The Round Table

Vol. 98, No. 400, 37–47, February 2009

International Conflict and Cooperation

in the 21st Century
KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN
Former Indian Foreign Secretary and Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General;
Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study at Uppsala, Sweden

ABSTRACT The rise of modern institutional multilateralism is a phenomenon dating back less
than a hundred years, and there is no reason to infer that it is either immutable or permanent.
With the end of the Cold War, there was an expectation of global consensus and the
implementation of collective security. But this depended to an excessive extent on the United
States and its willingness to use force, and the level of subjectivity in US-led interventions gave
rise to questions of whether multilateralism could survive in conditions of unipolarity. Now the
primacy of the United States is slipping, and its pre-eminence will decline as manufacturing,
technology and innovation spread. From being the major lending country, it has become the
biggest debtor. Despite American military superiority, the world will be increasingly poly-centric
and the new emerging powers will exert a strong and increasing influence in world affairs. The
character of international cooperation in the next few decades will be shaped by a process by
which about half a dozen new major powers seek to mould regional orders of their own. A return
to something akin to the 19th-century Concert of Powers seems possible, but this time on a global
scale, and with the participation of the emerging strong nations in formal and informal
governance structures. The United Nations will continue as a symbol of state sovereignty, and its
remit in humanitarian, cultural and developmental good works will be unchallenged, but peace
and security decisions at the regional level will be taken by the regional powers on the basis of
their self-interest and without reference to the United Nations. Notwithstanding the reasons for
the future world order, the existing foundations of security management will not be replaced by
anything more reliable, just or legitimate.

KEY WORDS: multilateralism, unipolarity, hegemony, sphere of influence, new emerging

powers, security management, unilateralism

Introduction: International Institutional Multilateralism

The belief that some kind of central institution was necessary to transform and
regulate relationships between states is not new: the concept goes back several
centuries. If each state is genuinely sovereign, it follows that any society of states
must lack a central authority. Nevertheless, the proposition that the waging of war
should be subject to some limits, and that states should observe some fundamental

Correspondence Address: Krishnan Srinivasan, c/o Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Linneanum,
Thunbergsvagen 2, S 75238, Uppsala, Sweden. Email: ksrinivasanuk@yahoo.co.uk

ISSN 0035-8533 Print/1474-029X Online/09/010037-11 Ó 2009 The Round Table Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/00358530802601660
38 K. Srinivasan

rules, was put forward by diverse thinkers, from Grotius through the Duc du Sully to
William Penn, Bentham, Kant, and many others.
Modern principles of inter-state behaviour are post-Westphalian and non-
interventionist, without which the whole structure of international co-operation
could never have been developed. On the foundations of state sovereignty,
institutions were defined and the framework of international law and the place of
war within the system were put into place and given terms of reference. The big
powers were apt to assert the prerogative to override the law in the interest of order,
war was recognized as the ultimate mechanism not only to resolve conflict but to
preserve order, and the special role of the major powers as managers and enforcers
was endorsed (Mayall, 2000).
Multilateralism in international politics signifies organized collective action by an
inclusively identified group of independent states; a mechanism that coordinates
relations between them on the basis of accepted criteria of conduct, and that creates
norms and principles that specify appropriate consequential action without regard to
the particular interests of the state parties (Ruggie, 1993). Previous to the 20th
century, neither formal regimes nor formal organizations played any significant role;
episodic treaty negotiations were the norm and the practice. But the brutal wars of
the state system forced governments eventually to think in terms of the establishment
of some species of supra-national bodies. The rise of modern institutional
multilateralism, implying universality, equality and multi-purpose decision-making,
is a relatively new phenomenon dating back less than a hundred years, and there is
no reason to infer that it is either immutable or permanent. The United Nations is
the most sophisticated, and despite its limitations, the most successful attempt at
multilateralism. But two principles continue to be in contention; the need for a
device to limit the powers of strong nations, and the need for an organization of
which they would wish to be members. The weakest states were the loudest
champions of nation-state rights and a pluralist international community, whereas
support for justice and individual human rights came from the strongest countries.
This was the dichotomy that contained the seeds of the controversies to come.

