Entropy and the New World Order

Parag Khanna wrote a long article on the changing world order, as America’s dominance reduces, and multiple players flex their muscles and try to grab pieces of the power pie. Are we then heading for a “return of great power rivalry”? Possibly, but unlike the unipolar era of America’s dominance, Khanna feels geopolitical power is heading to be distributed, not centralized.

“The most accurate description of today’s world is high entropy, in which energy is dissipating rapidly and even chaotically through the global system.”

 

Entropy, he reminds us, is not chaos. And the tools of power are many – military, financial and technological. On the financial front, at the end of World War II, America accounted for half of global GDP. Today, China and EU have greatly reduced America’s share of global GDP, and India is slated to further reduce America’s share. On the military front, from a time when only America had nuclear weapons, today, at least 9 countries have it.

“The structure of power is no longer a pyramid but a web with multiple spiders forging networks of varying strength.”

 

Such a multi-player world cannot be described by phrases like “new Cold War”.

“Alliances are more like multi-alignments in which swing states, regional anchors and almost every other country actively play all sides in pursuit of their own best deal. This is not about deference to hierarchy but active positionalism: each country, large or small, places itself at the center of its own calculations.”

Bangladesh dances with both India and China. When the West imposed sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, countries in Asia ignored it and took advantage of the situation. Saudi Arabia cuts deals with China and India, thereby reducing its economic dependence on the US.

 

Globalization, a theme that the West loved until recently, has helped level the playing field enormously. No wonder the West doesn’t like it anymore:

“Ascending powers such as China and India have used globalization not to serve the Western-led order but to assert themselves within an interconnected global system.”

The center of global power is shifting towards Asia. Russia has pivoted from EU dependence to China. Turkey is tilting towards Asia.

 

Wars and conflicts are of a different kind now:

“This is what we see in regional conflicts such as in Ukraine, confrontations in the South China Sea, Houthi rebel disruption of Red Sea shipping, and Iran and North Korea’s cyber-attacks to cripple critical infrastructure and hack valuable public or private data.”

The aura is fading quickly:

“America has lost its exceptionalism in the world’s eyes.”

 

Just because America’s power and influence reduces, it doesn’t mean all its rivals are well placed. Russia, for example, is precariously poised. Sure, China has its back. For how long though? Once the Siberian oil pipelines start pumping oil to China, will China switch its support to local Russian governors “willing to sell out the motherland”?

 

In pockets, oil trade now happens in the Chinese yuan and Indian rupee. The oil countries don’t just want to reduce the power of the US dollar – they don’t want any other currency to become the new dollar either. So they’ll do everything they can to ensure that oil trade splits into multiple currencies. The US overstepped on this front when it “weaponized” its currency into an instrument for sanctions, and the backlash has only just gotten started.

 

In the past, it was only non-Western countries that faced internal sources of instability due to multiple reasons – religion, ethnicity, poverty etc. Today, America itself is deeply polarized, and its illegal immigrant count continues to rise and make a perceivable change in the Spanish speaking headcount. France periodically sees a surge in racial unrest. The EU faces ever increasing asylum seekers from Africa, Syria and Ukraine, numbers that can’t be handled smoothly.

 

Everything and everyone is connected, and yet:

“The world comes together — even as it falls apart.”