What we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post-Cold War order. It’s the end of it.
The influence of non-state actors is growing – from corporations whose resources rival those of national governments to NGOs providing services to hundreds of millions of people, to terrorists with the capacity to inflict catastrophic harm, to transnational criminal organizations trafficking illicit drugs, weapons, and human beings.
Countries and citizens are losing faith in the international economic order, their confidence rattled by systemic flaws:
A handful of governments used rule-shattering subsidies, stolen IP, and other market-distorting practices to gain an unfair advantage in key sectors.
Technology and globalization that hollowed out and displaced entire industries, and policies that failed to do enough to help out the workers and communities that were left behind.
And inequality that has skyrocketed. Between 1980 and 2020, the richest .1 percent accumulated the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent.
The longer these disparities persist, the more distrust and disillusionment they fuel in people who feel the system is not giving them a fair shake. And the more they exacerbate other drivers of political polarization, amplified by algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than allowing the best ideas to rise to the top.
More democracies are under threat. Challenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears, erode independent judiciaries and the media, enrich cronies, and crack down on civil society and political opposition. And challenged from the outside by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.
Any single one of these developments would have posed a serious challenge to the post-Cold War order. Together, they’ve upended it.
Last year alone, nearly 110,000 Americans died of a drug overdose. Two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids, making synthetic opioids the number-one killer of Americans aged 18 to 49. The crisis cost the U.S. nearly $1.5 trillion in 2020 alone, to say nothing of the suffering it’s inflicting on families and communities across our country. …Rules that had provided a sense of order, stability, and predictability can no longer be taken for granted…We must put our hand on the rudder of history and chart a path forward, guided by the things that are certain even in uncertain times – our principles, our partners, our vision for where we want to go – so that, when the fog lifts, the world that emerges tilts toward freedom, toward peace, toward an international community capable of rising to the challenges of its time.
We know we will have to earn the trust of a number of countries and citizens for whom the old order failed to deliver on many of its promises. …where prosperity is not measured only in how much countries’ economies grow but how many people share in that growth….A world that generates a race to the top in labor and environmental standards, in health, education, infrastructure, technology, security, and opportunity….Now, our competitors have a fundamentally different vision. They see a world defined by a single imperative: regime preservation and enrichment. A world where authoritarians are free to control, coerce, and crush their people, their neighbors, and anyone else standing in the way of this all-consuming goal.
*Excerpt from the speech at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)
Full Text:
https://state.gov/secretary-anthony-j-blinken-remarks-to-the-johns-hopkins=school-of-advanced-international-studies-sais-the-power-and-purpose-of=american-diplomacy-in-a-new-era/