The Weaknesses of Institutional Multilateralism

At the end of the last century, with the ascendancy of western liberalism, there was
an expectation of global consensus, shared values and a new world order.
International institutions were again seen as the best way to resolve transnational
issues according to the application of international legal norms and obligations that
were to be based on consent. This hope proved to be unwarranted: the dilemma was
in the tension between force and morality; whether human rights were an enforceable
principle in international law; and whether waging war on a sovereign state over
humanitarian causes was ever justified. The post-Second World War doctrine that
force should uphold, and not undermine, international order was turned upside
down, along with a reversal of priorities; justice was now of growing importance, and
the demands of order were relegated to a secondary position. There was intrusive
action by international organizations in domestic affairs, and ex parte policies by
some big powers which violated sovereignty and which were legitimized unconvin-
cingly by Security Council resolutions, sometimes nunc pro tunc. Unilateralism and
 International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century 39

‘coalitions of the willing’ took actions that were described as ‘‘illegal but legitimate’’
(Bain, 2003), and revealed the absence both of global consensus and of effective
constraints on the exercise of power. Arguments invoking morality and the
enforcement of justice backed by force were juxtaposed against the obligations of
procedural legitimacy.
The United Nations Charter never directly addressed the issue of the justification
for humanitarian intervention, but creates a strong presumption against the use of
force except when a state has been attacked. It does not distinguish between
democratic and authoritarian regimes in extending protection to states from outside
interference. Nevertheless, the equivocal status of legality, beginning with the ‘safe
havens’ in Iraq which were not authorized by the Security Council, set a pattern to
be repeated with variations, although many negative experiences confirmed that
brokering settlements to conflicts and nation-building in societies rent apart by
ethnic, factional, ideological and religious divisions were beyond the capacity of a
small group of United Nations members.
Collective security in the UN depended to an unacceptable extent on the interests
of the United States and its willingness to use force—multilaterally if we can,
unilaterally if we must (Patrick and Forman, 2002). The level of subjectivity in these
interventions led to accusations against the United Nations of ‘‘creeping
unilateralism’’ and ‘‘collective imperialism’’. Practice led to theory, especially in
cases where the occupying powers went on to exercise some form of administrative
and executive control, and the formulation of many doctrines justifying the use of
force in the cause of justice. Power being exercised on the pretext of reconciling order
with justice was accepted in international multilateral organizations, and the
principle of sovereignty as an exclusive norm of domestic jurisdiction came under
challenge. At the post-Cold War juncture, there were few determined efforts made
even by Russia or China to resist this interpretation of international law.
Big powers make poor multilateralists because they are unwilling to concede
power and national capabilities to principles determined by broad consensus. But if
the major powers were not to be restrained by norms and institutions, why should
lesser states be thus constrained? Can multilateralism provide the basis of
international cooperation in conditions of unipolarity? What could be the alternative
to the current unsatisfactory multilateral arrangements in world affairs?

The United States in a Future Multi-polar World

While such questions were being posed, the primacy of the United States in the world
is palpably slipping and its pre-eminence decreases as the global redistribution of
wealth and technology gathers pace. From being the world’s leading lending
country, it has become the major debtor. Demographics are another factor: by 2050,
87% of the nine billion people on this planet will be non-western. The population of
the United States may grow by then to 400 million or thereabouts, largely through
immigration, but those of its allies in Europe and Japan will be in decline. With the
rise of China and India, with working-age population resources and faster economic
growth, the global balance is shifting towards Asia, and a multi-polar world is taking
shape. In Eurasia, the new strength of Russia, and in the Arab peninsula, the
influence of Iran, will both pose a challenge to American leadership. After a century
40 K. Srinivasan

of US-centricity, the United States will have to adjust to a new global situation of
rough equivalence with other power centres. Washington will be forced to interact
positively with a wider cast of major international actors and find a new rationale to
underpin its foreign policy—slogans like ‘common enemy’, ‘war on terror’, ‘regime
change’ and ‘rogue states’ will no longer win the United States any adherents or
sympathy.
Washington regards itself as the standard-bearer of freedom and democracy, and
considers that only its position as the enlightened centre of the civilized world could
protect the planet from disorder. American political culture is averse to imperial rule,
but the conduct of its foreign policy was not very dissimilar to the colonial solutions
and systems of indirect rule that were earlier used by imperialists such as Britain and
the Soviet Union in fashioning their empires: they told the subject people what to do,
but allowed them to run their own affairs. As Fitzroy Maclean wrote about the
Soviet Union before the Second World War,

