We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
What the West is doing wrong in the world's biggest crises
To fix our broken international political system, we need a crisis. For instance, a pandemic, climate change, Big Tech having too much power, or a Russia invasion of Ukraine. But it must be a crisis that's so destructive it forces us to respond fast, and together — like World War II. That's the crisis that created the international system we have today, and kept the peace until now. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks to Anne-Marie Slaughter, former US State Department official and now CEO of New America, and political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt about the war and other crises.
Slaughter and Walt debate key issues such as the tough choices NATO faces on expanding to more countries but not Ukraine or other former Soviet republics, what we learned from the pandemic, and whether there are still reasons for hope in our current gloomy political environment. "If you're going to use a crisis effectively for change, you have to be able to have the right time horizon, the right group of countries, and a very specific set of goals," says Slaughter. But Walt believes we can't tackle all these crises at the same time — otherwise, at some point people will just throw up their hands and say it's just too hard.
For Walt, it was unfortunate to have "a lot of the wrong leaders in a lotta the wrong places at exactly the wrong time," which prevented for instance the US and China from coordinating a more effective global response to the pandemic.
Slaughter thinks we do have the ability to address many of the problems affecting the Global South because the most powerful countries are now all over the world. Many voices of people who need to be at the table — civic groups, CEOs, women, people of color — are not being heard.
Using today's crises to fix tomorrow's problems
We're moving toward more illiberalism, zero trust in the US-China relationship, and other global crises. Are there any reasons for hope?
Not for political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt, who believes we can't tackle all these crises at the same time — otherwise, at some point people will just throw up their hands and say it's just too hard.
What's more, he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, when a crisis hits, the temptation to turn to strongman rule to fix the problem "goes way up."
For her part, Anne-Marie Slaughter, former US State Department official and CEO of New America, thinks we do have the ability to address many of the problems affecting the Global South because the most powerful countries are now all over the world.
Still, she says that many voices of people who need to be at the table — civic groups, CEOs, women, people of color — are not being heard.
Watch the rest of Ian Bremmer's conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Stephen Walt on this episode of GZERO World: Hope as major crises intersect
What we learned from COVID
What lessons did we learn from the pandemic that still apply now with the war in Ukraine?
Unlike the war or the 2008 global financial crisis, COVID was not an immediate threat we needed to respond to in real time, says former US State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter, so different countries were affected in different ways, and responded their own way at different times.
"If you're going to use a crisis effectively for change, you have to be able to have the right time horizon, the right group of countries, and a very specific set of goals," she tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
For political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt, it was unfortunate to have "a lot of the wrong leaders in a lotta the wrong places at exactly the wrong time" which prevented for instance the US and China from coordinating a more effective global response to the pandemic.
COVID also ran counter to the expectation that crises make governments take control. They did, but Walt says there was very strong pushback from citizens on things like lockdowns and masks — and that undermines the state's ability to respond.
We've also learned, he adds, how hard it is for many people to make short-term individual sacrifices in order to fix long-term problems.
Watch the rest of Ian Bremmer's conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Stephen Walt on this episode of GZERO World: Hope as major crises intersect
Is this crisis big enough? How crises can force solutions
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine hasn’t gone to plan, BUT he has achieved something nearly unimaginable: get US Republicans and Democrats to agree on something.
And it's not just a US problem. Trust in government has plummeted all around the world, to the point that this has becoming the defining story of our era. That's why international institutions like the UN or the IMF are no longer fit for purpose.
To fix this broken system, we need a crisis. For instance, a pandemic, climate change, or Big Tech.
But it must be a crisis that's so destructive it forces us to respond fast, and together — like World War II. That's the crisis that created the international system we have today, and kept the peace until now.
In his book The Power of Crisis, Ian Bremmer looks at three looming challenges, and what we should do about them so we are not caught unprepared when the Big One hits.
Hope as major crises intersect
To fix our broken international political system, we need a crisis. For instance, a pandemic, climate change, or Big Tech having too much power.
