Changing Global Power Equations
Vikram Sood
How India Sees The World: Kautilya To The 21st Century by Shyam Saran Juggernaut Books, 2018, 320 pp., 599
January 2018, volume 42, No 1

The 19th century was about European empires dominating the world and an era of consolidation. Yet in 1816, barely 40 years after US independence, Thomas Jefferson prophesied, ‘Old Europe will have to lean on us … what a power shall we be.’ This happened at the end of the Second World War and after nearly fifty years of endless violence. The US strategic planner, George Kennan, one of those original Cold Warriors was sure that the US would not give up its primacy where, with 6.4 % of the global population, that country owned 50 % of the global wealth. This disparity had to be maintained, sentimentality dispensed with, and issues like human rights, democratization relegated. From the end of the Second World War to the end of the first Cold War was the era of two superpowers and the last decade of the century saw US as the sole hegemon, an era some described as the ‘End of History’. Really speaking, the 20th century was a short one—from 1914 to 1991. Power equations began to change after the end of the Cold War.

Not immediately, but soon enough in human history, power began to shift from the West to the East, from presidential palaces to public spaces, from board rooms to startups, from the North to the South and even more slowly from men to women. But power, defined as capacity to make others do or to prevent them from doing something—is declining. By the end of 2010, the top hedge funds earned more profits than the world’s largest six banks. Insurgents and terrorists, using cyber, social media, military weapons and economic systems pulled down the state erected barriers. These wars have become hugely asymmetric in terms of money and human lives. Newer world groupings are looser formations having moved from the B2 to G8, G20 and G77; with other regional and amorphous formations like APEC, ASEAN, SAARC, NAM, BRICS. Power is losing old values, it is easier to acquire, harder to use and even easier to lose. The world is transforming. (Moises Naim: The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be.)

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