The World: A Brief Introduction

by Richard Haass

  the Doha Round: For a discussion of the Doha negotiations, see Will Martin and Aaditya Mattoo, eds., Unfinished Business? The WTO’s Doha Agenda (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2011).

  The volume of world trade: World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/topic/trade.

  International merchandise trade: World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/TG.VAL.TOTL.GD.ZS.

  World merchandise trade volume: World Trade Organization, World Trade Statistical Review 2019, 8.

  The number of regional trade agreements: World Trade Organization, “Regional Trade Agreements Database,” rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx.

  North American Free Trade Agreement: For a comprehensive introduction to NAFTA, see M. Angeles Villarreal and Ian F. Fergusson, “The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),” Congressional Research Service, May 24, 2017, fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42965.pdf.

  overall benefit of all three countries: For a look back on NAFTA’s first twenty years and the benefits it has brought to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, see Carla A. Hills, “NAFTA’s Economic Upsides: The View from the United States,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2014.

  Eleven countries in the Americas and Asia: The eleven members of the CPTPP are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

  The arrival of artificial intelligence: For more on how new technologies will alter the job landscape, see Edward Alden and Laura Taylor-Kale, The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-first Century (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2018).

  Cross-border investment, like trade: Philip R. Lane and Gian Maria Milesi-Feretti, “International Financial Integration in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis,” IMF Working Paper No. 17/115, May 10, 2017.

  increased more than one hundred times: Foreign direct investment flows stood at $13.26 billion in 1970 and rose to $1.3 trillion in 2018. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development STAT, unctadstat.unctad.org/wds/TableViewer/tableView.aspx.

  Currency and Monetary Policy

  known as monetary policy: It is difficult to truly understand monetary policy without picking up a textbook and learning various equations and technical relationships. For a good overview of the monetary policy choices the world’s leading central banks made during the global financial crisis, I would recommend Neil Irwin, The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (New York: New American Library, 2014). For a broader overview of the issues facing the global economy, I would recommend Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (New York: Penguin Books, 2015). For a discussion on what happens when monetary policy goes wrong, see Liaquat Ahamed’s study of the Great Depression, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).

  International Monetary Fund: For a concise look at the ideas underpinning the IMF, see James M. Boughton, “The IMF and the Force of History: Ten Events and Ten Ideas That Have Shaped the Institution,” IMF Working Paper, May 2004.

  Bretton Woods Conference: For those interested in this pivotal conference that shaped the post–World War II economic order and the debates that occurred during the conference, see Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013).

  The dollar’s role: The literature on the dollar’s role in the global economy is voluminous, but a few pieces to start with are Richard N. Cooper, “The Future of the Dollar,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, September 2009; and Barry Eichengreen, “The Dollar Dilemma: The World’s Top Currency Faces Competition,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2009.

  According to the IMF: IMF Data, “Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER),” latest update on June 28, 2019.

  mostly good for the United States: One study attempted to quantify the costs and benefits of being a global reserve currency and concluded that as a result of the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency the United States gains between $40 billion and $70 billion per year—or roughly 0.3 to 0.5 percent of U.S. GDP. McKinsey Global Institute, “An Exorbitant Privilege? Implications of Reserve Currencies for Competitiveness,” December 2009.

  a cryptocurrency, or some combination: Mark Carney, “The Growing Challenges for Monetary Policy in the Current International Monetary and Financial System” (speech given at the Jackson Hole Symposium, August 23, 2019), www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2019/mark-carney-speech-at-jackson-hole-economic-symposium-wyoming.

  China obviously comes to mind here: Periodically, scholars revisit the question of whether China’s currency, the yuan or RMB, can or will replace the dollar as the international currency of choice. A few pieces worth reading on this prospect are Sebastian Mallaby and Olin Wethington, “The Future of the Yuan: China’s Struggle to Internationalize Its Currency,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2012; Financial Times Special Report, “The Future of the Renminbi,” Financial Times, November 29, 2015; Benn Steil and Emma Smith, “The Retreat of the Renminbi,” Project Syndicate, June 22, 2017.

  European countries tried: “Europe Struggles to Protect Iran Trade as US Reimposes Sanctions,” Financial Times, November 5, 2018; “European Companies Will Struggle to Defy America on Iran,” Economist, November 8, 2018.

  Development

  Development is a widely used: For an optimistic view of global development, see Charles Kenny, Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding—and How We Can Improve the World Even More (New York: Basic Books, 2011). For a more skeptical take, see William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For another overview of development, see Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  The World Bank has rejected the distinction: The World Bank announced this decision in its 2016 World Development Indicators report and is phasing out use of the terms “developing world” and “developing countries.” World Bank, World Development Indicators 2016 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2016), iii.

  Countries are then determined to be: Low-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $1,045 or less in 2014. Lower-middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $1,046–$4,125. Upper-middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $4,126–$12,735. High-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $12,736 or more. World Bank, World Development Indicators 2016, xiii.

  GDP per capita ranges: World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD.

  range of social factors: An important book that brought about this shift in thinking away from GDP as the primary measure of development and toward looking at “capabilities” was Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999). As the United Nations Development Programme puts it, “Human development is about enlarging freedoms so that all human beings can pursue choices that they value. Such freedoms have two fundamental aspects—freedom of well-being, represented by functionings and capabilities, and freedom of agency, represented by voice and autonomy.” United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone (New York: United Nations, 2016), 1.