But it must be a crisis that's so destructive it forces us to respond fast, and together — like World War II.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks to Anne-Marie Slaughter, former US State Department official and now CEO of New America, and political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt about the Ukraine war and other crises.
Slaughter and Walt debate key issues such as the tough choices NATO faces on expanding to more countries but not Ukraine or other former Soviet republics, what we learned from the pandemic, and whether there are still reasons for hope in our current gloomy political environment.
By the way, Ian has a new book out, "The Power of Crisis," where he looks at three looming challenges, and what we should do about them so we are not caught unprepared next time.
Podcast: How crisis can help us fix broken systems: from Ukraine to COVID
Listen: To fix our broken international political system, we need a crisis. For instance, a pandemic, climate catastrophe, Big Tech having too much power, or a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But it must be a crisis that's so destructive it forces us to respond fast, and together — like World War II. That's the crisis that created the international system we have today, and kept the peace until now. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks to Anne-Marie Slaughter, former US State Department official and now CEO of New America, and political scientist and Harvard professor Stephen Walt about the war and other crises.
Slaughter and Walt debate key issues such as the tough choices NATO faces on expanding to more countries but not Ukraine or other former Soviet republics, what we learned from the pandemic, and whether there are still reasons for hope in our current gloomy political environment. "If you're going to use a crisis effectively for change, you have to be able to have the right time horizon, the right group of countries, and a very specific set of goals," says Slaughter, who thinks we do have the ability to address many of the problems affecting the Global South: the most powerful countries are now all over the world. Many voices of people who need to be at the table — civic groups, CEOs, women, people of color — are not being heard.
This interview comes from the weekly show on global politics, GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, which is available to view on US public television stations. Check local listings to watch.
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.The crisis we need
GZERO’s Ian Bremmer has a new book out, and his timing is uncanny in both good ways and bad. It’s called “The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World.” His central argument is that the world needs a crisis. Why? Because the right kind of threat can help foster the global cooperation we’ll need to manage future existential crises.
Ian originally intended to focus the book on the dangerous direction of US-China relations, climate change, and the ever-increasing injection of disruptive new technologies into the world’s bloodstream. All these subjects still get much of his attention.
But during the writing, history threw Ian two major curveballs, both of which, he says, bolster his argument. A few months after he began writing, the world was rocked by a global pandemic. Two years later – and 48 hours before the publisher finished with final edits – Russia invaded Ukraine.
If you’ve read any of Ian’s previous books, you know there will be some scary ideas in there. To play off of the famous army base billboard from “Doctor Strangelove,” risk is Ian’s profession.
But he insists this book is the most optimistic he’s written. Here’s the logic.
In many ways, the global response to COVID-19 has been a disaster. In China, state authorities chose secrecy over cross-border transparency in the outbreak’s early days, and in the US, responses to the virus got caught up in culture-war politics. At least 15 million have died worldwide. But, says Ian, scientists, public policy experts, and government leaders at every level have helped create and disseminate innovative treatments and vaccines at record speed, and these inventions will spur future breakthroughs across science and medicine.
In addition, writes Ian, without the unprecedented COVAX project, “the problems of vaccine hoarding and inequality between rich and poor nations would have been even worse than they were.” He adds that the “willingness of some countries to export excess supplies of vaccines … created a blueprint for shared sacrifice at a time of serious political and economic stress for all these countries.” That blueprint will save countless lives in future health emergencies.
It took a Russian invasion of Ukraine to unify NATO and the EU, giving them a new sense of purpose. That might well matter for a future crisis – in Europe and beyond. Vladimir Putin’s war even has Democrats and Republicans speaking from the same set of talking points on at least one issue. None of this has spared Ukraine the deaths and dislocations the war continues to inflict, but Russia’s invasion may have helped deepen Ukraine’s national pride, which can be carried forward toward a better future.
Yet, the crisis that can do the most good, says Ian, is one that is large enough to frighten political leaders, business decision-makers, scientists, and political activists toward more cross-border cooperation … but not so big that it cripples their ability to respond.