It is true to say that in each case the local instruments of power are for the most
part natives of the republic in question. Power is vested in the hands of a group
of reliable natives who are responsible for seeing that the wishes of the central
authority are carried out. If they prove unreliable they can be replaced . . . It is a
system capable of application to any new country . . . a stereotypical pattern
into which almost any people or country can be made to fit, with a little
squeezing or pushing. (Maclean, 1974)

The same methods were chosen for application by the United States, but
Washington was unable to find suitable local leaders who would play the roles
intended for them. The Americans did not understand that people, however
deprived, cannot be made free against their own inclinations and did not necessarily
share the same zeal for freedom and democracy. Washington failed to turn its power
into consensus and its principles into accepted international norms, and its
endeavours proved controversial and unsuccessful. Authority relies on legitimacy;
hegemony1 rests on a foundation of consent, however grudging, modesty incurs less
resistance than arrogance, and the pursuit of justice can undermine order in the same
way that the pursuit of order can compromise justice—these were the lessons of the
post-Cold War years.
The coming three or possibly even more decades will still be militarily in favour of
the United States, but diplomatically and economically the world will be decidedly
multi-polar with the revival of old strategic concepts such as ‘balance of power’ and
‘spheres of interest’. The new emerging powers, by displaying some elements of unity
and common purpose, will exercise a strong and increasing influence in international
affairs. World politics are now entering a state of flux, or more properly, of
transition. The hegemonic power of the United States, which had extended its
ascendancy over the rest of the world, is nowhere near its finale, especially in the
military sense. It spends about 5% of its Gross Domestic Product on its armed
forces, but this accounts for 40% of the world’s military expenditure, and exceeds the
next 20 countries combined. The US wishes to retain its ability to fight two wars in
different theatres simultaneously; has five military commands covering the globe;
and holds strategic geopolitical advantages in all directions of the compass.
 International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century 41

But despite such prowess, the single super-power world will not endure, and after the
Iraq war and recurrent economic crises which have debilitated both the United
States and the western world, the ability of the United States to influence events and
assert world dominance in both hard and soft power will become increasingly
circumscribed.

Peace and Security and the United Nations

The character of international cooperation in the next few decades will be shaped by
the global response to the evolving process by which about half a dozen new major
powers establish regional orders of their own. Peace and security decisions in their
spheres of influence will be taken by these powers on the basis of self-interest and
without reference to the United Nations, which has been diminished because of its
impotence when multilateral mandates were enforced unilaterally, and when Delphic
Security Council resolutions were interpreted ‘constructively’ to justify illegal
actions. The system of collective security led by the UN Security Council is regarded
a posteriori as a failure, mainly because the United States with its long-held
exceptionalist impulses would not cede authority over fundamental security choices
to any international organization.
In addition to the perennial problems of dysfunctional institutions, inadequate
resources and ephemeral political will, the United Nations has always faced crises of
expectations (Chesterman, Franck and Malone, 2008). Like other international
organizations, its capacity for decision-making is weak, legitimacy low, public
respect lacking, and authority marginal (Luard, 1999) while alternative inter-
governmental arrangements, such as formal and informal conclaves and ‘coalitions
of the willing’ tend to sideline the United Nations on the important issues of the day.
Repeated calls for institutional reform merely conceal self-interest, and the West and
the global South make mutual demands that neither could ever satisfy. The UN’s
lofty ideals can never be either fully attained nor abandoned, resulting in an eternal
Sisyphean endeavour, but the world organization will continue as a formal and legal
structure, a symbol of state sovereignty, and of importance due to its remit in
humanitarian, cultural and developmental good works. Multilateralism and
unilateralism do not exhaust the entire repertoire of international diplomacy; there
is also room for multilateralism à la carte (Hanggi, Rolof and Ruland, 2006). For
instance, there is obviously a pressing need for a new mechanism to manage the
apportionment of certain resource sectors such as energy, food and water, and to
mitigate the effects on climate change of rapidly growing economies and human
negligence.
Due to the world-wide redistribution of economic growth, technological skills and
military capacity, security theories like deterrence and containment will lose their
validity. A return to something akin to the 19th-century scenario of the Concert of
Powers seems likely, but this time on a global scale, and with the participation of the
emerging strong nations, who will take their places both in formal and informal
governance structures. They will both pose a challenge and provide an answer to the
previous unipolar world. The new international reality will have to take account of
the spectacular growth over the past decades in North East Asia, with the benefits of
low cost labour, vast territory and resources, and rapidly growing infrastructure and
42 K. Srinivasan

