its own influence? Are trade policies meant to increase profit or national power? Should their goal be to minimise the cost to the consumer in the short term or to protect local producers from unfair competition (thereby giving consumers a greater choice over the long term)?

Rather than eliminating tensions between countries, connectivity offers new means of competing and engaging in conflict. No wonder the line between war and peace has become increasingly blurred. Gone is Tolstoy’s world, where alternating periods of open conflict and harmony were clearly delineated. We have entered an era of perpetual conflict, in which most of the combatants and almost all of the victims will be civilians. In what I call the ‘age of unpeace’, the wretched of the earth have become unwitting ordnance.

Global fall in foreign investment reflects rise in geopolitical tensions

Foreign direct investment is increasingly being seen as a threat to national security as relations between China and the West deteriorate. Twenty-five nations imposed new security regulations controlling investment inflows during the past year.

There are now 34 countries screening foreign investment for national security threats. Nearly all are advanced nations, although China, India and Russia all imposed new national security barriers last year.

Globally, foreign investment flows in 2020 dropped to their lowest level since 2005. While the pandemic shook confidence in the global economy, last year’s investment fall extended a trend that has now been underway for four years. Global flows in 2020 of just under US$1 trillion were only half the level of 2016, according to the latest annual report on foreign direct investment from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (see figure I.1).

However, the impact of the new regulatory barriers and the loss of investor confidence appears to be mainly an advanced country phenomenon. Inflows to advanced nations dropped to just US$314 billion last year, having peaked at US$1.34 trillion in 2016.

Outward investment flows from advanced economies have also collapsed, dropping from a 2015 peak of US$1.26 trillion to US$347 billion in 2020. Outflows from EU businesses fell to just US$91 billion, the lowest level since 1987 and 87% below the 2015 peak.

Australia, which has traditionally been a major recipient of both US and UK investment, has been hit by the downturn, with global companies investing just US$20 billion last year, less than a third of the 2018 peak of US$68 billion.

Both inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment among developing countries are holding up much better. Foreign investment inflows fell by only 8.3% to US$663 billion last year, which was double the investment flow in advanced nations. Foreign investment outflows from developing nations dropped 7% to US$387 billion. It is the first time that companies based in developing nations have put more money into foreign investment than companies in advanced nations.

China is leading the way. Foreign investment into China actually rose last year, with a 5.8% increase to US$149.3 billion.

Investment inflows to China exceeded those to the European Union for the first time and are now only 4.5% below flows into the United States.

The UNCTAD report says China remains an important catalyst for foreign direct investment:

Despite significant uncertainty surrounding developments related to geopolitical and commercial tensions, multinational enterprises continue to invest heavily in China, considering it an indispensable strategic market.

They are also encouraged by its rising purchasing power, well-developed infrastructure and generally favourable investment climate. Some multinational enterprises may reshore or diversify away from China because of rising labour costs and the need to improve supply-chain resilience.

However, the substantial flow of market-seeking FDI, particularly by multinational enterprises in technology and services industries, is cushioning any negative trend in efficiency-seeking FDI.

Foreign investment to Hong Kong soared 62% to US$119 billion, with global business welcoming the end of the street demonstrations of 2019. Some of the surge in investment in Hong Kong was really intended for China, though the report commented that it also reflected Chinese companies restructuring their Hong Kong affiliates.

Investment abroad by Chinese companies fell by only 3% to US$132 billion last year. The growth of China’s global investment over the past decade has been extraordinary.

In 2010, Chinese offshore investment stood at only US$317 billion, which was 30% less than Australian companies had invested overseas.

China’s offshore investment now stands at US$2.4 trillion. The global spread of US enterprise is vastly larger, at US$8.2 trillion, but that reflects the activities of US multinationals over the 75-year post-war period. Outward investment from China last year was 43% larger than the foreign direct investment by US multinationals.

UNCTAD comments that investment abroad by Chinese companies has been restrained since 2017 both by the rise of security screening of investment, particularly in the US, and by controls on capital outflows by the Chinese authorities.

However, the report says Chinese foreign investment is being sustained by the Belt and Road Initiative and the continued expansion of Chinese multinational enterprises. Offshore mergers and acquisitions by Chinese companies doubled last year to US$32 billion. Chinese tech giant Tencent and the state-owned power company State Grid were the largest foreign investors from emerging nations.

The broad trend of foreign direct investment falling in advanced nations but rising (or, during the pandemic, holding ground) in developing countries is reflected in their sharply different approaches to regulation.

Historically, advanced countries have been more open to foreign investment, while developing countries, concerned about the relative weakness of their domestic businesses, have been more restrictive.

However, the focus of emerging countries now is on liberalising their foreign investment regimes, with 63% of new regulations over the past year making it easier for foreign companies to invest and only 14% making it more difficult.

By contrast, 85% of the new regulations affecting foreign investment in advanced countries made it more difficult for foreign companies. UNCTAD tracked 35 new regulations relating to national security concerns about foreign ownership of critical infrastructure, core technologies or other sensitive domestic assets.

Some of these measures were designed to protect domestic businesses during the pandemic, but others were more directly targeted at national security. In Australia, a temporary lowering of the threshold for screening by the Foreign Investment Review Board to zero, meaning all foreign investments required approval, was designed as a pandemic measure but was then made permanent for all companies in designated ‘national security’ sectors.

