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Today’s world is like a large and fragile train. From about 1990 to 2008, as China, India, and the former Soviet bloc joined the global economy, we basically took almost every unused track out of the box and connected it all together.
New expanded circuits boost global trade. From 1992 to 2008, Russian gas exports increase nearly eight times. From 2000 to the Russian invasion, Ukrainian corn production jumped more than ten times. New containers make shipping cheaper.Humans have never lived so well, nor have they so longThere’s just one problem: If any one of the tracks fails, global trains could derail.And it’s happening more and more often, most recently with Vladimir Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine. We live in fragile times.
Since 2001 alone, connectivity has experienced four serious derailments. First, the Saudis’ perversion of Islam killed nearly 3,000 Americans and sparked false wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which ultimately led to America’s internal collapse. Then, subprime mortgage lending in the United States sparked the global financial crisis. Next, a virus in Wuhan, fueled by Chinese secrecy, shut down the world. Now, Putin’s late-life crisis is destroying Ukraine, shutting down Russia again, and making two human necessities – food and fuel – unaffordable for many.
In stark contrast to the times when these countries were closed: their implosions, such as Stalin and Mao’s killing of millions of their own people, had little impact on the outside world. Indeed, hardly any foreigners heard the screams. Given the fragility of today’s system, you’d want a globally-appointed webmaster, but that becomes unthinkable.
After 20 years of turmoil, we are now all deglobalists, even politicians who are derided as “globalists” by nativists. trade peaks % of the global economy in 2008.Now Joe Biden Pledges to “ensure that everything from the decks of aircraft carriers to the steel on highway guardrails is American-made. Everything.” Emmanuel Macron Hope France makes its own medicines.EU commitment Get rid of Russian oil, natural gas and coal by 2027. Each new bloc – the West and China with its unreliable Russian junior partner – aims to build its own, smaller, independent train set.
Even the globalization of ideas is reversing: Russia is following China in shutting down the global internet. Who knows when the pre-2020 legions of Chinese tourists and students will return to the West. Deglobalization has made us poorer. Just as many Europeans in the late 1940s saw 1913 as a golden age of abundance, our generation may be forever craving 2007.
But despite deglobalization, global fragility will persist. This is mainly because of strongmen, their nuclear weapons and climate change.
As my FT colleague Gideon Rachman points out in his new book, Age of the Strong, Putin is not a one-off, but an omen. Several other strongmen are also trying to make themselves leaders for life – most notably China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and possibly Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Sall Man or Narendra Modi in India.
The strongman grew old, isolated, and became as obsessed with his place in history as Putin. He’s not just chasing boring economic growth, he’s chasing greatness. And he is increasingly likely to have nuclear weapons.India, Pakistan and North Korea are all first to test feasible nuclear bomb Between 1998 and 2015. Iran and Saudi Arabia could be next. If the strongman decides to push the button, who will stop him? As Rahman points out, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia have all gone from collective leadership (Politburo, large Saudi royal family) to one man’s whim.
The incompetence of Russian troops in Ukraine may only exacerbate the danger. Six weeks ago, Putin thought he had a strong army. Now, to accommodate the Cold War mockery of the Soviet Union, Russia looks like Burkina Faso, with nuclear weapons and savage artillery. This may encourage Putin to use one of his unparalleled weapons: nuclear. God forbid, we may start to get used to isolated nuclear attacks, and then we move on, as we did after the atomic bomb in 1945.
The next derailment could be Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, especially if he then lets his old friend Putin own Eastern Europe. In this case, the world’s two largest economies and most powerful militaries could both be backed by Russia. But other global threats have not disappeared since the war began. We just ignore them. In an era of constant crises, urgent things push important things aside, in our case climate change. I don’t understand how we can solve this problem.
Follow Simon on Twitter @KuperSimon and email him [email protected]
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