When historian Margaret Macmillan - author of the books "Paris 1919" (Paris 1919) and "The War That Ended Peace" (The War That Ended Peace) - issues extremely serious warnings about the deepening global chaos, her words deserve attention. Few historians have analyzed so thoroughly the fatal misjudgments that led to one world war and prevented the creation of an international order capable of preventing another. This is written for atlanticcouncil.org Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council - an American think tank based in Washington.
"When a storm is approaching, there are always warning signs. The wind can suddenly die down. The tide is receding further than usual. Cloud streaks are gliding across the sky,” writes the 82-year-old Macmillan in the Sunday edition of the New York Times.
In this context, she reminds her readers of the postwar novel by the French writer Albert Camus “The Plague,” in which dead rats appear on the streets of the Algerian city of Oran and its residents begin to fall ill. Despite the appearance of the rats, most citizens ignore these alarming signs and pay a high price for it. "Today, there are dead rats all around us", she writes, adding that temperatures are rising, global debt levels in advanced economies are reaching historic highs, and the rapid and largely unregulated development of artificial intelligence (AI) threatens jobs, security "and, in more dire predictions, human existence itself".
MacMillan notes: "Revisionist forces are flouting rules and norms with impunity. Voters are angry and volatile. The slow, measured, and necessarily discreet diplomacy that builds trust and understanding has given way to a showy and aggressive style that is more reminiscent of playground behavior or an audience glued to TikTok.”
I read Macmillan’s powerful essay after spending a week in New York, observing the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and following the summit in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping—the two most influential leaders of our time.
All participants in these meetings ignored the notorious "rats" at a time when they are multiplying at breakneck speed. At the same time, conflicts in Europe and the Middle East are spilling over beyond their regions. In both arenas of conflict, authoritarian states such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are testing the US’s eight-decade commitment to pursuing its interests in cooperation with its allies. The world has entered the early stages of an era of artificial intelligence (AI), which will dramatically amplify both the best and the worst of human instincts. Yet there has been little international effort to put safeguards in place for this rapidly evolving technology.
The United Nations meetings this past week have produced necessary but limited results given the gravity of the current situation. Even with nearly 65 interstate conflicts – the highest number since 1946, according to the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) – the UN General Assembly provides a platform for dialogue between adversaries and allies alike. It is a positive sign that leaders can still openly address the threats they face. A negative factor, however, is their inability to formulate a strategy or even a credible mechanism for ending the wars in Ukraine and Iran, or for regulating technologies whose risks transcend national borders.
The Trump-Xi summit produced more concrete, if more limited, results than the UN General Assembly session. The leaders agreed on more favorable customs treatment for certain goods, to strengthen trade and investment ties, and to a better mechanism for communication between the two governments on incidents related to artificial intelligence. These are necessary and useful steps.
Yet the parties have done little to resolve the disputes that are creating a dangerous rift in their relationship - most notably over Taiwan - or to seriously discuss each other's roles in the crises in Ukraine and Iran and the steps to address them. The two leaders have proven that they can organize and hold a meeting, with two more planned this year. But they have yet to prove that they can seriously address the problems of global chaos, a situation that they, more than any other two people on the planet, can influence.
"This is tantamount to dereliction of duty and leaves the rest of humanity in a losing position," wrote The Economist last weekend. "The list of urgent global crises and threats is long. Wars in Iran, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere are taking lives and destabilizing energy and food markets. Every week, there are new reports of AI agents breaking free from their creators’ control and running wild through digital networks like packs of wild animals.”
The Economist magazine concluded: “Given the enormous influence that both leaders wield within their political systems, Trump and Xi could agree on a few concrete, vital initiatives to save the world and task their aides with implementing them.”
The reality, however, is quite different. China under Xi Jinping believes that Beijing benefits from every additional month of dysfunction in the United States—a situation that weakens the dollar, undermines the country’s alliances, and draws its military into conflicts that drain resources needed to counter China. Meanwhile, under Trump, the United States has dismissed concerns about the future of the world order and its relations with its allies as topics of interest only to public policy experts; instead, the focus has shifted to culture wars, midterm elections, and the upcoming presidential election cycle.
"The new reality has arrived with astonishing speed," warns MacMillan. "The world order that had held up for most of our lives began to crumble when its participants became too self-confident and complacent, and bad behavior became accepted as the norm—even approved of."
MacMillan's conclusion is that it is time to begin the "laborious process of building something new"—a task that the United States has already mastered, most notably after World War II. In his book Present at the Creation, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson (one of the founders of the Atlantic Council) describes the task of "creating a world out of chaos" after the end of the wars in Europe and Asia in 1945. To achieve something similar today, world leaders must first notice the "rats" and realize the serious threats they pose.
Source: news.bg