The Future of the International System

Heather A. Conley, James Andrew Lewis

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Introduction

The great American baseball player and “philosopher,” Yogi Berra, famously said that if you come to a fork in the road, you should take it. Today, the international system stands at Berra’s fork and is heeding his advice by taking two roads simultaneously. The first road is the well-trodden one: the international community continues to practice multilateral diplomacy and follow the post-1945 international patterns of cooperation—but with fewer productive results. The second is an as-yet unchartered path of new patterns of behavior marked by technological competition and coercion, the revitalization and modernization of industrial policies, and a radical rethink of the role of governance and diplomacy.

The terrain of this new road is explored with the help of three authors: Ayse Kaya, associate professor of political science, Swarthmore College; James A. Lewis, senior vice president, CSIS; and David Victor, professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California at San Diego. Each author was asked to write a short, imaginative essay that examined the three issues that will significantly shape the future international system: 1) global trade and inequality (Kaya), 2) the role of cyber and emerging technologies (Lewis), and 3) climate change and the global energy transition (Victor). The authors were tasked to answer what they believed the future nature of competition and conflict would be in their respective topic and what they considered the role or limitations of the nation state in addressing those challenges. Who will hold power in this new international system, and who may lose preferential status? What are the consequences of failure or resilience of national governments to address these global challenges?

The international system has been advancing toward this fork in the road for the past 30 years, accelerated in recent years by a rapid decline in multilateralism as the United States returned to its historical state of retrenchment and as China challenges the U.S.-led global order and its presence in the Indo-Pacific. This structural shift of heightened Sino-American confrontation, very different from the bipolarity of the Cold War era, occurs at a time when trans-national challenges—climate change, technological innovation, a global pandemic, as well as ethnic, racial, and political tensions—confront all nations and spur calls for collective action. In this transitory period, fluid trans-, sub-state, and private sector coalitions have emerged to fill regional power vacuums. Increasingly, cross-regional alignments such as the proposed “alliance of democracies,” the emergence of cities and private companies as independent foreign policy actors, and greater fusion between the public and private sectors are also features of this structural shift.

There is no Google map or Waze app to navigate this new road, and the travelers of it seem “too tired, too divided, and without victors to negotiate the kind of new, U.S.-led order that was hashed out at the end of World War II,” as Professor Kaya notes in her piece, “Messy Multilateralism: Selective and Haphazard Cooperation in the New Global Economy.” Messy is an apt description of the international system today and of global economic relations in general, wherein a powerful political backlash against globalization and rising social inequality have fueled demands for policy changes. Kaya draws on the fork in the road analogy to describe two paths for future global economic and trade relations as priorities shift away from multilateralism and toward national industrial policies and protection of supply chains. The first of these roads, “take control,” foresees a future global economic order that has states seeking to regulate more rigorously while they look inward to shield domestic industries. In contrast, the second road encourages some positive reforms to the current international economic system, such as collective debt relief and emergency lending during economic crises, to help temper the worst instincts of the “take control” path. While suggesting that there are positive signs that a reform of the existing international economic system is possible, Kaya concludes with a sobering note by suggesting that the most likely way forward is a piecemeal renegotiation of the current multilateral economic system; in the meantime, a scaling back of international commitments and foreign economic policies based on individual domestic needs seems inevitable.

Just as cooperative patterns related to global trade are in flux, the role of new digitally networked technologies has also fundamentally shifted power in the international system, according to Jim Lewis in his essay, “The Role of Cyber and Emerging Technologies and its Impact on the International System.” As Lewis argues, most countries with cyber capabilities use them to pursue their national objectives (espionage and surveillance), but for those countries that utilize cyber as a coercive tool—mainly Russia and China—cyber is now a “central arena for inter-state conflict.” Within a framework of global technological competition, “countries that are strong in creating new technologies have advantages,” and fortunately, for now, most “innovator nations” are Western democracies. But they confront forceful competitors. Lewis suggests that “new groups with processes” are needed “to accelerate growth, ensure technological parity, and protect democratic values.” While governments must ensure a framework for cooperation, the actual work will be done in the private sector. If Western nations can develop such processes, technological trends in power relations will shift in their favor.

David Victor’s essay, “Rethinking Global Climate Strategy and Global Order,” integrates Kaya’s concept of messy multilateralism as well as Lewis’ point on the need for new processes and interactions between governments and the private sector. Victor notes that 30 years of climate diplomacy has resulted in three global treaties but an increase in global emissions. When it comes to climate policy, a “radical rethinking of the role of governance and diplomacy” is needed. He observes, for example, that decarbonization success comes from “a series of revolutions that will begin within localized sectors and markets and then, with the right incentives, spread widely.” These technological revolutions are pursued by risk-taking and innovative technology pioneers that focus on niche technologies. As these technologies begin to show promise, pioneering clubs of countries may be formed, which can more rapidly spread successful climate technologies. While these climate networks are neither business nor government controlled, for profound technology change to occur, they will require public investment, business models that reward innovation, and “joint searches between business and government to test out new ideas and learn what works.”

What all three essayists convey is the need for something different in international governance. Old strategic doctrines and methods both restrain new thinking and are increasingly ineffectual—as climate diplomacy has demonstrated. In David Victor’s words, a “radicalized theory of change” may be required to break out of the old multilateralism and into the new. This radicalization emanates from a sense of global urgency and civic activism and will be enormously uncomfortable for elites trying to manage the international system as they always have. But to be successful in the new international system, these authors suggest that it is likely that we will renegotiate traditional multilateral approaches, a reality that reflects changing domestic political requirements and greater integration of other important stakeholders.

Should these domestic requirements in part be fulfilled with a robust research and development base to support future technological innovation—which in turn fuels greater shared economic prosperity and incentivizes innovator nations to further develop more promising technologies which improve livelihoods globally —we might begin to see positive change in the international system and a new international approach. This is the promise, but it will be messy getting there. As Yogi Berra would say about the future, “It’s pretty far, but it doesn’t seem like it.”