  According to the latest HDI rankings: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update (New York: United Nations, 2018).

  people living in extreme poverty: World Bank, Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2018), 1–2.

  plummeted from 66 percent in 1990: World Bank Poverty & Equity Data Portal: povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/CHN.

  world’s
people were literate: Jan Luiten van Zanden et al., eds., How Was Life? Global Well-Being Since 1820 (OECD Publishing, 2014), 20.

  more than 85 percent of the world’s people: UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data, data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=166&lang=en.

  has improved by some twenty-five years: Riley, “Estimates of Regional and Global Life Expectancy, 1800‒2001.”

  more than tripled between 1950 and 2010: From 1950 to 2010, the average person in the developing world increased his or her years of education from 2.0 to 7.2. World Bank, World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2018), 4–5.

  Access to improved sanitation: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2016: Human Development for Everyone, 3.

  more than 7.5 billion mobile cellular subscriptions: International Telecommunication Union, 2018 Global and Regional Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Dataset, www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx.

  3.9 billion, or just over half the people on the planet: International Telecommunication Union, “ITU Releases 2018 Global and Regional ICT Estimates: For the First Time, More than Half of the World’s Population Is Using the Internet,” December 7, 2018; International Telecommunication Union, 2018 Global and Regional Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Dataset.

  two in five African adults cannot: Beegle et al., “Poverty in a Rising Africa,” 86.

  Nearly 900 million people: World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene: 2017 Update and SDG Baselines (Geneva: World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, 2017), 4.

  nearly one billion people: United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update (New York: United Nations, 2018).

  top 10 percent holds 85 percent: Kathleen Elkins, “How Much Money You Need to Be Among the Richest 10 percent of People Worldwide,” CNBC.com, November 7, 2018.

  Development aid or assistance: Nicholas D. Kristof, “Aid: Can It Work?,” New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006.

  Companies need to feel confident: This emphasis on building the proper institutions is termed the institutionalist approach to development. The best exposition of this approach—and one of the best books on development anywhere—is Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).

  the record was mixed: United Nations, “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015,” available at https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf.

  PART IV: ORDER AND DISORDER

  The Anarchical Society: Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 4th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

  Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Balance of Power

  respect for sovereignty: For a fuller treatment of the concept of sovereignty, see Robert Jackson, Sovereignty: The Evolution of an Idea (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2007); and Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). For a discussion of sovereignty debates in the United States since the country’s founding and how these play out in several policy realms, see Stewart Patrick, The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution, 2018).

  An ongoing debate: On this debate, which largely revolves around the responsibility to protect, see Power, “Problem from Hell”; and Kofi Annan, “Two Concepts of Sovereignty,” Economist, September 16, 1999.

  genocide, defined as: Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The text of the Genocide Convention is available at: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf.

  Responsibility to Protect doctrine: United Nations General Assembly, “Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 16 September 2005” (A/RES/60/1), undocs.org/A/RES/60/1.

  some 500,000 Syrians lost their lives: Specia, “How Syria’s Death Toll Is Lost in the Fog of War.”

  influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.”

  self-determination, or the notion: For an excellent treatment of the concept of self-determination, see Margaret Moore, ed., National Self-Determination and Secession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Alfred Cobban, The Nation State and National Self-Determination (New York: Crowell, 1970). For a riveting discussion of the post–World War I debates on self-determination, see Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002).

  “respect for the principle”: The charter’s full text can be found at www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/.

  1978 Camp David Accords: The full text can be found at avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/campdav.asp.

  Alliances and Coalitions

  strengthened or undermined by alliances: For a treatment of alliances, see Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).

  “There is only one thing”: Churchill made this comment at Chequers on April 1, 1945: winstonchurchill.org/uncategorised/quotes-slider/2014-11-3-16-25-06/.

  “appeasement” was the term: Bouverie, Appeasement.

  America’s alliances with countries: For more on the makings of America’s alliance system in Asia, see Victor D. Cha, Powerplay: The Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016).

  voiced his skepticism: Drew Middleton, “The de Gaulle Nuclear Doctrine Is Alive in Paris,” New York Times, May 6, 1981.

  Article 5 of its charter: Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty reads, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

  International Society

  More than 40 percent of the world’s countries: Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis, 2.

  “democratic peace” theory: Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).

  immature or illiberal democracies: Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).

  The argument is: Just before World War I, Norman Angell popularized this argument in his book The Great Illusion. Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910).

  “Meeting jaw to jaw”: Churchill’s biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, notes that during a trip to Washington in 1954, Churchill made this statement when trying to persuade the U.S.
Congress to pursue high-level meetings with the Soviet Union. International Churchill Society, Finest Hour 122 (Spring 2004), 12, https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-122/around-and-about-26/.

  large body of law: On international law and the use of force, see Louis Henkin et al., Right v. Might (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1991).

  when a war can be justified: On just war theory, see Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

  jus post bellum: Gary J. Bass, “Jus Post Bellum,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32, no. 4 (Autumn 2004): 384–412.

  War Between Countries

  “the growth of Athenian power”: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Rex Warner, trans.), (New York: Penguin Books, 1954), 49.

  Some observers would argue: Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

  violence must claim at least one thousand lives: For instance, this is the metric used by the Correlates of War Project, which compiles data sets on war. The data are available at www.correlatesofwar.org/data-sets.

  Some nine million soldiers: Merriman, History of Modern Europe, 923, 1102.

  continuation of politics by other means: Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

  common trigger for interstate war: Bryan A. Frederick, Paul R. Hensel, and Christopher Macaulay, “The Issue Correlates of War Territorial Claims Data, 1816–2001,” Journal of Peace Research 54, no. 1 (2017): 99–108; Monica Duffy Toft, “Territory and War,” Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 185–98.

  has claimed some 500,000 lives: Specia, “How Syria’s Death Toll Is Lost in the Fog of War.”

  military spending continues to increase: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2019,” www.sipri.org/databases/milex.