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The world is an inkblot
In 1921, a Swiss psychologist spent months carefully crafting a series of seemingly random blots of ink. When he was done, he arranged them in a set of 10 for publication.
He had discovered that different people saw different things in the inkblots and that this could tell him a lot about their mental state, their concerns, and their worldview.
I thought of Dr. Rorschach and his now-famous inkblots this week as I leafed through a massive new study of what people in a dozen of the world’s most powerful countries – the G7 industrialized democracies, plus Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – are worried about when it comes to their security.
The survey, done by the Munich Security Conference, an annual confab of world leaders happening this week (shameless plug for our coverage of it here), indexes respondents’ levels of concern, from 1-100, about dozens of threats.
They cover everything from terrorism to technology, climate to coronavirus. Mass migration, racism, trade wars, and organized crime are all in there too, as are questions about the threats posed by specific countries: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the US, and the EU.
There is obviously no shortage of stimuli for the anxious these days. Major wars rage in Europe and the Middle East. Artificial intelligence warps our experiences of both work and the web more and more each day. Conflict, poverty, and climate extremes have driven the highest numbers of refugees ever from their homes. And of course, the world is slowly cooking itself while its two leading economies – and carbon emitters – warily circle each other on technology, trade, and Taiwan.
All of that, everywhere, all at once, yes.
But when people in different countries look at our little blue and brown inkblot of a world, they see very different threats and risks.
South Africans, for example, are acutely worried about energy and food shortages. Ukraine, unsurprisingly, is concerned about Russia. The climate is Brazil and India’s top concern, while Germans now wring their hands over migration and terrorism.
Those are the finer lines of the study, but what can we see in the broader blot of responses?
First, in aggregate, the things that worry most of the world most right now have to do with two things: climate change and cybersecurity, both of which are significant cross-border issues that cannot be solved by countries working alone.
Second, the roughly two billion people of India and China are surprisingly chill these days. Not a single one of the risks rises above 50 on the index for either country, with the sole exception of “climate change” notching a blasé 54 in India. In all other countries, people are far more on edge, with most risks ranging between the 50s and 70s.
Third, Russia isn’t as scary anymore. The world – but especially Europeans and Americans – is less concerned about Russia than it was in 2022. Nearly two years on from Putin’s invasion, the dreaded “Ukraine fatigue” has set in — there’s a reason Volodymyr Zelensky has been struggling to secure more aid from his two biggest backers – the US and EU.
Fourth, what moves the “Global South” is different from what concerns Europe and the US. Climate and cybersecurity figure at or near the top for both groups, but while “Russia,” “Islamic terrorism,” and “mass migration” are keeping folks up at night on both sides of the Atlantic, these concerns hardly appear at all for China, Brazil, India, and South Africa, where economic upheavals and income inequality are more pressing.
And lastly, the most powerful country on earth is a little out of touch at the moment. While Americans’ primary security concern with cyberattacks echoes broader trends, the remainder of the US top five — “political polarization,” “China,” “Russia,” and “disinformation campaigns” — are not key concerns for most other countries, particularly in the Global South. Climate change – a major issue for the rest of the world – limps in at a lowly 21st spot for the US.
To be clear, there’s nothing surprising or abnormal about different countries seeing the world in vastly different ways. In fact, it would be terrifying if 9 billion people all saw the world identically.
The problem is that so many of these key challenges — climate change, cybersecurity, migration, technology regulation — require common cause and cooperation at a time when the world’s major powers seem to be pulling away from each other.
In other words, it’s great to see different things in a given inkblot, but the inability to get on the same page about solutions is, Dr Rorschach might agree, a more dangerous pathology entirely.
Quick Take: Biden's challenge and Navalny's courage
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and it is the last full day of the Trump administration. Extraordinary four years, unprecedented in so many ways. I guess the most important feature for me is how much more divided the United States is, the world is, as coming out of the Trump administration than it was coming in. Not new. We were in a GZERO world, as I called it well before Trump was elected president. The social contract was seen as fundamentally problematic. Many Americans believed their system was rigged, didn't want to play the kind of international leadership role that the United States had heretofore, but all of those things accelerated under Trump.
So perhaps the most important question to be answered is, once Trump is gone, how much of that persists? It is certainly true that a President Biden is much more oriented towards trying to bring the United States back into existing multilateral architecture, whether that be the Paris Climate Accord, or more normalized immigration discussions with the Mexicans, the World Health Organization, the Iranian Nuclear Deal, some of which will be easy to do, like Paris, some of which will be very challenging, like Iran. But nonetheless, all sounds like business as usual.
