The world is undergoing the greatest period of geopolitical turmoil since the end of the Cold War, with a fragmentation of global power, decline of a rules-based international order, and shifting international alliances, thrown into sharp relief by the Trump Presidency.
Professor Paul ‘t Hart, who has taught into ANZSOG programs since 2009, has decades of experience advising governments in Europe and recently gave audiences in Sydney and Melbourne an outline of the reasons behind global turmoil and how public services could respond.
The addresses were based on work Professor ‘t Hart has done with the Netherlands’ Scientific Council for Government Policy, an independent advisory body to the government, to prepare a major report on geopolitical challenges for the Dutch government.
“It is tempting to view all these occurrences through the lens of crisis, chaos, destabilisation. To some extent this is true – none of this is trivial and it is disruptive,” Professor ‘t Hart said.
“What we first need to get is a sensible diagnosis of what is the long-range development or set of developments here, what is going on underneath the headlines, before we can understand what our possible responses are.”
Moving away from the ‘unipolar moment’ to geopolitical uncertainty
Professor ‘t Hart spoke of the shift away from the ‘unipolar moment’ – of the 1990s when the USA stood as the sole global power at the end of the Cold War, and there was a widespread belief that it was only a matter of time before democracy and western liberalism triumphed.
“Our security protector, the USA, had won and our values and economic philosophy around free trade was on the ascendance. But there are long-term developments and fragmentations which have produced the end of this era and the beginning of something new that is very difficult to interpret.”
“The first fragmentation is the USA. If you measure it on economic or military capabilities, it is still predominant, but obviously a whole set of countries have caught up in various ways.
“So, we are moving from a unipolar world back to a multipolar world. That’s basically the power structure of the international system prior to World War II, where you had a range of major powers. We have some experience with navigating a multipolar world, and the message is: it’s complex and very risky, and it doesn’t always end well.”
He said that the USA was experiencing a long-term strategic reorientation away from Europe, which had begun before Trump and would continue beyond his presidency.
“Certainly in the Obama years (2009-2016) attention was shifting, but Obama was leaving in place the old security arrangements,” he said.
“If you think that, okay, once Trump gets out, the Americans are going to backtrack and all will be fine – forget it. There’s a broader, deeper consensus in Washington that the US should be a bit more transactional.”
Professor ‘t Hart said that European policymakers and citizens were unsettled and ‘borderline scared’ by the rapid changes in their security environment but he believed that it could be positive in the medium-to-long-term benefits.
“The standard line about the EU is that it is an economic giant, but a military dwarf. The military dwarf is now waking up and panicking. Our military people are saying the next three to five years are the most dangerous ones, because militarily, Europe will need at least five years to kind of get its act together. But, in terms of how much money goes into defence, and our population, then we are a potential global military power. I’m quite optimistic that the combined double punch of the invasion of Ukraine and Trump is actually good for us.
“This doesn’t mean the transition will be painless. And the cohesion of the European Union, which is weak, will be tested to the utmost.”
Countries on the rise: China, Russia and India
Professor ‘t Hart said that US hegemony was being challenged by China, Russia and India in particular, as well as countries in the global south such as Brazil and South Africa that were flexing their muscles on the world stage or in their regions.
“China has developed at an enormous speed on almost any indicator of power and depending on your benchmark, leads on 23 or 25 critical technologies for the 21st century. However, it is important to take into account that China faces a demographic abyss of epic proportions. They will continue to be very powerful, but they are facing more like a halving of the population by the end of this century.
“One of the issues with China is how badly we understand it because we haven’t really bothered to look deeply into its history and culture. You’re dealing with a country that tends to operate on very long timelines and is very patient in a way that we aren’t.”
He said Russia was still strong in terms of military and fossil fuel power, and that under Putin it had returned to its long-term strategic goal of expanding its territory and creating weak vassal states on its borders.
“Russian willingness to invest heavily in countries where the Western powers are saying, we will only invest if you abide by our democratic norms, has actually given them quite a bit of soft power, places like North Africa and certainly in its own backyard in the Caucasus.”
