It’s Not Your Parents’ World Anymore
“We’re facing an inflection point,” Joe Biden told Americans in a speech last fall. “One of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.” Originally a mathematical term to denote the point on a curve where it shifts from concave to convex, inflection here implies the juncture at which complex systems significantly transform, either for better or worse. To be sure, history is replete with occasions when the world has undergone critical transitions. Traditionally, they have occurred over generations or more and have enabled society to adjust. But in the present, the pace of change — whether social, political, economic, or technological — is happening within a fraction of a single lifetime.
During what constitutes a life span today, there have been several consequential events that can be considered inflection points. The first would be the Great Depression and the subsequent world war that begat what came to be known as the “Thirty Glorious Years” in Europe, and the “Golden Age” in the United States. These roughly three decades from 1945 to 1975 encompassed modern democracies with liberal welfare states that grew enlightened and prosperous, at least in most of the industrialized West. It also promoted two new superpowers — the U.S. and the Soviet Union — who often clashed via surrogates across the rest of the globe.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked a second such stage. By the time George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met at the close of that year to declare the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had already begun to collapse, leaving America as the planet’s sole hegemon. A position it was intent on maintaining. In 1991, the Bush administration developed a defense strategy to prevent the emergence of powerful rivals anywhere else in the world. The plan mandated that the U.S. “must sufficiently account for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.”
Though the scheme was not without serious flaws, what followed was a period relative peace and prosperity as more nations aspired to electoral democracies and market economies. In an ever more globalized world, another major war — hot or cold — seemed unlikely as the lives of billions improved. In 1981, more than half the global population lived in extreme poverty. Thirty years later, that number had been slashed to single digits.
Three in One
But all good things do come to an end, and the inflection point of which Biden speaks is actually the convergence of three crippling episodes. The 2008 financial crisis was a turning point in global economic circumstances. The Great Recession was one of the deepest downturns since World War II, and though the recovery was substantial, it was grievously uneven. Considerable portions of wealth accrued to the very highest percentile of earners, as middle- and lower-income brackets stagnated. In the years since, the gap between the top 0.01% and the bottom half of the population has surged 50%. Considering this trajectory, the world may have its first trillionaire within a decade, while eradicating poverty would take 230 years. An equality chasm like this breeds frustration, dissent, and turmoil, noted the late writer and Republican strategist Kevin Phillips and gives rise to populist crusades.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the election (and possible re-election) of Donald Trump. Having divined the anger of millions of Americans who believed their piece of the pie was shrinking owing to demographic changes, unwanted aliens, woke policies, and corrupt politicians, he guilefully exploited their outrage. Not only did Trump undermine democracy at home by abusing the authority of the justice system, subverting the electoral process, warping the truth, and reshaping the Republican Party into an imperious autocracy, he sabotaged U.S. policies abroad by pushing a nationalist agenda, antagonizing allies, and buddying up to dictators. Yet like most populists, he failed to manage a real crisis.
As was the case with the Great Recession, the Covid Pandemic has had profound and altering consequences. Once again, the economic recovery was lopsided, engendering further disparities among ages, races, and genders. Just as damaging have been the strains on physical and mental health. A 2023 study of 500,000 people in 17 countries, by the non-profit research organization Sapien Labs, found that mental well-being remained at its post-pandemic low, with the U.S. having a higher-than-average percentage of its population still distressed and struggling. Children and adolescence, in particular, have experienced the most severe anguish. Sadly, concluded the report: “the effects of diminished global mental well-being have become the new normal.”
Go Your Own Way
The pandemic also exacerbated tensions among countries with respect to the balance between global and national interests. Polarity is a word describing the distribution of power in international relations. The Cold War was a period of bipolarity, in which two states contended for domination. After the demise of the Soviet Union, America sat atop a unipolar world. But according to research by investment bank Morgan Stanley, the trend has been moving away from the “Washington consensus,” toward a multipolar sphere ostensibly divided among the U.S., China, and Europe. Yet where other nations no longer fall in line with global powers, but instead cherry-pick practices and policies that align with their own priorities.
To that point, a major opinion poll conducted this autumn in 21 countries, by the European Council on Foreign Relations and Oxford University, determined that while U.S. and European leaders still view their situation as one of conventional ideological and political competition between the West and East, citizens everywhere favor an “à la carte” arrangement where they can mix and match alliances based on various criteria, playing one side against another when appropriate. Many respondents, for example, remain attracted to the democratic values of the West, but prefer China as an economic partner.
This game plan has been most apparent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite condemnation by America and its closest allies, at least 35 nations, including Brazil, India, Mexico, and Turkey, have chosen to stay neutral, or blamed the U.S. for inciting the conflict. Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah articulated the sentiment when he declared it “will not blindly follow steps taken by another country.”
Events in the Middle East have been even more discordant. Most Global South states (the term used to describe developing, less developed, or underdeveloped countries) decry America’s denunciation of Russia as grotesquely hypocritical, given its support for Israel’s war in Gaza that has cost substantially more lives. The United States’ repeated veto of a UN ceasefire resolution has also antagonized some members of the European Union. And at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has concluded that Israel’s offensive after the October 7th attacks created a “plausible risk of genocide”, more than 50 countries are presenting arguments on a case entitled The Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem; the most to engage with any single matter since the ICJ was established in 1945.
Whatever the political, economic, and social configurations that have shaped the international community for more than three quarters of century, they have required some form of cooperation; something that is in short supply these days. According to the Global Cooperation Barometer, an annual report by McKinsey & Company and the World Economic Forum, collaboration among nations with respect to trade, innovation and technology, climate and natural capital, and health and fitness declined last year. Though not nearly as precipitously as regarding peace and security. Moreover, the Munich Security Index, which scores the likelihood and level of global risks, reckons a shift away from cooperation will trigger a set of “lose-lose dynamics,” including societal polarization, the rise of right-wing populism, and democratic backsliding.
The world is “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” warns United Nations Secretary-General Antònio Guterres, and is “not ready or willing to tackle the big dramatic challenges of our age.” But it has little choice. Joe Biden was wrong when he suggested decisions made now will have an impact over decades. On a hastily changing planet, that time frame is compressed to years or even less. Amid issues like instability, inequality, and uncertainty, the climate clock is ticking toward devastation. Plus, civilization is just on the cusp of generative artificial intelligence, the anticipated effect of which ranges from utopian to dystopian to apocalyptic. Given these dilemmas, fragmented societies face the option first presented by America’s Benjamin Franklin almost 250 years ago: “we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately.”