technology. China has enjoyed high growth patterns since 1978 and will be a more
formidable rival to world-wide American supremacy than any other country has yet
been. Russia is another rising power of this century. Through strong leadership,
astute diplomacy and abundant energy supplies, much of its loss in status has been
recovered and Moscow now fronts a Russia-led regional order. India has registered
growth rates of 8% per annum or thereabouts in recent years and is by far the
strongest economic and military force in South Asia. Iran has been made more
significant in its region by the US presence in Iraq, and backed by energy resources
and population, will extend its influence in the Arabian peninsula and Afghanistan.
Israel will continue to enjoy the backing of the United States and with its high-
technology culture and military power, will be the other influential power in the
region. Nigeria and South Africa, for demographic, economic and military reasons,
will dominate the regions of West Africa and Southern Africa respectively. Latin
America comprises small and medium-sized states with the exception of Brazil, and
the region has a low level of inter-state disputes and a generally low military
capacity. The United States will continue to exact dependence from the region, but
Brazil will not be willing to play the role of its deputy sheriff, seeking for itself both
international respect and a role in crafting a more equitable global order. The
European Union has a value-system closest to that of the United States, and will
have a diminished but still significant share of the world economy, but it will not seek
to project power or extract leverage by economic or military means beyond its
geographical limits. The effort by the United States to encourage the development of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an ‘out of area’ force will be aborted by
its experience in Afghanistan.
What these powerful international entities have in common with each other, to a
greater or lesser extent, and in contrast to the other countries in their respective
regions, is a large economic base, population strength, military ability, technological
skill, human and natural resources, a cultural and intellectual tradition, and access to
essential raw materials either from domestic or foreign sources. They will be major
participants in global trade and investment and, as ‘responsible’ members of the
international order, will be ready to shoulder a role as regional managers, peace-
makers and peace-enforcers in a new world system.

The New Hegemons

Order in world politics implies hierarchy. Men are not born equal, and physical
aggression is part of being human. Nations are also not equal, are naturally aggressive
some or most of the time, and it requires a hegemon with the possession of force and
the willingness to use it, to maintain order. Thus, ‘‘all governments tell us they will
never yield to force; all history tells us they never yield to anything else’’ (Schnabel
and Thakur, 2000). Peace needs equilibrium, and justice requires restraint. Coopera-
tion cannot take place in the world in the absence of more than one hegemony, and it
is not possible for peace or justice to prevail in a unipolar world. The prospects are not
bright for a future world order based on the rule of international law administered
impartially by a body like the United Nations. The presence of hegemonic states on
the other hand will bring order, parity will lead to the balance of power, and equality
between them will give a new meaning to MAD—mutually acceptable détente. ‘‘In
 International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century 43

a world of players of operationally more or less equal strength,’’ said Kissinger,

‘‘there are only two roads to stability. One is hegemony, and the other is equilibrium’’
(Cooper, 2003). The road-map towards a new international order in the 21st century
will be a reassertion of traditional hierarchy and hegemony, this time on a multiple-
pronged basis of approximate parities.
The problems facing the hegemons of the 21st century will not be the same as those
during the age of European expansion or the Cold War. Each particular hegemony
will have its own characteristics, but hegemony continues to be inherent in the
situation of a strong nation that exercises influence and generates power beyond its
frontiers. Great powers rarely allow other countries under their influence the luxury
of shaping their own fortunes; they may try to mould them in their own image, as the
victors did after the Second World War in Germany and Japan, or they may prefer
an oversight role, merely intervening to prevent dangerous contagions or conflicts
from intruding into their own borders. This century will see the operation of both
these models.
What features could best define a great power of the 21st century? It would be a
nation having been bestowed the international status befitting a great power such as,
but not necessarily, permanent membership of the Security Council, and a nation
accorded equal respect by the existing great powers. Being a great power implies
recognition not only by peers but also by smaller and weaker states willing to accept
the legitimacy and authority of the power in question. Regional preponderance
would represent an important element of any claim. A state may be considered a
major power to the extent that it demonstrates the will and ability to extend and
exercise power beyond its frontiers, fulfils a managerial or order-producing role in its
region, and displays readiness to intervene to prevent the spread of chaos or the
threat of destabilization. A ‘responsible’ great power will be a participant in
international discussions and situations, and consciously indulge in boosting its
domestic image. It would be home to a mass culture and generate soft power in terms
of characteristic, influential and civilizational, cultural, philosophical or intellectual
contributions over a wide radius outside its borders.
Relative power is a combination of different factors, but will include the ability of
a government to extract resources from its citizens to advance national goals and to
expend those resources to achieve them. A nation’s potential for power cannot be
realized without political capacity. The size of the population is important in terms
of the numbers of people who are able to work and fight, but it must also be
productive. The attributes of power in the 21st century will include physical size,
a large working-age population with total factor productivity,2 internal cohesion,
a strong national identity, the size of the economy, modern technology, military
prowess, a stable and strong currency, knowledge-based and capital exports, access
to resources including energy, attractiveness to investible funds, a cultural
endowment that will radiate beyond its borders, and the ability to withstand
environmental degradation and climate change.