But I would say that after the events of January 6th, the most significant response that I heard from world leaders around the world was shock that that could happen in the United States and certainly more awareness of the divides in the United States, of the reality that Trump is less of an aberration and more of a structural consequence than perhaps they had been willing to believe, or internalize, accept. And so, even though I think we're going to see a honeymoon of the United States with allies, with most allies, there will also be a ceiling on just how reintegrated the US will be diplomatically with these countries.
Some of which because China is more powerful and has more influence around the world. And that also continues, was happening under Obama, has sped up under Trump, and will continue under Biden. Some of that because there's more hedging on the part of American allies around the world. And some of it because the United States isn't as aligned on some key issues with other countries. I think about the response on technology. You saw how the Germans and the French were really critical of Trump being de-platformed by Google, and Facebook, and others.
You look at the Europeans today. Their views on the future of technology, not clearly aligned with the United States. I think more aligned with the US than China, but not obvious that it's massively so. They'd much rather, if they have a choice, continue to hedge. And on climate, even though Biden will be much more aligned with the Europeans than Trump was, we shouldn't pretend that these countries are going to be in lock step. So, I mean, some of it is a geopolitical environment where American adversary, principal adversary, is getting stronger. Some of it is that the United States is less willing to play the kind of role it has, and other allies don't believe in it. And some of it is because the actual policy orientations are changing over time.
And all of those things mean that the Americans don't get to come back to the status quo ante. And it'll be very interesting to see how the incoming Biden team deals with that. It's very interesting to see how Armin Laschet, who has just taken over the reins of party leadership from Angela Merkel and may well become the next chancellor of Germany, how he deals with that issue.
Another big issue about how we deal with it is Russia. Haven't spoken as much about Russia recently, but after the events of this weekend, how could I not. Alexei Navalny, the most popular member of the Russian opposition, hard to say there's a leader of the Russian opposition because political parties that are formally opposition in Russia are allowed by the Kremlin, and Navalny is not that, he has been detained for 30 days, kind of a show hearing where he wasn't allowed access to his defense attorney, really a joke. Upon him landing in Moscow, the plane was diverted from Vnukovo Airport to Sheremetyevo, which is where most of the international flights historically had come in, at the last minute by the Russian government, as well as a detention of family members and friends that were waiting for Navalny.
Look, staggering bravery and courage of Navalny going back to his homeland after a failed assassination attempt by poisoning. And he was in Germany for months. You could say, "How could he do that? Because he's obviously risking his life." Then you can ask, "How could he not do that when he knows just how badly his countrymen have been mistreated by a dictatorship, and his relevance, his ability to make a difference in his country, for his country inside, and standing for what he knows is right, is so much greater than he can as an exile living in comparative comfort in a country like Germany?"
Look, I mean, I have no idea, if I was in his position, how I would act, but I will tell you that an extraordinary amount of thanks, of gratitude, that we have human beings like that, who are capable of putting the many before the needs of the one, I'm going to go back to Star Trek, if you want. It's quite something to see, and to watch it play out real-time, and he knows, and his wife, who was with him on the plane, knew exactly what they were getting into. And not only did it not stop them, in some ways, it emboldened him. There will be additional sanctions from the US and Europe.
There'll be travel restrictions on Russian officials. It will have virtually no impact on the Russian economy. And it's kind of like what the Chinese are doing, rounding up all of these Democrats and arresting them in Hong Kong. It's making rule of law impossible in that territory. It is ending an agreement to have one state and two different political systems. And ultimately, the Chinese government doesn't feel like there are any consequences.
And it is that impunity, my friend, David Miliband, the former foreign secretary for the UK, that impunity, as he writes about, that leaders around the world increasingly feel when there is an absence of global leadership, when the United States no longer has the same level of credibility to be able to lead by example, when there are massive divisions, and the country that is most powerful after the United States is, frankly, the opposite, in terms of the absence of human rights and indifference to individual liberties and privileges. We're going to see a lot more of this. And it is the behavior of brave individuals like Navalny that give all of us hope that even as the geopolitics are so truly problematic, that human spirit remains indomitable. And lots for us to continue to hope for in this 2021. So next time I'll talk to you, there will be a new President of the United States. The underlying structural issues will still persist, but there will be a lot to talk about. Hope everyone's doing well. Stay safe, avoid people. Talk to you soon.
World Bank President David Malpass on the January 6th Capitol riots
World Bank President David Malpass was as horrified at what he saw during the January 6th pro-Trump riots on the Capitol as millions of other Americans. But he was concerned for another reason as well: "From the standpoint of world development, it distracts attention at a time when we need to help countries actually develop and get beyond COVID and get back to growth path." He joined Ian Bremmer to talk about how the civil unrest on Washington was distracting from the urgent development work of the World Bank during a pandemic. Their conversation was part of the latest episode of GZERO World.
The world believes the US can do better but its ability to lead diminishes
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
Sum up the world's response to the US Capitol riots.
