The old order, globalisation and the new era

THERE is a consensus among academics as well as those who watch policymaking across the globe that 2017 was a bad year. Why was that the case?

There are a number of reasons why the year that became history about two weeks ago is regarded so poorly. Five of these are worth reflecting on. The first is the near-collapse of the old order put in place in the years after the end of the Second World War. The second is the inability of what came to be called globalisation to spread evenly the rewards of steady growth. The third is related to the second. Fairly significant segments of the population in the West voted into office leaders who promised to kill the old order and replace it with something quite different. The fourth is demographic developments, coupled with political turmoil in the more populous parts of the world, which produced large movements of people. These migrations were seen as threatening precisely by the people who had been hurt by globalisation. The fifth was China's continuing economic as well as military rise that brought to the fore a non-Western power that challenged those that had dominated the old system for three quarters of a century. Each of these five developments is worth closer examination.

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, then first secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party, boasted of the rising power of the country over which he presided. "Whether you like or not, history is on our side. We will bury you," he told the West. That, of course, did not happen but the claim did not seem ridiculous then. The breakneck speed at which the Soviet Union had industrialised helped it to defeat the Nazi armies during the Second World War. When the Germans sent their troops into Russia, they thought they were invading a rural economy. Instead, they met an industrialised power that was able not only to push them back but bring under its control much of Eastern Europe.