YEAR IN REVIEW
2022 Holiday Edition Bookazine
MASTHEAD CEO & PUBLISHER ANA C. ROLD
MANAGING EDITOR SHANE SZARKOWSKI
MULTIMEDIA MANAGER WHITNEY DEVRIES
SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR KELLY R. BAILEY
ART DIRECTOR MARC GARFIELD
SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR WINONA ROYLANCE
SPECIAL SERIES EDITOR JEREMY FUGLEBERG
BOOK REVIEWER JOSHUA HUMINSKI EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
ASMAA AL-FADALA ANDREW M. BEATO FUMBI CHIMA DANTE A. DISPARTE
KERSTIN EWELT GHIDA FAKHRY SIR IAN FORBES LISA GABLE
GREG LEBEDEV ANITA MCBRIDE CLARE SHINE
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS ANDREA BONIME-BLANC DANTE DISPARTE FEDERICO FUBINI LISA GABLE RICHARD HAASS JOSHUA HUMINSKI PARAG KHANNA BARBARA LANGLEY NOËLLE LENOIR JOHN MORRELL
MARTHA E. NEWTON JOSEPH S. NYE, JR. ANA PALACIO SUNDAR PICHAI ADAM RATZLAFF MARIA RENTETZI TERESA RIBEIRO DANI RODRIK ALEXANDER SCHALLENBERG YASMINE SHERIF
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER MICHAEL SPENCE SHANE C. SZARKOWSKI OLA M. TUCKER ANDRÉS VELASCO DAN WITTERS NGAIRE WOODS SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
Copyright © by Diplomatic Courier/Medauras Global Publishing 2022. All rights reserved under International and PanAmerican Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Medauras Global and Diplomatic Courier. LEGAL NOTICE. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form—except brief excerpts for the purpose of review—without written consent from the publisher and authors. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication; however, the authors, Diplomatic Courier, and Medauras Global make no warranties, express or implied, in regards to the information and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions. EDITORIAL. The content represents the views of their authors and do not reflect those of the editors and the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information in this publication, however, Medauras Global and the Diplomatic Courier make no warranties, express or implied in regards to the information, and disclaim all liability for any loss, damages, errors, or omissions. PERMISSIONS. This report cannot be reproduced without the permission of the authors and the publisher. For permissions please email: info@medauras.com with your written request. COVER ART. The cover design depicts downtown New York City during the Christmas season. Watercolor by Cary Peterson.
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Y EAR I N R EV IEW I DEC EMBER 2022
Welcome
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Ana C. Rold Publisher & CEO
he readers who have known us since our humble beginnings, know that we set out to accomplish a very lofty goal during one of the most disruptive times in the media business. In 2006 social media giants Twitter and Facebook were just being born alongside a flurry of layoffs across a number of legacy publications. We know now they would ultimately completely change the business of content creation. We set out to publish Diplomatic Courier at a time when there was a real need for new voices in international affairs — voices that represented an evolution in diplomacy, policy, business, and tech. We began as a quarterly journal, then a bi-monthly, and then a monthly. And in 2016, as we celebrated our ten-year anniversary, we shifted our print strategy to publish only special editions. In the meantime, our digital presence grew substantially, reaching 182 countries with nearly 10 million readers. Since then, our special editions — especially our signature bookazines, which resemble part periodical, part journal — have become highlyanticipated amongst our members. This year, we’ve produced several high-level bookazines, including our annual Davos Dialogue, the Good Country Index, the IX Summit of the Americas, Great Powers and Urbanization, UNGA 77, and COP27, to name but a few. We also published numerous reports in collaboration with our partners at Salzburg Global Seminar, Gallup, DisinfoLab, and GEC Risk Advisory. We also cherish our partnership with Project Syndicate, bringing world-class opinion leaders to our audience in the United States and across the world. This special edition — the last one for 2022 — is our gift to our readers. This collection of our “greatest hits” chronicles the biggest stories that you, our readers, shared and engaged with the most, bound together in a special holiday edition. From the war in Ukraine to the fall of Crypto, this edition has something for everyone. We are grateful for your continued support. From our entire team at Diplomatic Courier, we wish you a joyful holiday season and peaceful New Year. DECEMBER 2022 | 5
Contents
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005 I Welcome: Greatest Hits By: Ana C. Rold
008 I A World of Mounting Disarray By: Richard Haass
012 I Whatever Happened to Soft Power? By: Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
016 I Regime Change in the Global Economy
040 I The Many-Headed Hydrae of Surveillance Capitalism By: Andrea Bonime-Blanc
044 I The Other Threat to Democracy By: Federico Fubini
048 I What in the World (in 2050) is a Megatrend? By: Shane C. Szarkowski
By: Michael Spence
020 I How World in 2050 Aims to Help the Future Arrive Better
052 I Asia’s Megacities and the Future of Geopolitics By: Parag Khanna
By: Shane C. Szarkowski
024 I Reforming the Defective U.S. Sanctions Regime
056 I Investing in Africa’s Digital Transformation By: Sundar Pichai
By: Ola M. Tucker
028 I The Americas’ Comorbidities: Inequality and Declining Trust in Democracy By: Richard Haass
032 I China’s Ambitions on a New International Order By: Joshua Huminski
036 I The Global Consequences of American Polarization By: Ana Palacio
062 I Surviving and Flourishing Amid Climate Change By: Shane C. Szarkowski
066 I Rebuilding Trust in the Institutions We Need to Meet the Future By: Shane C. Szarkowski
070 I Building Agility for the Future of War By: Joshua Huminski
074 I More Resilient Markets and Democracies through Better Gender Inclusivity By: Barbara Langley & John Morrell
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Contents
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078 I When Democracy Is Not an Option, Women Suffer the Most
118 I Helping the 222 Million By: Yasmine Sherif
By: Lisa Gable
082 I Education Has Let Us Down, Let Us Build It Up
122 I The World Backslides on Efforts to End Modern Slavery By: Martha E. Newton
By: Shane Szarkowski
086 I Democracy Is the Next Identity Politics
126 I No Security Without Climate Security By: Anne-Marie Slaughter
By: Andrés Velasco
090 I Will Exponential Tech Be Our Doom or Salvation? By: Shane Szarkowski
094 I War in a World that Stands for Nothing
130 I The Economics of Wellbeing By: Dan Witters
134 I Defending Democracy’s Defenders By: Alexander Schallenberg & Teresa Ribeiro
By: Slavoj Žižek
098 I A Perfect Storm for Developing Countries By: Ngaire Woods
102 I A Better Globalization Might Rise from Hyper-Globalization’s Ashes By: Dani Rodrik
106 I The Technological Contest of Our Times By: Dante Disparte
110 I Scientific Sanctions Do Not Work By: Maria Rentetzi
114 I Fighting Big Lies By: Noëlle Lenoir
DECEMBER 2022 | 7
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A World of Mounting Disarray By Richard Haass
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y book, A World in Disarray, was published five years ago. The book’s thesis was that the Cold War’s end did not usher in an era of greater stability, security, and peace, as many expected. Instead, what emerged was a world in which conflict was much more prevalent than cooperation. Some criticized the book at the time as being unduly negative and pessimistic. In retrospect, the book could have been criticized for its relative optimism. The world is a messier place than it was five years ago – and most trends are heading in the wrong direction. At the global level, the gap between challenges and responses is large and growing. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the inadequacies of international health machinery. We are entering the third year of the pandemic, but still do not know its origins, thanks to Chinese stonewalling. What we do know is that more than five million people, and more likely 15 million, have died. We also know that some three billion people (many in Africa) have yet to receive a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. And we know that the ongoing pandemic has reduced global economic output by trillions of dollars. Climate change has advanced. The world is already more than 1° Celsius warmer than it was at the start of the industrial revolution and is on course to get warmer. Extreme weather events are more frequent. Fossil fuel use is up. Governments have pledged to do better. Their performance remains to be seen; in some cases, including China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, the pledges are noteworthy for their lack of ambition and urgency. Cyberspace remains akin to the Wild West, with no sheriff willing or able to set boundaries on acceptable behavior. There is not even the pretense of global cooperation. Rather, we see technology outpacing diplomacy, with authoritarian governments going to considerable lengths to wall off their societies while violating the cyber-
space of others to sow political discord or steal technology. Nuclear proliferation continues. North Korea has increased the quantity and quality of its nuclear arsenal and the range and accuracy of its missiles. And, in the aftermath of the unilateral US decision in 2018 to exit the accord that placed temporary ceilings on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the Islamic Republic has gone from being a year away from possessing a nuclear weapon to just a few months or even weeks.
U.S.-China relations have deteriorated rapidly, mostly owing to increased Chinese repression at home, trade and economic frictions, and China’s growing military strength and increasingly assertive foreign policy. Great power rivalry is more pronounced than at any time since the Cold War. USChina relations have deteriorated rapidly, mostly owing to increased Chinese repression at home, trade and economic frictions, and China’s growing military strength and increasingly assertive foreign policy. Against a backdrop of growing economic competition and possible conflict over Taiwan, it is unclear whether the two countries will be able to cooperate on global challenges like public health and climate change. Russia is arguably even more disaffected with the world order. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, President Vladimir Putin, seemingly ensconced in power for the foreseeable future, is set on stopping or, if possible, reversing NATO’s reach. Putin has shown himself to be comfortable using military force, energy supplies, and cyberattacks to destabilize countries and governments he views as adversarial. The immediate target is Ukraine, but the strategic challenge posed by Putin’s Russia is much broader. DECEMBER 2022 | 9
Democracy is in retreat in much of the world, not just in dramatic cases such as Myanmar and Sudan, but also in parts of Latin America and even Europe. Other developments also offer reason for concern. More than 80 million – one in every hundred people – are displaced. Many times that number are enduring what can only be described as a humanitarian crisis. The Middle East is home to several ongoing wars that are simultaneously civil and regional. Democracy is in retreat in much of the world, not just in dramatic cases such as Myanmar and Sudan, but also in parts of Latin America and even Europe. Haiti and Venezuela are essentially failed states, as are Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Afghanistan appears on its way to again becoming a world leader in terrorism, opium production, and misery. There is one other critical factor: The United States is in greater disarray internally than it was five years ago. Political polarization is at an all-time high, and political violence has emerged as a serious threat. The peaceful transfer of political power following elections can no longer be taken for granted. This internal reality has in turn accelerated America’s pullback from global leadership after three-quarters of a century. No other country is able and willing to assume this role. To be sure, some positive developments
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deserve mention: the rapid creation of vaccines that dramatically reduce vulnerability to COVID-19; new green technologies that reduce reliance on fossil fuels; growing cooperation between the US and several of its partners to push back against a more forceful China; and the simple fact that, so far, great power rivalry has not descended into war. What would it take to avoid a future defined by disarray? A short list would include widespread vaccination against COVID-19 and new vaccines effective against future variants; a technological or diplomatic breakthrough that would dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels and slow climate change; a political settlement in Ukraine that promotes European security and an outcome with Iran that prevents its becoming a nuclear or even near-nuclear power; a US-China relationship able to put in place guardrails to manage competition and avoid conflict; and a US that managed to repair its democracy sufficiently so that it had the capacity to focus on world events. As always, little is inevitable, for better or for worse. What is clear, though, is that trends will not improve by themselves. Innovation, diplomacy, and collective will are needed to turn things around. Unfortunately, the last two are in short supply. ***** About the author: Richard Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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Whatever Happened to Soft Power? By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
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s 2021 drew to a close, Russia had massed troops near its border with Ukraine; China had flown military jets near Taiwan; North Korea was still pursuing its nuclear-weapons program; and Taliban fighters were patrolling the streets of Kabul. Seeing all this, friends asked me: “Whatever happened to soft power?” One answer is that it can be found in other recent events, such as President Joe Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy, which was attended by representatives from more than 100 countries. Having been excluded, China took to the airwaves and social media to proclaim that it had a different and more stable type of democracy than the one being extolled by the United States. What we were seeing was a great-power competition over soft power, understood as the ability to influence others by attraction rather than by coercion or payment. When I first wrote about soft power in 1990, I was seeking to overcome a deficiency in how analysts thought about power generally. But the concept gradually acquired more of a political resonance. In some respects, the underlying thought is not new; similar concepts can be traced back to ancient philosophers such as Lao Tse. Nor does soft power pertain only to international behavior or to the US. Many small countries and organizations also possess the power to attract; and in democracies, at least, soft power is an essential component of leadership. Still, the concept is now generally associated with international relations. As the European Union developed into its current form, European leaders increasingly made use of the term. And ever since 2007, when then-Chinese President Hu Jintao declared that China must develop its soft power, the government has invested billions of dollars in that quest. The challenge now is for China to implement an effective smart-power strategy. If it can effectively pair its growing hard power with soft power, it will be less likely to provoke counter-balancing coalitions.
Soft power is not the only or even the most important source of power, because its effects tend to be slow and indirect. But to ignore or neglect it is a serious strategic and analytic mistake. The Roman Empire’s power rested not only on its legions, but also on the attraction of Roman culture and law. Similarly, as a Norwegian analyst once described it, the American presence in Western Europe after World War II was “an empire by invitation.” No barrage of artillery brought down the Berlin Wall; it was removed by hammers and bulldozers wielded by people who had been touched by Western soft power.
Smart political leaders have long understood that values can create power. If I can get you to want what I want, I will not have to force you to do what you do not want to do. If a country represents values that others find attractive, it can economize on the use of sticks and carrots. Smart political leaders have long understood that values can create power. If I can get you to want what I want, I will not have to force you to do what you do not want to do. If a country represents values that others find attractive, it can economize on the use of sticks and carrots. A country’s soft power comes primarily from three sources: its culture; its political values, such as democracy and human rights (when it upholds them); and its policies (when they are seen as legitimate because they are framed with an awareness of others’ interests). A government can influence others through the example of how it behaves at home (such as by protecting a free press and the right to protest), in international institutions (consulting others and fostering multilateralism), and through DECEMBER 2022 | 13
its foreign policy (such as by promoting development and human rights).
China has a smart-power problem. After all, it is difficult to practice vaccine diplomacy and “wolfwarrior diplomacy” (aggressive, coercive browbeating of smaller countries) at the same time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, China has tried to use so-called “vaccine diplomacy” to bolster its soft power, which had been damaged by its secretive handling of the initial outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan. The government’s efforts have been aimed at reinforcing its Belt and Road Initiative, which supports infrastructure projects in many parts of the world. But international polls show that the results have been disappointing. In measures of attractiveness, China lags behind the US on all continents except Africa, where the two countries are tied. One reason for China’s lower level of soft power is its heavy-handed use of hard power in pursuit of an increasingly nationalist foreign policy. This has been on full display in its economic punishment of Australia and in its military operations on the Himalayan border with India. China has a smart-power problem. After all, it is difficult to practice vaccine diplomacy and “wolf-warrior diplomacy” (aggressive, coercive browbeating of smaller countries) at the same time. True, international polls showed that the US also suffered a decline in soft power during Donald Trump’s presidency. But, fortunately, America is more than its government. Unlike hard-power assets (such as armed forces), many soft-power resources are separate from the government and are only partly responsive to its purposes. For example, Hollywood movies showcas14 | D I PLOM AT I C COURIE R
ing independent women or protesting minorities inspire others around the world. So, too, does the charitable work of US foundations and the freedom of inquiry at American universities. Firms, universities, foundations, churches, and protest movements develop soft power of their own. Sometimes their activities will reinforce official foreign-policy goals, and sometimes they will be at odds with them. Either way, these private sources of soft power are increasingly important in the age of social media. The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol certainly damaged US soft power. But those who would mourn the death of American democracy prematurely should bear in mind that the 2020 election drew an unprecedented turnout despite the pandemic. The American people are still able to unseat a demagogue in a free and fair election. This is not to suggest that all is well with American democracy or its soft power. Trump eroded many democratic norms that now must be restored. Biden has made strengthening democracy at home and abroad a goal of his presidency, but the results remain to be seen. No one can be certain about the future trajectory of any country’s soft power. But there is no doubt that influence through attraction will remain an important component of world politics. As Mark Twain famously quipped, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” The same is true of soft power. ***** About the author: Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard University and author, most rececntly, of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford University Press, 2020). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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Regime Change in the Global Economy By Michael Spence
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n 1979, W. Arthur Lewis received the Nobel Prize in economics for his analysis of growth dynamics in developing countries. Deservedly so: His conceptual framework has proved invaluable in understanding and guiding structural change across a range of emerging economies. The basic idea that Lewis emphasized is that developing countries initially grow by expanding their export sectors, which absorb the surplus labor in traditional sectors like agriculture. As incomes and purchasing power rise, domestic sectors expand along with the tradable sectors. Productivity and incomes in the largely urban, labor-intensive manufacturing sectors tend to be 3-4 times higher than in the traditional sectors, so average incomes rise as more people go to work in the expanding export sector. But, as Lewis noted, this also means that wage growth in the export sector will remain depressed as long as there is surplus labor elsewhere.
when many developing economies fall into the middle-income trap.
now that several decades of developing-country growth have exhausted much of the world’s unused productive capacity, global growth is increasingly constrained not by demand but by supply and productivity dynamics.
Because labor availability is not a constraint, the key factor with respect to growth is the level of capital investment, which is needed even in labor-intensive sectors. The returns on such investment depend on competitive conditions in the global economy.
Lewis’s growth model is worth revisiting because something similar is happening today. When the global economy started to open and become more integrated several decades ago, massive amounts of previously disconnected and inaccessible labor and productive capacity in emerging economies shifted to the manufacturing and export sectors, producing dramatic results. Manufacturing activity relocated from developed countries, and emerging economies’ exports grew faster than the global economy.
These dynamics can produce startlingly high growth rates that sometimes continue for years, even decades. But there is a limit: when the supply of surplus labor is exhausted, the economy reaches the so-called Lewis turning point. Typically, this will happen before a country has climbed out of the lowermiddle-income range. China, for example, reached its Lewis turning point 10-15 years ago, which brought about a major shift in the country’s growth dynamics.
Owing to the sheer scale of relatively lowcost labor in emerging economies (especially China), wage growth in advanced economies’ tradable sectors was subdued, even when the activity did not shift to emerging economies. Labor’s bargaining power was reduced in developed economies, and the negative pressure on middle- and lowincome wages spilled over to non-tradable sectors as displaced labor in manufacturing shifted to non-tradable sectors.
At the Lewis turning point, the opportunity cost of shifting more labor from traditional to modernizing sectors is no longer negligible. Wages start to increase across the whole economy, which means that if growth is to continue, it must be driven not by shifting labor from low- to higherproductivity sectors, but by productivity increases within sectors. Because this transition often fails, the Lewis turning point is
But that process is largely over. Many emerging economies have become middleincome countries, and the global economy no longer has any more large reservoirs of accessible low-cost labor to fuel the earlier dynamic. Of course, there remain pools of underutilized labor and potential productive capacity, for example in Africa. But it is unlikely that these workers will enter productive export sectors fast enough and at DECEMBER 2022 | 17
sufficient scale to prolong the pre-turning point dynamics. The Lewis turning point will have profound consequences for the global economy. The forces that have been depressing wages and inflation over the past 40 years are receding. A wide range of emerging and developed economies are growing older, reinforcing the trend, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further reduced the labor supply in many sectors, possibly on a permanent basis. Under these conditions, the four-decade decline in labor incomes as a share of national income is likely to be reversed – though automation and other rapidly advancing labor-saving technologies may counteract this process to some extent. In short, now that several decades of developing-country growth have exhausted much of the world’s unused productive capacity, global growth is increasingly constrained not by demand but by supply and productivity dynamics. This is not a transitory shift. One clear consequence of this process is that inflationary forces have shifted fundamentally. After vanishing or flattening for an extended period, the Phillips curve (which describes an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment) is probably back, permanently. Interest rates will rise along with inflationary pressures, which are already forcing major central banks to withdraw liquidity from capital markets. A highly indebted global economy (the legacy of years of low interest rates) will go through a period of turbulence as debt levels are reset for a “new normal” interest-rate environment. Portfolio asset allocations will be adjusted accordingly, and the extended honeymoon during which risk assets outperformed the economy will end. It is anyone’s guess how abruptly this will happen. Specific outcomes are impossible to forecast precisely. The global economy’s encounter with the Lewis turning point will be a period of considerable uncertainty, which is to be expected with any tectonic shift.