Power, Unilateralism and Legitimacy

The currency of power will be different from what it was in the middle of the 20th
century. The USSR and the USA will be the last to have exercised the purely military
44 K. Srinivasan

conception of power projection, and the United States will be the last imperial
power. The new emerging nations of the 21st century will be chary of using force
when it could jeopardize economic progress, regional supremacy or national unity.
Acquiring territory or subject populations will no longer be an objective; perhaps the
reverse. Ideologies, whether religious or liberal or communist or secular-democratic,
will play little or no part. Nor will the possession of nuclear weapons. Use of force
will not be designed towards victory in the field but to achieve political outcomes
that are favourable and sustainable. There will be no further attempt to graft western
institutions on non-receptive countries, and the value-system based on western
history and experience will not be universalized: it would have to embrace or at least
co-exist with the traditional values propagated by the new emerging powers of this
century.
In the modern international order the ultimate guarantor of security is force. The
United States cannot adduce any claim to global unilateralism without conceding the
same right to other states that had the ability and the will to dominate their regions.
China, Russia, India, Iran, Israel and Brazil have in common an ability to
concentrate loyalty and power in the nation state. These regimes will not threaten the
West but will be the axial points of geopolitical areas in which other regional
hegemons will have no wish to intervene. Even a hyper-power in military terms such
as the United States will have cause to accept the idea of security based on mutual
accommodation, and Washington will come to the conclusion that its security
requirements could more easily and cheaply be achieved through cooperation with
the other regional hegemons than by confrontation.
American military strength and reach will be an asset in contributing to world
stability in the first half of the 21st century. The USA will strive to provide world
leadership, but will also increasingly be obliged to cooperate with others. The choice
between chaos and instability and hegemony, and between balance and hegemony
will be settled in favour of the acceptance of multiple hegemonies. There will be an
understanding between the major powers that weak and failing states pose a danger
to order in the world, and that action to avert this menace will have to be taken
regionally by the local hegemon acting either through, or if necessary, outside the
auspices of the regional organization. When a hegemon intervenes in its own region,
there will be no Gulf War type of coalition forming to confront the hegemon. The
concept of non-interference will be observed in respect of such actions; it will be
understood that the responsibility for order in the world has become multi-
lateralized, and that this is the quickest, most efficacious and economical manner in
dealing with such situations. The sources of regional influence will be the exercise of
power and authority backed by the legitimacy of acceptance.
The old foundations of security management will not easily be replaced by
anything more just, reliable or legitimate. World security will be fragmented,
pluralized and regionalized, and made egalitarian as far as the exercise of power in
the interests of order is concerned. There will be various co-existing security
communities, and enforcement by the local hegemons in the cause of security
management. These new hegemonic states will be centres of comparative affluence
surrounded by a far less developed hinterland. They will have the same immigration
dilemmas presently faced by the United States and the European Union—though,
with the exception of Russia, they will have no need of migrant labour. The basic
 International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century 45

