That’s the subject of my just-released TED Talk. And, believe it or not, it used to be an easy question to answer.
If you’re over 45, like me, you grew up in a world dominated by two superpowers. The United States and its allies set the rules on one side of the Berlin Wall, while the Soviet Union called the shots on the other. Nearly every other country had to align its political, economic, and security systems with one side or the other. That was a bipolar world.
If you’re under 45, you came of age after the Soviet Union collapsed. The US became the world’s sole superpower, dictating outcomes both through its dominant role in international organizations and also by exerting raw power. That was a unipolar world.
About 15 years ago, the world changed again – and it got a lot more complicated. The United States became less interested in being the world’s policeman, the architect of global trade, and even the cheerleader of global values. And lots of other countries grew powerful enough to ignore rules they didn’t like and, occasionally, to set some themselves. That’s the G-Zero world order I named my media company after and constantly write about – a leaderless world.
Three things happened to cause this “geopolitical recession” – when the global architecture no longer lines up with the underlying balance of power.
First, the US didn’t bring Russia into the US-led international order. Now a former great power in serious decline, Russia has become extremely angry and sees the US as its primary adversary on the global stage. We can argue about who is most to blame for this, but the fact is we are where we are.
Second, the US did bring China into US-led institutions – but on the presumption that as the Chinese grew more integrated, wealthy, and powerful, they would also become American (i.e., a free-market democracy willing to play by the rules without wanting to change them). As it turns out, they’re still Chinese – and the US is not ready to accept that.
And third, the US and its allies ignored the tens of millions of their own citizens who felt left behind by globalization. After decades of benign neglect, most of these citizens have grown fundamentally mistrustful of their governments and of democracy itself, in turn making their leaders less able or willing to lead.