The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  A second crisis was economic: For an accessible account of what led to the global financial crisis, see Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010). For a look at the crisis’s long-term consequences, which continue to be felt, see Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2018).

  deterioration in U.S.-Russia relations: For an overview of U.S.-Russia relations from the end of the Cold War through 2013, see Angela Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-first Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014). For a look at Russia’s relations with the United States in the recent past and the challenges going forward, see Andrew Monaghan, Dealing with the Russians (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2019).

  manipulate the U.S. 2016 presidential election: In an Intelligence Community Assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. intelligence agency assessed with high confidence that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.” The report further stated, “Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” January 6, 2017, www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.

  concern that China is forging ahead: Council on Foreign Relations, Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2019).

  international tribunal’s ruling to the contrary: Jane Perlez, “Tribunal Rejects Beijing’s Claims in South China Sea,” New York Times, July 12, 2016.

  openly raise the prospect of a cold war: Niall Ferguson, “The New Cold War? It’s With China, and It Has Already Begun,” New York Times, December 2, 2019; Odd Arne Westad, “The Sources of Chinese Conduct: Are Washington and Beijing Fighting a New Cold War?,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2019.

  2,000 active satellites: Stewart Patrick and Kyle L. Evanoff, “The Right Way to Achieve Security in Space: The U.S. Needs to Champion International Cooperation,” ForeignAffairs.com, September 17, 2018, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/space/2018-09-17/right-way-achieve-security-space.

  drove millions of people out: As of June 2019, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela had reached four million. UNHCR, “Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela Top 4 Million,” June 7, 2019.

  democracy has slowed or even reversed: For a book-length treatment of this phenomenon, see Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency (New York: Penguin Press, 2019). The subtitle of Freedom House’s 2018 report on the state of freedom in the world was “Democracy in Crisis” and the report began, “Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.” The report continued, “For the 12th consecutive year . . . countries that suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains.” Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis, 1.

  Inequality has increased: Income inequality within countries continues to increase, while some estimates show that inequality between countries has narrowed because the incomes of developing and developed countries have been converging (that is, developing countries are growing more rapidly than developed countries). Relative global inequality has declined over the past few decades, from a relative Gini coefficient of 0.74 in 1975 to 0.63 in 2010. Absolute inequality, however, has increased dramatically since the mid-1970s. Since 2000, 50 percent of the increase in global wealth benefited only the wealthiest 1 percent of the world’s population. The poorest 50 percent of the world’s population, by contrast, received only 1 percent of the increase. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population had 32 percent of global wealth in 2000 and 46 percent in 2010. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone, 30–31.

  number of civil wars has increased: Scholars define interstate conflict or civil wars differently and use varying thresholds to determine when violence reaches the threshold where it should be counted in the data set, which means that people cite different data. I recommend using the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) tables, charts, and graphs. According to two scholars affiliated with the UCDP project, “Non-state conflict concurrently [use of armed force between two organized groups, such as rebel groups or ethnic groups, neither of which is the government of a state] has increased: a new peak of 82 active non-state conflicts was recorded in 2017 and fatalities have increased.” Forty-nine state-based conflicts (violence where at least one of the parties is the government of a state, that is, violence between two states and violence between the government and a rebel group) were active in 2017, down from fifty-three in 2016, the peak year of the entire 1946–2017 period. Of the forty-nine conflicts in 2017, only one was fought between states, while the remainder involved the government fighting a rebel group. Therése Pettersson and Kristine Eck, “Organized Violence, 1989–2017,” Journal of Peace Research 55, no. 4 (2018): 535–47.

  number of displaced persons and refugees: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees tracks the number of displaced persons and refugees, and noted in its annual report on global trends, “The global population of forcibly displaced increased by 2.3 million people in 2018. By the end of the year, almost 70.8 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. As a result, the world’s forcibly displaced population remained yet again at a record high.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, 2.

  biased by what they are focusing on: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).

  era of deterioration: Richard Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).

