A SYMPOSIUM OF VIEWS: To what extent will the war in Ukraine, and the overwhelming global support for debilitating economic sanctions against Russia, lead to, first, a further decline in globalization, and second, a sharp turn to the bifurcation of the industrialized world powers? On one side would be the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan and other Pacific allies, and others. On the other would be Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and (maybe) India.
Over two dozen international policy strategists offer their views in The International Economy. KEY POINTS:
SCOTT BESSENT, Founder and CEO, Key Square Group: “Global bifurcation is imminent.”
DANIEL SNEIDER, Lecturer in East Asian Studies, Stanford University: “The war in Ukraine has given new life, and new purpose, to the security system in East Asia that arose out of the destruction of the Korean war.”
JAMES A. LEWIS, Senior Vice President and Director, Strategic Technology Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies: “Not an end to globalization, but a temporary check.”
MICHAEL C. KIMMAGE, Ordinary Professor and History Department Chair, Catholic University of America: “The United States is an island of security and stability. Over time that will shift investment and trade toward the United States.”
MARINA V.N. WHITMAN, Professor of Business Admin. and Public Policy emerita, University of Michigan: “A return of Pax Americana, China as the long-term winner, or a return to the status quo. My response? None of the above.”
JENNIFER LIND, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College, and Associate Fellow, Chatham House: “The Ukraine war helps China because it absorbs U.S. strategic energies in Europe.”
EDWIN M. TRUMAN, Senior Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, former Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, U.S. Treasury, and former Director, International Finance, Federal Reserve Board: “My best guess is a world that is
not bifurcated but trifurcated.”
EWALD NOWOTNY, Former Governor, Oesterreichische Nationalbank: “Not a world of bifurcation or of a return to ‘Pax Americana,’ but rather a world of overlapping regional
coalitions.”
HAROLD JAMES, Professor of History and International Affairs, Princeton University, and co-author of The Euro and the Battle of Ideas (2016): “Putin has in fact already revitalized both the European Union and NATO, and will do the same for the principle of multilateralism.”
ATMAN TRIVEDI, Senior Vice President, Albright Stonebridge Group: “Globalization’s future is more in doubt than at any time in the twenty-first century.”
ANDERS ÅSLUND, Senior Fellow, Stockholm Free World Forum, and author, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (2019): “Russia’s likely defeat in Ukraine will probably lead to a reinforced Western
military and a new Pax Americana.”
JEFFREY D. SACHS, University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University: “We should put aside Biden’s vision of an inexorable struggle between democracies and autocracies, and focus instead on pressing common challenges.”
ROBERT D. ATKINSON, President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation: “Putin’s attack should galvanize real foreign policy, defense policy, and industrial policy cooperation among democratic, allied nations.”
MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN, President, Queens’ College, Cambridge University, and Professor, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: “It is time to chart a path to a new multilateralism.”
LORENZO BINI SMAGHI, Former Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank: “Deglobalization may come too early for China’s ambitions. This may force a rethinking of its growth strategy.”
DANIEL TWINING, President, International Republican Institute: “A war Putin launched to expand Moscow’s imperial control risks making it subservient to Beijing’s imperial designs.”
PATRICK M. CRONIN, Asia-Pacific Security Chair, Hudson Institute, and former Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University: “The war in Ukraine may weaken Russia, but that will only make Moscow more reliant on a reemerging China dedicated to
making the world safe for autocracy.”
JOHN M. DEUTCH, Former Director of Central Intelligence, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, former Undersecretary, U.S. Department of Energy, and retired Institute Professor of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “The best chance of avoiding this new bifurcated world is a policy of
integrating Russia into the European economic system.”
MANSOOR DAILAMI, Senior Advisor, Rock Creek Group, and Former Manager, Emerging Trends Team, World Bank Group: “This affront to international morality and justice speaks volumes about the fraught state of the current
international order.”
GARY CLYDE HUFBAUER, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics: “Just as globalization made progress during 2005–2020, in the
decade 2020–2030, continued progress seems likely.”
GABRIEL J. FELBERMAYR, Director, Austrian Institute of Economic Research,and Professor of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business: “The war reveals and
speeds up tendencies that started to gain traction earlier.”
WILLIAM A. REINSCH, Scholl Chair in International Business, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Senior Advisor, Kelley, Drye & Warren LLP, and former President, National Foreign Trade Council: “We will see a new normal—an interconnected world economically, but
more fragmented politically.”
JOSEF BRAML, Secretary General of the German Group, Trilateral Commission, and author, The Transatlantic Illusion (C.H. Beck, 2022): “Germany and Europe become collateral damage to this historic dispute if their decision
makers do not develop options for action to defend their interests.”
ROBERT A. MANNING, Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council: “Never before has
the world’s eleventh largest economy, a major exporter of
oil, gas, wheat, metals, and fertilizer, been unplugged.”
THOMAS OATLEY, Corasaniti-Zondorak Chair of International Politics, Tulane University: “The sanctions
imposed on Russia by Western governments have uncovered a much larger global fault line.”
GARY KLEIMAN, Senior Partner, Kleiman International Consultant: “Russia’s sweeping commodity ties with trade
and financial partners reflect the co-dependency and complexity that underscore globalization as a future
overarching theme.”
Read detail views here.
An Asia Pacific-based author and analyst tells despardes.com: “No consensus among Western scholars – we humans tend to fall back on our preferred values, orientations and expectations when the future looks even more uncertain than is usually the case. The fact is, there are just too many variables in play right now and accurately predicting the outcomes of their intersections and interactions is a task beyond human cognition. This is why ‘prophecy’ is such a challenge.”