Neither the current pandemic nor the ongoing war is big enough, Ian warns. Climate change offers the best grounds for optimism, but the introduction into our lives, workplaces, and battlefields of ever-more disruptive technologies might create challenges that develop faster than we can handle.
There’s a lot to argue over in this book. I hope you’ll give it a read and tell us what you think.
This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team at GZERO Media, a subsidiary of Eurasia Group that offers balanced, nonpartisan reporting, and analysis of foreign affairs. Subscribe today for your free daily Signal.
Don't expect US gun reform: Americans tolerate gun violence
Will the Buffalo shooting finally lead to gun reform in the United States? Is North Korea on the brink of a COVID-19 catastrophe? What is "The Power of Crisis"? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will the Buffalo shooting finally lead to gun reform in the United States?
Absolutely not. Yeah, white supremacist uses a Bushmaster and puts out a manifesto that talks about how excited he is about all these guns, crazy lunatic, and going to be in jail for the rest of his life. For me, the one that got closest to maybe you get gun reform was the Newtown shooting in Connecticut. That was one that, really hit close to middle America, American elites and moved the needle in Washington for a bit, but still within a few months was pretty clear it wasn't going to happen. I think that the Americans, it's not that they've given up on gun reform, but that it just feels like something that Americans are prepared to tolerate. And also it's just not considered a top priority issue in terms of a threat to the average American that hits their top two, top three, top five. And so, as a consequence to me, it feels a little bit like the crack cocaine issue back in the eighties and the nineties. Horrible human tragedy, largely performative response, thoughts and prayers, but doesn't really force anyone to get out of their comfort zone and it's still politicized. Horrible thing.
Is North Korea on the brink of a COVID-19 catastrophe?
It certainly looks that way. They're one of only two countries in the world that have refused vaccines. The other is Eritrea. It's a totalitarian regime. They were offered vaccines by the Chinese. They said, "No, we want good vaccines. We want Moderna. We want Pfizer." They're not getting Moderna and Pfizer. Though, maybe we should send them, frankly. It now looks like you have enormous spread of cases in a population that has no healthcare capability to respond effectively and probably no antibodies because they're been locked down in terms of their borders for a long time. And now, unfortunately, massive transmission. This could be an enormous crisis from North Korea. And it makes me concerned that they're going to lash out to get more attention and maybe to get more aid if it's really bad. So if you were concerned about potential tests of nuclear weapons and so forth, or big ICBM launches, the next few weeks would be where I would worry about that.
You have a new book, what is "The Power of Crisis"?
Oh, come on. Really, really? You asking me that, or did my guys line that up? I have a new book. “The Power of Crisis” is this idea that in an environment where our institutions both domestically and internationally are eroding, drip by drip over the course of the past several decades, that a target rich crisis environment is potentially exactly what we need to really respond in ways that otherwise we would not. And we're certainly seeing that with the climate crisis in ways that we didn't 10, 20 years ago. We're also seeing it with the Russia-Ukraine crisis in ways that Putin did not think were possible, or he never would've invaded Ukraine back on February 24th. Not all crises are like that. Some are too small for us to really bother, like for example, the way we perceive the Buffalo shooting. And frankly, the way we've handled, COVID, both the United States and China. And hopefully none are too big, because if they are then we're really screwed.
- Hard Numbers: Spain spy chief sacked, US gun deaths soar ... ›
- Ian Bremmer: power of the "Goldilocks crisis" - GZERO Media ›
- Hard Numbers: North Korea confirms COVID, US pandemic death ... ›
- After the Buffalo shooting: gun violence and US polarization ... ›
- The politics of US crime: Perception vs reality - GZERO Media ›
- Boris Johnson is likely to face another no-confidence vote soon - GZERO Media ›
- US Senate passes bipartisan gun bill but SCOTUS may loosen gun laws - GZERO Media ›
- Boris Johnson is going to be out, one way or the other - GZERO Media ›