  PART II: REGIONS OF THE WORLD

  Bangladesh, in particular, faces: Gardiner Harris, “Borrowed Time on Disappearing Land,” New York Times, March 28, 2014.

  No religion claims a majority: Pew Research Center, “The Changing Global Religious Landscape” (April 2017), 8–10.

  age distribution across countries: United Nations Population Division, “2019 Revision of World Population Prospects,” with graphs and maps available at population.un.org/wpp/.

  no single language is spoken: According to Ethnologue, 1.132 billion people in the world speak English. See www.ethnologue.com/language/eng. The World Bank estimates a global population of 7.594 billion, meaning that 1 out of every 6.7 people in the world speak English. While 1.116 billion people in the world speak Mandarin Chinese, 1.082 billion (or 97 percent) of those who speak Mandarin Chinese live in China. See www.ethnologue.com/language/cmn.

  Europe

  Europe’s economy is slightly larger: The countries included in this region had a combined output (GDP) of roughly $22.7 trillion in 2018, compared with a GDP of $20.5 trillion for the United States. Given global GDP of $84.7 trillion, Europe accounts for 26.8 percent of total output. See International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook Database” (April 2019).

  region’s fifty countries: For the purposes of this chapter, Europe includes fifty countries: Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Holy See, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, L
ithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

  second half of the nineteenth century: For those interested in this period of European history, see James Joll, Europe Since 1870: An International History (New York: Penguin, 1973); L. C. B. Seaman, From Vienna to Versailles (New York: Harper & Row, 1955); and A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).

  begin a consideration of today’s Europe: For those interested in post–World War II European history, see Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).

  “keep the Soviet Union out”: Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, made this remark earlier in his political career. NATO Leaders: www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/declassified_137930.htm.

  known as the Marshall Plan: Steil, Marshall Plan.

  French statesman Robert Schuman: Merriman, History of Modern Europe, 1123.

  the Warsaw Pact: The organization’s original members were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

  UN peacekeepers still deployed: The UN Security Council in 1999 authorized the UN secretary-general to establish an international civil presence in Kosovo—the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). As of March 2019, 351 total personnel were deployed to Kosovo as part of this mission. UNMIK Fact Sheet, peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/unmik.

  One difference between the EC and the EU: The Maastricht Treaty, known formally as the Treaty on European Union, declared, “A common foreign and security policy is hereby established.” Treaty on European Union, Title V, “Provisions on a Common Foreign and Security Policy.” The full treaty is available at europa.eu/european-union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/treaty_on_european_union_en.pdf.

  expanded its membership: The twelve founding members of the EU were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined. In 2004, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined. In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania joined, followed by Croatia in 2013.

  rejected a new European constitution: Elaine Sciolino, “French Voters Soundly Reject European Union Constitution,” New York Times, May 30, 2005; Marlise Simons, “Dutch Voters Solidly Reject New European Constitution,” New York Times, June 2, 2005.

  slim majority of British voters: Fifty-two percent of voters opted to leave the EU, while 48 percent voted to remain in the bloc. Steven Erlanger, “Britain Votes to Leave E.U.; Cameron Plans to Step Down,” New York Times, June 23, 2016.

  nineteen countries in the eurozone: The following countries are members of the eurozone and therefore use the euro as their national currency: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

  no European banking mechanism: For a fuller discussion of this and other shortcomings with the euro, see Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth, eds., The Future of the Euro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  Europe has an aging population: The share of the population aged sixty-five years and over is increasing in every EU member state. Eurostat, “Population Structure and Ageing,” July 2019, ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Population_structure_and_ageing.

