Towards a New World Order
Noted Philosopher Heraclitus had famously said that you cannot bathe in the same river twice. The implication is very clear that change is the only certainty in this otherwise uncertain world. While there are certain changes that follow their own course there are some changes that are driven by some unpredictable events or individuals. These are more sudden. The world today is witnessing changes that fall in this category.
It was some four decades ago that a New World Order was created in the name and style of Globalization. A catchy slogan was coined which said that the world is a Global Village. It was the beginning of a new era called the LPG regime, an acronym for Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization, which intended to facilitate Openness and Restructuring in economic policies of nations. It was a movement led by the United States of America (US) to reorient Global Trade and Commerce and ease cross border business between countries by minimizing tariffs and removing barriers. A World Trade Organization was put in place to regulate commerce between countries. Championed by the (US), that was one of the two leaders in the then bipolar world. The other pole was led by the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic). The USSR under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev became the laboratory for testing the effect of impact of the globalization experiment. And the globe changed in a big way.
With the disintegration of the USSR, new independent nation states found a place on the world map. Ukraine was one of the several countries that came into existence. But the bipolar world did not become unipolar as the US would have expected logically. Rather a multipolar world started developing with China and India gradually emerging as key players in the new Global economic order. However, Russia still remained an important player in the global order despite the dismantling of the erstwhile USSR. But the promised global village did not emerge as business interests of the big players, particularly the US, continued to dominate. Agreements like GATTS and TRIPS framed to regulate global trade could not prove to be of much consequence and free trade was not all that free. China and India, initially called as the emerging economies in the early phase of globalization, emerged as major economies, changing the grammar of trade and commerce of the post Global world order.
The new economic order thus designed continued, though rough patches kept on arising, causing discontent between players. But then came Covid-19 that first halted and then caused reversal of the Globalization wheel. This was followed by the Russia Ukraine war that pushed globalization further backwards. And then came the US election that brought President Trump on the global scene. Whatever remained of globalization got a big blow.
As things stand today, given the pace at which US policies are being changed a new world order seems to be in the making. Where will the US be in that scheme of things cannot be predicted at this stage, but the pace at which the US is revisiting and reorienting it's policies, there might as well be a new world disorder. America became great because its policies were great. Things that really made America great were its magnanimity and openness that made it a land of opportunities. It's liberal ecosystem, it's respect for freedom of speech and the merit based reward system created a society that gave opportunity to anybody with the right mettle and mindset. It is this entrepreneurial culture that led to the rise of immigrants in the American melting pot and created the American dream. The right to dissent made the US decent. The US universities that house the top scholars from all over the world and have been admired globally are now feeling the heat. The free press symbolizing the American spirit of libertarian values are not feeling as free. The ecosystem that made America flourish is getting affected adversely. Closing the doors to talent and fighting tariff wars may not make good business sense and is likely to dent Brand America in a big way. US will lose its attraction for the bright and the spirited. It was as early as 1925 that the then US President Calvin Coolidge while addressing the Economic Editors of the US press had said that the business of America is business. And that is what made America great. For the world the US means business. It must remain so.