threats confronting them from their region will be in the form of ungovernable
territories, state weaknesses or failures, refugees, environmental damage, narcotics,
transnational crime, including terrorism, internal conflicts, ethnic rivalries and social
conflict.
The new hegemons have long blamed western-dominated international society for
having denied them their rightful role in world affairs. They will resist external
interference, let alone intervention, in their respective spheres of influence. There have
been countries with strong economies that have chosen to refrain from the exercise of
international influence, but the emerging powers will not show such self-restraint. On
the contrary, they will prove that opening their economies can be married to a strong
assertion of national sovereignty. They will be in the front line as the bulwark to
contain international anarchy, the criminalization and collapse of states, ethnic
hatred and religious and environmental conflict because they will not want any
disturbances in the regions under their tutelage. The influence of one regional
hegemon will end where that of another hegemon begins: these boundaries will
necessarily be ill-defined, subject to shifting power-equations, and often ambiguous.
The use of Chapter VII provisions of the UN Charter that require mandatory
compliance by member states will diminish considerably. When applied, they will be
more in support of the regional hegemon than to interdict its actions. Similarly,
Chapter VIII provisions, which envisage regional organizations acting in support of
the ‘purposes and principles’ of the United Nations, will be more applicable to the
Security Council working in encouragement of the regional hegemon than the other
way round. The major power most affected by a crisis will have the primary
responsibility for orchestrating a response. The wrongs to be righted and the dangers
to be confronted may be of global relevance but only the regional authority will have
the interest, the will and the ability to deal with them.

Conclusion
The new world order of the first half of the present century will be one of peaceful
mutual accommodation between the big powers located in the East and West, North
and South. The priority for these powers will be for economic progress and regional
order, with defence expenditure being used to build technological capacity for
deterrence against the other big powers and as an enabler for their self-appointed but
globally recognized role as regional enforcers. In this neo-Hobbesian world system,
the lesser states will come to their own bilateral arrangements with the local regional
hegemon upon whom they will be dependent not only for their security but for
economic, technical and trading facilitation. Some of these lesser entities will enjoy
economic prosperity, depending on their ability to maintain internal cohesion, to turn
globalization to their advantage, and to control the socio-economic consequences of
climate change, but they will not be able to mount a challenge to the hierarchical
nature of international society. They will have far greater recourse to the United
Nations than the major powers, who will prefer to apply unilateral methods with the
connivance and consent of their peers. The debate between Westphalian national
sovereignty and the right to intervene to breach the sovereignty of other states on the
grounds of preventing threats to international peace and security will not be resolved.
Political and economic inequality between nations will be drawn in ever sharper
46 K. Srinivasan

focus. Regional institutions will be dominated by the local big power. Reform of the
United Nations will be incomplete and unappealing to the vast majority of member
states. The world’s hegemonic powers will lose faith in the Security Council as an
effective mechanism to deliberate issues of peace and security. World bodies will be
used for discussion of global issues such as the environment and climate change,
pandemic disease, energy and food supplies, and development, but resulting action
will primarily devolve on the big powers in the affected regions. This will particularly
be the case in the realm of peace and security in which only the regional hegemon will
have the means, the will and the obligation, for the sake of its own status and security,
to ensure resolution or retribution as each case may demand. Even in a globalized
world, regional and local action will be the prime necessity and such action will be left
to the power best equipped to understand the particular circumstances, select the
appropriate remedy and execute the action required to administer it.
Conflict will be contained and localized. There will be no menace of war on a
world-wide scale and little fear of international terrorism. Private-enterprise terrorist
actions will continue to manifest political, social and economic frustrations, but they
will be parochial, ineffective and not state-sponsored. There will be far less
invocation of human rights in international politics, since these will be identified with
a western agenda and western civilization: there will be an equal recognition of
community rights and societal values associated with Eastern and other traditions.
Chinese artists, Indian entrepreneurs, Russian actors, Iranian chefs, South African
song-writers and Brazilian designers will be household names; models on the fashion
cat-walk and sporting teams from all major countries will be distinctly multi-racial,
reflecting the immigration to, but also the purchasing power of, the new major
powers. National populations will show evidence of mixed race more than ever
before in history. Climate change will be an acknowledged global challenge and all
countries, led by the regional hegemons, will undertake binding restraints on carbon
emissions. The world will become acutely conscious of the essentiality of access to
fresh water. The pace of technological innovation will accelerate at dizzying speed,
further accentuating inequalities. There will be very rapid steps taken to develop
alternative sources of energy in the face of dwindling and costly oil supplies. Western
industrialized nations, to remain competitive, will vacate vast areas of traditional
manufacturing in favour of new technologies and green engineering. The world will
be a safer and stable place until one of the hegemons eventually develops an obvious
ascendancy first regionally, then continentally and finally globally over all the others.

Notes
1. Hegemon is used in this article in the popular sense of dominant national power, and not the
Gramscian definition of the term.
2. The value added of all factors of production, including labour and capital.

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