I think that Daron Acemoglu is fantasizing in his latest piece at Project Syndicate:
During the two most recent global crises – the 2008 financial collapse and today’s pandemic – the Communist Party of China quickly adjusted the country’s political economy in response to changing circumstances, thereby solidifying its grip on power. Because countries that do not want to toe the US line now routinely turn to China for inspiration and, often, material support, what could be more natural than China emerging as one of the two poles of global power?
In fact, a bipolar world would be deeply unstable. Its emergence would heighten the risk of violent conflict (according to the logic of the Thucydides Trap), and its consolidation would make solutions to global problems wholly dependent on the national interests of the two reigning powers. Three of the biggest challenges facing humanity would either be ignored or made worse.
The challenges to which he refers are Big Technology, advocacy for human rights and democracy, and climate change. Basically, his argument is that all three issues would receive “short shrift” in a bipolar world of the U. S. and China. Here’s what he proposes:
All of these problems would be more likely to be addressed in a world with two additional poles, represented by the European Union and a consortium of emerging economies, perhaps within a new organization – an “E10†– comprising Mexico, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, South Africa, and others. Such a quadripolar world would be less conducive to a new cold war, and it would bring more diverse voices to global governance.
I think he has a couple of basic misconceptions. The first misconception is that he’s confusing Europe and the European Union. Europe is composed of 44 countries, each with its own foreign policy, economy, military, culture, traditions, history, and most with their own languages. The European Union on the other hand is a sort of shadow government for 27 of those countries. The countries of Europe don’t speak with a single voice—they have as many rivalries and conflicts as they do commonalities. Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe but it doesn’t speak for Europe. As we should have learned by now, Germany speaks for Germany. The Germans won’t do anything they perceive as hurting Germany regardless of the implications for the rest of Europe.
And his E10? He’s trying to bring the band back togetheR—it’s basically the old non-aligned movement, just as irrelevant now as it was when it was initially formed 60 years ago in opposition to the United States and the Soviet Union. The only thing those countries have in common is that they don’t want to take directions from Washington or Beijing. Or from Moscow, Berlin, or Brussels for that matter. I suppose I should be grimly amused at the prospect of Turkey, which seems to fancy itself as the new caliphate and India, with its rising Hindu nationalism in conflict with also having the third largest Muslim population in the world, agreeing on anything. The countries of his E10 can’t even agree on what basic human rights are and he expects them to be the standard bearer for universal human rights?
