OPINION Vol.1, No.1 June 2013 - National Defence University

countries (like Mexico, Turkey, Australia, Indonesia or South Africa) are on the waiting list or in
the “second row”. In line with this, apart from the so-called BRICS whose basis is economic, other
emerging powers with global influence can be identified: in terms of hard or military power,
Pakistan (nuclear power) and Iran (potential nuclear power), in terms of economic weight, Mexico
and South Africa and, for reasons of population, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria also
feature.
Emerging Blocks
It is commonly perceived that some emerging blocks and regional alliances like SCO, ASEAN and
BRICS respectively will gradually transform the existing power balance in the future.
Regionalism
Shanghai Cooperation Organization – SCO. SCO was originally founded to counter terrorism
and separatism on its member states’ territory. The security interests of the organization are now
increasingly complemented by economic and trade issues. The bloc is expected to counter US
influence in areas including Chinese neighbourhood and Russia’s ‘near abroad’.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). The BRICS thesis posits that China
and India will become the world's dominant suppliers of manufactured goods and services,
respectively, while Brazil and Russia will become similarly dominant as suppliers of raw
materials. It is important to note that the Goldman Sachs thesis isn't that these countries are a
political alliance (like the European Union) or a formal trading association - but they have the
potential to form a powerful economic bloc.
Major regional forums include the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), the Organization of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to count few of them. Regionalism appears to be
growing rapidly. Regionalism in fact is a by-product of globalization, yet, it offers a collective response to
the coercive dimensions of globalization. Therefore, the political unanimity of thought against countries of
a particular regional organization such as ASEAN would not be easy to muster when seen in the backdrop
of such coercion if applied against a country which is not part of any such regional dispensation.
Analysis
There are three possibilities that could lead to the end of this liberal international order.
Though it is possible that another hegemon would rise at some point, this is unlikely to
happen at least in the next two decades. We have had two dramatic transitions in the global
system in the last century, but both happened as a consequence of the collapse of major powers.
The end of the Second World War saw the demise of not just Germany and Japan but many
European great powers, leaving a bipolar order dominated by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 converted that bipolar system into a unipolar one. While there
are plenty of predictions of other great powers rising, there are none that suggest the U.S. will
collapse. And short of that, what we are likely to witness are gradual rather than dramatic changes
in the balance of power, and these will take a lot longer than two decades.
The second possibility, more probable than the first, is the rise of several new powers such
as China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Australia, Turkey and South Korea who are growing
strong enough to share the stage with proportional strength with the U.S., even if they do not
necessarily match the U.S. Such a multi-polar order could gradually erode the current
international liberal order. But this will not be because these powers do not share the norms of the
current liberal international order, but because the coordination and management problems become
greater as the number of great powers populating the international system grows.
The third possibility has been little discussed but it deserves greater attention – the
likelihood that the U.S. declines as a power with global managerial capacity but no other power
rises to take up the slack. This reverses many current expectations: instead of others rising to meet
the U.S., the U.S. declines to meet the others at a much lower level of capability. Such a system
would not be so much global as regional, dominated by regional hegemons that are strong enough
to control their immediate environs but who have insufficient capacity to act globally.
Conclusions from the Emerging World Order
OPINION Vol.1 No.1 46 June 2013