What the Economic Crisis Tells Us about the World

By David Shorr

In these turbulent times, it’s a struggle just to wrap one’s heads around the full import of the global economic downturn. The ramifications are just starting to sink in, and will be for quite a while. At some level, though, the crisis actually clarifies the interconnected nature of today’s world. The notion that Americans and the rest of the world are “all in it together” is no longer a sentimental ideal – it’s reality.

So if the 21st Century fate of nations today is a shared one, what does that mean for international politics and the foreign policies of the United States and others? In other words, given that the world is a community in the sense of collectively feeling the impact of economic trends or security conditions, can the world’s leaders harness their power for the benefit of the community at large? Can they help build a healthy and vibrant global community?

While the economic turndown and global warming have given these questions new salience, they are classic concerns of international relations theory – i.e. the behavior of nation states. My organization, The Stanley Foundation carries out a range of program activities on the importance of international cooperation and a robust rules-based global order. The foundation’s recent project on Powers and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World, with the results collected in a forthcoming book I co-edited with Michael Schiffer, brought together 33 leading experts to respond to these questions directly. (The essays are on the web for a few more weeks until the book is released)

Contributing writers were asked to describe the paths that global and regional powers could take as constructive stakeholders in a strengthened rules-based international order. Each chapter is an assessment of what is politically possible (and impossible)—with a description of the associated pressures and reference to the country’s geostrategic position, economy, society, history, and political system and culture.

When I give talks on foreign policy to local groups around the US, I often say that everything I needed to know about international politics I learned in kindergarten. And indeed, the eminent analysts in our project affirmed a number of simple verities of community mindedness. Everybody has to play by the same rules. You have to do for others if you want them to do for you. No one likes to be bossed around.

Two parallels can be drawn with the debate over international economic policy and this week’s G20 meeting in London. First, is the widely remarked damage to the United States’ credibility on these issues (the focus of Paul Krugman’s Monday column). Given the news of the past year, the US is scarcely in a position to preach the virtues of disciplined lending and vices of crony capitalism. With all of its material power, America lost sight of the importance of the moral high ground and the force of example – a problem that stretches across the broader policy agenda (e.g. torture and global warming).

The financial meltdown bears another important lesson about the world that our foreign policy must navigate: Without the safety of a robust system based on rules, trust and confidence, you’ll instead get a mad scramble of self-aggrandizement.

David Shorr is a program officer at the Stanley Foundation and the co-editor of Power and Principles: International Leadership in a Shrinking World.

Comments

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