  Russian threat to Europe: For more on Russia, its political system, and how it views the world, see Dmitri Trenin, Russia (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2019); Angela Stent, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest (New York: Twelve, 2019); Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015); Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2015); Shaun Walker, The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Nina Khrushcheva and Jeffrey Tayler, In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

  great power more in name: For more on Russia’s economy, see Anders Aslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019).

  an economy roughly the size of Canada’s: The IMF estimated the size of Russia’s economy at $1.63 trillion in 2018, compared with $1.62 trillion for South Korea, $1.71 trillion for Canada, $1.87 trillion for Brazil, and $2.1 trillion for Italy. See International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook Database” (April 2019).

  heavily dependent on energy: According to Russia’s Ministry of Finance, in 2018 oil and gas revenues accounted for 46 percent of the country’s total federal budget revenues. Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, “Annual Report on Execution of the Federal Budget,” July 11, 2019, www.minfin.ru/en/statistics/fedbud/. According to the IMF, as of 2017 Russia’s oil and gas exports accounted for 54 percent of the country’s total exports. International Monetary Fund, “Russian Federation: Staff Report for the 2018 Article IV Consultation,” July 17, 2018, 31.

  has declined for two decades: In 1992, Russia’s population stood at 148.7 million and began declining, bottoming out at 142.7 million in 2008. Recently, the population began to recover, reaching 144.5 million in 2017 before dipping again in 2018. World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=RU.

  male life expectancy: World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.MA.IN?locations=RU.

  humiliated over how the Cold War ended: Vladimir Putin famously said, “First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy.” “Putin: Soviet Collapse a ‘Genuine Tragedy,’” Associated Press, April 25, 2005. For further evidence of Putin’s view of the end of the Cold War, see especially his 2014 speech before the Valdai International Discussion Club. Vladimir Putin, “Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” October 24, 2014, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46860.

  NATO’s enlargement as an insult and a threat: During his 2007 speech before the Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin argued NATO’s expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” Putin, “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy.”

  steadily lost interest: Of the U.S.-led liberal world order, Putin rhetorically asked, “Let’s ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and ask awkward questions? Maybe the United States’ exceptional position and the way they are carrying out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax and enjoy it all? Let me say that this is not the case, absolutely not the case.” Putin, “Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” October 24, 2014.

  backed by Russian soldiers: “Putin Admits Russian Forces Were Deployed to Crimea,” Reuters, April 17, 2014.

  dismiss the referendum as a sham: At the time, President Obama stated, “The referendum in Crimea was a clear violation of Ukrainian constitutions and international law, and it will not be recognized by the international community.” White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on Ukraine,” March 17, 2014. On July 25, 2018, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo reiterated the U.S. stance, stating, “The United States rejects Russia’s attempted annexati
on of Crimea and pledges to maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.” Michael R. Pompeo, “Crimea Declaration,” July 25, 2018.

  taken 13,000 lives: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, 16 November 2018 to 15 February 2019,” 6, www.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/WopiFrame.aspx?sourcedoc=/Documents/Countries/UA/ReportUkraine16Nov2018-15Feb2019.pdf.

  Russia worked to influence: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”; European Commission, “A Europe That Protects: EU Reports on Progress in Fighting Disinformation Ahead of European Council,” June 14, 2019.

  including the vote on Brexit: David D. Kirkpatrick, “Signs of Russian Meddling in Brexit Referendum,” New York Times, November 15, 2017.

  claimed waters off Ukraine: BBC News, “Russia-Ukraine Tensions Rise After Kerch Strait Ship Capture,” November 26, 2018.

  history seemed to have truly ended: Fukuyama, “End of History?” For a rebuttal of Fukuyama’s essay, see Samuel P. Huntington, “No Exit: The Errors of Endism,” National Interest (Fall 1989).

  something dramatically different: I made a similar argument in a December 2018 column for Project Syndicate. Richard N. Haass, “Europe in Disarray,” Project Syndicate, December 13, 2018, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/growing-threats-to-europe-democracy-security-by-richard-n--haass-2018-12.

  East Asia and the Pacific

  Its thirty-one countries: For the purposes of this chapter, East Asia and the Pacific includes the following countries and territories: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Kiribati, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Vietnam.