Panel split on lack of global leadership being a new normal

Some observers have said that a leaderless and divided world will be the new normal, especially given the United States' lack of interest in assuming global leadership.

But such leadership has rarely been provided by any single power, and to say that the world is entering a "new" normal would be to ignore historical facts. This was the key point of contention during a spirited debate among four geopolitical observers at the Singapore Summit yesterday.

The annual summit gathers business and thought leaders to discuss global trends, and ends today.

Yesterday's virtual debate moderated by FutureMap consultancy founder and managing partner Parag Khanna saw Mr Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, cite his reasons for thinking the world has entered a leaderless new normal.

First, the US is "much angrier" now about the idea that it should be the global sheriff or promoter of global values - a national sentiment that propelled Mr Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016.

Second, while China is becoming more powerful, it is still state capitalist and authoritarian in orientation, and the international architecture that it is building stands in competition with the US.

Third, technology is no longer a unifying force. "Ten years ago, as seen in the Arab Spring, there was a lot of support for democracy and the use of technology. Today, technology is more about surveillance and big data that is driving us apart, and we see a technology Cold War between the US and China," said Mr Bremmer. The biggest problem, he added, is that despite the challenges facing the world, "the Americans are not going to be interested or feel the impulse to fill that vacuum in the near term".

Countering this was Stanford University senior fellow Niall Ferguson, who said an anarchic world lacking order has never existed. "Leadership is never, if rarely, ever provided by one power. More usually, there are a few great powers that compete, sometimes cooperating and sometimes colliding."

He recounted the arc of history, from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia - treaties which ended a 30-year European war - to the two world wars, where great powers formed coalitions with lesser powers. Even in the 1990s when the US "was the only show in town", he said, China's rise was already beginning.

Professor Ferguson also cited examples where US leadership has remained resilient, from America's continued dominance of tech firms, and its brokering of Israel's landmark peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to the Federal Reserve's array of actions to limit the economic damage from the pandemic.

Agreeing, Professor Ngaire Woods, dean of Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government, pointed out that China does not seem to be trying to replace a US-led system of governance.

Rather, she said, it has joined the international institutions that the US helped create, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organisation, and competed within these institutions for influence. "Therefore we are getting an increasingly complex leadership, but it is (still) a leadership. It shows a willingness by China to - on the US' own terms - help fashion and push for change in the rules that govern those institutions."

The dean of Tsinghua University's Institute of International Relations, Professor Yan Xuetong, disagreed, saying that just because a country has power does not mean that it is providing leadership.

"Leadership is based on having followers - without followers, you cannot be a leader," he said, adding it is doubtful if President Trump could today command the same degree of support from the global community as President George W. Bush did during the Iraq War.

Reiterating Mr Bremmer's point about the lack of political willingness, he said that neither the US nor China is willing to assume leadership. China's model of governance - socialism with Chinese characteristics - is premised on leadership by the Chinese Communist Party, Prof Yan explained. Because it is so specific to China, it cannot provide this leadership to any other country.

Nor, he added, is China willing to enter into ideological or economic confrontation with the US. "This is something China has frequently repeated. China knows that confrontation is not in its interest."

Prof Woods cautioned against an excessively bleak prognosis, pointing out that neither of them "have the power to simply command a bloc and recreate the Cold War".

What each is doing, she said, is rebalancing its relationship with the rest of the world. "I think there are opportunities here for countries to start finding other avenues of cooperation that will work well for them, and selectively cooperate with one side or the other."