How Global Power Dynamics Between Countries Are Shifting

If history has taught us one thing, it’s that there has always been an uneven distribution of power in countries across the globe. For Professor Michael Cox, Course Co-Designer on the Business, International Relations and the Political Economy online certificate course from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), what needs to be considered is the effect that this has on international politics, as well as the possible consequences of shifting this power dynamic.

Transcript

One of the big issues in world politics – if not the biggest – is why some states are more powerful than others and what the consequences are for international politics because of the uneven distribution of power across the world. A related issue, of course, is what happens to the world when power shifts from one state to another or, indeed, from one region to another.

In the past, when we have witnessed such great shifts, the result has rarely been peaceful. Thus, when France became increasingly powerful following the French Revolution, a near twenty-five-year war followed. The economic rise of Germany a century later was one of the more obvious causes of World War One. And in the same way, the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union following World War Two was the principal cause of the Cold War. By the same token, when great powers fall – as they have done throughout modern history – the outcome is rarely peaceful either. But does history repeat itself?

Is history an accurate guide to the present or simply a toolbox from which we can draw useful lessons? These are key questions as we look at the rapidly shifting international landscape today.

Newspaper headlines are full of stories about terrorism, failed states in the Middle East, and the tragedy represented by migration. However, behind the headlines, much larger shifts in the tectonic plates of power are taking place. Is the once dominant West now in retreat, and will the East, in the form of Asia, replace the West at the heart of the world system by the end of the twenty-first century? Now, many believe this is bound to happen, given the rise of China at the centre of a new Asian order and the many challenges facing the West today.

Indeed, the two great events of 2016 – the UK’s vote to exit the European Union and the election of Donald Trump in the United States – are read by some as signs that the Western liberal order is in deep trouble. And to add to the West’s many woes, one of its most successful constructions – the European Union – remains mired economically and divided politically against itself.

Meanwhile, China looks set to continue its upward ascent, and Asia, its economic drive towards ever greater prosperity. Indeed, if Goldman Sachs is to be believed, by the year 2050, China will be the biggest economy in the world, and India, the third largest. In 1950, Asia was an economic pigmy representing no more than 5 per cent of world production. A century later, it could well be more than 60 percent. That is the scale of the change.

Still, the West – it is argued by a number of other writers – retains a significant structural power. Thus, the United States remains by far the most productive economy in the world. It also spends more on defence than the next ten countries put together. And it has a formidable array of dependent allies worldwide.

Even the European Union, many insist, should not be underestimated. With its numerous world-class companies, its array of internationally recognised universities, its stable political systems, and its strong institutional connections, the EU will remain a major international actor moving forward. To talk, therefore, of a major power shift in which the West is the loser is premature. The West still rules – for now.