Already a subscriber?Imagine an alien observer, sent undercover to Earth every half-century, to account for the status of human life on the planet. What would she convey to her extraterrestrial colleagues about 2024?
1974’s report, however, was absolutely Pollyannaish compared with 1924’s. One horrific world war had concluded while laying the seeds for another even more murderous one. Imperialism shaped the international order, as a significant percentage of the world’s population was ruled or exploited by European capitals thousands of miles away. A steep economic depression had just ended but was only a precursor to a far deeper, more devastating financial collapse a few years later.
In short, the world has made unimaginable progress in taming the steep challenges of scarcity that had plagued humanity for millennia and had been one of the core drivers of total wars for plunder, empire, and conquest. But the success in creating a more prosperous, informed, and secure world for humanity has, unexpectedly, generated a whole new set of planetary challenges that, if not resolved, threatens disaster, if not human extinction.
Finally, ground-breaking new military capabilities, especially thermonuclear weapons, prohibitively increased the costs and risks of great-power wars of conquest. Expectations have also been dramatically raised while left unmet. While the age of abundance has promoted tolerance and radical individuality, it has also undermined social cohesion and weakened the sense of common purpose needed to confront these challenges. Governing norms and institutions developed to tame scarcity have been exposed as ill-suited to confront contemporary challenges, generating a crisis of political legitimacy and stoking polarisation.
Unlike states and empires during the age of scarcity, China has no reason to fear being conquered, nor, even if it wanted to, could it easily invade, occupy, and take over neighbours such as India, Japan, and South-East Asian states, especially if a future successful takeover of Taiwan generated widespread military balancing and nuclear proliferation in the region.
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