Examining Ian Bremmer's TED Talk on Global Power and Order
Last week, TED released a very timely talk given by political scientist and Eurasia Group chief Ian Bremmer. Bremmer's talk describes the current state of military, economic, and digital power in the world and teases out some of the consequences of the distribution of those three types of power for the world. His discussion was animated by several key questions, including (1) Who leads the world right now? (2) Who is the next global superpower? (3) And what kind of order(s) will result from how power is likely to be configured in the near-term?
Bremmer makes the case that on military and security affairs the world is effectively unipolar. According to the size of its defense budget, its ability to project power, and its warfighting experience and its military organization and training, the U.S. is the primary dominant military power. This is a fairly reasonable and straightforward and conventional assertion, at least according to most academics and policy analysts.
That said, I do think it's worthwhile to add a minor caveat: global asymmetries in military power today aren't as large as they were in the 1990s and early 2000s, in the heyday of global unipolarity. In terms of military power, China is catching up to the U.S. fairly steadily, modernizing its military and expanding its naval capabilities, with the goal of eventually pushing American forces out of East Asia and recapturing Taiwan. Moreover, China has been much more assertive in pursuing its territorial and waterway claims along its border with India, vis-a-via Taiwan, and in the South China Sea. In fact, at this point, China can constrain what the U.S. does throughout Asia with its military forces—an important indicator that the regional, if not global, balance of forces is shifting and China is gaining ground.
Bremmer argues that global economic power is multipolar. Again, this is a fairly reasonable and uncomplicated argument. Based on standard economic indicators, like GDP and annual economic growth, among other things, it's clear the world has several global economic powers. The U.S., the E.U., China, Japan, and India are the economic giants, while multiple middle powers, such as Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, are also economically strong. Bremmer's punchline is that "the global economic architecture is fragmenting and it's becoming more competitive. And the Europeans are driving some rules, and the Chinese are driving others, and the Americans are driving others."
These two arguments by Bremmer are reminiscent of Joseph Nye's work on power in the early 2000s. Nye argued then that if we're going to examine power, we need to break the concept down into its various constituent subparts (like military power and economic power). At the time, Nye took issue with the prevailing wisdom that the world was across the board unipolar. Nye argued that it was unipolar on military/security power, but not on other power domains (on economic power, it was multipolar; on transnational issues, power was diffuse).
Instead of exploring transnational power as a holistic and concrete term like Nye, Bremmer looks at one single element of it: digital or technological power. Digital power is the product of the various prominent global tech companies, the tech bros who own them, and the ever advancing technology created and deployed by tech firms. Bremmer lays out the oft-told story that new technologies offer a mix of good and bad news for the world. They can empower reformers and democrats, help to hold leaders accountable, and even assist underdogs like Ukraine in war. At the same time, the current digital landscape also allows hate to proliferate, enables disinformation, spurs riots and insurrections, and facilitates crack downs on political opponents.
Interestingly, and this is the novel part of his talk, Bremmer foresees three pathways for the future digital world. One possibility, he argues, is a digital split between East and West, as the U.S. and China set up firewalls to block the other and their allies from entering their digital spheres. A second possibility is a free-flowing digital world that resembles contemporary economic globalization at its best: Competitive, rule-bound, and open. The third pathway is one of digital dominance. This is a world in which tech companies and their honchos determine the rules of the road in which people, groups, and states operate. Bremmer calls this a techno-polar world, and it’s an argument he spelled out in a 2021 Foreign Affairs article.
Contra Bremmer, my take, in line with realist thinking and scholarship, is that power is still vested in states and, as a result, they dominate international relations—now and for the foreseeable future. States are the most powerful actors in the world, and this is especially the case for the world's great powers. They have unmatched ability to acquire, innovate, and project diverse forms of power—hard, soft, and smart power. To the extent that the digital sphere is ostensibly on the rise, this has happened only because states have allowed it to happen. A disinclination by nations to cooperate globally in an effort to form global digital rules, and a state apparatus incapable and unwilling to deal internally with domestic tech issues and problems, in combination, have resulted in states of various shapes and sizes ceding ground to tech companies, allowing them to gather strength, become extraordinarily wealthy, and run rampant. Now, could a techno-polar world become a reality? Sure. And that would reflect a massive failure of the state project that largely began in 1648, with the Peace of Westphalia. But I don't think we're there yet.
Let’s look at the other two pathways suggested by Bremmer. Sure, China and the U.S. want improved relations, as the recent visit by Secretary of State Tony Blinken to Beijing illustrates, but neither side has the appetite for big, substantive cooperation. And I don't expect that to change anytime soon. And so, with that in mind, I don't see the U.S., China, and other major powers getting together to agree on global digital rules and standards. Given the trendlines in the relationship between the U.S. and China, what's more likely is a digital cold war, one that accompanies a political, economic, and security cold war. But even here, I’m not sold that a digital cold war is highly likely. Absent a particularly provocative step from Beijing, the U.S. would likely face resistance from allies who see cutting China off from the West’s digital realm as too drastic and escalatory a measure to undertake. Furthermore, placing China behind a digital firewall, and thereby inhibiting China’s ability to access information about the U.S., is bound to increase uncertainty in the relationship, which isn’t a good thing and something American officials realize.
My hypothesis is that the state will seek its revenge on the tech sector in the coming years, as it attempts to box in its power and reach. Certainly the world’s authoritarians—who constantly worry about non-state centers of power within their territories, particularly ones that could destabilize their power bases—have a huge incentive to put tech companies and tech bros in their place. But so do the world’s democrats. They worry about fake news and disinformation, of course, but also increasingly of the prospect that non-elected tech CEOs and companies are wielding a disproportionate amount of political power. Already, the heads of tech giants like Facebook and TikTok have been hauled before Congress to testify on big data, privacy concerns, fake news, etc. And Washington is showing clear signs that it wants to regulate AI, much like the E.U. has already done with its E.U. AI Act. I anticipate much, much more of this in the future. There will be some bilateral and multilateral cooperation on these efforts within the West, especially between the U.S. and the E.U, though most of this will come in the form of domestic legislation by individual states.
Regardless of my disagreement with Bremmer’s analysis, he does provide good food for thought. I encourage you to view his TED Talk and figure out what you make of what he has to say.