According to the OECD, Australia now has the world’s second most onerous foreign investment screening process after New Zealand. Other countries impose more stringent equity share limitations or place demands on use of foreign personnel.

Australia is far from alone in tightening security regulations. For example, Japan lowered the threshold for foreign investment in ‘national security’-relevant businesses before requiring approval from 10% to 1%. The UK lowered thresholds for government vetting of takeovers in artificial intelligence, cryptography and advanced materials. The US requires publicly listed companies to declare that they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government and barred US citizens from investing in Chinese companies with military connections.

China, India and Russia also tightened their investment rules. China now requires foreign companies to seek approval before concluding investments in the military, agriculture, energy, transport and information technology sectors. Russia added a rule requiring temporary purchases of voting stakes in strategic companies to seek approval. India, in a move clearly targeted at China, will vet all investments from businesses in countries with which it shares land borders.

A concert of powers for a global era

Last week’s testy US–China dialogue in Alaska augurs poorly for bilateral relations. And the mounting rivalry between the two countries clearly indicates that the emerging world of multiple power centres could presage an era of increased competition and conflict.

A big part of the problem is that the existing international governance architecture, much of it erected soon after World War II, is outdated and not up to the task of preserving global stability. The US-centred alliance system is a club of democracies, poorly suited to fostering cooperation across ideological lines. Fly-in, fly-out G7 and G20 summits are episodic and spend too much time haggling over communiqués. The United Nations provides a standing global forum, but its Security Council invites grandstanding and paralysis among veto-wielding permanent members.

What is needed is a global concert of powers—an informal steering group of the world’s most influential countries. The history of 19th-century Europe points the way. The Concert of Europe—a grouping of Britain, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria formed in 1815—successfully preserved peace for half a century in the absence of a dominant power and amid ideological diversity. The Concert of Europe rested on a mutual commitment to rely on regular communication and the peaceful resolution of disputes to uphold the territorial settlement that ended the bloody Napoleonic Wars.

A global concert offers the best vehicle for managing a world no longer dominated by the United States and the West. The members would be China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia and the US, collectively representing roughly 70% of world GDP and global military spending. Including these six heavyweights would give a global concert geopolitical clout while protecting it from becoming an unwieldy talking shop.

Concert members would send senior permanent representatives to a standing headquarters in a place determined through mutual agreement. Summits would occur on a regular basis and as needed to address crises. Although they would not be formal members, four regional organisations—the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Organization of American States—would maintain permanent delegations at the concert’s headquarters. When discussing issues affecting these regions, concert members would invite delegates from these bodies and other relevant countries to join meetings.

A contemporary concert, like its nineteenth-century forebear, would enable sustained strategic dialogue. It would bring to the table the most influential states, regardless of their regime type, thereby separating ideological differences over domestic governance from matters requiring international cooperation. It would shun formal procedures and codified rules, instead relying on persuasion and compromise to build consensus.

The concert would be a consultative, not a decision-making body, addressing emerging crises, fashioning new rules of the road, and building support for collective initiatives. It would leave operational oversight to the UN and other existing bodies. The concert would thus augment, not supplant, the current international architecture, by sitting atop it to tee up decisions that could then be taken and implemented elsewhere.

Like the Concert of Europe, a contemporary concert would promote stability by privileging the territorial status quo and a view of sovereignty that precludes, except in the case of international consensus, the use of military force or other coercive means to alter existing borders or topple regimes. Members would reserve the right to take unilateral action when they deem their vital interests to be at stake. Ideally, sustained strategic dialogue would make unilateral moves less frequent and destabilising.

The concert would also seek to generate collective responses to longer-term challenges, such as combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as terrorist networks, promoting global health, forging norms in cyberspace and combating climate change. These important matters often fall between institutional cracks that the concert could fill.

Imagine what might have been had a global concert taken shape after the Cold War. The major powers might have been able to avert, or at least make far less bloody, the civil wars in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Syria. Russia and the US might have been able to forge common ground on a security architecture for Europe, heading off ongoing frictions over NATO expansion and preventing Russian land-grabs in Georgia and Ukraine. The coronavirus pandemic might have been better contained had a great-power steering group coordinated a response from day one.

Looking forward, a concert of global powers would be a venue for minimising the risk that US–China differences over Taiwan trigger a major clash. It could facilitate the peaceful resolution of political stalemates in places like Afghanistan and Venezuela. And it could set parameters to limit the interference of countries in each other’s internal politics.

Establishing a global concert would be no panacea, however. Convening the world’s heavyweights hardly ensures a consensus among them, and success would often mean managing, not eliminating, threats to regional and global order. The proposed steering group would accept both liberal and illiberal governments as legitimate and authoritative, implying abandonment of the West’s longstanding vision of a global order made in its image. And restricting membership to the most important and influential actors would sacrifice representation in favour of efficacy, reinforcing hierarchy and inequity in the international system.

But a global concert has one enormous advantage. It offers the best and most realistic way to advance great-power consensus, and what is workable and attainable is always preferable to what is desirable but impossible. And the most likely alternative to a great-power steering group—an unruly world managed by no one—is in no one’s interest.

This commentary draws on an essay published at Foreign Affairs.