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Ian Bremmer: A political power vacuum is bad news for the world
We clearly live in a G-Zero world. But have the crises of 2022 made it better or worse?
That depends, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer says in a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
On the one hand, the perception that the US is the global leader it once was leaves a vacuum that rogue states are eager to fill. On the other, the West has stepped up, uniting NATO against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
"When it gets bad enough, the international community shows resilience," Bremmer explains.
Watch the full Global Stage livestream conversation "The Road to 2030: Getting Global Goals Back on Track" .
On Russia’s reckoning, China’s vulnerability & US democracy’s Dunkirk
2022 started and ended very differently for Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
Putin has gone from all-powerful to global pariah. Zelensky from untrustworthy former comedian to TIME magazine's Person of the Year.
It's one of the oldest lessons in the history books: political power can be fleeting.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer looks back at 2022 and forward to 2023 with two frequent guests of the show: former US State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter and The Atlantic contributor Tom Nichols.
Lots to talk about: Ukraine, the state of American democracy, and Xi Jinping's rocky year.
Does Russia still have game after its disaster of a war in Ukraine? Did US democracy dodge a bullet with the unexpected result of the midterms? And has walking back zero-COVID humbled Xi on the year of his CCP coronation?
Podcast: Not infallible: Russia, China, and US democracy with Tom Nichols & Anne-Marie Slaughter
Listen: From the largest European land invasion since World War II in Ukraine to the essential “coronation” of the world’s most powerful person in Beijing, to one of the biggest political comebacks for Democrats in Washington, 2022 has been quite the year. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America, and Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic, join Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to look back at the remarkable power shifts of 2022 and what it might mean for the year ahead.
Were fears about US democracy in peril overblown or justified? Did China's Xi Jinping gain more power, or was his regime "cut down to size" when the zero-COVID policy finally caused massive protests? Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended the geopolitical balance around the world, but where will the war lead - especially if Putin really has no endgame?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: Can the US get its act together? Susan Glasser & Peter Baker on "the world’s greatest geopolitical crisis" ›
- Podcast: What US midterms tell us about the state of US democracy ›
- Podcast: Examining Putin: his logic, mistakes, and hope for Ukraine ›
- Podcast: Tom Nichols on Biden’s “boring” presidency and a narcissistic nation ›
- Disinformation the “biggest threat” from Russia – Anne-Marie Slaughter ›
- Podcast: Russia's view of the Ukraine war: a Kremlin ally's perspective - GZERO Media ›
- America vs itself: Political scientist Francis Fukuyama on the state of democracy - GZERO Media ›
- In divided America, anything goes in the name of “protecting democracy" - GZERO Media ›
2022 has been rough. Will 2023 be any better?
2022 has been the year of converging crises: the ongoing pandemic, climate change, economic turmoil, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Lots of gloom and doom, indeed.
But in all these crises, there is an opportunity to bounce back with solutions to make the world a better place. Think of how the war in Ukraine united the West more than ever against a common enemy.
How? Good question. We asked several experts during the Global Stage livestream conversation "The Road to 2030: Getting Global Goals Back on Track," hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
For Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO, the main reason for hope in 2023 is that this year some people realized that there are big problems worth fixing. Although we definitely live in a G-zero world with a vacuum of global leadership, he adds, we've also seen unprecedented Western unity that would not have happened without Russia invading Ukraine. Ian believes that resistance to a negotiated solution to the war will come from the developing world and that Elon Musk is definitely complicating things with how he's running Twitter.
Microsoft President Brad Smith discussed the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which at their halfway point he sees as a "glass half full, half empty" but questions how progress is being measured. Also, Smith sees Russia turning to civilians in Ukraine because its military is losing against Ukrainian soldiers, which he regards as the opposite of what the world agreed to do after World War II. On climate, he doesn't see things in good shape after COP27 but hopes today's multiple ongoing crises will push us to do more things together.
Melissa Fleming, the UN's Undersecretary-General for Global Communications, laments there is so much more to be done to make the world a better place next year, but there's so much lethargy amid all the gloom and doom. She also braces for Ukraine's tough winter as Russia targets the country's energy infrastructure. Fleming is worried about a disturbing spike in climate change disinformation, which has returned to the denial narrative when people most need to be informed about what's happening to the planet.
Khadija Mayman from the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative underscores the need for young people in her community to get mental health support. Other types of support would be welcome, too — youth want to do the work, but they can't wait forever for jobs, so we need to help create businesses that'll employ them.
Hindou Ibrahim, co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change, says that we can't protect biodiversity without first recognizing Indigenous peoples' rights to land and access to finance. We must all be partners, she adds, and Indigenous peoples are the "CEOs" (chief ecological officers) of the planet's biodiversity.
Dr. Omnia El Omrani, Youth Envoy for COP27 and SDG Champion, resents how young people's voices are excluded from the global climate conversation while they are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. She wants to create a space for young people to be able to shape their own futures without killing their dreams.
This livestream is the latest in the Webby-nominated Global Stage series, a partnership between GZERO and Microsoft that examines critical issues at the intersection of technology, politics, and society.
- COVID's impact on education and its long-term geopolitical consequences: Gerald Butts ›
- Who can solve the world's "emergency of global proportions"? ›
- Is the world coming apart? Drama at Davos ›
- Top Risks 2022: We’re done with the pandemic, but the pandemic ain’t done with us ›
- Russia freezing out Ukrainian civilians because it can't beat military, says Microsoft's Brad Smith - GZERO Media ›
- We can't fix climate change without protecting biodiversity, says UNFCCC official - GZERO Media ›