The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bankers (Ministers) met this weekend in Australia to further develop the G20 Brisbane Action Agenda. They released, mercifully, a short communique that identified, whether stated or not, their continued measured efforts to achieve in G20-speak ‘strong sustainable and balanced growth”. This meeting is just one piece in a continuing effort to provide policy coordination for the G20 – and a step along the road to the completion of the Brisbane Action Plan.
The historiography of World War I and the examination of the events that led to war on August 4, 1914 are enormous. Notwithstanding that very large historical and analytic record, the examination of the approach to World War I is in the process of receiving a new infusion as I suggested recently in The Flood of Remembrance – 100 Years Since the Great War approach the 100th anniversary of the war’s outbreak. Indeed this very article and the others that accompany it are part of this new look at an old issue.
Fashioning a moderately cooperative relationship between the US and China – the two great powers in the international system today – has occupied many minds. International relations specialists continue to be haunted by ‘power transition’ thesis. According to this hypothesis, when a rising power challenges the leading status quo power, competition and often conflict follows. Indeed historical examinations over the last century and a bit suggest that when these conditions prevail, with the most notable exception of the US and Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, these changes in the power distribution among the great powers lead to competition, rivalry and conflict. It certainly underscores the long standing effort by the Harvard Study Group – the group I have been involved with for a number of years – and many other bilateral US-China efforts to focus their attentions on the changing dynamic of the US-China relationship. As Beida’s Yiping Huang has written recently:
But times have changed. Today, although the US is still the world’s largest economy, China is already the second-largest and is set to overtake the US with
in the next 10 years. It is, therefore, reasonable for China and other developing countries to want to be part of the new rule-making process. But a transition of global superpowers could make all parties very nervous, as in history it often ended in war. This makes China–US cooperation all the more important, not only to avoid major confrontation but also to build a better world (January 19, 2014 EastAsiaForum.com).
With the recent turn of the calendar to 2014, we find ourselves closing in on August 4, 2014. That date records a civilization-shaking anniversary. On that date 100 years ago the European powers went to war – to be joined by the Ottoman Empire and Japan and then later, the United States. August 4th thus marks the commencement of World War I. Not surprisingly there is a growing flood of historical analyses and reflections on the ‘War to End All Wars’.
A noticeable difference in tenor. That is the first thing that struck me about this Dialogue meeting just recently concluded in Beijing. The tenor of this Harvard-CASS Think Tank Dialogue on “Towards a New Model of Major-Country Relations between China and the United States” differed significantly from the Harvard-Beida Conference of January 2013. The earlier Harvard-Beida Conference was filled with defensiveness and harsh questioning by our Chinese colleagues over the ‘American pivot’. Chinese experts made repeated references to US efforts to contain China. The suspicions over US policy and its intentions in Asia – especially US efforts to contain China – were largely absent from this meeting – apparently the 9th in the series. Instead, in this meeting there were numerous references to the 35th anniversary of US-China relations.
So my colleague and friend Stewart Patrick, the Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations has given us a full picture of the contemporary global governance system recently in Foreign Affairs.
But say it ain’t so Stewart. The bottom line for him is an unruly and largely unorganized global governance architecture delivering only partially what is needed:
The future will see not the renovation or the construction of a glistening new international architecture but rather the continued spread of an unattractive but adaptable multilateral sprawl that delivers a partial measure of international cooperation through a welter of informal arrangements and piecemeal approaches.
Quietly, maybe a touch too quietly, Australia assumed the hosting duties of the G20 on December 1, 2014. As one of the first initiatives under Australia’s presidency, the program director of the G20 Studies Centre at Australia’s Lowy Institute, Mike Callaghan convened a Think20 session in Sydney. So as in Russia, and before that in Mexico, representatives from G20 think tanks and G20-focused academic centers gathered in the mercifully warm and sunny city of Sydney.
Shanghai was the first conference stop; but it wasn’t the last. For the first time the partners – the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Stanley Foundation – held a conference in Pretoria partnering with our friends at the Department of Political Science at the University of Pretoria. We were very fortunate to welcome friends from most of the key countries – Brazil, India, China and obviously South Africa. Unfortunately, our colleague from Russia was ultimately unable to make it.
Well I must say, I have a fair bit of catching up to do. Much in the way of travel and international legal action, but not much action on the blog front. Well that is at an end.
And we are approaching as well, if you hadn’t noticed, a milestone event in international relations – the 100th anniversary of the commencement of the “War to End All Wars” – the First World War. If you haven’t noticed, there has been a notable uptick in the number of books on the approach to war and the initiation of World War 1 – August 4, 1914. So I shall be delving into various of these books and articles on this crucial twentieth century event.
So forget the BRICS, or even IBSA. The newest grouping is MIKTA. MIKTA stands for Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey and Australia. All these countries are members of the G20. It would seem that the group met at the margins of the UN General Assembly opening.