From GS, May 15:
Executive summary
As the U.S. and China coexist, compete, and confront each other to determine who will set the geopolitical rules, they will either court or thwart an emerging group of countries to gain an edge. This new class of influential nations are the geopolitical swing states of the 21st century. These countries fall into four overlapping categories:
1. Countries with a competitive advantage in a critical aspect of global supply chains
2. Countries uniquely suited for nearshoring, offshoring, or friendshoring
3. Countries with a disproportionate amount of capital and willingness to deploy it around the world
4. Countries with developed economies and leaders with global visions that they pursue within certain constraints
In American domestic politics, swing states can be won by either party, and they decide presidential elections. In geopolitics, swing states have agency to chart their own course on an issue-by-issue basis, and they may decide the future of the international balance of power. They are relatively stable countries that have their own global agendas independent of Washington and Beijing, and the will and capabilities to turn those agendas into realities. They are growing more assertive in using their economic advantages to bolster their standing and influence. They are more demanding, flexible, dynamic, and strategic than they could have been in the 20th century, whatever their shared interests with one great power or another. And they will often choose multi-alignment, a strategy that will make them critical—and sometimes unpredictable—forces in the world’s next stage of globalization, and the next phase of great power competition.
Introduction
In the 2020s, everything is geopolitical. It took a global pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and heightened U.S.-China competition for the fact that the old era of globalization is over to become undeniable. Each great power has a privileged position in the global economy, and they all face new risks and uncertain futures. The United States is leaning more into its status as the holder of the world’s reserve currency, using the dollar and related payment systems to sanction adversaries and competitors. China is leveraging dependency on its position in supply chains. And Russia—with nowhere near the power of China or the U.S., but with more appetite for risk—has wielded energy to intimidate and coerce its neighbors and limit global support for Ukraine. There is no country or multilateral organization that has the capacity to arbitrate these tensions.
But this unstable geopolitical reality doesn’t mean that other countries or organizations are helpless, waiting for the dust to settle around the geopolitical victor—the old Cold War this is not, even if some of the patterns seem eerily reminiscent. When the U.S. and USSR were locked for four decades in what George Orwell described as “a peace that is no peace,” the rest of the world had three options. Countries could join the U.S.’s alliance system or sphere of influence, they could join the Communist bloc, or they could attempt to remain non-aligned.
The world is more connected today than it was during the Cold War, and the pace of events is accelerating. Non-alignment is more challenging both in theory and in practice. As the U.S. and China coexist, compete, and confront each other to determine who will set the geopolitical rules, they will either court or thwart an emerging group of countries to gain an edge. This new class of influential nations are the geopolitical swing states of the 21st century.
In American domestic politics, swing states can be won by either party, and they decide presidential elections. In geopolitics, swing states have agency to chart their own course on an issue-by-issue basis, and they may decide the future of the international balance of power. They are relatively stable countries that have their own global agendas independent of Washington and Beijing, and the will and capabilities to turn those agendas into realities. They are growing more assertive in using their economic advantages to bolster their standing and influence. They are more demanding, flexible, dynamic, and strategic than they could have been in the 20th century, whatever their shared interests with one great power or another. And they will often choose multi-alignment, a strategy that will make them critical—and sometimes unpredictable—forces in the world’s next stage of globalization, and the next phase of great power competition.
The era of multi-alignment....
....MUCH MORE