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Many parts of the global economy will experience a fundamental regime change. Several decades of growth in emerging economies have driven a massive increase in middleincome consumers and overall purchasing power, while simultaneously removing the world’s ultra-low-cost productive capacity. Of course, there may still be periods of demand-constrained growth, following crises like the pandemic or future climate-driven shocks. But the underlying pattern will be one of supply- and productivity-constrained growth, because the remaining reservoirs of underutilized productive capacity simply are not large enough to accommodate growing global demand. Lewis’s work was not primarily focused on the global economy, except to the extent that international markets provide the technology and demand needed to fuel earlystage export-led growth in developing countries. Nonetheless, his insight that growth patterns shift dramatically depending on whether there are accessible untapped productive resources (especially labor) is as relevant as ever. Applied to the transitions now underway in the global economy, Lewis’s insights imply major changes in growth patterns, the structure of economies, the configuration of global supply chains, and the relative prices of pretty much everything – from goods, services, and labor to commodities and various asset classes. Equally important, they indicate that this transition will be irreversible. Navigating the global version of the Lewis turning point will be tricky. Understanding the underlying structural changes is the necessary place to start. ***** About the author: Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate in economics, is an emeritus professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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How World in 2050 Aims to Help the Future Arrive Better By Shane C. Szarkowski 20 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
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e live in frightening times which—if we think logically—are indeed bleak. Climate change is real and existentially daunting. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only disrupted every aspect of our lives but demonstrated how disastrous it can be to privilege efficiency over resilience—be it infrastructure, supply chains, labor markets, or health systems. At the same time, we’re at what feels like the precipice of rapid, dramatic change. Yes, we are facing a changing climate and questions about the basic resilience of our globalized system. We are also in the midst of an exponential technology revolution, an uncertain and complex energy transition, a changing workplace that is more focused on skills than education, and societal distrust and fragmentation – all while the democratic and governance institutions we’ve long taken for granted are under unprecedented pressure.
our model had to change just to survive in a world where traditional convenings were impossible. While the 18 months or so following March 2020 were harrowing, those months also gave us a kind of opportunity to think about the major disruptive trends influencing our world and what W2050’s role should be in meeting those challenges.
World in 2050 (W2050) was originally founded 10 years ago with the intention of creating a productive workspace for hope. The idea was simple; convene a variety of experts from a wide swath of sectors—entrepreneurs, corporate executives, policymakers, academics, and civil servants—who would otherwise never have had the chance to meet. Present them with related problems with long-term consequences to consider and let them share their experiences and ideas. Through this sharing, W2050’s convenings resulted in something new: hybrid ideational innovations, which left our expert participants with a sense of hope. Something new they could bring back to their colleagues for discussion and use to solve problems that before were just a bit more daunting. That hope is an extremely important, precious thing.
We were fortunate to work with some great partners—and uncommon partnerships have been and remain at the core of W2050— to finetune a new approach to publication series and virtual convenings so we could continue to bring together diverse voices and expertise to generate new insights. At the same time, we took a step back to really think through what W2050 could do to help generate positive change.
World in 2050, Relaunched I’ve worked with W2050’s founder, Ana Rold, for several years. Just before the pandemic changed everything, we had what we thought was an exciting roadmap for the future of W2050 and its sibling organization, Diplomatic Courier. Everything about
“If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.” -Jacques Yves Cousteau
W2050 has long worked through thematic clusters of change we call megatrends. For us, these are transitions which are either on the verge of fundamentally changing our world or are in the process of doing so. Over the past 18 months, we learned (with some help from partners) to think about these transitions through the three horizons model. In the three horizons model, we think about three discrete points—a type of legacy system as it exists today, where a given transition appears to be taking us over the next several decades, and what the often-harmful disruptions could look like on the way. Three horizons author Bill Sharpe talks about developing a “future consciousness” through this framework of thinking about the future. At W2050, we look at the potential futures DECEMBER 2022 | 21
that our megatrends indicate and think about how not only to arrive at the best of those possible futures, but at how to help those futures “arrive well” by making the transitory period as smooth and just as possible. While our exact articulation of megatrends has shifted over the years, through our convenings and uncommon partnerships we’ve amassed an impressive archive of thought leadership. This content has served as the basis for publications and reports in the past. We are formalizing this process and accelerating: • • •
how we use this existing content and make it accessible to change makers, how we create new content through partnerships and convenings, and how we create new thought leadership in-house and through commission.
Over the next five weeks, we will be publishing a series of articles discussing each of our five megatrends in more detail. We will also explain more about how W2050 is positioned to be a force for positive change within each cluster.
Our World in 2050, Reimagined. One theme that kept coming up for us over the past 18 months has been the now somewhat-tired Winston Churchill quote, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” In our five volume “After the Pandemic” series—which you can find here—our expert contributors identified ways the pandemic not only created new problems, but how it even more devastatingly accelerated systemic problems that have been with us a long time. Paradoxically, that acceleration is also a cause for hope. What in many cases had been largely invisible (to most of us) systemic problems were now on full display, and we suddenly had the sense of urgency needed to address them. More than anything, W2050 wants to identify the sometimes not obvious crises embedded within the megatrend transitions shaping our future and find ways to address them before (when possible) they reach the kind of magnitude Churchill was talking about. We get there by recognizing that voices 22 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R
from all segments of society will have different lenses from which to speak, and those different perspectives can give us a whole other view. We want to continue bringing together experts from different sectors who wouldn’t typically get to share their perspectives and synthesize something new. We also want to look to the margins and amplify perspectives that are too often systemically overlooked—whether they are too young, too poor, too rural, or too-anything-else. For us, the world as it will exist in 2050 should be something we look at by borrowing the astronautical experience of the overview effect. Looked at from space, the Earth is a tiny blue dot, teeming with life but also small and alone, rocketing through a void. Our world’s inhabitants, then, are crewmembers on rocket ship Earth. At W2050, we believe that to help the future arrive well, we must internalize this idea that we are all crewmates who have a shared future—and we can keep our rocket ship in the best possible shape by working together and caring for the well-being of the whole of the crew. The world in 2050 is 28 years away, just a little over one generation. Arriving there as well as possible is a daunting task and logic—looking at our systemic dysfunctions today—suggests it probably can’t be done. At W2050, we’re choosing to hope that better is possible, and to do the work to help make it so. Over the next few weeks, we will be publishing a series of articles discussing five key megatrends that will shape our future, and how we intend to put in the work to help that future arrive well. We hope you’ll come along for the ride. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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Reforming the Defective U.S. Sanctions Regime By Ola M. Tucker 24 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
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he popularity of economic and financial sanctions as a foreign policy tool has grown significantly in both breadth and scope in recent years, particularly by the U.S.— which employs sanctions more than any other country. Correspondingly, the use of sanctions has been met with increasing condemnation. Critics argue that sanctions are ineffective and cite the harm to business and the deleterious consequences that are often suffered by vulnerable and innocent groups. A recent comprehensive Sanctions Review by the U.S. Treasury highlights how a clear, strategic, and coordinated sanctions approach can improve the current sanctions regime as well as address national security challenges. With its stated commitment to further diplomacy, human rights and democratic values, the Biden Administration is in a distinct position to make good on its word and reform what many see as a broken sanctions program. However, in practice, this will be more complicated than it initially appears due to the fact the global economy is more interconnected and interdependent than ever before with many nations highly reliant on sanctions targets such as Russia, China, Iran, and others. Added to this is the unprecedented struggle that countries continue to face owing to the devastating setbacks of the coronavirus pandemic.
What Are Sanctions and How Are They Used? Sanctions involve the withdrawal of usual trade or financial relations and are based on foreign policy goals and objectives. Sanctions can be comprehensive in scope, such as the enduring U.S. embargo on Cuba, which prohibits commercial activity with the entire country, or they can be more selective, such as the blocking of financial transactions with particular groups, individuals, or businesses. The goals of these measures range from persuasion (to act or refrain from acting), to punishment, for violating an international treaty, for example. Historically, sanctions have been used to
effectuate counterterrorism, combat narcotics trafficking and arms proliferation, promote human rights, advance conflict resolution, and further a host of other policies. Sanctions have also been imposed to deter unlawful conduct and prevent military advances by aggressors.
Why Is the Current Sanctions Regime Ineffective? Over the past two decades, sanctions have been imposed with ever more rigor and frequency to achieve U.S. objectives. However, this has often been done without sufficient planning prior to their adoption and without adequate analysis and evaluation of their effectiveness during and after their imposition. As a result, sanctions often end up hurting U.S. interests, result in greater costs on U.S. companies, and still do not alter the target’s behavior.
Because sanctions are a strict liability regime—meaning that a violation can result in civil liability without proof or fault or intent—companies often overcomply out of fear of violation. For companies operating internationally, sanctions can be confusing and challenging to navigate and may directly impact business. Because sanctions are a strict liability regime—meaning that a violation can result in civil liability without proof or fault or intent—companies often over-comply out of fear of violation. Not only does this result in the loss of otherwise legitimate business to companies, but consumers also lose out on products and services. State and non-state actors threatened by sanctions, including powerful terrorist organizations and influential criminal groups, may retaliate by doubling down on unlawDECEMBER 2022 | 25
ful activity, diverting resources, and otherwise increasing repression measures. Despite exemptions for humanitarian aid, such aid often can’t be supplied because of sanctions. Women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, refugees, indigenous persons, and other at-risk groups are often most impacted. Although comprehensive sanctions receive the most criticism, selective or targeted sanctions can also have negative consequences when not used properly. For example, although targeted sanctions aimed at a specific individual may be effective in stifling their financial access, sanctions against a particular bank may adversely affect a number of otherwise innocent consumers.
How Can Sanctions Be Reformed? The Treasury’s Sanctions Review made recommendations for reforming the current sanctions program, many of which are in line with what scholars and experts have espoused. According to the Review, to be effective, sanctions must have a “clear policy objective.” Additionally, lawmakers must ensure that the brunt of sanctions fall on designated targets and that potential collateral negative damages be minimized. Furthermore, the Review noted that the intended impact of sanctions can be bolstered when plans are made in coordination with allies and partners, as the coordinated use of sanctions can provide greater leverage against the sanctions target. Furthermore, countries imposing economic sanctions must also be willing to
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understand and accept any negative consequences to their own economies, particularly when dealing with potential adversaries such as China, which comprises the world’s second largest economy as well as serves as a major international financial center. Sanctions programs are a national as well as global security governance tool. As a result, sanctions must inevitably evolve as new threats emerge. There is no doubt that the U.S., which makes the greatest use of sanctions, must modernize its current regime, a measure that would be well in line with the Biden Administration’s vow to bring diplomacy back into U.S. foreign policy. When used strategically, economic and financial sanctions can be highly effective tools that foster democracy and the rule of law. But sanctions will always be a doubleedged sword that require careful planning, collaboration, and extreme caution. It is imperative that policymakers be realistic about the goals that can be reasonably achieved through the use of sanctions. In its Sanctions Review, the U.S. Treasury has already outlined what needs to be done—all that remains is for Washington to act upon it. ***** About the Author: Ola M. Tucker, an attorney and compliance professional, is the founder of Compliance Notes, a boutique compliance training consultancy.
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The Americas’ Comorbidities: Inequality and Declining Trust in Democracy By Adam Ratzlaff 28 | D IPLOM AT I C COU RIE R
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he COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated underlying social issues across the globe. No region has been as hard hit by the pandemic as the nations of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. Despite only representing about 13.1% of the global population, as of Dec. 20, 2021, the region saw approximately 36.4% of total COVID-19 cases and 44.6% of deaths. Not only were the health outcomes disproportionate, but the IMF noted that the Latin American and Caribbean region saw the economy contract by 7% percent in 2020, more than any other region in the world. Given how hard COVID-19 hit the Americas, it should come as little surprise that it has also exposed and exacerbated some of the region’s core underlying challenges—in particular the interlinked issues of inequality and declining trust in democracy. These two challenges can be seen as comorbidities to the COVID-19 pandemic in that they make it more difficult to address the pandemic itself and are worsened by the pandemic’s impact. The Latin America and Caribbean region is often considered one of the most unequal regions in the world. While inequality in the region declined drastically in the first decade of the 21st century, it has remained fairly constant ever since. Additionally, while the aggregate numbers highlight income inequality in the region, high levels of inequality based on ethno-racial identity and gender continue in the region as well. While all segments of society have been impacted by COVID-19, efforts to curb the spread of the disease were limited by the region’s high levels of inequality. In fact, evidence suggests that inequality and the higher need of the poor to continue working in the pandemic reduced the effectiveness of pandemic lockdown measures, particularly amongst the most vulnerable. Inequalities have echoed in the impact of COVID across different population groups. Evidence from the United States highlights the racial differences in both the likelihood of contracting and dying from the virus. While less information is available on the racial impacts of COVID-19 in Latin Amer-
ica, similar trends are evident where data is available. These high levels of inequality hamper the effectiveness of governments to address ongoing challenges and create a high level of distrust in the effectiveness of governments.
The Latin America and Caribbean region is often considered one of the most unequal regions in the world. While inequality in the region declined drastically in the first decade of the 21st century, it has remained fairly constant ever since. The Americas also find themselves in the middle of a “democratic recession.” Leaders in many countries in the region have taken steps that challenge democracy and freedom in their countries. This has included assaults on the media, efforts to concentrate power in the executive, inappropriate uses of the armed forces, among other ongoing challenges. Despite these threats making democracy in the region fragile, most countries remain democracies. However, Cuba was the only country in the Americas was non-democratic at the turn of the 21st century, but has now been joined by Nicaragua and Venezuela. These cases highlight how easily democratic backsliding can shift into full blown authoritarian regimes. Underlying these threats to democratic governance is declining support for democracy among the populace in the region. Results from the last round of the Latin American Public Opinion Project highlight that the decade-long decline in support for democracy has continued. This decline in support for democracy does not suggest citizens no longer want a voice in politics, but rather reflects concerns over high levels of corruption, the failure of governments to effectively address probDECEMBER 2022 | 29
lems, and concerns over how democracy is functioning at home. While this has been a long-term phenomenon, the failure of governments across the region to curb the spread of COVID-19 coupled with high levels of corruption in COVID responses in some countries have done little to slow declining levels of support for democracy in the Americas. While a great deal of attention has long been paid to these issues in Latin America, these comorbidities are evident across the Americas—particularly within the United States. Relative to other OECD countries, the United States is among the most unequal, ranked as the fourth most unequal among the non-Latin American OECD countries (only being more Equal than Turkey, Bulgaria, and South Africa as well as the four Latin American OECD countries). Likewise, U.S. democracy is at one of the most fragile points in the nation’s history. Ignoring that the United States faces problems similar to its Hemispheric neighbors weakens the ability to collectively address these shared challenges and learn lessons from across the region. Recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic is going to require that countries address not only the health impacts that the pandemic has laid bare, but seek to rectify the comorbidities that have exacerbated and been exacerbated by the pandemic. In the Americas, this is going to mean tackling the issues of inequality and declining support for democracy head on. Addressing these challenges will not be an easy task, requiring cooperation between all the Americas’ governments to address regional challenges while they simultaneously work to tackle these issues at home. Countries must show that popularly elected governments not only represent the will of the people, but are able to deliver on their promises, combat corruption, and tackle the varied challenges that face their citizens. This will require implementing reforms to promote transparency within government, greater citizen inclusion in budgetary processes, strengthening rule 30 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
of law and anti-corruption measures, as well as active civics education campaigns that highlight why democracy works the way that it does and benefits that democracy and pluralism bring to society. All of these actions must also work to support all of a country’s citizens rather than reinforce the perception that the government continues to serve only a subset of the population. In addition to all of these, governments must seek to tackle inequality in their countries. This includes addressing not income inequality, but the systemic inequalities that are evident in every country in the region. Only by addressing both inequality and the governance crisis can the Americas move forward to a brighter future. The Americas must face not only the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but address some of the underlying symptoms that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and that have hampered governments’ abilities to address this crisis. It will not be enough just for the economy to rebound and to end the pandemic. Governments across the Americas need to address their citizens’ concerns about the quality of governance, their ability to deliver, and the underlying inequality that is prevalent across the region. Only then can the region be better prepared to advance in the 21st century and ensure governments that are truly for all of their citizens. ***** About the Author: Adam Ratzlaff is a Contributing Editor to Diplomatic Courier and a Deputy Director at Global Americans.
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China’s Ambitions on a New International Order By Joshua Huminski 32 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R
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espite being broadly anticipated and widely discussed, China’s rise still seems to offer up new surprises. In the summer of 2021, reports emerged about mysterious “bouncy castles of death” in Yumen, China. These inflatable domes masked China’s installation of intercontinental ballistic missile silos, part of Beijing’s nuclear development. In November, China allegedly tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that caught analysts by surprise, given its sophistication and reported deployment of a secondary payload in flight. How much of a surprise these reports were to U.S. and allied intelligence remains unclear, but both indicate an acceleration in China’s military modernization efforts, a program that aims to bring China on par with the United States in the near-term – and possibly even surpassing it in the future. Beijing’s military efforts are, of course, only one part of a multi-faceted, dynamic rise. As this rise progresses, China’s Communist Party is increasingly confident in its regional and global position, and accordingly is keen to assert its interests. The story of this rise and its practical application in politics, diplomacy, economics, and culture is one that is increasingly being told from nearly every angle. Books on China’s surveillance state, the global reach of the CCP, Beijing’s efforts within the United States and further afield – and the Party’s grand strategy are more common than even five years ago. This situation helps the public be better informed about shifting geopolitical norms, but it also makes it more difficult for a book to stand out. “The World According to China” by Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow with Stanford’s Hoover Institution and current senior adviser on China to the Department of Commerce, is an excellent contribution to the field of China geopolitical studies. Unfortunately, it also misses a step that could have made it stand-out even more from this increasingly crowded field. From the outset, it is important to note that Economy’s book (a copy of which
was kindly provided by the publisher) is superb. It is well-written, well-researched, and notably balanced in its presentation of China’s policies and the effects of these policies’ implementation. Economy looks at the dynamic and multifaceted nature of China’s rise, the application of its power, its attempts to manipulate global norms and institutions, the “One Belt, One Road Initiative,” and more – each of which is presented in a very even-keeled and balanced manner. She discusses China’s aims such as presenting China’s model as an alternative to the Western democratic-capitalist system and the reunification of China without hyperbole, making this one of the more balanced books on China available today. It is neither a Party apologist’s tome nor a breathless book of doom.
Economy’s exploration of China’s relationship with Greece and the Port of Piraeus is particularly insightful, weaving together not only the political and financial interests of Athens and Beijing in the broader context of how Greece’s relations with northern European states during the 2008 financial crisis affected the Aegean state. Economy’s exploration of China’s relationship with Greece and the Port of Piraeus is particularly insightful, weaving together not only the political and financial interests of Athens and Beijing in the broader context of how Greece’s relations with northern European states during the 2008 financial crisis affected the Aegean state. Here, Economy discusses how Beijing managed to secure a financial stake in the port, expand this interest, and the resulting effects of this investment (to include ChiDECEMBER 2022 | 33
China’s entry into the WTO did not achieve a fraction of the openness and democratization President Clinton suggested it would, nor did it lead to a more even economic playing field and benefits for American companies. Quite the opposite, in fact. nese organized crime). She explores the One Belt and One Road initiative, noting the initiative often requires investments and loans be made prior to the program’s initial launch. Her exploration illustrates the strings that come with Chinese backing, strings that are prompting a considerable backlash. It is also interesting to note that this investment does not necessarily equate to full backing of China’s interests and positions. Economy could have gone into greater depth about China’s use of the Thousand Talents Program, state-sanctioned/supported corporate espionage, and Beijing’s use of state intelligence apparatuses to support Chinese industry. To be sure she does cover this, but the insidiousness of this threat and the West’s uneven acknowledgement of these threats (both overt and covert) is a significant obstacle to addressing the challenge. Here too the attractiveness of China’s lucre often overpowers domestic interests, save for those few countries willing to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party—look at what Lithuania is doing today in pushing back against Beijing’s coercive tactics. All of this superb content comes after one of the most riveting chapters I’ve yet read on China and one that could (and perhaps should) have been a book in and of itself. Economy opens her book with a fascinating look at how China’s response to Covid encapsulates nearly every element of Beijing’s playbook, save for the military component, which 34 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
one almost certainly could find a connection if this were a feature-length book. From the knee-jerk reaction to suppress any information about the virus, obfuscating its origins, and stonewalling the international community, through to Beijing’s use of wolf warrior diplomacy to spread mis- and dis-information, China’s response to the pandemic illustrates much about the Party’s interests and its pursuit of those interests. Economy’s exploration of this as an opening is inspired. It is likely one of the few places where the totality of China’s response has been analyzed and it is fascinating. How China managed to flip the narrative to become an internationally benevolent country and economic success in the face of a bungled and chaotic initial response says much about Beijing’s application of its power and pursuit of its interests. Economy dismantles some of the popular conceptions, exposing how much of the “aid” was really commercial in nature and how Beijing made the allocation of this support contingent on signing contracts or political concessions such as supporting Beijing’s policies or avoiding sensitive topics. China’s mobilization of overseas Chinese through its United Works Front Department to provide PPE and critical supplies at the outset is also a story that is largely forgotten at this point. Ironically, so too are the rather ham-fisted efforts by Beijing to cast doubts on the origin of the virus, even suggesting that the U.S. military brought COVID-19 to Wuhan. While many of the Tweets were laughable, to look at their apparent silliness is to miss the fact that China is playing on the dis- and misinformation field, and will only get improve its efforts. Within China, the Party’s narrative is the only narrative, yet, as Economy shows, Beijing is working on the global stage to spread not only favorable news stories, but the whole Party line. The response to COVID-19 also illustrated China’s misuse of international organizations to quash unfavorable stories and narratives, but also to isolate Taiwan from the global community.
