2015 : the year geopolitics bites back ?
▻http://forumblog.org/2014/11/2015-year-geostrategic-competition
In the years following the Cold War, the prevailing view was that the world had moved towards a liberal, democratic consensus. The break-up of the Soviet bloc, the integration of Russia and China into the global economic system and a fresh wave of democratic transitions, from Latin America to Eastern Europe, led many to believe that superpower rivalries were finished. Globalization, the free market and the ‘interdependence’ of countries would make wars less likely, while a greater role was forecast for multilateral bodies like the United Nations in responding to issues that put everyone at risk.
This did not relieve us of security concerns, but from the 1990s onward, the so-called new challenges were regarded as asymmetric. Rather than fearing strong, opposing states, we worried about state weakness, the breakup of countries, or the global reach of non-state, terrorist networks.
Today, however, renewed competition between key actors is a concern. According to the Survey on the Global Agenda, both Asian and European respondents ranked the rise of geostrategic #competition as the second most important global trend. While the old Cold War is not making a resurgence, recent developments have led to tectonic shifts in state interaction. Geopolitics – and realpolitik – is once again taking centre stage, with potential wide-ranging consequences for the global economy, politics, and society.