While many nations have seen new levels of peace and prosperity under
the rules-based order that the United States and its allies built in the
wake of the Second World War, “not everybody accepts those principles
and values that have been the foundation of that system,” according to
former US National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley. The challenge for
the United States in the 21st century, Hadley continued, is
to “revise, adapt, and revitalize,” this international system, while
building global support for the central tenets of democracy and freedom
that underpinned the relative peace of the last half century.
Hadley, who spoke alongside former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Atlantic Council on October 30, said that there are new signs of hope in this mission. “Whether it is Latin America, whether it is in Africa, whether it is Europe, whether it is in Hong Kong, whether it is in the streets of Moscow, people are demanding accountability from their governments [and] demanding that their governments not be corrupt, that they be responsive to their needs,” he said. “This is a perfect time,” he argued, for the United States and its allies to promote the value of a rules-based international order and “renew our vows to our democratic principles.”
The United States faces an uphill battle, however, as authoritarians abroad question those very principles, as detailed in the Global Risks 2035 Update: Decline or New Renaissance, a report by Mathew J. Burrows, director of the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Burrows warns that the increasing power of authoritarian regimes—chief among them China—threatens to bring back the great power competition that created so much destruction during the first part of the 20th century.
n the face of dissent abroad and disaffection at home, Albright and Hadley are duly concerned that the United States will continue to retreat from global leadership, giving away hard-won power to authoritarian leaders that are happy to take it. As Albright pointed out, the Chinese government is “filling the vacuum” left by a retreating United States, “and where they aren’t filling the vacuum, the Russians are filling the vacuum.” Albright also drew attention to China’s Belt and Road Initiative that seems to expand Beijing’s global reach by the day. “I keep saying the Chinese must be getting very fat, because the belt keeps getting larger and larger, and they have made all kinds of relationships of dependency on that,” she said.
Read more at: Transforming the international order: US leadership or bust - Atlantic Council
Hadley, who spoke alongside former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Atlantic Council on October 30, said that there are new signs of hope in this mission. “Whether it is Latin America, whether it is in Africa, whether it is Europe, whether it is in Hong Kong, whether it is in the streets of Moscow, people are demanding accountability from their governments [and] demanding that their governments not be corrupt, that they be responsive to their needs,” he said. “This is a perfect time,” he argued, for the United States and its allies to promote the value of a rules-based international order and “renew our vows to our democratic principles.”
The United States faces an uphill battle, however, as authoritarians abroad question those very principles, as detailed in the Global Risks 2035 Update: Decline or New Renaissance, a report by Mathew J. Burrows, director of the Atlantic Council’s Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Burrows warns that the increasing power of authoritarian regimes—chief among them China—threatens to bring back the great power competition that created so much destruction during the first part of the 20th century.
n the face of dissent abroad and disaffection at home, Albright and Hadley are duly concerned that the United States will continue to retreat from global leadership, giving away hard-won power to authoritarian leaders that are happy to take it. As Albright pointed out, the Chinese government is “filling the vacuum” left by a retreating United States, “and where they aren’t filling the vacuum, the Russians are filling the vacuum.” Albright also drew attention to China’s Belt and Road Initiative that seems to expand Beijing’s global reach by the day. “I keep saying the Chinese must be getting very fat, because the belt keeps getting larger and larger, and they have made all kinds of relationships of dependency on that,” she said.
Read more at: Transforming the international order: US leadership or bust - Atlantic Council
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