Imagine an extraterrestrial analyst who secretly visits Earth every half century to assess the status of human life on the planet. What would he tell his fellow aliens about 2024?
Before a trip, he would review previous reports, making notes. In 1974, the world's leading democratic power, the United States, was in geopolitical retreat and in chaos on the domestic scene, while the authoritarian Soviet Union seemed increasingly powerful. The most populous country in the world, Mao Zedong's China, had an economy barely above basic sustainability, while the second most populous country, India, was a shade better.
The global economy has suffered from inflation and weak growth due to a chaotic international monetary and financial system. Wars or the threat of wars, both civil and interstate, were common in every part of the planet. The nuclear end of the world hung over the planet like the sword of Damocles.
However, the 1974 report is absolutely optimistic compared to that of 1924. One horrible war had ended while sowing the seeds for another even more murderous one. Imperialism shaped the international order, as a significant percentage of the world's population was ruled or exploited by European capitals thousands of miles away. The dizzying economic depression had just ended, but it was only a prelude to the far deeper, more devastating financial collapse that followed a few years later. Racism, misogyny and intolerance were normal. It was heaven, however, compared to the previous chronicle. A report from 1874 indicates that the human lifespan is only 30 years and that there are few people alive who, at some point in their lives, have not been the target of personal or group violence, deadly disease, injustice, and famine and natural disasters.
In fact, each previous report is worse than the next.
From that historical vantage point, the alien might send home a more than positive report. In the year 2024, hunger and illiteracy have been dramatically reduced, life expectancy has more than doubled in the past hundred years. Unimaginable amounts of wealth have been created, astonishing amounts of information are available to ordinary people, and instantly; and every day technologies are created that save lives and change the way of working. Genocide is rare; tolerance, not prejudice, is increasingly the norm; capitalism in the formal sense of the word has been consigned to the dustbin of history, and there is little chance that economic recessions will turn into crippling depressions.
While the Age of Abundance promotes tolerance and radical individuality, it has also undermined social cohesion and weakened the sense of shared purpose needed to meet challenges.
More importantly, initiatives by states to fully mobilize their societies for general war of conquest—perhaps the most pervasive and terrifying aspect of world politics in the alien's previous chronicles—have all but disappeared. Indeed, states are now expected to protect and provide benefits for their citizens, rather than merely using them as a military tool to destroy enemies and seize territory. Ideas and innovations, not territories, are the sources of power in this new world.
Revolutionary changes
In short, the world has made unimaginable progress in overcoming the great challenges of scarcity that have plagued humanity for millennia and been one of the essential drivers of wars, empires and conquests.
However, success in creating a more prosperous, more informed and safer world for humanity has, unexpectedly, created a whole new set of planetary challenges that, if not resolved, threaten catastrophe if not human extinction.
Tremendous advances in creating unimaginable levels of wealth, information, and security have created new, and perhaps more dangerous, problems of abundance—unexpected and potentially catastrophic challenges that, to add to the irony, have been created by humanity's impressive efforts to combat scarcity.
Five revolutionary changes were the key to the current era of abundance.
First, an unexpected and voluntary demographic compression took place in the developed world, with birth rates plummeting while life expectancy increased significantly; as the number of middle-aged people increased and population growth slowed down, the need to conquer additional territories decreased.
Second, an economic-technological revolution broke out that massively improved agricultural yields and food availability, dramatically boosted industrial productivity, and transformed capitalism while improving transportation, housing, health, and making fuel affordable and available.
Third, the information revolution took place, while the increase in literacy and technological changes significantly expanded the scale of access to knowledge about the world.
Fourth, the leaders of the developed world have created domestic and international institutions of governance, which among other things have brought about far greater domestic stability and socio-economic well-being, eliminating great depressions and providing greater both personal and collective security, creating a political order that values order, sovereignty and , over time, human rights.
Finally, revolutionary new military capabilities, especially thermonuclear weapons, significantly increased the costs and risks of great power wars of conquest.
