We are in a world without leaders: The G-Zero will soon replace the G7
WHEN so many problems bestride borders, the need for international cooperation has never been greater. Cooperation demands leadership, however. Only leaders have the leverage to coordinate multinational responses to transnational problems. They have the wealth and power to persuade other governments to take actions they wouldn’t otherwise take. They pick up the bills that others can’t afford and provide services no one else will pay for. Leaders set an agenda and drive it forward.
This is why it’s so unfortunate that today’s world is without leadership.
In the US, a war-weary public laments high unemployment and mounting debt. In Europe, a debt crisis undermines confidence in the future of the single currency and the broader European idea. In Japan, last year’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown have added to the long-term damage of two decades of political and economic malaise.
Not long ago, the US, Europe and Japan were the world’s powerhouses. With Canada, they made up the G7 Group of industrialised democracies. Four years after the financial crisis, their elected leaders are increasingly less willing and able to pursue ambitious foreign policies.
But China, India, Brazil, Turkey and the Gulf Arabs aren’t ready to take up the slack. They face complex challenges that demand too many resources and too much time, energy and money for them to accept major new burdens abroad.
China must pass enormous tests in coming years to remain stable. Its leadership knows it must build a modern, middle-class country with a 21st-century social safety net, reduce its reliance on exports by fuelling domestic demand for Chinese-made products, transfer huge amounts of wealth from state-owned companies to Chinese consumers, manage environmental fallout from growth, and absorb and redirect rising public demand for change to preserve the ruling party’s political control. Just as in other emerging countries, emergence will be a full-time job.
If not the West or the rest, who will lead? The answer is no one. The US and Europe have overcome adversity before and are equipped over the long run to do it again. But for the next few years, we’ll be living with a G-Zero order, a world in which, for the first time since World War II, there is no power or alliance of powers that can provide consistent and predictable leadership.
This period of transition will generate new sources of conflict, make them more difficult to manage, and produce forms of crisis that appear suddenly and from unexpected directions.
The two regions most likely to generate conflict are the Middle East and Asia. In the first, the influence of cost-conscious and risk-averse foreigners is already diminishing. Political earthquakes rumbled across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, but only in Libya did NATO actively intervene, and only from high altitude and after appeals from other Arab governments. This retreat will produce intense competition for leadership among Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and perhaps Egypt, all of which have differing visions of an ideal balance of force and influence.
Asia may prove even more volatile. Competition for resources and local influence will bring Asia’s most powerful states into conflict. From North Korea to Pakistan, the region has too many potential flashpoints and will prove too large and complex for a single country to dominate. Adding to the risks, many of China’s neighbours are at once trying to deepen commercial ties with Beijing and security ties with Washington – an unsustainable balance if America and China come to conflict.
Beyond these traditional sources of conflict, a world without leaders will complicate the ability of policy makers to expand opportunity, tackle climate change, and feed growing populations. Its effects will have implications for politics, business, information, communication, security, food, air and water. It will be felt in every region.
For governments, companies and investors, this will be an era in which resilience and adaptability matter at least as much as size and strength.
Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and author of Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World (Portfolio Penguin).