The strength of this chapter is an absolute stand-out. It merits its own book and I do hope Economy takes this task on as I will be amongst the first to pre-order it when and if it goes live. This chapter’s strength sets it apart from the remainder of the book which, again, is superb. Ultimately, in the crowded field of Chinapolicy books, it comes down to the policy recommendations on what the United States and the West should do with China’s rise. Economy smartly writes that the strategy of “engage, but hedge” seen in previous administrations and President Donald Trump’s “compete, counter, and contain” approach are largely two sides of the same coin. Here, if nothing else, Trump’s presidency and COVID-19 may have caused the scales to fall from the eyes of all by the most ardent China cheerleaders. China’s entry into the WTO did not achieve a fraction of the openness and democratization President Clinton suggested it would, nor did it lead to a more even economic playing field and benefits for American companies. Quite the opposite, in fact. The balanced narrative Economy offers up, is perhaps too bullish on the prospects for stability and the absence of a new Cold
War, or maybe the reviewer is too cynical and bearish. Perhaps both are true. While Economy is undoubtedly right that alliances matter, that the tent of traditional partners must be enlarged, and values are a currency of the realm, the reality is that hard power and financial interests matter more. Soft power can only achieve so much in the absence of conventional economic and military strength, especially in this new era of strategic geo-technological competition, where marshaling national power is much more multifaceted. So long as there are leverages to be exploited, financial interests to be manipulated, and the absence of a full appreciation of the 21st century challenge that the Chinese Communist Party represents, Quad diplomacy and multilateral democratic summits will only achieve so much, and right now, that isn’t very much at all. ***** About the Author: Joshua Huminski is Diplomatic Courier’s Book Reviewer and the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Affairs at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.
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The Global Consequences of American Polarization By Ana Palacio 36 | D I PLOM AT I C COU RIE R
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nother bitter battle has played out in the US Congress – and amounted to nothing. US Republicans have yet again used the filibuster to thwart legislation aimed at countering new voting restrictions around the country, and Democrats have failed to change filibuster rules to get it passed. The saga exemplifies the turmoil, polarization, and paralysis that have engulfed American politics and will undoubtedly shape November’s mid-term congressional elections. This state of affairs should worry the rest of the world. In recent years, American society has been riven by misunderstanding and mistrust. By creating algorithm-driven “echo chambers,” social-media platforms have compounded these problems, reinforcing people’s existing views, discrediting opponents, and facilitating the emergence of an over-zealous “cancel culture.” The honest self-reflection and open dialogue needed to enable reform and reconciliation have become all but impossible. As political leaders have learned to capitalize on polarization, the situation has deteriorated further. Former President Donald Trump’s populist, isolationist, and capricious rhetoric and policies exacerbated polarization and stoked volatility. Now, political scientist Barbara F. Walter warns, the United States is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” I have no desire to preach to Americans about what is in their political interest. That is a long-standing habit of Europeans, and it is patronizing in the best of times. It is all the more inappropriate at a time when Europeans are confronting our own brand of extremism and deadlock. But the fact is that the fracturing of US society affects us all. Most obviously, America’s polarized politics are shaping its economic, climate, defense, agricultural, and foreign policies. The recent Republican-led initiative to impose sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline – despite the threat this would
pose to both US President Joe Biden’s Russia strategy and America’s relationship with Germany – is a case in point.
After decades of emphasis on economic considerations, geopolitics has again taken center stage globally, with ideologydriven great-power competition intensifying at precisely the moment when liberal democracy has lost its shine and authoritarianism is gaining ground. But the problem runs deeper than any individual policy. After decades of emphasis on economic considerations, geopolitics has again taken center stage globally, with ideology-driven great-power competition intensifying at precisely the moment when liberal democracy has lost its shine and authoritarianism is gaining ground. This competition is playing out in various geographic arenas (Ukraine, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Taiwan), and even bleeding into the economic sphere (as with Nord Stream 2 or the Chinese tech giant Huawei). The last time geopolitics defined world affairs, the US stood tall as a global leader and champion of Western interests and democratic values. Today, as the ongoing crisis on Ukraine’s border shows, the world needs America to reprise that role. Yet the US is a shell of the leader it once was, and domestic polarization is largely to blame. There is no silver bullet. But a number of ideas have been advanced, from straightforward calls to stop giving extremists platforms to detailed proposals for revitalizing citizenship through compulsory national service. In some ways, the latter scheme gets to the heart of the challenge. DECEMBER 2022 | 37
Americans need to reconnect with a sense of shared ownership of their country and its trajectory. They must take responsibility for their future, including by contributing directly to the process of charting a path forward. Otherwise, popular buy-in will remain elusive. The European Union is well-acquainted with this imperative. Like the US, the EU is becoming increasingly fragmented, as it has struggled to clarify its raison d’être in the modern age. To tackle this challenge, the EU has launched the Conference on the Future of Europe. The brainchild of French President Emmanuel Macron, the Conference entails a series of citizen-led conversations focused on clarifying Europe’s challenges and priorities and helping to “shape our common future.” As appealing as the concept may sound, however, the Conference looks a lot like an idealistic fig leaf covering bureaucratic inefficiencies. In any case, for the US even to attempt such an initiative, it would first have to achieve some consensus on what it means to be an American. Here, Republicans and Democrats currently subscribe to sharply contrasting visions, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear. If Americans cannot agree on a shared understanding of their present – including, crucially, their country’s position in the world – how can they even begin to discuss a common vision for their future? The US has been here before. In the years leading up to World War II, the US was deeply divided, both by national policies which greatly changed the landscape (such as the New Deal) and by conflicting opinions of what US involvement in the war should entail. Yet WWII is now remembered as a “moment of American domestic comity.” While this shift can be partly attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s deft political leadership, it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that secured broad public support for the US to enter the fray.
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But a common enemy works to unite a country only if everyone agrees on who that enemy is. Given that COVID-19 – a foe shared by the entire world – only hardened America’s partisan divide, it is clear that this is easier said than done. In clarifying America’s role in the world, an outsider’s perspective may be of use. NonAmericans tend to have a clear idea of what the US has historically represented: ingenuity, generosity, and democracy. The path to a reunited America, acting as a credible global leader, will be neither smooth nor straight. But, given how many actors are eager to take advantage of America’s decline, Europe must do everything it can to help the US make progress. Just as the US sought a “Europe whole and free” after the Cold War ended, Europe today needs to support an America healed and reconciled. ***** About the author: Ana Palacio, a former minister of foreign affairs of Spain and former senior vice president and general counsel of the World Bank Group, is a visiting lecturer at Georgetown University. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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The ManyHeaded Hydrae of Surveillance Capitalism By Andrea Bonime-Blanc 40 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
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urveillance capitalism is a many headed hydrae—when you cut off its heads, additional ones sprout up. In this era of exponentially transforming technology this is a big problem—for everyone. Oversimply put, “Surveillance Capitalism” is a recent technologically enabled form of capitalistic economic power where the capitalists (tech firms) harvest private data (largely unbeknownst to its donors (us). In exchange, we (the donors) get “free” social media or platform experiences like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. And, in turn, the tech firms then monetize our “free” data via advertising and other data selling techniques into millions and billions in revenue. But, for a more fulsome and dramatic definition of “Surveillance Capitalism” as well as an amazing treatise on the topic, take a look at author Shoshana Zuboff definition in her great book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. In all of its constantly, rapidly evolving and bleeding edge characteristics—surveillance capitalism falls squarely into public and private governance discourse as well as the overall environmental, social and governance (ESG) discussion or what I like to call ESGT – ESG + technology. Indeed, if there ever was an ESGT issue that was mostly about technology it is the phenomenon we are calling “surveillance capitalism”—the creation, sale and profit making of technology enabled products and services that are based on the collection, use and abuse of data. While this is not a brand-new issue, it is sufficiently evolved, transformational, ferociously mutating, and impactful that it requires constant attention from actors and stakeholders in business, society, and government. Business and other entities are caught willingly or unwillingly in this crossfire and must understand the challenge and consequences. And “spyware” is one of the more troubling manifestations
of the many heads of the surveillance capitalism hydrae.
Spyware: Surveillance Capitalism on Steroids NSO, an Israeli-based, privately held technology company founded in 2010 is until recently primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of “remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones” and was supposedly sold only to and used by governments and law enforcement (and, by implication, not the “bad guys” according to NSO). It is a technology that is surreptitiously embedded into people’s phones without their knowledge, and which tracks their every move, content, and communications. What could go wrong?
In all of its constantly, rapidly evolving and bleeding edge characteristics—surveillance capitalism falls squarely into public and private governance discourse as well as the overall environmental, social and governance (ESG) discussion. Apparently, just about everything. An obvious problem is that not all governments or law enforcement agencies are created equal in terms of observing proper rule of law or human rights protections. While one can posit that authoritarian regimes and the usual underworld suspects (criminals, hackers, and spies) will not comply, sadly, democratic governments, their agencies, and politicians cannot be trusted either nor can private interests for that matter. Witness the recent revelations of the use of Pegasus by ruling party Polish government officials against out-of-office democratic political party contenders in (mostly) democratic Poland. DECEMBER 2022 | 41
The implications for all manner of business, NGOs, educational and research organizations everywhere couldn’t be clearer: when and if a competitor, hostile government, criminal, or underworld entity wants to get protected information and data from one or more of your people, all they need to do is to pay NSO (or one of their competitors) for this kind of “surveillance”. Not surprisingly, NSO isn’t the only game in town—they’re the ones recently caught in the act. In this December 27, 2021 opinion piece called “The Spyware Crisis is Much Bigger than NSO Group”, the Editorial Board of the Washington Post sounded the alarm on this topic not only because it is a seriously important topic but they have been directly affected by this scourge in the case of murdered WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi whose wife had Pegasus implanted into her phone months prior to his murder. But theirs isn’t the only case—journalists, non-governmental organizations have had Pegasus inserted into their phones. As WaPo concludes in their editorial: “The roster of victims runs a gamut, suggesting that the only real selection criterion for these companies is whether a client is willing to pay.” Thus, is born another nuance in the story of Surveillance Capitalism. The implications for all manner of business, NGOs, educational and research organizations everywhere couldn’t be clearer: when and if a competitor, hostile government, criminal, or underworld entity wants to get protected information and data from one or more of your people, all they need to do is to pay NSO (or one of their competitors) for this kind of “surveillance”. Meta (formerly known as Facebook) just issued an alarming “Threat Report on the Surveillance for Hire Industry” in which, among other things, they conclude that a “global surveillance-for-hire industry” has emerged that targets individuals for the collection of data, intelligence and the manipulation and compromise of their devices and accounts. The Report calls these
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deployed against its own employees, executives and board members by nefarious competitors, officials, criminals or other bad actors and be prepared from a crisis management standpoint to deal with it. 6. Have a transparent policy framework, related training and communications for all affected stakeholders explaining what the entity does to protect them, providing reporting helplines and protocols to protect against data and tech misuse and abuse. 7.
Gauge the challenge of maintaining high ethical, legal and transparency standards in the various countries you are present in – you will be challenged and thwarted in authoritarian countries (and maybe even in some democratic or hybrid ones).
8. Understand the essential nature of private/public collaboration while being cognizant of the dangers thereof especially in less than democratic countries. A final and critical component for dealing with the multiplying challenges of surveillance capitalism and related tech issues is that all entities need to have tech savvy executives and boards who understand the need for a permanent, cross-functional, transversal team of internal and external experts looking at these interconnected issues as they affect the entity, the sector, and the stakeholders in real time and continuously.
entities “cyber mercenaries” and (like NSO in its public statements) claim to only target “criminals and terrorists”. However, this months-long study showed that the net of people caught in this mostly nefarious practice includes human rights activists, political opponents in both democratic and authoritarian regimes as well as journalists and other private citizens.
What Are We to Do? So, what is a business or for that matter any other form of legitimate organization to do in the face of this serious and super challenging new threat? Depending on where an entity “sits” geographically and virtually, its mission, its main stakeholders, its human capital footprint and supply chain, its leadership at both management and board levels have a critical and proactive role to play.
Anything short of this is seriously insufficient in today’s world of complex interconnected ESGT risks and opportunities. These issues aren’t going away, if anything they will continue to multiply like the many headed hydrae, until further notice. ***** About the author: Andrea BonimeBlanc is the Founder and CEO of GEC Risk Advisory and a Diplomatic Courier Contributor.
And there are a few things leaders of every type of entity—whether in business, NGO, education, research, media—can do, to wit: 1.
Deploy appropriately sophisticated and effective cyber-security protections at all key entry points guarding crown jewels (including data).
2. Establish disciplined governance, quality and ethical filters and protocols to prevent/disable the implanting of dangerous software and/or misuse of data. 3. Scrub - and have the talent to understand how to scrub and evaluate - supply chain software coming in and going out. 4. Prevent the illegal (and even legal but problematic) use of spyware in the workplace (in and out of the office including WFH) to track employee movements, productivity, communications, and other activities 5. Understand that external surveillance tech may very well be DECEMBER 2022 | 43
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The Other Threat to Democracy By Federico Fubini
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he emergence of illiberal politicians across the West has led to prophecies about the end of democracy. In the United States, Donald Trump is maneuvering to return to the White House in 2025, after attempting to overturn an election that he lost in 2020. In France, not one but two farright populists are running for president. And in Italy, Matteo Salvini of the League and Giorgia Meloni of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy will be plausible contenders for the premiership when Italians go to the polls in 2023.
when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren (…), they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them. (…) So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And (…) democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence.”
Like right-wing political and media operatives in the US, Salvini, Meloni, and Marine Le Pen of the French far-right National Rally have all paid homage to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. They have made no secret of their temptation to pursue his brand of illiberalism if given the chance.
In all of its constantly, rapidly evolving and bleeding edge characteristics—surveillance capitalism falls squarely into public and private governance discourse as well as the overall environmental, social and governance (ESG) discussion.
Concerns about the future tend to be molded by our most vivid memories of the past. We learned from our parents and grandparents about the threat of fascism. And in recent years, we have watched authoritarian leaders come to power democratically, only to erode constitutional norms and institutions once in office. This “electoral” model for establishing autocracy thus has come to seem like a potent threat. But are we worrying about the right kind of democratic decline? In fact, a more immediate risk lies in the descent from democracy to ochlocracy, a term coined by the Greek historian Polybius during the second century BC to describe mob rule. Ochlocracy results from politicians using cheap gifts and seductive talk to attract voters who don’t appreciate their freedom, because they have never experienced the abuses or repression of non-democratic governance. As Polybius explains in The Histories: “As long as some of those survive who experienced the evils of oligarchical dominion, they are well pleased with the present form of government, and set a high value on equality and freedom of speech. But
Before Polybius, both Plato and Aristotle also agreed that democracy is potentially vulnerable to ever-changing and easily manipulated public moods. In our time, we call this populism, a label that allows us to shift all the blame for democratic backsliding onto individual populist figures like Trump, Le Pen, and Salvini. But while these politicians have fomented fear of immigrants and polarized public opinion, they are not operating in a vacuum. They owe their political successes to voters (and, in Trump’s case, to many American conservative elites). Twenty-first-century ochlocracy tends to go beyond classic populism to implicate broader swaths of public life. Three symptoms of this process stand out today. First, mainstream political parties have been hollowed out, with vaguer policy programs and narrower pathways for new leaders to DECEMBER 2022 | 45
emerge. The Republican Party in the US is a case in point. But in the past two presidential elections, the Democrats also have continued to elevate longtime establishment stalwarts, even when the times seemed to call for new figures and fresh ideas. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson commandeered the storied Conservative Party, first by peddling lies about Brexit, and then by feeding the delusion that a divorce from the European Union would be easy and beneficial. It is no surprise that such a leader would feel invulnerable enough to host or attend parties while the rest of the country was in pandemic lockdown. The situation is no better in Italy, where no mainstream party has any credible internal democratic processes for selecting new leaders or devising a policy program. The parties are so hapless that they regularly need to call in technocrats to manage complex crises, as happened with Prime Minister Mario Monti in 2011-13 and now Mario Draghi. Recent convulsions among and within parties to select a new head of state are further evidence of how dysfunctional Rome’s political class has become. Only by re-electing President Sergio Mattarella, despite his reluctance, could parties break the stalemate. A second major symptom of democratic decay is the degradation of the media. Democracy suffers when media organizations become partisan, polarized, and shallow (using sensationalism and fear in pursuit of market share). When a society is politically polarized, publishers and editors see a commercial opportunity in goading likeminded segments of the population. Fanning the flames becomes a business model. Especially in recent years, leading media outlets have found that it pays to take an unflinching position on controversial figures like Trump, Johnson, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, or Beppe Grillo, the founder of Italy’s populist Five Star Movement. By becoming dependent on polarization, media outlets have fed it, doing little to help form public opinion 46 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
beyond short-term political conflicts. As Leslie Moonves, then the CEO of CBS, said of Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” A third symptom is the rise of social-media chatter as a dominant influence on politicians’ views and decisions. As a journalist, I personally know prominent leaders who are addicted to Twitter and spend a considerable part of their days on it. Twitter becomes their reality, while their constituents continue to live in the real world. A political system with hollowed-out parties is more likely to succumb to such pressures. As the system increasingly fails to address long-term issues, trust in it erodes and public opinion becomes increasingly volatile, resulting in a now-familiar spiral of noise, ineffectiveness, negligent media, aggressive rhetoric, and shortsighted political programs. This is a formula for ochlocracy. Twentytwo centuries after his death, Polybius has our number. ***** About the author: Federico Fubini, an economics journalist and editorat-large at Corriere della Sera, is the author, most recently, of Sul Vulcano (Longanesi, 2020). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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What in the World (in 2050) is a Megatrend? By Shane C. Szarkowski
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tarting out on a personal note—I love talking about World in 2050. It’s one of the things that comes along with doing something professionally that just clicks with you on a deeper level. In those conversations, there’s one question that I get asked every…single…time.
“Wait, what’s a megatrend?” There’s a simple answer; megatrends are trends which are driving change on a global scale with big implications for the future. Simple. The simple explanation doesn’t quite do enough to explain what in the world we mean with our megatrends, though.
What Makes a W2050 Megatrend Different? At W2050, we have for a long time categorized dramatic forces of innovation, disruption, and change by themes which we call megatrends. For us a megatrend traditionally has been a set of closely related pressures—whether brought about by innovation, demographics, shifting social norms, or reactions to changes in the natural world—that are having or will soon have an outsized impact on how we live life. Rather than a narrowly defined trend which will have a big impact in a well-defined sector of a market or segment of society, we’ve tried to identify our megatrends thematically to encompass several interrelated forces of dramatic change. Over the first ten years of its life, W2050 conducted research, expert convenings, and held innovation challenges for entrepreneurs around seven or eight megatrends. With the (re)launch of W2050, we decided to that seven or eight megatrends, each with a fluctuating number of what we call “sub-trends” (though make no mistake, each of these could be rightly defined as a megatrend in popular usage) is just too nebulous. So we tightened our focus and reimagined five key megatrends (each consisting of 4-5 tightly focused and in-
terrelated sub-trends) that we see as the most disruptive to our lives and futures— but which we also see as full of hope and potential. Ultimately, W2050 is a futurefocused organization that is determined to help bring the best future possible to fruition. Our five megatrends—which you should go read about here if you haven’t already—are not only themes for research
Our megatrends don’t encompass all the world’s problems or even most of them, but we believe they cover the most pressing challenges the world will face in the coming decades. They are also a roadmap of what we need to focus on most intensively to help the future arrive well. clusters. They are also a roadmap of what we need to focus on most intensively to help the future arrive well. Our megatrends don’t encompass all the world’s problems or even most of them, but we believe they cover the most pressing challenges the world will face in the coming decades. Here they are. Exponential technologies are radically reshaping our world. Digitalization. AI. The Internet of Things. Blockchain. Big data. We’re all aware that the pace of technological innovation is breathtaking. More than ever, the world is tech driven and that is a trend which is accelerating. Exponential technologies are powerful tools – they help us understand and change our world for the better. They also disrupt old ways of doing things and they introduce new concerns over privacy, safety, security, and equality of access. Disruption from climate change and the energy transition has only just begun. DECEMBER 2022 | 49
COP26 felt, if not like a watershed moment, at least like we all had finally agreed to take climate change seriously with governments reaching an unprecedented though disappointing climate deal and the private sector getting loud about their commitment to net-zero. Yet even if we do everything right (and we won’t) our job markets, financial markets, and access to cheap energy will be impacted by the energy transition while actual changes to climate and extreme weather events will need to be mitigated.