These revolutions combined to reduce the shadow of hunger, disease and misery that had long loomed over humanity, massively increased total wealth and information while weakening the main drivers of territorial expansion, immeasurably improving the quality of life in the developed world.
Populations have stabilized and aged; food, resources and markets abound; and immediate information flows have exploded.
So what exactly are the problems of abundance? The current world order has a huge material product, which is a consequence of the increasing global exchange, but its fair distribution within and between populations is disputed. This enormous prosperity created by growing trade and industrial capabilities has spawned serious risks of climate, environmental, migration and public health crises. The emergence of new technologies, developed mainly by the private sector, has solved many problems, but it has also created new and daunting challenges. Surprisingly, the unlimited amount of data and information, which no longer has an intermediary in the form of traditional institutions, creates different but equally terrifying dangers as the scanty information controlled by religious institutions or the state.
Faced with a rapidly changing world and global phenomena they do not understand, leaders rely on their outdated beliefs about how the world should work, rather than trying to better understand how the world actually works
Yes, it seems that fiscal and monetary policy have been in an expansionary state for too long. However, this era also saw a rebalancing of the world economy.
As Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman point out in their forthcoming book, Children of a Modest Star, the list of threats to human well-being, life and the planet itself that has arisen from abundance is terrifying: climate change, pandemic diseases, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, space debris, increasing antibiotic resistance, loss of biodiversity, anthropogenic genetic disturbances, land degradation, disturbances in the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, freshwater depletion, ocean acidification, ocean plastic waste - and perhaps even new technologies with terraforming potential, such as bioengineering and artificial intelligence.
Individuality at the expense of common purpose
A key feature of the Age of Abundance is the extraordinary ability to rapidly move vast amounts of ideas, money, goods, and especially people, regardless of borders and territories. However, this revolution in transmission does not mean that it allows only good citizens and products to move around the world: unwanted agents and agents - from pathogenic viruses to terrorists to bad ideas - can also move much faster and easier, often with devastating consequences. Expectations were also dramatically raised, but not met. While the Age of Abundance promotes tolerance and radical individuality, it has also undermined social cohesion and weakened the sense of shared purpose needed to meet these challenges. The ruling norms and institutions created to successfully combat scarcity have proven unprepared to face contemporary challenges, creating a crisis of political legitimacy and causing polarization.
In an era of abundance in which empires, plunder and conquest do not make much sense, how are we to understand the current turmoil in world politics, marked by atrocities in the Middle East, brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine and deepening tensions between the two most powerful countries in the world, China and the United States? Why do the leading powers seem to be focused on topics reminiscent of those of a world of scarcity, especially great power rivalry and war, while offering weak responses to burning issues arising in a world of plenty? There are several reasons, but three stand out.
First, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is the exception that proves the rule, revealing the dangers of strategic decisions based on outdated assumptions about conquest. From the narrow perspective of national interest, the desire to control the Donbass would have made some sense in 1900 when abundant supplies of coal, wheat, defense in depth and an adaptable population contributed to Russia's power in a world shaped by poverty and where empire and conquest were the norm. Today, in an age when food and fuel are cheap and plentiful, when land is less valuable, when conquered territories are much harder to subjugate, alternative grand strategies offer much more, and the world is both ready and willing to punish Russia for its violation of the norms of sovereignty and human rights, even a successful conquest of Ukraine is unlikely to make Russia more powerful in the long run.
There are many important differences between America's disastrous post-11/XNUMX wars in the wider Middle East and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, both reflect bad strategic decisions based on a gross misjudgment of the nature of power and what drives the international system, on a misunderstanding of the increasingly difficult and less profitable use of force to conquer territory or subjugate populations in an age of plenty.