“Where China is facing demographic abyss, India is facing enormous demographic dividend. India has decades’ worth of young people, and has been incredibly successful in elevating enormous numbers of people to middle-class status.
So the medium-term answer to the question of ‘who will make the stuff that we buy?’ is India. For the coming decades India will have enormous economic growth, and a more highly educated population.
“Geo-strategically, India sits in the middle. It has this long tradition of being a non-aligned country. And at the moment it is making itself multi-aligned – it will do deals with the West, it will do deals with China.”
Infrastructure, immigration – emergence of new arenas of conflict
As well as a changing global balance of power, Professor ‘t Hart outlined how global arenas of struggle have expanded from military and security domains to include attacks on infrastructure, positioning for control of the Arctic and Antarctic, and the weaponisation of refugee migration.
“What is very characteristic of our present age is that these power shifts, and the manoeuvring that comes with them are playing out in almost every imaginable field of public policy or economic activity. For example, your infrastructure – internet cables and electricity – is no longer a strictly domestic management problem because there are all kinds of security elements to it.
“The Poles, particularly because they are melting, become a real theatre. The USA attempt to take over Greenland may sound wild and bizarre, but it makes complete sense if you look at the geography of it.
“Control of Space is also a conflict. Interestingly enough, what we’ve seen is the privatisation of space and the rise of Elon Musk to become perhaps the biggest player, which was unthinkable 10-15 years ago when Space was essentially an American-Russian duopoly that the Chinese and the Indians were starting to muscle their way into.”
“We are seeing the weaponisation of migration. People arrive in Finland in their thousands, because Belarus has put them there, because Putin told them to. Turkey derives a lot of power and clout over Europe from the fact that it is a gateway for refugees, and Prime Minister Erdogan can just turn on or turn off the tap, at a time when the intake of refugees is such a hot issue domestically within European countries.”
Professor ‘t Hart said that the emergence of a more protectionist global economy would highlight the asymmetrical dependencies between states – for example the monopoly of essential raw materials such as cobalt by certain countries.
“During COVID, we all suddenly discovered that 80 to 90 per cent of our pharmaceutical products come from India or from China. This is all well and good in a world of open borders, not so great in a world where strategic autonomy is the name of the game.”
“Another very new factor that is very hard to gauge is the accrual of power by big tech companies. Are the techs being controlled by Washington or are the techs controlling Washington?
“Most importantly, all of these conflicts and changes increasingly occur in an institutional void. All those international regimes, all these agreements that we had to put norms around behaviour on the international stage, they are weakening because big players like the US are ignoring them or repudiating them. The game gets more intense, but the referees are vacating the field.”
How public services can thrive in this turbulent environment
Professor ‘t Hart said that this environment means that for smaller countries such as Australia the balancing act between security and prosperity would become harder, and could leave little room for advancing our values. This would lead to tough political discussions about how to pay for these costs.
“What I think is a big danger in Europe, perhaps less so in Australia, is this kind of over securitisation of everything, seeing everything now through a security prism.
“The change is also about trading patterns, new opportunities opening up, perhaps a different look at countries like South Korea and like-minded countries that have a lot to offer. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for Australia to re-engage with Southeast Asia, but it has to be done on equitable terms and not exploitative or opportunistic.”
He said public services needed ‘recalibration, not panic’ as they helped elected governments manage this new global reality.
“In our report, we end up with some tentative things for public services to focus on,” he said.
“The first thing is we don’t need simplification. In fact, we need investment in really deep and diverse thinking because otherwise we don’t understand the logic of how other countries are operating.”
“Secondly, we need a strategic culture where we think long range. In that sense, emulate the Chinese who have done this for centuries. We need to find ways to escape the political business cycle that focuses on the short-term.”
“Thirdly, the fact that the UN system is kind of breaking down and that some international regimes are crumbling doesn’t mean that you cannot start ‘coalitions of the willing’ who share particular interests to start new sets of treaties and so forth. Creativity in the policy rather than just standing by and looking at the wreckage of the UN system is going to be very helpful.”
He said that in this environment it would be even more important for public services to retain their political independence and focus on stewardship and good governance.
“At the moment, we perhaps need a bit less political responsiveness and a bit more institutional stewardship,” he said.