Since the 1990s there has been a great deal of progress socially – we see the world as more interconnected and we’ve made major strides toward gender, ethnic, and LGBTQ+ equity. Yet over the same period, social polarization has paradoxically increased. The workplace cares less about education and more about skills. The way we used to think about education and its role in preparing us for the workplace is out of favor. We know that most employers now care more about skills than where you went to school. What we don’t know is how to help tomorrow’s employees identify what skills they need, what they already have, and where to get what they need and
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don’t have. The transition to a skill-focus and away from expensive schooling could mean a more inclusive workplace but we must act conscientiously to get there. Societal distrust and fragmentation are surging. Since the 1990s there has been a great deal of progress socially – we see the world as more interconnected and we’ve made major strides toward gender, ethnic, and LGBTQ+ equity. Yet over the same period, social polarization has paradoxically increased. With misinformation, populism, and anti-intellectualism on the rise, this problem isn’t going away on its own. Our hard-fought gains are under threat at a time when we more urgently need to work together than ever. Democratic and governance institutions are under pressure. Amid the previous four megatrends, public trust in formal institutions at the local, national, and international level that have been integral to so much (if imperfect) progress in the previous decades is at an all-time low. This distrust threatens our democracies – whether established or fledgling – and our ability to practice governance at all levels. To an extent, the private sector has stepped up its governance efforts – but our world faces existential challenges and robust governance institutions will be critical to helping the future arrive well. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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Asia’s Megacities and the Future of Geopolitics By Parag Khanna
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urrently in Western societies, there is significant discussion about de-urbanization and suburbanization—people wanting to get away from cities and live the remote life. By comparison, young Asians still aspire to move to cities because of the quality of life, access to public services, education, higher wages, and better health care. Asia is going to continue to be a rapidly urbanizing region and represent the better part of the urban population of the world. Asian cities, especially Asian megacities, are an order of magnitude larger than Western megacities. If you take the entire US Northeast corridor (Boston, New York, and Washington together), this represents a population of 60 to 70 million people, which is approximating the Greater Bay Area of China. In the West, however, there are only a few “urban archipelagos” that could be characterized according to those geographical parameters—in Asia, there are many more. As such a large proportion of the world’s population, the urban demographics of Asian megacities obviously matter greatly, but how do they influence great power geopolitics? Within Asian megacities, there is stratification, a micropolitics depending on economic equality and inequality, access to services, and different spatial organizations. There is a clear relationship to geopolitics based on the function different city components serve in terms of domestic and international economic connectivity and connection to global supply chains. This is, of course, true of megacities across the globe. However, the difference in Asia is that some of the large urban agglomerations and wealthier countries have evolved beyond that to an extreme stratification and have built sufficient infrastructure to absorb populations that provide highquality services across the board. “...geopolitical power begins with building a supply chain empire, and that begins with building cities. We really cannot and should not separate conversations about what constitutes or comprises a superpower in geopolitics from its urban foundations.”
The story of this growth and stratification begins with Special Economic Zones (SEZs). As urban populations in Asia expanded rapidly through the 20th century, SEZs represented a conscious strategy for countries to attract investment, become part of global supply chains, expand the labor force, and boost incomes and savings. It is a story identified very often with Shenzhen, which just over 40 years ago was declared China’s first SEZ. There are two models of how SEZs become part of the pursuit of national modernization: firstly, those with genuine spillover effects, where
There is no understanding geopolitical competition in the 21st century without an understanding of urbanization and cities. local firms copycat those inside the zone leading to more industrial activity and competition, and secondly, those where development spreads and regulations harmonize such that SEZs are no longer needed because the country has one common legal and regulatory standard for investment. Singapore is an example of the latter. Many countries have witnessed the success of China’s SEZs and have begun to emulate those practices, as seen in Vietnam and India. Through a lens of geopolitics and urbanization, SEZs contribute to the historical process of building empires and superpowers. The origin of any system story of imperial rise is industrial policy. In many ways, this harkens back to the European colonial era and the way cities connect to global supply chains and anchor a country’s growing economic weight and gravity in the world. In other words, geopolitical power begins with building a supply chain empire, and that begins with building cities. We really cannot and should not separate conversations about what constitutes or DECEMBER 2022 | 53
comprises a superpower in geopolitics from its urban foundations. The larger processes of urbanization, connectivity, and investment in urban infrastructure in Asia have intensely geopolitical dynamics and territorial consequences. In building a supply chain empire, there is always some resistance, and we are seeing this around the world, but particularly in Pakistan, South East Asia, and Africa. It is evidenced through the militarization of supply chains and particularly anti-Chinese protest in some of these regions.
The enormous investment in urban infrastructure across the Asian continent is further drawing young people to cities, and when projecting forward 10 to 20 years, we should question: which next set of cities will emerge as key hubs of commerce and diplomacy? The enormous investment in urban infrastructure across the Asian continent is further drawing young people to cities, and when projecting forward 10 to 20 years, we should question: which next set of cities will emerge as key hubs of commerce and diplomacy? These are the cities that will act as foundations of power for the countries or regions in which they reside. Many of these may be sitting at the intersecting lines of new Eurasian urban infrastructure. The answer to this question will also have an enormous territorial impact on Central Asian countries, becoming scenic, resource-rich passageways for the connectivity they enable between China and West Asia, the Gulf countries, and Europe. These seismic shifts in geopolitical power on the Eurasian continent and worldwide are all linked to the complex history of
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the Western politics of outsourcing and globalization in the 1950s and 1960s and the expansion of Asian megacities as the world’s factory floor. The dual processes of urbanization and globalization which have produced Asia’s megacities as the foundations of geopolitical power are now reshaping those regions and global urban development on a global scale. ***** Acknowledgments: This essay was adapted from the workshop “Geopolitics and Urbanisation in the Asia-Pacific” held by the Melbourne Centre for Cities on June 3, 2021. The Great Powers and Urbanization Project is a collaboration of global leaders in international and urban affairs: the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, the Melbourne Centre for Cities at the University of Melbourne, the Argentine Council for International Relations (Consejo Argentino para las Relaciones Internacionales), the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and the African Centre for Cities. About the author: Parag Khanna is Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap and author of MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us (2021), which was preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019).
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Investing in Africa’s Digital Transformation By Sundar Pichai
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few years ago, I was in Lagos to see Alphabet’s digital skills programs at work. There was excitement for the future of technology in Africa and all the jobs and opportunities it could bring. From jobseekers learning new skills to entrepreneurs building promising new apps and businesses, the people I met were deeply inspiring. These people were on my mind again when I addressed regional leaders at the African Union’s annual Business Forum this week. Although the continent is facing big challenges – from the ongoing pandemic to a difficult economic recovery – it also has plenty of reasons for optimism, led by its engineers, developers, and entrepreneurs. Africa is increasingly a place where innovation begins. There were more investment rounds for African tech start-ups last year than ever before. People everywhere now use mobile payment systems first developed in Kenya. Renewable energy solutions created in Africa are shaping a more sustainable future for us all. And thanks to the internet, African businesses can reach markets all over the world, while also providing solutions to Africa’s – and the world’s – most pressing challenges. This is meaningful to me personally. Growing up in India, my family had to wait for every new technology to come to us, from the television that gave us a view into other parts of the world, to the rotary phone that meant we could get test results faster. Today, India is exporting technologies to the world. Africa has the same opportunity. Despite having 18% of the global population, the continent currently accounts for just 0.4% of high-tech exports, and only 2% of the world’s broader service exports, which are now heavily reliant on technology. Boosting these exports will accelerate growth for the continent, much like it has in India. Fortunately, Africa is on the cusp of a digital transformation. Over the next five years, 300 million more people are coming online in Africa – many of them young,
entrepreneurial, and digitally savvy. The African internet economy has the potential to grow to $180 billion – roughly 5.2% of the continent’s GDP – by 2025.
Our megatrends don’t encompass all the world’s problems or even most of them, but we believe they cover the most pressing challenges the world will face in the coming decades. They are also a roadmap of what we need to focus on most intensively to help the future arrive well. Working in partnership with governments, companies like Google can play an important role in accelerating this shift. In 2020, we outlined some of those opportunities in our Digital Sprinters report, and in 2021 we committed an additional $1 billion to Africa over the next five years. Now, we are calling on others to make their own investments. We recommend focusing on four key areas that will ensure that the digital transformation benefits every African. First, we must help to expand affordable and reliable internet access throughout the continent. We have seen during the pandemic that digital connectivity is a lifeline, helping people find essential information and connect to critical services. Our Equiano subsea cable will bring faster, better-quality internet to more people, helping to bring down costs by more than 20%. Working with partners like Econet Wireless, our Taara team is deploying wireless optical communications links that use light to transmit information at super high speeds through the air, improving both affordability and connectivity. We are also focusing on lowering the barriers to smartphone adoption, including by working with Safaricom in Kenya to introduce that country’s first device financing plans. DECEMBER 2022 | 57
The second priority is to help African businesses of all sizes with their digital transformations. According to the Portulans Institute, business sophistication (defined as “knowledge workers, innovation linkages, and knowledge absorption”) lags well behind the availability of digital infrastructure. Closing that gap means enabling businesses to move online, training more people to pursue careers that depend on technology, and ensuring that companies take advantage of cloud computing. Companies should invest in products and solutions that are fit for Africa, and African governments need to adapt regulatory environments and their own development strategies to be digital-first. Small businesses need to be at the center of digitization and training efforts, as they employ around two-thirds of the continent’s formal workforce. A third priority is investing in African entrepreneurs. Where entrepreneurship flourishes, innovation and investment will follow. That is why we will be investing directly in African start-ups through a dedicated $50 million Africa Investment Fund, as well as through our global Black Founders Fund. We have already invested in SafeBoda – an app that connects passengers to a community of safe, trusted drivers – and we hope that other compa-
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nies will help to provide additional funding for start-ups across the continent. The final priority is to support nonprofits and institutions working to unlock the benefits of technology. For example, the AirQo team at Makerere University in Uganda is using artificial intelligence and sensors to monitor air quality. We are providing them with $3 million so that they can take their work beyond Kampala, as part of a broader $40 million commitment to help NGOs respond to challenges in their communities. Any company seeking to invest in Africa should be open to learning. Google’s presence on the continent is already helping us improve the technology that we build for everyone. Looking ahead, deeper partnerships will be key to ensuring that Africa’s digital progress is sustainable. We hope more companies will join us in these efforts, helping to ensure that every person in Africa can take advantage of the opportunities technology creates. ***** About the author: Sundar Pichai is CEO of Google and Alphabet. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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Surviving and Flourishing Amid Climate Change By Shane C. Szarkowski
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here is no more questioning that climate change is real. The disruption to our lives, already evident, has begun and will get worse. The energy transition is critical and must be accelerated. At the same time, disagreement over the severity and pace of climate change remains. Governments the world over have adopted disjointed policies—at odds with one another and often with themselves. Economies still rely on more traditional fossil fuels to remain solvent or, in many cases in the Global South, to develop enough to provide their citizens with even what we would consider the most basic of necessities. We all continue to rely on legacy energy infrastructure, which was expensive to lay down, often has decades of viability left, and which needs to continue operating for those remaining decades for investments to be recouped. Investment in green infrastructure is uneven and being left largely to private enterprise, with a lack of public policy support and regulation lending uncertainty as to how and where investments can have the most impact. Amid all this uncertainty—and in the backdrop of the urgency of climate change and the energy transition—how can we help the future to arrive well?
Disruption From Climate Change, Energy Transition Only Beginning Climate change isn’t a problem for tomorrow or next year. Climate change is our current reality. Considering this sampling of events in 2021 which studies show are directly linked to anthropogenic climate change: •
Severe flooding in Western Europe that killed hundreds.
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Wildfires in the western United States and Canada – with damages estimated at $70-$90 billion in the U.S. alone.
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The “heat dome” in the US Pacific Northwest and west part of Can-
ada, which likely killed more than a thousand. •
Extreme flooding in southern India, killed dozens, left tens of thousands homeless, and destroyed wide swaths of cropland.
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Rain, for the first time ever, at the Greenland ice summit.
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In 2020, global economic losses from natural disasters were $268 billion (only $97 billion of which was insured). Aon’s annual report (linked above) links these rising costs conclusively to climate change.
Climate change means more extreme weather, ecological damage, economic pain, and the loss of homes and livelihoods. The energy transition can disrupt our job markets, investment ecosystems, energy supplies, tax systems, and the development of poorer countries. The good news is that, in part because these effects are so immediately visible, there is now wide consensus – among populations, governments, and even leaders of polluting industries – that climate change is real, manmade, and an existential threat. We now have consensus that climate change is real, an imminent threat, and manmade—even from leaders of industries criticized for casting doubt on its severity. There are still some doubts about how genuine corporate and government strategies for fighting climate change are, but this is still progress. Incremental progress alone is not enough, however. Today’s climate disruptions are bad, but the latest projections from the DECEMBER 2022 | 63
IPCC tell us it’s going to get worse. Significantly worse. How much worse is up to us - how robustly can we address our emissions? But when we ask this question, we can’t neglect the follow on; how can we mitigate the painful disruptions brought about by our efforts to combat climate change? Climate change means more extreme weather, ecological damage, economic pain, and the loss of homes and livelihoods. The energy transition can disrupt our job markets, investment ecosystems, energy supplies, tax systems, and the development of poorer countries. These are the threats. What can we do?
How W2050 is Helping the Future Arrive Well Amid Climate Change Governments, corporations, and international institutions have laid out ambitious – if still somewhat undeveloped – strategies and targets for combating climate change. Saving Gaia—and ourselves— calls for more. Actions at a high level to increase investment and cooperation are wonderful – they should be applauded and accelerated. But we need something more. Something uncommon.
For all its ten years of existence, W2050 has been focused on uncommon collaborations, convening experts and stakeholders from a variety of spaces who would often otherwise never get a chance to compare perspectives and experiences on shared challenges. We know that we have to build better adaptation and resilience, and that to do so we need more and better cooperation among 64 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
private and public stakeholders. A coherent vision for the what the future will look like is necessary for investments to have their greatest impacts and for us to find ways to resettle and employ those who’ve lost their homes and livelihoods. Those investments can fuel the innovation we need to not only meet the challenges of a changing climate and energy transition, but to thrive in a future which is fundamentally different from what we know today. This is where World in 2050 comes in. For all its ten years of existence, W2050 has been focused on uncommon collaborations, convening experts and stakeholders from a variety of spaces – corporate executives, leaders of NGOs, policymakers, academics, and entrepreneurs – who would often otherwise never get a chance to compare perspectives and experiences on shared challenges. W2050 is also making it a priority to ensure our uncommon collaborations include experts and stakeholders from often overlooked regions and sectors. We believe that inclusiveness and a resolve to amplify often silenced perspectives is indispensable to mitigating disruptions from climate change and the energy transition – and it’s part of what makes our approach uncommon. For climate change and the energy transition, our approach include three initiatives. Convenings. In the past, W2050 hosted sideline events at major summits like the annual COP meetings and the World Economic Forum. COVID-19 disrupted this for us as much as you, but we spent 2020 and 2021 building new models for virtual and hybrid convenings that go beyond zoom. We’re very excited to be partnered with unleesh to host new series of iterative convenings, both virtual and in-person. Innovation Olympics. W2050 has for several years hosted an annual Innovation Olympics, where we identified social impact entrepreneurships that have a proven business model and are poised to make a real positive difference. In previous Innovation Olympics, we supported winners
by giving the access to Diplomatic Courier’s and W2050’s wide network of experts and by helping them to raise their profile and thereby attract investment. Moving forward, we are taking a more hands-on and proactive approach – but more on that later. Research & Publications. In collaboration with our network of partners and experts, W2050 and Diplomatic Courier have promulgated an impressive body of publications – amplifying a broad spectrum of perspectives on pressing issues as well as novel blueprints for change. This will continue. Indeed, we are building up our capacity to get more publications in the pipeline than ever before and are exploring ways to get those publications to a still wider audience. In addition, we are working to identify exciting thinkers you probably wouldn’t usually hear from – like this report from DisinfoLab – to carry out research addressing gaps we’ve identified within each megatrend. We have a fourth initiative, Innovation Labs, which currently is focused on other
megatrends but will expand over time. While we talk about and organize each of these separately, they operate synergistically. For example, Convenings (and our Innovation Labs) include not only our network of partners and experts, but winners of current and past Innovation Olympics. All three of these (Convenings, Innovation Labs, and Innovation Olympics) are informed and supported by our Research & Publications – but each of those three also provides source material for new Research and Publications. At World in 2050, we believe this uncommon approach is perhaps the most important element to ushering in a future that arrives well for all of us, and we’d love you to come along. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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Rebuilding Trust in the Institutions We Need to Meet the Future By Shane C. Szarkowski
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orld in 2050’s (W2050) mandate is simple, if difficult: help the future arrive well. This mandate is necessary specifically because we live in an era of great change and—while we believe a “new renaissance” is possible—there remains no guarantee we won’t be worse off in the future. Amid society-altering forces, it should surprise nobody that we are beset by fear and uncertainty. We are also beset by distrust—the very institutions we’ve relied on to structure our increasingly interconnected world, protect against calamity, and prosper are the targets of much of this distrust. Rightfully so. Our institutions have many clear failings and need to change dramatically if they are to help us navigate an uncertain future. Yet that very distrust impedes our ability to reform and rely on them. A megatrend decades in the making (accelerated by a pandemic and other crises) we’ve observed how hyper-partisanship and populism have put immense pressure in rule of law and democratic institutions. Rising inequality—made more acute by these recent crises—has further fueled distrust and populist sentiment, polarizing society and extending distrust across geographies and within alliances at a time when we must cooperate to meet shared challenges. In the absence of credible governance from state and civil society institutions, corporations are responding with more robust corporate governance strategies that increasingly see corporations taking key roles in the politics of global governance. This shift has been accelerated by pressure from institutional and activist investors, but there are concerns that when markets reward corporations for touting corporate governance strategies it encourages a kind of moral grandstanding more than a real shift to good corporate citizenship. Our multilateral institutions are aware of the need for reform, and efforts are underway to transform them to meet our evolving needs. Those efforts are hampered by societal dis-
trust as well as the self-serving nature of bad actors. How can we reimagine future institutions to regulate bad actors while regaining societal trust?
Society Is Telling Institutions How to Change Scholarship is at odds over how to explain the interaction of populist sentiment and institutional distrust. Demand-side explanations reference changing need and demands from citizens, while supply-side explanations argue existing institutions are becoming unable or unwilling to meet citizens’ needs and demands. This academic debate may be interesting, but both explanations speak to a shared conclusion. Rising populist sentiment and distrust in institutions signals the failure of institutions to meet the needs and demands of citizens—whether because the institutions have degraded or whether they’ve simply failed to keep up with the evolution of society.
Climate change means more extreme weather, ecological damage, economic pain, and the loss of homes and livelihoods. The energy transition can disrupt our job markets, investment ecosystems, energy supplies, tax systems, and the development of poorer countries. We cannot turn back the clock to a time when more people felt our shared institutions were trustworthy and useful. But we can try to understand where and how our institutions are falling short today, while changing how we think about institutions and governance to better imagine what institutions should look like tomorrow as well. We aren’t the only ones to think about what’s gone wrong and how to revitalize institutions. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic DECEMBER 2022 | 67
made these questions more prominent than ever, with institutional failures and distrust leading to things like vaccine hesitancy making human suffering and economic fallout worse than they needed to be. Our network of experts has been thinking of how, postpandemic, public and private governance can be reformed to avoid this kind of catastrophic failure in the future. The pandemic was a major disruptor, and it taught us what the costs can be if our institutions don’t have the capability or the moral authority to do their jobs. If we want the future to arrive well, we need to reimagine institutions that can meet the legion of potentially disastrous disruptions encapsulated within W2050’s megatrends.