The difference between imperialism and irredentism
Second, it is important to recognize that there are many causes of war and conflict other than plunder and imperial conquest. In particular, a distinction must be made between the imperialist conquests of the past - or the expansive, often unrestricted urge to add territories and colonies - and irredentism, or the desire of a state to reclaim territory it believes has been wrongfully taken from it. The most dangerous places in the world - Kashmir, the Korean Peninsula, the Middle East and the Taiwan Strait - are often the ones where states are willing to fight, and pay a high price, to reclaim territory they believe is their natural and historical right. Although they may operate similarly, imperial conquest and idiosyncraticism are driven by different factors and forces, shaped by different calculus, and require different strategic responses.
The unlimited amount of data and information, which no longer have intermediaries in the form of traditional institutions, creates different, but equally terrifying dangers as the scanty information controlled by religious institutions or the state
Whether China's ambition to seize Taiwan is an example of irredentism or a desire for global dominance is a key question. Regardless of China's ultimate goal, the changing circumstances brought about by the era of plenty make the return of an imperial, expansionist Eurasian empire similar to Napoleon's France, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, or Stalin's Soviet Union highly unlikely. Unlike states and empires in times of scarcity, China has no reason to fear being conquered, nor could it, even if it wanted to, so easily attack, occupy, and occupy neighbors such as India, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries, especially if future the successful occupation of Taiwan produced widespread military balancing and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region.
In an age of plenty, China may soon find that the cost-benefit ratio of conquest has completely changed over the past century. Even if Beijing wanted to embark on an imperialist conquest, it is hard to imagine how it would succeed, and, if it tried, it would risk its own defeat and collapse.
Finally, it often takes some time - sometimes decades - for people, institutions and states to realize that their environment and circumstances have changed and to update their assumptions, conceptual perspectives and political practices accordingly. A millennium of conquests and violent revolutions - and the governing institutions built to deal with those crises - have left deep scars, and states, leaders and populations have not been quick enough to recognize the profound changes in demographics, technology, economics and socio-cultural realities that have contributed so much to suppressing scarcity while exacerbating the problems of abundance.
Leaders continue to play the game of great powers
This short-sightedness can come at a high price. Today's leaders may share the characteristics of their tragic predecessors on the eve of the First World War. Faced with a rapidly changing world and global phenomena they do not understand, they rely on their long-held, unspoken, and often unexamined beliefs about how the world should work, rather than trying to better understand how the world actually works.
As terrible as the problems of poverty and the geopolitical behaviors they cause are, at least they are known. The leading powers and their leaders and institutions know how to play the great power game that has dominated the past. The problems of abundance and the solutions needed are unknown, disorienting and demanding. Yet a melting planet, mass migration, another deadliest pandemic, destabilizing new technologies and cancers of inequality, deep polarization, and sociocultural fragmentation and alienation threaten the United States and the planet far more than the sort of expansionist industrial Eurasian hegemon that ran rampant in the first half of the 20th century. .
How would our alien friend finish his report? He would point out that institutions, practices, theories and policies have successfully suppressed scarcity and are not adequate to deal with the problems of abundance. It would highlight the cost of failure to adjust fundamental, often unspoken assumptions about how the world works, and point out that in preparing for the final war, Earth could go tragically and needlessly wrong.
In the report, he would criticize thinkers and statesmen in 2024 for obsessing over the return of great power rivalry and repeating the views of geopolitical thinkers like Meehan and Mackinder to control oceans and land that, unless problems of abundance are faced, may soon become unusable and disappear.
Due to visiting the planet every half century, the alien is, unlike Earthlings, an optimist. The human species never chooses the easy way, and considering the stakes, it easily messes up - by starting the third world war or by not being prepared for more deadly pandemics than covid-19, unbridled artificial intelligence, or the deadly consequences of the climate crisis. The alien reminds himself and wishes the inhabitants of the planet to remember that in 1974, 1924 and 1874, few could have imagined the incredible progress Earthlings have made since then. This, perhaps wrongly, gives him hope that he will visit Earth in 2074 and be impressed again.
The author is a distinguished professor and director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University.
The text is taken from the magazine "Forin Polisi"
Translation: N. Bogetić
Bonus video:
