New Statesman: The New Age of Great Power Politics

Political scientist Samuel Huntington and others have theorized that elites as beneficiaries of globalization demonstrate less loyalty for nations. Many anticipated great power rivalries to subside after the Cold War, but resentment emerged about global endeavors as revealed by Brexit and Donald Trump’s election: “Two of the nations that had evangelised most about the liberal international order, the United States and the United Kingdom, seemed to lose their faith in its durability (and perhaps even its desirability),” writes John Bew. There is a shift toward new world order and all must contemplate navigating global issues with more dominance from China, influence from Russia and interventions from regional powers. “The Western self-confidence that was so prevalent at the end of the Cold War has been replaced by an intellectual virus of internalised angst,” Bew writes. “Some of the weakening of the Western model of progress is self-inflicted; much of it is the product of immovable historical forces such as the rising population and wealth of Asia.” With Western powers questioning a rules-based order that reinforced their dominance, Bew recommends other nations to prepare for a new era of competition with more risk. – YaleGlobal