Workshopping NextGen Institutions We Can All Believe In To regain societal trust and moral authority, the institutions of tomorrow need to do more than deliver needed services. One thing our partners and network of experts at W2050 talk about a lot is resilience. Usually, they’re talking about things like supply chains and energy systems. To futureproof our institutions, we need to think about resilience here as well. How can institutions be resilient against the degrading effects of populism? Whether you find supply-side or demand-side explanations of populism to be more compelling, open flows of communication with people around the world will be key to ensuring institutions not only understand what the most urgent needs are, but also how well they’re being met. This means rejecting the old top-down paternal model of institutions in favor of something more inclusive, with inputs from all segments of our global society. We need to find ways to better listen and respond to the disenfranchised and disappointed to ensure the trappings of inclusivity are genuine. Institutions can be resilient against the ills of distrust and lost efficacy by making them more accessible and responsive as compared to today’s model of elite-centric access and top-down decision-making. 68 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
That’s what we believe at W2050. So, what are we doing to help? For years we’ve been at the forefront of figuring out what international governance will look like in this century. While much of the world remains stuck in a 90’s style of paternalistic institutions-know-best and top-down solutions, we’ve been experimenting with and discussing whole-of-society approaches to governance. Most recently—as a virtual side convening to the 2020 Annual World Bank and IMF meetings—W2050 held its annual convening in partnership with Coeuraj (formerly Watershed Partners). Dozens of experts from a variety of sectors came together, utilizing the three horizons model, to talk about the circular economy and UN SDGs. From this collaboration we produced a February 2021 report, which synthesized key takeaways from the forum. These included robust discussion on how to make boundaries between organizations, institutions, and nations more porous to foster better communication and collaboration. Our experts agreed that to get there, we have to make space for all stakeholders—and especially those historically marginalized—have the space to collaborate and be heard to make institutions more effective and just. Not only did they workshop ways to foster this inclusivity, but they were then able to bring these synthesized learnings and broader perspectives back to their organizations and push for positive change. W2050 has for years regularly hosted highlevel side events at major global summits and forums. These summits, particularly as they resume some form of hybrid and inperson formats, provide the perfect setting for uncommon collaborations where we can bring together business leaders, policy makers, civil servants, IGO execs, and representatives from more marginalized groups to explore a better, shared future. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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Building Agility for the Future of War By Joshua Huminski
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n his new book “War Transformed”, Major General Mick Ryan of the Australian Army sets out to define how war is changing and – more importantly – how Western militaries need to prepare for these changes. It is an exceedingly timely book, and one that separates itself from its peers by focusing as much on what will not change as on what will. Instead of taking the well-trodden path of focusing on technology, Ryan’s work focuses instead on the ideas, institutions, and people that make up militaries as the fundamental elements of transformation. It is this at times almost contrarian approach that makes “War Transformed” (a copy of which was provided by the U.S. Naval Institute Press) particularly insightful and worth reading. Russia’s war on Ukraine brings the importance of the study of war into focus. At the time of this review’s drafting, the outcome of the war remains uncertain. Will Ukraine’s defenses hold, or will Kyiv succumb to the mass of Moscow’s onslaught? In war, nothing is certain except friction and death. From TikTok-driven open-source intelligence to Twitter-led propaganda meme wars to drone-coordinated anti-tank assaults, the battlefields of Ukraine are playing host to new ways of conducting warfare. At the same time, the Russian military is finding that the challenges written so eloquently by Carl and Marie von Clausewitz still apply. In war, everything is simple, but the simplest thing is the hardest. That friction can and will accumulate and grind the best laid plans to a near halt. Perhaps most importantly, the enemy has a say and that will—that incalculable measure of the human spirit—matters more than one can imagine. How else can one explain the scenes of heroism by the Ukrainian armed forces in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds or the everyday citizen putting down the tools of daily life and picking up the arms of war to defend their homeland? It is likely that war will never be fully understood. There will be endless theories about war and its conduct, but there will never be a grand unified theory—the efforts of
Clausewitz and others notwithstanding. But as with the science of physics, its study is necessary and continuous, especially as unlikely physics the laws governing the science of war are ever changing. To begin, “War Transformed” is a book that exclusively focuses on the profession of arms, and military transformation and adaptation. Ryan touches on related concepts such as national power, changing concepts of war and pace, and the need for joint-ness and integration. At its core, however, this is a book about the military itself.
There is a cottage industry of cyber experts predicting bloodless wars fought solely by machine proxies, or others who suggest that war could (or should) simply be privatized. One could be considered cynical for seeing profit-driven self-interest in the promotion of such narratives about war. This tight focus allows Ryan to explore critical topics, such as military education and professional development, that are often overlooked in discussions about the future of the armed forces. Too often books on the military are found occupying a strange middle ground—neither focused enough on that which makes the military unique, nor broad enough in scope to address the larger questions of national power with sufficient efficacy or depth. Ryan achieves that which he sets out to do—pen a book specifically about the armed forces. One thing that makes this book especially unique is that Ryan focuses almost as much on that which doesn’t change. War will remain a part of the human condition. Nation-states will seek to use military power to advance their poDECEMBER 2022 | 71
sition and compel adversaries to accept their political will. Militaries will remain the tool by which the strategies of deterrence and coercion are applied. There will continue to be a professional class of soldiers who will execute the political will of the nation-state. These truths seem to be obvious, but it is interesting to realize how quickly discussions about military power wander away from these core tenets. It is often the case that debates about war seem to suggest that nation-states will move beyond the need for hard power, seeking to compete elsewhere. There is a cottage industry of cyber experts predicting bloodless wars fought solely by machine proxies, or others who suggest that war could (or should) simply be privatized. One could be considered cynical for seeing profit-driven self-interest in the promotion of such narratives about war. Too often transformation fixates on technology. So many discussions on military transformation focus solely on kit—the technology of warfare. Every technology is seemingly transformative or revolutionary. This new widget will fundamentally reshape the battlefield. Hypersonics will accelerate conflict and render deterrence moot. Zero-day cyber exploits will nullify traditional warfare. Loitering munitions and drones have turned tanks into antiques. Oh, and we mustn’t forget artificial intelligence (AI) which will leave humans without a role on the battlefield at all. The future of war, Ryan argues, is largely unknowable. What matters more is not predicting the right path, but creating institutions that are flexible and agile enough to adapt to whatever changes come. This means empowering people to be innovative and training them to be flexible- ready to adopt good ideas from wherever they may come, even if from unconventional sources. It also means building institutions that incubate people and ideas into real substantive change. Having such a strategic culture will ensure that no matter what the future may offer up, the profession of arms will be positioned to respond in a timely manner. Beyond merely responding, the institution will be better placed to forecast and transform to anticipated strategic challenges. 72 | D IPLOM AT I C COURIE R
When Ryan finds his own voice, the book is exceedingly strong. Unfortunately, he too frequently relies on referencing other authors and studies. Ryan is an expert in his profession and should not be afraid to let that shine through. Moreover, while what Ryan outlines is eminently sensible and grounded, one wonders how practical it is to attempt to shift the leviathan that is the Department of Defense. Even shifting such a massive organization by a few degrees is no easy task. There are too many entrenched interests, too many layers of bureaucracy, and, until recently, arguably too little sense of urgency. Change-makers and their projects are often shunned, and careerism stands in the way of speaking truth to power. These issues and more all make real change difficult. Here, the U.S. Marine Corps serves as an example of making that difficult pivot. For an organization so steeped in tradition and formality, it has proven surprisingly agile in its pivot to the Indo-Pacific and the threat from China. Jettisoning its heavy tanks and re-learning the lessons of amphibious expeditionary warfare, the Corps under Commandants David Berger and Robert Neller has been exceedingly forwardleaning. The challenge is getting that kind of culture into Big Army, Big Navy, and Big Air Force (the Space Force’s culture remains very uncertain at this early stage). Ryan’s book is a timely addition to the study of the art and science of war, particularly as the U.S. military, but also its UK counterpart, pivot away from 20 years of low-intensity conflict in Southwest Asia to the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Europe. Whether or not the Department and Ministry of Defense, respectively, will heed his lessons and build a truly adaptable organization for the future is as unclear as how the war in Ukraine will end. ***** About the Author: Joshua Huminski is Diplomatic Courier’s Book Reviewer and the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Affairs at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.
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More Resilient Markets and Democracies through Better Gender Inclusivity By Barbara Langley & John Morrell
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omen make up at least 50% of all segments of society, including marginalized populations such as youth, religious or ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQI+ community. Empowering women economically makes markets more inclusive and resilient. It’s well-documented that women’s economic realities and experiences are often very different from men’s. This is, in part, due to gaps in women’s legal rights. In its 2021 Women, Business and Law report, the World Bank identified eight key areas where women are impacted by law: mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension. We must advocate for women’s rights and commercial interests to ensure their economic empowerment. Advocacy—whether aimed at public policy or public opinion—helps marginalized segments of the population make their voices heard, making possible more just laws, institutions, and social norms. The World Bank report touted the potential of Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) programs. These programs work to ensure equality of access for women and men when it comes to petitioning governments and thereby shaping institutions and policies. The World Bank explained such programs are “… likely to lead over time to more representative, and more inclusive, institutions and policy choices.” This suggests that any programs that help ensure equal access to opportunities and resources for excluded or marginalized population segments will help to make for more inclusive democracies. The United States Congress has prioritized women in foreign assistance through legislation such as the 2019 Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act (WEEE Act). The WEEE Act requires 50% of USAID resources supporting micro, small, and medium enterprises to target businesses owned, managed, or otherwise controlled by women. It also requires program and performance monitoring efforts to include goals with a gender disaggregated basis. Both the Trump and Biden Administrations have since championed women’s empowerment in their presidential budgets
through their Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) and Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) funds at USAID. Yet these measures and many others around the world remain insufficient to cultivate a supportive ecosystem for women’s economic empowerment and specifically to promote
Women’s economic empowerment is best achieved through a holistic approach based on three levels of entrepreneurial communities. At the individual level this holistic approach involves fostering an entrepreneurial mindset, leadership development, and empowerment. women in the private sector. Women’s economic empowerment is best achieved through a holistic approach based on three levels of entrepreneurial communities. At the individual level this holistic approach involves fostering an entrepreneurial mindset, leadership development, and empowerment. At a community level it involves building relationships by linking community actors and creating collaborative spaces. In the broader business ecosystem, it involves improving the environment for women in business by promoting entrepreneur-friendly policies, lowering barriers, and garnering community and official support. Women’s economic empowerment pays dividends because, as Boileau Loko and Mame Astou Diouf wrote in a Working Paper for the IMF, “in development economics, it is now fully acknowledged that educated women allocate a higher share of households’ resources to education and healthcare—two factors that are expected to boost productivity and growth in the long-run.” This means a growing investment in future generations. A 2016 report by UN Women highlighted this fact by explaining that “increasing the share of household inDECEMBER 2022 | 75
come controlled by women tends to increase spending on children’s education and health.” For example, in Ghana, the share of assets and the share of land owned by women are positively associated with higher food expenditures. In Brazil, women’s own nonlabor income has a positive impact on the height of their daughters. In China, increasing adult female income by 10 percent of the average household income increased the fraction of surviving girls by one percentage point and increased years of schooling for both boys and girls. In contrast, the World Bank finds that a comparable increase in male income had no statistically significant impact on survival rates and educational attainment for children.
Women now represent more than 40 percent of the global labor force, more than 45 percent of the agricultural workforce, and more than 50 percent of the world’s university students. For an economy to function at its potential, women should be engaged in activities that best utilize their skills and talents. When this is the case (women’s abilities are more optimally utilized), these workers are more productive. Conversely, when women’s labor is underused or misallocated – due to discrimination that prevents them from completing school, entering certain occupations, dealing with the burden of care issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, or otherwise earning the same incomes as men—productivity falls.
Women sacrifice present consumption in order to enhance the future earning potential of children. This is yet another way that economically empowering women builds economic resilience in emerging markets.
Clearly, expanding women’s access to inputs and means of business support drives down income inequality and reduces drag on economic growth. In addition to its impact on economic performance, greater inclusion of women directly contributes to greater economic diversification, which bolsters economic resilience. This is especially the case in emerging markets, which tend to have more concentrated economic structures.
One tool for empowering women is a Women’s Business Agenda (WBA)—adapted from U.S. Chamber of Commerce experiences and employed by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). The WBA has successfully been employed in such countries as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Other models showing big progress include networking programs and resource centers for women that provide business services, training, and mentorship opportunities. These activities and outlets are likely to drive change. A 2018 study by the Group of Seven (G7) Ministers and Central Bank Governors documented that improvements in gender equality can lead to greater diversification of output, exports, and means of production. Women in leadership positions can increase female labor force participation “by providing role models for other women, and by combating stereotypes. Once women are in charge, they can significantly change public attitudes toward women and, importantly, raise the aspirations parents have for their daughters and the aspirations teenage girls have for themselves,” as a 2009 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics reported.
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The fate of any democracy is tied to the role of women in that society. Reducing gender inequality in economic opportunity, entrepreneurial activity and access to resources boosts economic growth, makes economic growth more widely shared, and enhances economic productivity. It’s the right way to build a better future for all people. ***** About the Authors: Barbara Langley is the Director for CIPE’s Center for Women’s Economic Empowerment (CWEE) John Morrell is the Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific at CIPE. Editor’s Note: The authors wish to thank Nora Wheelehan and Connie Gonzalez for their contributions to the article.
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When Democracy Is Not an Option, Women Suffer the Most By Lisa Gable
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hat if you lost the right to be called by your name? It is incomprehensible that under another system of government and societal framework, women could be nameless, known only as “daughter of [fill in the blank]” or “wife of [fill in the blank].” However, that was the reality in the Taliban ruled Afghanistan prior to democratization after 9/11, as the society was and is today dominated by male figures who manipulate a legal framework to deny a woman’s identity. In a recent conversation with Naheed A. Farid, a member of the Afghan parliamentin-exile, Naheed told me about her 2002 campaign for public office, which centered around the theme: “Where Is My Name?” In Taliban ruled Afghanistan, women could be denied the right to be called by their name or have their name listed on their child’s birth certificate. In many cases, a woman’s name would not be listed on their own wedding invitations or even at their graves as it is considered disrespectful to men. Naheed stepped forward to run for office with a goal of opening commercial and educational opportunities for women. She realized though that she needed to first address a basic human right of simply allowing women and girls to claim their identity. Thanks to her tenacious work and that of her colleagues, the inclusion of a mother’s name in national identity decree passed in 2019. However, the legal frameworks, census law, and family law continued to be used by men to support name denial even after the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. Today, the situation is worse. History shows the treatment of women in authoritarian countries is the worst form of bullying. From verbal abuse and demeaning societal rules to sexual advances and abuse, it is ultimately a power play enacted to diminish women, strip them of their power, and reduce the value of their work. Whether in a situation of domestic violence or within the realm of a dictatorial regime, violence against women is aimed at lessening their value, their right to be
acknowledged, and their right to be heard. Yet, brave women like Naheed continue to speak out, and we must support them in doing so.
As democracy is on the decline, the use of sexual assault to dominate is on the rise. In Belarus, human rights organizations estimate that there are between 70 and possibly 100 women dissidents who have been jailed for daring to speak out against the Russian backed regime. The fall of Kabul last August was heart wrenching as U.S. leaders received pleading texts from women asking for help as they and their families tried to flee. Mothers knew that men would once again treat women and girls as commodities, not human beings. For example, a great fear was that young daughters would be forced into marriage at a young age. In November, UNICEF drew attention to the rising trend: “We have received credible reports of families offering daughters as young as 20 days old up for future marriage in return for a dowry.” As democracy is on the decline, the use of sexual assault to dominate is on the rise. In Belarus, human rights organizations estimate that there are between 70 and possibly 100 women dissidents who have been jailed for daring to speak out against the Russian backed regime. Eurozine writes of a “sisterhood behind bars” which includes businesswomen, elected officials, and bloggers. The BBC has noted these dissidents are subjected to extreme forms of torture, including rape. With Xi Jinping’s rise in China, we are also hearing more reports of aggression against women. The use of degradation to control DECEMBER 2022 | 79
minority populations horrify the West as systematic rape of Uyghur women in reeducation camps has been covered extensively by the BBC. Sports figures watched in stunned amazement when Chinese tennis star, Peng Shuai, “disappeared” after accusing the former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. She emerged later with controlled interviews prior to and during the Olympics. I question whether Eileen Gu understands she has made a Faustian bargain as she renounced her American citizenship for financial gain and fame. Today, women fight bravely in Ukraine to protect their children and their freedom. They sacrifice everything for their values. Organizations like the International Republican Institute’s Women’s Democracy Network, the National Democratic Institute, and others have maintained a global network of women who make things happen on behalf of other women. When our freedom is at risk, we lay aside our political differences to give our daughters and their children the opportunity to live in free societies, and we pray for the women of Ukraine who show incredible resolve as they fight for their freedom. As Nobel Prize Winner Pearl Buck said: “For no country is a true democracy whose women have not an equal share in life with men, and until we realize this, we shall never achieve a real democracy on earth.” ***** About the Author: Lisa Gable is a Diplomatic Courier Advisory Board member and WSJ and USA Today best-selling author of “Turnaround: How to Change Course When Things Are Going South” (IdeaPress Publishing, October 5, 2021).
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Education Has Let Us Down, Let Us Build It Up By Shane Szarkowski
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hen it comes to education, we have pretty high expectations. Promises were made – education helps us understand the world more and make it better. It helps us find better paying and more fulfilling work. It improves our social standing, regardless of who our parents were or what they did. Education, we were promised, would break down barriers by empowering youth and encouraging equity. By and large, however, our educational institutions have failed to deliver on these promises. That failure was made clearer – and more critical – by the pandemic.
Liberalism’s “Rising Tide” Failed Too Many Boats There was a common refrain during the first decade of the 2000’s. “A rising tide lifts all boats.” We now know that aphorism, if not outright wrong, is at least grossly misleading. Whether we’re talking regional disparities or cleavages within our own societies, we know that in creating economic prosperity vast segments of each society were left behind. The U.S. was one of the biggest winners of post-Cold War liberalism, but even there the prosperity gap has only grown. It’s worse in places in the Global South. These failures span from early childhood education to higher ed and lifelong learning. Our children are being let down by outdated models of education that aren’t preparing them for what society and the workplace demand. The skills children need to acquire today are fundamental things like social and emotional skills, learning/mental agility, and empathy. These skills will not only help them grow up to be happier and more capable in our rapidly evolving societies, but to meet the needs of labor markets that are increasingly beset by crises. In the realm of higher education and lifelong learning, we were told that getting a university degree was key to succeeding in life and climbing social classes. The truth is darker – institutions of higher education are anything but places of social equity. Research shows that increasing income in-
equality is a powerful driver in increasing university tuition, in turn depressing enrollment in these institutions among the less wealthy. To reap the promised benefits of higher education, students need to already have access to an array of tools and resources that the less advantaged – whether due to poverty, ethnicity, religion, or other minority status – are unlikely to have.
Talent is universal, but opportunity and access are not – some parts of the world are still iterating on old models because that is all they have real access to. How do we solve the problems of societies where entire segments of the population aren’t allowed real access to education full stop? And when they do get into university, students are leaving these institutions with degrees that don’t give them the skills the labor market needs – so they’re forced to take on additional debt reskilling and upskilling. The promise of education is falling flat, and the numbers bear it out. Millennials are the first generation to be worse off than the previous generation and student debt levels are out of control (in the U.S., at least.).
The Education and Skills Marketplace, Disrupted Labor markets require skills that neither our antiquated early childhood education nor higher education institutions are providing. The problem isn’t a hidden one, and disruption caused by the pandemic made it more visible than ever. It’s not that there is no work being done to address the learning and skills gaps, but as is often the case, technological innovation is outpacing policy.
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Companies are building their own platforms to upskill, reskill, and just generally credential their workforce. This credentialling helps employees – many of whom wouldn’t be able to attend university on their own – build the skills portfolios they need to succeed, though often these credentials may not transfer well outside a corporate family. Market intelligence firms like HolonIQ are examining the current and future states of education and how they interact with the wider economy through community-driven research initiatives. Edtech is innovating around social and emotional learning (SEL) for young people with the goal of improving overall mental health, societal well-being, and readiness for the workplace of the future.
Technology is working with education institutions, innovators, and communities to use blockchain to empower students, unlocking opportunities for social mobility through student-owned learning records.
Exponential tech is having its impact as well. Innovators are working on how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help current and potential employees identify the marketable skills they already have and develop skills they want. A consortia of academic and professional organizations is using blockchain to develop a permanent, verifiable skills credentialing system intended to help address a skills gap, which is only expected to grow as AI continues to disrupt labor markets.
Talent is universal, but opportunity and access are not – some parts of the world are still iterating on old models because that is all they have real access to. How do we solve the problems of societies where entire segments of the population aren’t allowed real access to education full stop? What about “advanced” economies where the prosperity gap limits access? What about refugees and displaced populations – which are expected to grow calamitously in the face of climate change and conflict? Can we solve these while contributing to a ballooning trillion-dollar ed-tech market? We have to. At W2050, we believe that the way forward is interdisciplinary collaboration to better democratize solutions, in part by elevating marginalized voices to better understand and mitigate unintended consequences of our innovations.
There are some exciting solutions being worked on, but we must be cautious. Adopting tech without considering the continuing place of education in this evolving skills marketplace will have unintended consequences. Education is a millennia-old institution and there are good reasons for that. Better conceived education and more equitable access to educational institutions remain the best way to address the prosperity and skills gaps. For that future to manifest, though, we need education policy and our academic institutions to catch up.
Helping the Future of Education Arrive Well First, let’s acknowledge that some good work is being done to update how we learn. The pandemic brought the benefits of hybrid learning environments into sharp focus. In the U.S., the Office of Education 84 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
This kind of collaboration is invaluable. That’s why World in 2050 is approaching the future of education, skills, and work from an innovation lab/interdisciplinary perspective. Too often, innovation for the future of education/learning is being siloed – and this is too important to mess up. Innovators need to talk to each other and to learning institutions and policymakers, otherwise we risk seeing inequalities widen. That’s one lesson of the pandemic – we don’t lack the tech to do better, we lack equitable access.
***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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Democracy Is the Next Identity Politics By Andrés Velasco
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wenty years ago, while standing in line at a Harvard cafeteria, I overheard one student say to another, “It is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust!” What could that be, I wondered. The Rwandan genocide? Cambodia’s killing fields? South American juntas causing opponents to “disappear” by throwing them into the ocean from helicopters? Eventually, the answer came: Eating meat was the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, and Harvard bureaucrats the guilty party for not providing sufficient vegetarian and vegan meal options. I found myself recalling that moment as I watched videos of Russian shells falling on Ukrainian apartment blocks, schools, and maternity wards. President Vladimir Putin’s deliberate flattening of cities in an attempt to break Ukraine’s heroic resistance is surely a war crime, though not yet on the scale of genocide. I would like to think that those university students I overheard, and their successors today, would recognize the moral chasm between Putin’s heinous actions and the petty sin of enjoying a burger with fries. In recent years many young citizens of rich democracies have been in a funk over the virtues of democracy and liberalism. Rather than fighting for survival, they have been skirmishing over pronouns. Rather than fearing that something they said on a bus could cause armed men to drag them out of bed in the middle of the night, they have worried that misspeaking in the classroom could earn them social-media opprobrium. But Putin’s atrocities now seem suddenly to have put everything into perspective. Yes, many Western countries have a colonial past and a racist present. And, yes, rising income inequality in some of them has hollowed out the middle class and betrayed the promise of equal opportunity for all. But while democracies frequently come up short, they do not terrorize their own people, or send tanks to subjugate democratic neighbors. Moreover, life in liberal democracies – which today exist not only in the old West but also in Eastern Europe and South America, as
well as swaths of Africa and Asia – is less nasty, brutish, and short than ever. Liberalism has always been a “moral adventure,” in Adam Gopnik’s lovely phrase, because it aims – and, more often than not, succeeds – at making the world “less cruel” by “expanding the right to access a broader range of pleasures and possibilities for other people.”