I'd say two things. The leaders I've spoken to around the world in the last few days, the first is disappointment, shock that something like this could happen in the United States. I mean, on the one hand, really depressing. On the other, a lot of people that really do expect and believe that the United States can do better. And I think that's still the case. I think there is still a lot of belief that the United States is better than what is being reflected in the international news right now, from the activities that are happening in Washington and perhaps across the country over the coming days. The second is people want to know what's going to happen as a consequence. And when I say what's going to happen, I mean, first and foremost, what are the consequences of the behavior that's been taken of President Trump, of all of these members of House and Senate that have been putting forth this disinformation and calling for this insurrection? And on that front, I don't have anything very good to say. I mean, there is no question in my mind that tomorrow Trump will be impeached for a second time. It will be largely a party line vote. People are getting excited because maybe 10 or 20 Republicans will vote their conscience and vote in favor of impeachment. The vast majority of sitting Republicans will vote against, which is an extraordinary thing and sends a very strong message to other countries around the world that impeachment is no longer a part of rule of law in the United States, which of course really diminishes the balance of powers in the US and allows the executive, if the executive controls the legislature, to get away with basically whatever they want.
You could say, "Well, Biden wouldn't do that." Well yeah, but it doesn't matter. You still want to have that balance of power. And that really is eroding. And I think that that's true so broadly in terms of the lack of accountability and responsibility for everyone that is involved. I mean, you can't call for unity when you've just supported an overthrow of a free and fair election. Now, the first thing you do is you say, "That's wrong. The election is legitimate." It was legitimate. There wasn't systematic fraud, and Biden is the incoming President Elect. Yes. And if you said something that was contrary to that, you apologize, you throw yourself on the mercy of everyone you screwed with. Absent that happening, and that is certainly not happening from President Trump and is certainly not happening for those that supported his measures in House and Senate, there is no unity. And absent unity, the ability of the United States to lead effectively around the world continues to diminish. So, there's that.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's Beijing friendly leader accused the West of hypocrisy citing US Capitol riot. Does she have a point?
Well, I mean, obviously there's hypocrisy all over the place and certainly historically from the United States, but for the leader of Hong Kong to say that is more than a little rich. There is not moral equivalence between the Chinese government and the US government. As bad and as divided and dysfunctional as the US is right now, the Chinese are systematically abrogating the political rights of Hong Kong citizens. I think you're going to see a mass exodus of a lot of Chinese from Hong Kong to the UK where they can have citizenship and anywhere else they can get, if they care about personal liberties, because they're gone. A lot of Americans do care about personal liberties. And there's no question that President Trump is not one of them. There's no question that if he could have engineered a coup, he would have. His interest in democracy in the US is very limited, but that is not to in any way imply that the American political system is somehow as hypocritical as that of communist authoritarian China. And for the leader of Hong Kong to say that, well she has to. It's her job. And I'm sensitive to that. I mean, anyone in that position is has to say what they say. Having said that, I'm not so sensitive because you put yourself in that position. It's like there are people that are in positions that the position requires them to do and say immoral things. You can justify what they say because anyone in that post will do it, but you'd kind of hope that they wouldn't take that position. And I obviously am prepared to blame her for that.
Why have Merkel and Macron objected to Trump's Twitter ban?
Well, because they think it's arbitrary and they're right. Twitter has not banned Mahathir from Malaysia, despite calling for massive violence against non-Muslims saying that that's perfectly justified. They haven't banned Iranian Supreme leader, Khamenei, despite calling for violence against Israel. But they ban Trump and they ban him permanently, for life. They didn't need to do that. They could have easily done a short-term suspension until after the inauguration and that would have gotten you through the period that's most dangerous in terms of violence and transition in the United States. And they could have also published rules for all heads of state and former heads of state. Very easy to have someone monitor that. And if any of them then breach that rule, then it applies and they're thrown off maybe forever, but they're not doing that. And Merkel and Macron fundamentally object to the idea that arbitrary norms and rules being set by CEOs that are principle shareholders of major corporations is not the way you should engage in governance or deal with free speech. Now, again, they have the legal right to do it because since it's a company, and in the United States a company can decide what its norms and terms for service are. But if they're a monopoly for getting your message out there on social media, then they kind of need to be regulated differently. And the point that Merkel and Macron have, which is a much deeper point and a more obvious one, is that Trump's behavior should be responded to and policed, not by a social media company, but by Congress. And going back to what I said at the beginning, if impeachment has failed, it is no longer a tool of rule of law in the United States. And it's pretty clear that is the case. Impeachment no longer serves the purpose. It no longer functions as a guardrail on abuse of power of the executive in the US, then you've lost something fundamental in a representative democratic system. And I think that the French and German leaders are deeply and publicly concerned about that and they're right to be, I am as well.