Liberalism has always been a “moral adventure,” in Adam Gopnik’s lovely phrase, because it aims – and, more often than not, succeeds – at making the world “less cruel” by “expanding the right to access a broader range of pleasures and possibilities for other people.” To those of us who grew up under dictatorial regimes whose goons could drag you out of bed in the middle of the night, these truths have always seemed absurdly self-evident. Putin’s painful reminder of this – for anyone who needed reminding – is now reshaping global politics. Former US President Donald Trump is not the only authoritarian populist embarrassed by his links to Putin. Shamefaced politicians can be found from Ankara to Zagreb. As the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen prepares to contest the first round of France’s presidential election on April 10 in an attempt to unseat incumbent Emmanuel Macron, her campaign operatives must be feverishly tracing – and are now trying to explain away – every last bit of fulsome praise their boss once directed at the Kremlin strongman. While Chinese leaders may fantasize about a stalemate between Russia and the West that ends up weakening both, China is also a likely loser from the Ukraine conflict. Chinese leaders’ refusal to condemn Putin makes them look less credible by the day. Even more DECEMBER 2022 | 87
worryingly for Chinese policymakers, their country’s appeal as a development model is waning. Some African and Asian leaders, impressed by China’s capable state bureaucracy and growing wealth, may have been willing to look the other way when President Xi Jinping persecuted the country’s ethnic and religious minorities. But do they really want to be photographed next to Xi knowing he could invade Taiwan and turn himself into another Putin?
The European Union, seldom successful at pursuing a unified foreign policy, now speaks with a single, clear voice, ably led by Germany’s new “traffic light” coalition. NATO, which Macron described in 2019 as “brain-dead,” suddenly looks energized and likely to acquire new members. The European Union, seldom successful at pursuing a unified foreign policy, now speaks with a single, clear voice, ably led by Germany’s new “traffic light” coalition. And US President Joe Biden is finally acting like the kind of global leader his lifetime of foreign-policy experience qualifies him to be. After the debacle in Afghanistan, it was unclear whether rich democracies had any moral backbone left. Their actions since Russia’s tanks rumbled into Ukraine show that they do. But there is another, subtler process at work. Over the past decade, the world’s autocrats – and leaders of the charitably-labeled illiberal democracies – have amassed power by exploiting identity politics. Locals against immigrants, the cultural majority against racial or religious minorities, or the people against the elite – no cleavage was too repugnant if it could be manipulated for political gain. Today, autocrats are about to be confronted by a different kind of identity politics. Start with Ukraine, once divided between its Russian-speaking east and Ukrainianspeaking west, but now increasingly united 88 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
against Putin’s aggression. Only the supremely stone-hearted can fail to be moved by the sight of Ukrainian women berating armor-clad Russian soldiers, or of slightly hunched Ukrainian pensioners learning to march and fire a weapon. Superior morale is so far enabling the defending army to contain a larger Russian force endowed with far greater firepower. A shared identity is also emerging among citizens of other democracies. Many German, Hungarian, and Polish families that until last month were complaining about immigration are now tidying up spare bedrooms to receive displaced Ukrainians. South Koreans and Japanese may still be separated by history, but they are members of the same coalition against barbarous aggression. In Latin America, leftist leaders who are not exactly fans of US foreign policy – new Chilean President Gabriel Boric is an example – have categorically denounced Putin’s war. Divisive blood-and-soil identity politics will now be challenged by a noble – and increasingly global – strand of identity politics based on the liberal values of freedom, dignity, and respect for human rights. In 2019, Putin claimed that “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose” and “become obsolete,” because it “has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.” By invading Ukraine, he has begun to prove the opposite. ***** About the Author: Andrés Velasco, a former presidential candidate and finance minister of Chile, is Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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Will Exponential Tech Be Our Doom or Salvation? By Shane Szarkowski
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his is the final installment from a five-part series explaining World in 2050’s (W2050) megatrends. If you’ve been reading these, there’s a few themes you may have noticed are consistent throughout. We’re undergoing dramatic and rapid change everywhere, and each megatrend encapsulates a set of interrelated transitions. Those transitions are not just dramatic and fast— they’re also daunting. Handled wrong, the world will be a darker place in the decades to come but handled right there are some incredible opportunities for improving our world. This is true for each of our megatrends, but it is arguably far truer for this fifth megatrend—Exponential Technologies Radically Reshaping the World. Reflect on that for a moment and it’s easy to see why—exponential tech plays a key role in each of the previous four megatrends: potentially confounding, potentially uplifting, or both. If you’re not quite sure what we mean by “exponential technology,” you can find a great explanation here. Put simply, exponential technology is that technology which is expanding in capability, enabling change, and disrupting systems at a pace that grows, well, exponentially.
Exponential Tech as a Villain It’s in the name. Exponential technology is the kind of technological innovation which proceeds at an exponential pace and drives change at a similar pace. There’s a lot to be excited about. Blockchain, AI, machine learning, digitalization—they’re changing the world and driving the fourth industrial revolution. The problem is that good regulation struggles to keep up, while selfish or downright bad actors seek to use these innovations for their own benefit—and that doesn’t equate to our good. Artificial Intelligence is being abused by autocrats to expand surveillance, censorship, and all manner of repression. Digitalization helps hackers to disrupt our infrastructure and steal our identities. Cryptocurrencies boost anonymity and underpin some very
ugly practices on the darknet—a whole range of cybercrime including money laundering and human trafficking. That doesn’t even touch on broader social ills you’ve heard so much about - mis- and disinformation, deep fakes, echo chambers, and the like.
One thing the potential and real harms of exponential technology makes clear is that every segment of “spaceship earth” is vulnerable. If our societies are fragmented and we can’t trust our institutions, then the promise of exponential tech will benefit only a few and many of us will be worse off than ever. Speaking to W2050’s megatrends, exponential technology is a big part of the dangers espoused in several. Societal distrust and fragmentation is the most obvious. Populism is on the rise, and it’s making us more fragmented and distrustful of one another. This growing tribalism is partly due to economic and geopolitical precarity, but it is amplified by the echo chambers that social media helps create as well as disinformation spread by selfish actors. When the digital revolution was young, we were enamored of the possibilities for bringing the world together— but we’ve experienced something very different. We can share ideas more openly and rapidly but rather than building common ground in many cases we trust our neighbors less than ever. For much the same reason, exponential technology is a culprit in making us trust our governance institutions less. A hallmark of populism is the tendency to distrust our
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established governance institutions. Populist politics, amplified by mis- and disinformation, poses a threat to national governance institutions as well as supranational institutions like the EU and IGOs like the UN. More broadly, the abuse of AI, digitalization, and blockchain increases uncertainty and we—justly—feel that our institutions have let us down. After all, good policy is typically outpaced by technological innovation.
The pandemic taught us a lot about the role of tech in creating more resilient education systems, and if we can ensure equitable access then EdTech is poised to bring better future-focused education to everybody. As for climate change and the future of education and work, the impact of exponential technology is less obvious but still very real. In both cases, we need to rely on our institutions and one another to bring about the best future possible. Abuse of exponential technology undermines that. Misinformation has for decades made many of us dubious that climate change is a real problem, and it continues to muddy the waters on the best way forward. The adoption of exponential technology for our education systems and labor markets has in some cases exacerbated existing inequalities. We learned that access to technology is a big problem for education during the pandemic, even in rich countries—and the problem is far worse in the Global South. Education gaps will only exacerbate the inability of sections of society to participate meaningfully in the labor market.
Exponential Tech as a Hero It doesn’t have to be this way. We’ve spoken about reforming institutions and rebuilding societal trust. Beyond that, all the things that excite us about the potential 92 | D IPLOM AT I C COURIE R
of exponential technology remains true. It not only lets us keep in touch with friends and family no matter where they are, it empowers us to turn strangers from far-flung lands into colleagues and friends. We have access to information—if we have the media literacy to sort the good from the bad—that is unprecedented. Our institutions can use digital tech to make services more accessible—look at Estonia as a great example— and they can use things like AI and blockchain to do their jobs infinitely better. As for climate change and the energy transition, we must rely on exponential technology to avoid catastrophe. AI already plays a key role in monitoring and quantifying climate change. Digital twin technology is a fundamental part of making both clean energy and legacy fossil fuel energy more efficient. Nearly every aspect of mitigating the worst impacts of climate change and accelerating the energy transition does or will rely on exponential technology. The positive potential of exponential technology on the future of education is even more clear. The pandemic taught us a lot about the role of tech in creating more resilient education systems, and if we can ensure equitable access then EdTech is poised to bring better future-focused education to everybody. Investment in EdTech is surging, research suggests it could even play a powerful role in bolstering social and emotional learning. Government institutions, meanwhile, are working with private enterprise to innovate ways to build better and more equitable education outcomes through blockchain. Companies are also using blockchain to better identify and credential skills beyond what’s shown in your resume or degree.
Mitigating the Scary, Amplifying the Positive How do we circle the square and resolve this disconnect between the hurtful and helpful aspects of exponential technology? The answer is simple, but quite tricky. Helping the future arrive well comes down
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to good regulation and smart innovation. At W2050, we believe a big part of the solution will come through collective intelligence—a central component to our innovation labs. Techpreneurs are doing exciting things, but they often operate in bubbles. Governments and NGOs are already bringing together stakeholders to work with entrepreneurs to burst those bubbles. That’s a great start, but we need more of that—and we need to make sure that we’re getting a true diversity of perspectives so we’re not just forming a bigger bubble. The pitfalls of exponential technology are many and they’re not always obvious. How different iterations of exponential technology can cause harm differs on geography and social situation. Inclusive collective intelligence ensures that hard-learned lessons from often marginalized spaces can be taken into consideration as we propose targeted ways to use exponential tech for good. This requires us to put techpreneurs, regulators, investors, academics, and community stakeholders together. It also requires us to be thoughtful about where they come from—that way we do not run the risk of ignoring hidden harms in favor of chasing easy gains. One thing the potential and real harms of exponential technology makes clear is that every segment of “spaceship earth” is vulnerable. If our societies are fragmented and we can’t trust our institutions, then the promise of exponential tech will benefit only a few and many of us will be worse off than ever. If we work together as a crew, though, even the sky isn’t a limit. ***** About the author: Shane Szarkowski is the Managing Editor of Diplomatic Courier and Executive Director of World in 2050.
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War in a World that Stands for Nothing By Slavoj Žižek
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he so-called oligarchs in Russia and other ex-communist countries are a bourgeois counterpart to what Marx called the lumpen-proletariat: an unthinking cohort susceptible to political manipulation because its members have no class consciousness or revolutionary potential of their own. Unlike the proletariat, however, the lumpen-bourgeoisie who emerged in these countries from the late 1980s onward control capital – lots of it – thanks to wild “privatization” of stateowned assets. An exemplary case is Rok Snežic, a collaborator and friend of Slovenia’s right-wing prime minister, Janez Janša. An “independent tax adviser,” Snežic helps Slovene companies redomicile in the lower-tax jurisdiction of Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia and Herzegovina). He apparently has no private possessions, and he has erased his own past tax bills by declaring bankruptcy. Yet Snežic also cruises around in new luxury cars and has the means to pay for jumbo billboard ads. He is officially employed by a company owned by his wife, where he receives a monthly salary of Euro 37,362 ($40,346) in cash. But “normal” capitalism also generates a lumpen-bourgeoisie. Snežic is not so different from Donald Trump, who similarly thrives precisely because he stands for nothing, motivated solely by money and the trappings of material wealth. Market values have also determined the contours of Russia’s war in Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to have had a crash course in how global capitalism and democracy really work. Since the start of the war, Europe has sent Russia almost $40 billion in payments for oil and gas, prompting his observation that Western countries are more concerned about rising energy prices than Ukrainian lives. The capitalist market – the one that has been fueling the Russian war engine – has forsaken Ukraine.
Ending this bloody trade would require governments to abandon their reliance on market mechanisms and start organizing energy supply directly, as would addressing the global food crises that Russia’s war is generating. (In addition to being two of the world’s biggest wheat exporters, Russia and Ukraine are also major sources of
Given that Western solidarity is limited by economic interests, the Ukrainians will have to accept that “defending Europe” is not enough. Ukraine is also defending the Russian people from the self-destructiveness of their president, Vladimir Putin, and his lumpen-bourgeoisie. chemical fertilizers for Europe.) Paradoxically, only measures recalling the newborn Soviet Union’s “war communism” can save Ukraine and preserve Western power. After all, Russia is coordinating with China not only to challenge the West geopolitically but also to depose the US dollar and the euro as global currencies. Given that Western solidarity is limited by economic interests, the Ukrainians will have to accept that “defending Europe” is not enough. Ukraine is also defending the Russian people from the self-destructiveness of their president, Vladimir Putin, and his lumpen-bourgeoisie. In a recent commentary published by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA News, Timofey Sergeytsev presents the full scope of the Kremlin’s genocidal project in Ukraine. The basic premise is that Ukraine needs to be “denazified,” and thus de-Europeanized, because “a significant part of the people – most likely the majority – has been mastered and drawn into the Nazi regime in its politics. As such, the DECEMBER 2022 | 95
hypothesis, ‘the people are good, and the government is bad’ does not work.” Sergeytsev not only equates Ukrainian politics with Nazism. He also claims that “ukronazism” poses an even greater threat to the world and Russia than Hitlerite Nazism did. Even the name “Ukraine” must be eliminated.
Western imperial powers’ brutal exploitation of the Global South is a truth that must never be forgotten. But it is strange to hear such talk from Russia, with its long history of such behavior. So, Russia plans to do with Ukraine what Bertolt Brecht describes in his 1953 poem “The Solution”: dissolve the people and elect another. By reading Sergeytsev’s mad ravings alongside Putin’s claim that Lenin invented Ukraine, we can discern the current Russian position. Ukraine has two fathers: Lenin, who invented it, and Hitler, who inspired today’s “ukronazis” to actualize Lenin’s invention. What, then, does this imply for Russia’s geopolitical situation? According to Sergeytsev: “Russia has a high potential for partnerships and allies with countries that the West has oppressed for centuries, and which are not going to put on its yoke again. Without Russian sacrifice and struggle, these countries would not have been liberated. The denazification of Ukraine is at the same time its decolonization, which the population of Ukraine will have to understand as it begins to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence of the so-called European choice.” 96 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
In other words, Russia must radically reorient, breaking its links with the West to forge new ties with all those countries that were brutally exploited by Western colonial powers. It is Russia that will lead a global process of decolonization. Western imperial powers’ brutal exploitation of the Global South is a truth that must never be forgotten. But it is strange to hear such talk from Russia, with its long history of such behavior. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great conquered southeastern Ukraine and territory from Siberia to Alaska to Northern California. Now, we are told that Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine will be “decolonized” by way of…Russian colonization. Territories will be liberated against the will of their people (who will have to be re-educated or otherwise dissolved). If a new world war is to be avoided, it will be through a “hot peace,” with massive military investments sustaining a fragile new balance of power. The fragility of the situation stems not just from conflicting economic interests but also from conflicting interpretations of reality, which is not just about settling facts. But simply trying to prove that Russian claims are false misses the point made by Aleksandr Dugin, Putin’s court philosopher: “Post-modernity shows that every so-called truth is a matter of believing. So we believe in what we do, we believe in what we say. And that is the only way to define the truth. So we have our special Russian truth that you need to accept.” Faith, it seems, overrides knowledge. According to the “special Russian truth,” Russia’s soldiers left behind no corpses of brutalized civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities and towns; Western propagandists supposedly staged those atrocities. Given these circumstances, Westerners must stop proposing that Zelensky meet with Putin to negotiate a peace settlement. That is a fool’s errand. Any eventual negotiations will have to be conducted by low-
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er-level bureaucrats. Putin and his inner circle are criminals who must be ignored as much as possible. Ultimately, a significant share of the Russian population must see this. In the former Yugoslavia, corrupt policemen were the butt of many jokes. In one of them, a policeman returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife alone in bed, half-naked and aroused. Suspecting that her lover is hiding under the bed, he bends down and looks. A few seconds later, he pops back up, mumbles, “Everything’s okay, nobody is there,” and quickly shoves a wad of banknotes into his pocket. In a way, all of us are that policeman, accepting misery and humiliation as the price of some form of surplus enjoyment. In Russia, the suffering population is compensated not with banknotes but with cheap patriotic pride. And in the West, we allow the market to dictate the strength of our commitment to human rights in Ukraine and elsewhere. ***** About the Author: Slavoj Žižek, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School, is International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London and the author, most recently, of Heaven in Disorder (OR Books, 2021). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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A Perfect Storm for Developing Countries By Ngaire Woods
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hrough no fault of their own, developing countries face a perfect storm of famine, political upheaval, and debt crises. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Western-led sanctions it triggered are partly to blame, as are COVID-19 lockdowns in advanced economies, which deprived poor countries of vital tourism and export revenue. Millions of lives are now at risk, but mitigation is possible. It should start at this month’s spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Policymakers have much to address – starting with spiraling food prices. The RussiaUkraine conflict, involving countries that between them supply 29% of the world’s wheat, has contributed to a 67% increase in wheat prices since the beginning of this year. Export bans imposed by other wheat producers are also fueling price increases, as is a fertilizer shortage because of reduced supplies from Belarus and Russia. Unsurprisingly, famine is spreading. The first countries to be hit are those that were in desperate straits prior to Russia’s invasion, including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Rapidly joining them are countries that rely on imported grain and were already facing acute food insecurity, such as Djibouti, Lesotho, Mozambique, Burundi, Madagascar, El Salvador, Lebanon, Honduras, Eswatini, Guatemala, and Namibia.
refugee camps, and elsewhere. In March, large-scale protests erupted in countries including Cameroon, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Spain. Governments that can take preventive action are already doing so. Egypt, for example, which imports around 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, recently introduced a price cap to counter the soaring price of unsubsidized bread (the government already subsidizes bread for most of the population). The government also announced an economic aid package totaling 130 million Egyptian pounds ($7 million). These measures were made possible by assistance from the IMF and Saudi Arabia. But many countries have yet to receive such help.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict, involving countries that between them supply 29% of the world’s wheat, has contributed to a 67% increase in wheat prices since the beginning of this year. Export bans imposed by other wheat producers are also fueling price increases.
United Nations World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley recently issued a stark warning: “If you think we’ve got hell on earth now, you just get ready. If we neglect northern Africa, northern Africa’s coming to Europe. If we neglect the Middle East, [the] Middle East is coming to Europe.”
Failure to cooperate is driving famine and conflict. Astonishingly, global stocks of rice, wheat, and maize, the world’s three major staples, are apparently at historic highs. Even stocks of wheat, the commodity most affected by the Ukraine war, are “well above levels during the 2007-08 food-price crisis,” while estimates suggest that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the invasion.
Rising food prices and hunger will make riots and political upheaval more likely. Even before the Ukraine war began, people had been plunged into crisis in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, Myanmar, Syrian
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capital markets, trade and supply-chain disruptions, depressed remittances, and a historic surge in refugee flows. Developing-country debt has soared to a 50-year high, at about 250% of government revenues. About 60% of countries that were eligible for the pandemic-related G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) are experiencing or at high risk of debt distress.
About 60% of countries that were eligible for the pandemicrelated G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) are experiencing or at high risk of debt distress. Moreover, slower global growth and rising inflation, together with tighter financial conditions in richer countries, are spurring capital outflows from developing economies, forcing them to devalue their currencies and increase interest rates. As World Bank President David Malpass recently noted, “never have so many countries experienced a recession at once.” Malpass added that advanced economies’ stimulus policies have helped to make matters worse by fueling price rises and increasing inequality around the world. Finding a genuinely global solution to these problems is now vital. In past debt crises, rich countries have used the IMF and World Bank to push the adjustment burden onto developing economies, arguing that they must undertake reforms before receiving assistance. But the most potent forces buffeting indebted low-income economies today are global and beyond their control – and IMF and World Bank member countries must pool resources and cooperate to address them. The good news is that powerful shareholders in these institutions have proven capable of collective action. Last August, for example, they agreed to a new $650 billion allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs, the IMF’s reserve asset). 100 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
But, because SDRs are distributed according to countries’ IMF quotas, most of the allocation went to the largest economies. Worse still, major IMF and World Bank shareholders have failed to channel resources to where they are most needed. Instead, to limit their possible exposure to any losses, they keep insisting on conditions that prevent rapid deployment. This approach also threatens to hinder the IMF’s new Resilience and Sustainability Trust and the World Bank Group’s emergency financing. A far bolder collective approach is now required. The United States, China, Japan, the European Union, and the United Kingdom depend on global security and prosperity. They must work together to prevent famine, conflict, and a developing-country debt crisis that will tip the world into recession. They can prevent famine by acting in concert to calm global wheat and other grain markets and to take measures to keep exports flowing. They can reduce the risk of conflict by not hobbling emergency IMF and World Bank assistance with conditionality. And they can build on the DSSI by creating a debt-restructuring mechanism in which they all participate. Two core elements are crucial to managing today’s developing-country crisis. Powerful countries must refrain from beggar-thyneighbor trade, fiscal, and monetary policies that wreak havoc on developing economies. And they must use their combined resources in the IMF and the World Bank to act quickly and unconditionally to avert disaster. The challenges facing poorer countries are unprecedented. And that means the cooperative response from richer economies must be, too. ***** About the Author: Ngaire Woods is Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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A Better Globalization Might Rise from Hyper-Globalization’s Ashes By Dani Rodrik
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he post-1990s era of hyper-globalization is now commonly acknowledged to have come to an end. The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have relegated global markets to a secondary and at best supporting role behind national objectives – in particular, public health and national security. But all the talk about deglobalization should not blind us to the possibility that the current crisis may in fact produce a better globalization. In truth, hyper-globalization had been in retreat since the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The share of trade in world GDP began to decline after 2007, as China’s export-to-GDP ratio plummeted by a remarkable 16 percentage points. Global value chains stopped spreading. International capital flows never recovered to their pre-2007 heights. And populist politicians openly hostile to globalization became much more influential in the advanced economies. Hyper-globalization crumbled under its many contradictions. First, there was a tension between the gains from specialization and the gains from productive diversification. The principle of comparative advantage held that countries should specialize in what they were currently good at producing. But a long line of developmental thinking suggested that governments should instead push national economies to produce what richer countries did. The result was the conflict between the interventionist policies of the most successful economies, notably China, and the “liberal” principles enshrined in the world trading system. Second, hyper-globalization exacerbated distributional problems in many economies. The inevitable flip side of the gains from trade was the redistribution of income from its losers to its winners. And as globalization deepened, redistribution from losers to winners grew ever larger relative to the net gains. Economists and technocrats who pooh-poohed the central logic of their discipline ended up undermining public confidence in it.
Third, hyper-globalization undermined the accountability of public officials to their electorates. Calls to rewrite globalization’s rules were met with the retort that globalization was immutable and irresistible – “the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water,” as US President Bill Clinton put it. To those who questioned the prevailing system, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair responded that, “You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.”
the zero-sum logic of national security and geopolitical competition was antithetical to the positivesum logic of international economic cooperation. With China’s rise as a geopolitical rival to the United States, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, strategic competition has reasserted itself over economics. Fourth, the zero-sum logic of national security and geopolitical competition was antithetical to the positive-sum logic of international economic cooperation. With China’s rise as a geopolitical rival to the United States, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, strategic competition has reasserted itself over economics. With hyper-globalization having collapsed, scenarios for the world economy run the gamut. The worst outcome, recalling the 1930s, would be withdrawal by countries (or groups of countries) into autarky. A less bad, but still ugly, possibility is that the supremacy of geopolitics means that trade wars and economic sanctions become a permanent feature of international trade and finance. The first scenario seems unlikely – the world economy is more interdependent than ever, and the economic costs would be huge – but we certainly cannot rule out the second. DECEMBER 2022 | 103
Yet, it is also possible to envisage a good scenario whereby we achieve a better balance between the prerogatives of the nation-state and the requirements of an open economy. Such a rebalancing might enable inclusive prosperity at home and peace and security abroad.
our future world need not be one where geopolitics trumps everything else and countries (or regional blocs) minimize their economic interactions with one another. The first step is for policymakers to mend the damage done to economies and societies by hyper-globalization, along with other market-first policies. This will require reviving the spirit of the Bretton Woods era, when the global economy served domestic economic and social goals – full employment, prosperity, and equity – rather than the other way around. Under hyper-globalization, policymakers inverted this logic, with the global economy becoming the end and domestic society the means. International integration then led to domestic disintegration. Some might worry that emphasizing domestic economic and social objectives would undermine economic openness. In reality, shared prosperity makes societies more secure and more likely to countenance openness to the world. A key lesson of economic theory is that trade benefits a country as a whole, but only as long as distributive concerns are addressed. It is in the self-interest of well-managed, well-ordered countries to be open. This is also the lesson of actual experience under the Bretton Woods system, when trade and longterm investment increased significantly. A second important prerequisite for the good scenario is that countries do not turn a legitimate quest for national security into aggression against others. Russia 104 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
may have had reasonable concerns about NATO enlargement, but its war in Ukraine is a completely disproportionate response that will likely leave Russia less secure and less prosperous in the long run. For great powers, and the US in particular, this means acknowledging multipolarity and abandoning the quest for global supremacy. The US tends to regard American predominance in global affairs as the natural state of affairs. In this view, China’s economic and technological advances are inherently and self-evidently a threat, and the bilateral relationship is reduced to a zero-sum game. Leaving aside the question of whether the US can actually prevent China’s relative rise, this mindset is both dangerous and unproductive. For one thing, it exacerbates the security dilemma: American policies designed to undermine Chinese firms such as Huawei are likely to make China feel threatened and respond in ways that validate US fears of Chinese expansionism. A zero-sum outlook also makes it more difficult to reap the mutual gains from cooperation in areas such as climate change and global public health, while acknowledging that there will necessarily be competition in many other domains. In short, our future world need not be one where geopolitics trumps everything else and countries (or regional blocs) minimize their economic interactions with one another. If that dystopian scenario does materialize, it will not be due to systemic forces outside our control. As with hyper-globalization, it will be because we made the wrong choices. ***** About the Author: Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is President of the International Economic Association and the author of Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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The Technological Contest of Our Times By Dante Disparte
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oiled by a return of war in Europe, forgotten crises such as Afghanistan, and two years of the COVID-19 pandemic along with unchecked climate change, the world’s institutions, countries and companies, even those that enjoy fortress balance sheets, look decidedly enfeebled. And yet, amid the clouds, there is a silver lining with the emergence of the third generation of the internet, or Web3. Web3 is not only a new foundational layer of the internet, more importantly it is a fundamentally new approach to corporate governance, value creation and stakeholder participation, where my interests advance pari passu with yours. Bending the arc of Moore’s law in humanity’s favor presents generationally unique opportunities where people are not merely products or beneficiaries of technologypowered business models, with the attendant distortions this creates, but builders and owners of digitally unique assets.
are on the margins but otherwise enjoy access to low-cost, device-centric internet connectivity. The perimeter of peace and prosperity cannot be stretched any further with institutions designed hundreds of years ago, riding on 50-year old technologies and led by risk-averse leaders incentivized with preserving status quo ante.
During the globally paralyzing onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc on the global economy and the people who make it turn, a series of pre-pandemic vulnerabilities were revealed. These vulnerabilities, wherein technology and universal access to the internet as veritable digital commons offered the only semblance of continuity, amounted to nothing short of a Great Correction. Like past global crises, whether anthropogenic or naturally occurring, post-pandemic recovery will require reformulating institutional and global norms. Technology and how it is harnessed, especially with the emergence of an open internet of value, is the technological contest of our times. This is especially true and urgent, since the provision of even basic services riding on brick and mortar or fixed lines have reached a point of diminishing returns.
The economic creative destructive cycle that has created an embarrassment of riches in the world’s advanced economies, is borne from the minds of entrepreneurial challengers and a concerted transition from the agricultural age, to the industrial revolution, to the shift from services to an always-on internet economy. Whereas the entanglements of Web1 and Web2 made people products by monetizing their data, while socializing losses, Web3 strives for equilibrium, enabling people to read, write and own even their digital bread crumbs. After the sun and human aspiration, the world’s most abundant resource is data and Web3 gives us a new way to compartmentalize and monetize it.
When coupled with record low rates of institutional trust, replenishing the wellspring that irrigates societal beliefs in democracy, peace, equity and equal access to prosperity, requires more than false promises and analog infrastructure. It requires delivery and results meeting billions of people who
When coupled with record low rates of institutional trust, replenishing the wellspring that irrigates societal beliefs in democracy, peace, equity and equal access to prosperity, requires more than false promises and analog infrastructure.
The instinct to shut down the Web3 revolution for short-lived failures conforming with institutional norms across banking, traditional corporate governance, regulations and political inclinations, should be ignored. Not only would this be on the wrong side of history, it ignores the deeply democratic tendencies of Web3, as well as the fact that amid otherwise anemic or sclerotic growth in traditional sectors, Web3 is powering trillions in economic acDECEMBER 2022 | 107
tivity and we are only nearing the starting line. Of course, technology alone is not a panacea, but as with all emerging models of competition, it often shows where incumbents, their policies and regulatory frameworks have fallen short. How for example will the world attain the first of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty with so many billions of people out of the reach of the
of course, technology alone is not a panacea, but as with all emerging models of competition, it often shows where incumbents, their policies and regulatory frameworks have fallen short. brick-and-mortar banking system that is the gateway to the formal economy? How will these gates to the bottom rung of the ladder of economic mobility be opened for the billion people who are functionally born in the shadows with no portable identity that is minimally acceptable to entering the formal economy? Left unchecked, this state of economic inequity is a greater source of global risk than millions of people establishing peer-to-peer economic relationships with each other powered by public blockchains and Web3. In Thomas Friedman’s hot, flat and crowded world, we no longer send cross-border mail as the internet tore down national boundaries, creating trust-based, frictionless information exchange. In the future, will we still send cross-border payments? Or will we be able to freely engage (in a compliant, trusted and privacy-preserving manner) in the frictionless exchange of economic value? More than 200 million people and counting all over the world are taking the long bet on device-centric banking, payments and digital assets, while institutional adoption of Web3 has triggered nothing short of a pecuniary space race. Who wins, how
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winning is construed, if this is a zero-sum race at all, and which value systems are enshrined in conduct, code, bits and bytes, will be as deterministic to our future as arresting war, climate change, pandemics and institutional mistrust. Rising to the technological contest of our times is about spurring more equitable economic growth, making people owners rather than technological serfs and harnessing otherwise stranded assets and aspirations. Like all economic corrections and cycles, progress comes with externalities. The carbon-hungry economic model of the Robber Barons of the industrial age accelerated man-made climate change, just like the data hungry Tech Titans have amplified cyber risk and societal misinformation. Web3 is a correction to these challenges, but it too must be rules-based and accountable for its full potential to be unlocked. The countries, companies and institutions who embrace this technological opportunity will advance their competitiveness and help shape an always-on, economically equitable future. ***** About the Author: Dante Disparte is the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle and a Diplomatic Courier Advisory Board Member.
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Scientific Sanctions Do Not Work By Maria Rentetzi
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ne can see the war in Ukraine as an attempt to reshape the world order and the global redistribution of power rather than as a mere binational conflict. However, in any shift of power distribution, science and technology have always been key issues—if not the most important ones. Throughout the last two decades, the influence of science and technology in international affairs and their decisive role in resolving international conflicts has been captured by the term ‘science diplomacy’— using science to address global challenges or to bring back on track diplomatic negotiations that are otherwise in a deadlock. As both the United States and Britain have leaned into the idea that science diplomacy is a soft power, the European Union has invested millions into its Horizon 2020 programs to develop strategies that make hard military power less needed in their international affairs. However, as the war in Ukraine has shown, science diplomacy is anything but a soft power and science is not a universal language that strengthens cooperation and exchange. Instead, science diplomacy can be a formidable political and strategic tool that serves as an element of coercive hard power. In the case of the current war in Ukraine, science diplomacy, exercised through scientific sanctions, has proved to be a punitive strategy. In her May 4, 2022 speech, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen clearly stated that “the future of the European Union is also written in Ukraine.” One of the first ways in which the EU began to exert incremental pressure on Russia was the suspension of cooperation in research and innovation. This cut Russia off from scientific institutions, first and foremost of which was Horizon 2020. EURussian scientific ties were gradually severed, including those through academic organizations, research institutions, and the funding agencies of several EU member states—vital to the EU’s science diplomacy strategy. Scientific fields such as research on climate change and space science have been deeply affected as a result.
At the same time, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly approved a resolution demanding the end of the war in Ukraine on March 2. Although nonbinding, the resolution justified the decisions of scientific organizations, both national and international, to freeze cooperation with Russia. Several attempts to exclude Russia from
Scientific sanctions were designed for the previous century’s Cold War not for addressing contemporary global crises. The globalized character of science and technology in the 21st century demands a more sophisticated and engaging science diplomacy. other UN organizations and related agencies followed. On May 10, European member states within the World Health Organization passed a resolution that, besides demanding that Russia respect international humanitarian law, could result in the closure of the country’s regional office. Likewise, following Russia’s seizure of Chernobyl during the initial phase of the invasion, Poland addressed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governance on March 2, condemning Russia in a joint statement with Canada. A day later, during an emergency meeting, the IAEA Board adopted a resolution on nuclear safety, security, and safeguards, calling for an immediate end to the war. Other international organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), made their moves even earlier. Just one day after the beginning of the war, the OECD decided to close its office in Moscow. As a next step, OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) suspended the Russian membership, exDECEMBER 2022 | 111
cluding Moscow from any decision making. In a May 11 email to NEA delegates and steering members, Daniela Lulache, NEA’s Head of Policy and Co-ordination, affirmed that “starting this day, representatives of the Russian Federation will not be entitled to attend the NEA official bodies’ meetings and may not receive any documents related to such meetings.” Yet, cutting Russia from major regulatory agencies reduces
An anonymous survey of Russian academics—of whom only two supported the war in Ukraine— revealed that Russian scientists feel trapped and anticipate that scientific sanctions will be counterproductive in the long run. insights into their nuclear operations and polarizes the world— leading to a new Cold War where nuclear science and technology are once again a major battleground. From a historical perspective, attempts to use international organizations to exert pressure on particular nations have been common. In order to replace some of the international scientific associations that existed before World War I, representatives from the leading scientific academies of the major Allied nations founded the International Research Council (IRC) in 1919. The new Council was deeply politicized and far less international than it claimed to be as it excluded the defeated Central Powers, including Germany. The IRC’s major concern was to assure that Germany could not regain its military power and its prominence in industry, science, and technology. German scientists were excluded from conferences and German was forbidden as an IRC language. Despite the IRC’s policy of exclusion, throughout the interwar period German scientists continued to thrive in fields such as radioactivity re-
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search, chemistry, and eugenics. After the end of the Second World War, scientific sanctions and the expulsion from international organizations were developed into a Cold War strong policy of isolation. In the today’s globalized context, scientific sanctions create more problems than they solve. An anonymous survey of Russian academics— of whom only two supported the war in Ukraine— revealed that Russian scientists feel trapped and anticipate that scientific sanctions will be counterproductive in the long run. They will force Russians to shift research topics and reorient themselves towards India and China, to the detriment of both the United States and Europe. There will certainly be a weakening of collective approaches to problems that afflict and threaten our common humanity. Our recent experience with the pandemic was itself an object lesson in the value of global cooperation—and the disastrous effects of its absence. The swift cut of all scientific ties with Russia through expulsions might seem like an immediate and appropriate response to a catastrophic war. However, the implications are profound. Scientific sanctions could impact not only economic and political relations, but also diplomatic ones—limiting the available options to cope with the variety of situations which are bound to occur, including nuclear issues. Thus, the complexities of the challenges the world faces in the 21st century demand the kind of science diplomacy that builds bridges for a global future instead of destroying them. And while governments and nation states might have their hands tied, individual academics and universities have the privilege of their academic freedom. The time is ripe for them to make a difference. ***** About the Author: Maria Rentetzi is professor and chair of Science, Technology and Gender Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).
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Fighting Big Lies By Noëlle Lenoir
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rom the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absurd claims that Ukraine is run by Nazis who are pursuing genocide against the country’s Russian-speakers, the Kremlin has long been an expert in the dark art of disinformation. A forgery published in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Protocols supposedly exposed a Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination. It was as big a lie as has ever been told, and it became a pillar of the virulent anti-Semitism that led eventually to the extermination of most European Jewry by Hitler’s Third Reich. As for Putin’s own big lie, it has deceived almost no one outside of Russia, but it may well have incited some of the atrocities that Russia’s poorly trained, ill-informed soldiers have committed in Bucha and elsewhere. Disinformation and lies can kill. They can also tip a country over to the wrong side of history. Western democracies had a wake-up call in 2016, when Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election on Donald Trump’s behalf, and in the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum in support of Leave. These two shocks alerted the world’s democracies to the fact that authoritarian states are unleashing a new kind of information warfare against them. The objective is to destabilize, divide, and weaken democratic societies, politics, and institutions—starting with the European Union. Until recently, we in France had hardly considered the threat of foreign interference in our politics. But that changed with the 2017 presidential election, when emails stolen from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign were dumped online just days before voters cast their ballots. Mixed in with real emails were fake ones designed to suggest, falsely, that Macron had offshore bank accounts. In 2019, similar hackand-leak attacks were launched against German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hundreds of other German politicians. By the time the 2019 European Parliament elections were held, Russian attempts at
meddling had become a foregone conclusion, and the European Commission responded by setting out an Action Plan against Disinformation and additional measures to protect the electoral process. Nonetheless, democracies remain doubly disadvantaged in the face of electoral interference, manipulation, and information warfare.
Authoritarian states are unleashing a new kind of information warfare against the world’s democracies— disinformation. To defend against such threats, we should be treating big lies for what they are: deliberate attacks on our societies. For starters, democracies cannot respond with their own counter-propaganda, lest they lose credibility in the eyes of an already distrustful public. As such, they are confined to fact-checking, which has only limited effects. Moreover, democracies cannot renounce essential principles like freedom of expression, which the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen describes as “one of the most precious rights.” Of course, this freedom is not absolute. One does not have the right to infringe on others’ rights. And, unlike in the United States, many European countries have laws against hate speech. In France and elsewhere, for example, Holocaust denial is a criminal offense, and white supremacist demonstrations would be inconceivable. Perhaps owing to these differences, the EU has done much more than the U.S. to regulate digital platforms, which are increasingly expected to serve as guarantors of informational integrity. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which will enter into force in 2023, online platforms will have to meet new transparency requirements, DECEMBER 2022 | 115
such as by explaining how their algorithms work, and by publishing annual reports on the illicit content (such as hate speech) that they have removed.
Lawmakers must be more creative and direct. Though we do not want to create anything like a thought police, we should be treating big lies for what they are: deliberate attacks on our societies. Platforms will also be obligated to inform law enforcement about information that may constitute criminal offenses or indicate a serious threat to people’s lives or security. And companies that fail to comply with the DSA will face penalties of up to 6% of their annual global revenue. But the text of the law does not really regulate “disinformation,” which is a term coined by the Soviets in the 1920s to describe their preferred instrument of propaganda and destabilization. Rather, the EU is concerned with “verifiably false or misleading information created, presented, and disseminated for economic gain or to intentionally deceive the public,” or more precisely: “coercive and deceptive efforts to disrupt the free formation and expression of individuals’ political will by a foreign state actor or its agents.” In practice, the text of the DSA leaves disinformation to be dealt with through online platforms’ own codes of conduct. The past few years have shown that approach to be far from satisfactory. Lawmakers must be more creative and direct. Though we do not want to create anything like a thought police, we should be treating big lies for what they are: deliberate attacks on our societies. Signaling a step in the right direction, the EU General Court recently rejected an ap116 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
peal by RT following the suspension of its broadcasting license in France. The court found that the balance of interests between the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster and the EU clearly fell in the EU’s favor. The EU’s interests, it ruled, “aim to protect Member States against campaigns of disinformation and destabilization that would be carried out by the media under the control of the Russian leadership and that would threaten public order and security of the Union, in a context marked by military aggression against Ukraine.” This reasoning should not be limited to the context of a military invasion. Sanctions against anyone peddling fake news should be designed on the same basis. Now that the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council has agreed to pursue coordinated measures against disinformation, it has an opportunity to craft a more effective response to the threat of authoritarian information warfare. To paraphrase Clausewitz, the world’s democracies must recognize that disinformation is nothing but the continuation of war by other means. Defending against such threats will require not just stronger logistical means, but also stronger legal tools. ***** About the Author: Noëlle Lenoir is a former member of France’s Conseil Constitutionnel, the Conseil d’Etat, and a former minister for Europe. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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Helping the 222 Million By Yasmine Sherif
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he United Nations recently estimated that the number of crisis-affected children in need of urgent educational support has skyrocketed from 75 million in 2016 to 222 million today. That’s 222 million dreams dashed—and 222 million attacks on our collective humanity. This growing crisis will have far-reaching effects on our economies and societies. But only 2-4% of global humanitarian funding is dedicated to education. As world leaders decide how to allocate resources in response to COVID-19, climate change, and conflict, they must make spending on education a much higher priority. This means rethinking international development policy with a view to achieving a world in which respect for equality and human rights starts with education for all. Education requires money, but it is an investment that empowers people, creates more resilient economies, and ends poverty traps that perpetuate negative cycles of hunger, displacement, conflict, and chaos. A space flight with Jeff Bezos was recently auctioned for $28 million—a sum that could provide close to 200,000 crisisaffected children with the safety, power, and opportunity for an education. Every $1 spent on girls’ education generates approximately $2.80 in return. And ensuring that all girls complete their secondary education could boost developing countries’ GDP by an average of 10% over the next decade. But we can’t just throw money at the problem. We need to think about the quality of our investments in education. Of the 222 million children currently affected by crises and emergencies, 78.2 million are out of school. And nearly 120 million are in school but not achieving minimum proficiency in math or reading. Yes, these children need classrooms, teachers, books, pencils, and more. But, to
benefit from the kind of learning that has the power to transform societies, they also need a broad spectrum of additional educational supports. For example, according to the UN, only 56% of schools in least-developed countries have access to safe drinking water, and 350 million children worldwide are hungry. How can a child who rarely eats a nourishing meal be expected to learn algebra?
The United Nations estimates that the number of crisis-affected children in need of urgent educational support has skyrocketed from 75 million in 2016 to 222 million today. Helping the 222 million starts with achieving universal and equitable education. Through the School Meals Coalition and other broad partnerships, we can ensure that children in places like Haiti and Somalia are able to eat at least one nutritious school meal a day. That can make all the difference. So can protecting children from violence. The recent deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was a tragic reminder of the need to keep schools safe. The challenge is particularly daunting for children who face the prospect of living their entire life in a war zone. According to the recent Education Under Attack 2022 report, attacks on education and the use of schools by military forces increased by one-third from 2019 to 2020. The war in Ukraine, in which over 1,800 educational institutions have so far been damaged and 170 completely destroyed, has made the situation even worse. Upholding international humanitarian law and the Safe Schools Declaration is another investment countries must make.
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Additional supporting measures will help to achieve quality learning outcomes. These include counseling and other psychosocial services, which are vital to ensuring continuity of education for young people.
Without education, no other Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved. To avoid inefficiencies and further disruptions to efforts to deliver on the SDGs, we need to focus on achieving universal and equitable education (SDG4). Donors should also follow the lead of organizations like The LEGO Foundation by investing in early childhood education. Teaching girls science, technology, engineering, and math should be a high priority. And we must provide the specialized education services that children with disabilities and other severely marginalized groups need. Without education, no other Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved. To avoid inefficiencies and further disruptions to efforts to deliver on the SDGs, we need to focus on achieving universal and equitable education (SDG4). That is a distant dream for the 84% of the crisis-affected out-of-school children who are living in areas with protracted crises. The vast majority are in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen. The war in Ukraine is exacerbating the problem, with recent estimates indicating that the conflict is threatening the lives and well-being of 5.7 million school-aged children. There is hope. For example, the Ecuadorian government has recently responded to the crisis in Venezuela by allowing refugees to 120 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
access public education. In Uganda, which hosts the largest refugee population in Africa, the government is implementing an Education Response Plan to provide safe learning environments for refugee children. In Ethiopia, accelerated school programs are helping refugee girls to make up for years of lost learning. Responding to the urgent educational needs of children affected by crises is not the job only of national governments or the UN. By making a global commitment to help every child and adolescent—including those enduring wars, forced displacement, and climate-induced disasters—to reach their potential, we can contribute to human rights, peace and security, and economic prosperity for all. First, we have 222 million dreams to save. ***** About the Author: Yasmine Sherif is Director of Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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The World Backslides on Efforts to End Modern Slavery By Martha E. Newton
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or the first time in five years, the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage were released jointly by UN organizations ILO and IOM, and the non-governmental organization, Walk Free. “Modern slavery” as defined in the estimates are adults and children forced to work or marry against their will. The updated estimates are alarming, showing that 50 million people are in a situation of modern slavery on any given day, which devastatingly represents an increase of 10 million more people than in 2017. We often grasp forced labor in terms of extremes – a fisherman trapped on a boat and not touching land for years, or the abusive trafficking of children for commercial sexual exploitation – but there is similar horror in less dramatic forms. The exploitation that is forced labor and forced marriage depends on one party’s ability – through threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power – to disregard another human being’s non-consent and to keep them in a situation that they cannot refuse or leave. A worker taking on excessive hours despite being unpaid for months because they simply cannot afford to give up those earnings is also a reality of forced labor. We’ve seen the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic ravage regions and this devastation has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. During the pandemic, more people were exposed to forced labor – forced to work excessive hours in confined workplaces, including for production of personal protection equipment, like rubber gloves, in response to COVID-19. We shouldn’t take false comfort in the idea that if not for the pandemic, prospects would be much rosier. The data in this report shows that forced labor is a problem across the globe – in fact, it is higher in the world’s richest countries than in middle or lower-middle income countries. Despite this fact, the over 28 million people in forced labor on any given day – including 3.3 million children – are the world’s poor;
from marginalized groups; workers in the informal economy; and migrants.
The exploitation that is forced labor and forced marriage depends on one party’s ability – through threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power – to disregard another human being’s non-consent and to keep them in a situation that they cannot refuse or leave. The estimates also address state-imposed forced labor, including as a means of racial or religious discrimination, most notably in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region in China. Even though China recently scrambled to ratify UN Forced Labour Conventions, the estimates join the chorus of multiple UN bodies, including the Special Rapporteur of Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the ILO’s Committee of Experts, and the sobering, long-awaited report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Together, these reports paint a devastating picture of serious concerns about the continued human rights situation in China and has helped drive policies in the United States, other countries and the EU to use trade to prevent inputs and products associated with forced labor into import supply chains. Ending forced labor once and for all is about prioritizing policy choices, by governments, lending institutions and businesses. The nugget of good news in the estimates is that effective policy solutions do exist. Highlighting under-appreciated factors that can be critical in ending modern slavery: 1.
The importance of law enforcement and strengthened and empowered labor inspectorates. DECEMBER 2022 | 123
In situations like trafficking, the prosecution and punishment of traffickers in criminal courts is critical, but labor inspection plays a fundamental role not only in the identification and follow-up of forced labor, but in its prevention. Labor inspectors can discover violations such as the withholding of wages, unfair deductions, and abusive recruitment practices before they become forced labor. They can also detect other potential crimes such as the presence of children, unsafe working conditions, social security violations, and other abuses that might otherwise never be reported. This is not just a question of ensuring respect for basic human rights – it’s an underutilized tool in supporting a level playing field and fair competition between businesses. 2. Social protection is under-appreciated as a risk reduction tool. The provision of basic social protections is a bulwark against vulnerability and reduces the pressure for the most vulnerable to pursue irregular migration paths. Wealthier countries and international financial institutions can do more to support the extension of basic social protection in low-income countries by reducing their debt burdens and freeing developing country governments to develop sustainable social safety nets. 3. The contribution that the private sector can make with responsible business conduct. Ultimately, governments are accountable for the protection of human rights, but, as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights clearly state, every business has a responsibility to respect human rights, and responsibility is independent of whatever a government may or may not be doing. 124 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
Ending forced labor once and for all is about prioritizing policy choices, by governments, lending institutions and businesses. The nugget of good news in the estimates is that effective policy solutions do exist. The estimates indicate that 86% of the instances of forced labor are found in the private sector. Businesses should examine their own operations and use what leverage they have with business partners to prevent, remedy, or mitigate adverse impacts at workplaces in their supply chains. For example, the global electronics industry, led by Apple, has made significant efforts to reduce the risk of forced labor in parts of the supply chain by prohibiting – and ensuring the repayment of – recruitment fees paid by migrant workers. These new global estimates should set off alarm bells among governments, business, and consumers about the urgency of ending modern slavery. It is not a question of not knowing what to do, it’s sharing the commitment to prioritize actions that will end the scourge of modern slavery once and for all. ***** About the Author: Martha E. Newton is a former Deputy Director-General, UN ILO. She is the Founder and Principle, Fifth Fundamental.
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No Security Without Climate Security By Anne-Marie Slaughter
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n July, CIA Director William Burns gave a 45-minute interview at the Aspen Security Forum. Only at the very end, following questions about the RussiaUkraine war, China, Taiwan, Iran, and Afghanistan, was Burns asked what the CIA can do to identify where climate change is most likely to cause conflicts to erupt. Burns’s answer was unequivocal. First, he noted that climate change is “an important priority for the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community.” He then said that while he considers China “the biggest geopolitical challenge that our country faces in the twenty-first century,” he also views climate change as the “biggest existential threat” to the United States. Existential risk, as the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative defines it, is a risk that “could cause the collapse of human civilization or even the extinction of the human species.” Burns probably had something less extreme in mind—perhaps a catastrophic event that would wreak irreparable harm and change life as we know it. But still, in this weeklong forum dedicated to national and international security discussions, no panel focused specifically and entirely on climate change. That’s not unusual. As Burns pointed out, climate change does not fit the traditional definition of a national-security threat. As such, it falls within the jurisdiction of other government departments. Yet if climate change poses an existential threat to the U.S., then the U.S. defense apparatus must participate in the fight against it. Under Burns’s leadership, the CIA has established a mission focused on helping “policymakers in the U.S. government understand the consequences of climate change in already fragile societies.” The National Security Council, the State Department, and the Pentagon all have units that focus on climate-change-related conflicts abroad. Still, what about the direct impact of climate change on the U.S.? Generals, after all, do not stop fighting wars when the fighting spreads from foreign to American soil.
Science-fiction writers have no trouble bringing the future home to the present. For example, Omar El Akkad’s 2017 novel American War opens with a map of the U.S. in 2075: Florida, New Orleans, New York City, Long Island, and Los Angeles are all underwater. Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future begins with a heatwave in India that overwhelms the power grid and kills 20 million people.
Climate change does not fit the traditional definition of a nationalsecurity threat. However, climate change is an existential threat, and the Biden administration and the U.S. national-security establishment must treat it like one. In the scenario Robinson imagines, temperatures in Uttar Pradesh reach a “wet bulb temperature of 42 degrees centigrade.” An extreme scenario? Consider that in California’s recent heatwave, temperatures in the Bay area and Sacramento Valley reached 46.6° Celsius (115.9°F) and that California prepared for brownouts and blackouts. As the thermometer breaks records, the prospect of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying in a heatwave does not seem far-fetched. Perhaps the problem is that an existential “risk” is not yet an existential “threat,” whereas the war in Ukraine, Chinese militarism, and Iranian nuclear aspirations demand immediate attention. But tell that to the hurricane, fire, and flood victims who have suffered the consequences of catastrophic weather over the past decade. The Colorado River, Lake Mead, and the Great Salt Lake are disappearing now. Sea-level rise is already making itself felt in Norfolk and Miami. The future, as scientists keep telling us, is already here.
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To be fair, Congress and President Joe Biden have done more than any previous administration. With the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden has secured a historic legislative victory that will enable the U.S. to meet its international obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. At the most recent United Nations climate change conference, Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry negotiated a crucial deal with the Chinese to allow the world to move forward with its climate commitments.
Perhaps the problem is that an existential “risk” is not yet an existential “threat,” whereas the war in Ukraine, Chinese militarism, and Iranian nuclear aspirations demand immediate attention. Moreover, U.S. national-security officials have their hands full. The risk that Russia will use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine is real and rising, and violating the nuclear taboo could draw NATO countries into a nuclear great-power war that could wipe out all of humanity. A nuclear conflict with China would be equally deadly, and Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would also lead to nuclear proliferation across the Middle East, effectively gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and significantly increasing the risk of nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. Still, the real measure of how much importance the American government attaches to a particular threat is the amount of time and money it invests in addressing it, and I doubt that Biden and his advisers spend more than 10% of their time on preparing for the impact of climate change. The issue is one of perspective: national-security officials operate in a world of geopolitics, competition, and cooperation among countries. They are trained to deter, prevent, and fight wars or to negotiate peace 128 | D IPLOM AT I C CO URIE R
with other governments, not to deal with global threats that transcend national borders. As the adage goes, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Bill Burns got it right. Climate change is an existential threat, and the Biden administration and the U.S. national-security establishment must treat it like one. Doing so would require reallocating substantial funds from the military to government agencies that focus on building domestic resilience and civil protection. It would also require creating new security agencies whose mandate would be to address global threats. Minimizing the risk of climate change will not be easy, but we have no choice. To paraphrase Game of Thrones, a long and deadly summer is coming. If we do not rise to the challenge, many Americans will not survive. ***** About the Author: Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the U.S. State Department, is CEO of the think tank New America. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
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CSS-5987 Well-Being Summit
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The Economics of Wellbeing By Dan Witters
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ellbeing matters. Subjective wellbeing—the kind that is measured through survey research—has been linked to a large array of outcomes that are relevant to the economics of both communities and to organizations. In workplaces, for example, wellbeing closely predicts absenteeism, performance, and healthcare utilization as well as turnover and employee engagement. Wellbeing among residents of communities, in turn, is correlated to healthcare utilization, crime rates, high-school graduation rates, teen pregnancy, and life expectancy among many other metrics. Wellbeing has even been linked to shifts in voting patterns for the U.S. Presidency across counties. And improving total population health to better realize these outcomes requires a holistic approach, as noted many years ago by officials of the World Health Organization. Health, they noted, was not merely comprised of its physical components and the absence of infirmary, but rather “a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing.” All of these factors—both large and small— influence the economics of a community. From how much businesses can count on employees to show up on time for a productive day at work to how much residents spend on healthcare, today and in the future, the U.S. economy is substantially impacted by the wellbeing of its citizenry. Since 2008, Gallup has measured the wellbeing of nearly three million randomly selected U.S. adults a part of the Gallup National Health and Wellbeing Index. Gallup defines wellbeing through its five essential elements: • • • • •
Career wellbeing: You like what you do every day. Social wellbeing: You have meaningful friendships in your life. Financial wellbeing: You manage your money well. Physical wellbeing: You have energy to get things done. Community wellbeing: You like where you live.
In the workplace, wellbeing-related programs are increasingly common, and it is everywhere in America’s communities and workplaces. The large majority of big employers now offer at least some programs in the workplace that are meant to enhance it. Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming majority of programs are focused only on physical wellness—from back pain to weight loss to smoking cessation to yoga classes and other forms of stress management. Often, little else is dedicated to the remaining elements of wellbeing. And this leaves a very substantial gap between the outcomes that workplaces are currently yielding from their wellbeing programs and the outcomes that they could be yielding, even in the presence of widespread knowledge among employees of what is at their disposal and even in the presence of great managers that are engaging them.
From how much businesses can count on employees to show up on time for a productive day at work to how much residents spend on healthcare, today and in the future, the U.S. economy is substantially impacted by the wellbeing of its citizenry. Gallup research has proven that addressing wellbeing holistically—as compared to just physical wellness alone—results in substantially better economic outcomes. After controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, income, education, region, and marital status, those workers who are physically fit but otherwise lacking in high wellbeing in the remaining four elements consistently underperform those who exhibit high wellbeing across all five. Compared to employees who are thriving across all five elements, employees who are thriving in physical wellbeing alone: •
Miss 68% more work due to poor health annually. Those who are DECEMBER 2022 | 131
physically fit miss 3.2 extra days of work each year due to poor health compared to 1.9 days among those with holistic wellbeing. This adds up to an estimated loss of $443,000 in lost productivity due to absenteeism per 1,000 employees per year.
The large majority of big employers now offer at least some programs in the workplace that are meant to enhance it. Unfortunately, however, the overwhelming majority of programs are focused only on physical wellness. •
Are three times more likely have an accident on the job that results in a worker’s compensation claim. This adds up to about nine extra claims per year per 1,000 employees, or about $450,000 per year per 1,000 assuming an average direct cost of $50,000 per claim.
•
Are five times more likely to seek out a new employer in the next year and are more than twice as likely to actually change employers during that time.
•
Are less than half as likely to exhibit adaptability to change and are 26% less likely to bounce back fully after hardship.
•
Are 19% less likely to have donated to charity in the last year and are 30% less likely to have volunteered in the community.
In short, it’s not just about being physically fit; it’s also about all the other things. And those communities and
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workplaces that embrace this reality and execute on it will lead the nation in building cultures of wellbeing that economically thrive and prosper. Regardless of the quality and reach of wellbeing interventions, the role of leaders—in communities or in organizations—is critical in engendering wellbeing among their constituents. Be they politicians, corporate executives, managers, clergy, educators or community activists, a well-informed and active leadership is crucial to a community’s success at building an institutionalized, embedded, and sustained wellbeing culture upon which a thriving economy depends. Included within this culture are certain guiding principles by which these leaders should abide, including a shared and uniform definition of wellbeing, constant and public vigilance in its advocacy, and a clear message that commitment to it will never, ever go away. In this manner, leaders can fulfill an honorable—and critical—responsibility to the people that they lead and to the constituents that they serve. ***** About the Author: Dan Witters is Research Director at Gallup’s National Health and Wellbeing Index.
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Defending Democracy’s Defenders By Alexander Schallenberg & Teresa Ribeiro
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hen independent journalists report on the full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine, they show the reality of war. They show its barbarism, its cruelty, and the humanitarian tragedies that inevitably accompany it. They provide viewers with accurate reporting on the developments on the ground and contribute to the collection of war-crimes evidence for future accountability mechanisms. For this, journalists and media workers often pay a heavy—or even the ultimate—price. On September 19, 54-year-old Ukrainian journalist Zhanna Kyseliova was kidnapped from her home in the city of Kakhovka. On May 30, 32-year-old French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff was killed while riding with a humanitarian transport full of fleeing civilians. Two weeks earlier, Oleksii Vorontsov, an engineer of public broadcaster UA: Kherson was abducted. In mid-March, Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and his Ukrainian colleague and journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova were killed when their vehicle came under fire. Around the same time, Ukrainian photojournalist Maks Levin went missing and was later found killed near Kyiv. At least eight journalists and other media workers have been killed while carrying out their duties since Russia launched its war of aggression in Ukraine in February. Many more have been wounded, abducted, and mistreated. War is an extreme situation. But journalism is not safe even in peaceful settings. Many journalists conduct their work in constant fear of threats and attacks. And make no mistake: the acute threat to media workers is not some faraway problem. Globally, including in the region of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the safety of media workers is under constant and growing pressure. Journalists face a barrage of online and offline threats, surveillance, intimidation, physical attacks, and imprisonment. Worryingly, female journalists are increasingly being tar-
geted both as journalists and as victims of sexual and gender-based violence, especially online.
Many journalists and media workers conduct their work in constant fear of threats and attacks. This has consequential impacts because when journalists are threatened, so are our communities, societies, and democracies. When journalists are threatened, so are our communities and societies. When those who deliver the facts to inform citizens come under attack, the foundation of society is at stake. Free, independent, and pluralistic media are as necessary to democracy as elections, parliaments, and independent judges. The pandemic showed the need for reliable information. Any major government policy needs at least a modicum of public support in a democracy. At the same time, the pandemic sparked deep mistrust of journalists, with demonstrators, online trolls, and opportunistic political actors stoking violence against the hated “mainstream media” or what they perceive as purveyors of “fake news.” We must reverse this trend. Our democracies’ fate depends on journalists’ ability to express themselves freely and work safely. Ensuring this is not an easy task, and governments and international organizations cannot do it alone. Large societal change requires a concerted effort at all levels of society. While this effort is no doubt hard to realize, we must start somewhere by bringing more attention to the issue and bolstering support for the initiatives that support this crucial work. Ten years ago, the United Nations endorsed the UN Plan of Action on the Safety DECEMBER 2022 | 135
of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, the first concerted effort globally to create a free and safe environment for media workers. It is time to convene again to discuss new and emerging challenges and to provide new impetus for the plan’s implementation.
Our democracies’ fate depends on journalists’ ability to express themselves freely and work safely. Ensuring this is not an easy task, and governments and international organizations cannot do it alone. To this end, the Austrian Foreign Ministry, together with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is organizing a high-level conference on November 3 and 4 in Vienna. The goal is to reaffirm international commitment to the safety of journalists and to create a platform for advancing the plan’s objectives. Twenty-five years ago, the OSCE established the Mandate of the Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM). The OSCE’s participating States saw the need for an independent watchdog to scrutinize and assist them in working toward the goal of true media freedom. Since then, the RFoM has resolutely defended the important contribution of media freedom to security. Countless interventions have been made where journalists were attacked for their work, media pluralism was restricted, investigative reporting was hindered, or free speech was criminalized. Many laws have been improved, and numerous safeguards have been erected. Such efforts will be needed more than ever in the coming years. To confront the growing threats to media freedom and the safety of journalists, representatives of states and 136 | D I PLOM AT I C CO URIE R
international organizations must combine forces and operationalize the outcomes of the Vienna high-level conference. We will need to review our laws on the protection of journalists and bring attackers to justice. We also need more systematic reporting related to attacks against journalists in order to keep our media safe. Only by protecting journalists can we protect freedom of the press—and our democracies. ***** About the Authors: Alexander Schallenberg is Austrian Foreign Minister. Teresa Ribeiro is Representative on Freedom of the Media at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.