Further, it is hard to imagine that China and America will be the only two countries to emerge from the G-Zero with their ambitions intact. Whatever happens to the eurozone, Europe's skilled workforce and its tradition of innovation bolster the odds that it will show long-term resilience. Japan, too, has suffered many setbacks, but it is still the world's third-largest economy. Nor is there any reason to believe that growth in leading emerging states will be stunted to an extent that robs them of their steadily increasing influence. Their growth may slow, but only a truly global disaster would return us to a bipolar world.
A Concert of Nations
If there are indeed multiple centers of power a decade from now, imagine a scenario in which the global power vacuum generates a crisis, or series of crises, so damaging that established and emerging powers are virtually forced to collaborate, compromise, and share the risks and burdens of leadership. This is a G-20 order that actually works, a kind of "concert of nations" -- a structure similar to the so-called Concert of Europe that aligned Britain, the Russian Empire, Austria, Prussia, and later France in a bid to restore and maintain Europe's peace following the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. This institutionalized balance of power brought stability in Europe from the early 19th century until the outbreak of World War I.
But this scenario is especially unlikely to develop because there are so few conceivable circumstances that could create that degree of widespread fear and maintain it for very long. Imagine a meltdown in European financial markets that develops much further and lasts much longer than America's "Lehman moment." Spain and Italy -- countries too large to bail out -- lose investor confidence. German and French banks with exposure to bad loans in these countries go under. The eurozone collapses, and Europe fragments. The United States and China lose a crucial trade partner and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that it helps create.
Yet it is hard to imagine that lasting cooperation would emerge from such destruction. As with the 2008 financial crisis, the effects of even a much greater shock to the system would last longer in some places than others, and the temptation to find advantage in the weakness of others, rather than to partner to buttress international trade, might prove too great for some to resist.
Let's imagine an even more global problem: Perhaps rising global demand for grain begins to far outstrip supply, and a series of weather-related disasters sends food prices soaring across South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, and much of Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Protests in Russia provoke a brutal state response that strips the government of any vestige of popularity. Uprisings in India swell across state borders. Venezuela, Thailand, and Egypt see surges of unrest. Violence grips China. But here again, food shocks will always hit emerging powers and the developing world much harder than the United States, Europe, and Japan, because people in the developed world spend a far smaller percentage of their income on staple foods. Once again, even this scenario doesn't hit everyone at once, or equally -- and history demonstrates that food fights are as likely to produce finger-pointing as cooperation.
In the end, it is hard to imagine a crisis large enough to force lasting cooperation from established and emerging powers, and the complexity of the threats facing the foreign ministers of 19th-century Europe pale beside those of the G-Zero era.
Cold War 2.0
If the G-Zero era pushes China and the United States toward more direct forms of conflict, and if Washington and Beijing are left with much more economic, political, and military power than any other country or bloc of countries, it could generate a new kind of Cold War. This war, however, is less likely to be waged with military hardware because, thanks to global economic interdependence, conflict with economic weapons or cyberespionage comes with much lower costs than traditional warfare for those who provoke it. Its weapons will be currency valuation strategies, restrictions on market access and foreign direct investment, or cyberattacks and counterstrikes designed to disrupt information flows or disable critical infrastructure. No one can know who would hold the advantage in such a contest -- not even the U.S. and Chinese strategists who might stumble into it.
The origins of this potential conflict are not difficult to trace. Earlier stages of China's development provided U.S. companies and consumers with access to Chinese markets, cheap labor, and inexpensive consumer products. Chinese manufacturers gained access to the American middle class and the advanced technology that only Western companies could provide. But the West's economic woes have added urgency to Chinese plans to reduce dependence on exports to U.S. and European consumers in favor of greater domestic demand for Chinese products.
In addition, a growing number of increasingly self-confident Chinese companies now rely on state-sponsored protection from foreign competition. They can use political connections to rewrite commercial rules and regulations in their own favor and use local print, broadcast, and online media to manipulate Chinese public opinion of U.S. companies. In short, China is already becoming less dependent on American economic strength, and U.S. companies will discover that long-term bets on China might not pay off.
As the commercial ties that have encouraged policymakers on both sides to look beyond political and ideological differences fray, the two countries will compete much more aggressively for influence and commerce all over the world. Long-simmering tensions over the value of China's currency, the Chinese government's inability or unwillingness to protect foreign-owned intellectual property, and U.S. criticism of China's human rights record are increasingly likely to boil over.
Cold War 2.0 would be much more dangerous than the first one. Yes, tomorrow's Washington and Beijing are no more likely than yesterday's Washington and Moscow to wage nuclear war. The destructive power of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile and the ease of figuring out where it came from continue to make a nuclear exchange extremely unlikely. But cyberattacks in particular render that stability obsolete because they need not kill millions to inflict devastating damage and their origin can be hidden. This is a weapon that has already been used more than once.
Yet, there is another important difference that makes an especially destructive U.S.-Chinese conflict less likely. During the U.S.-Soviet conflict, the Iron Curtain was not simply the wall that kept invaders out and prisoners in. It was a buffer between the capitalist and communist worlds. The Soviet Union was an important energy supplier for Europe, but East-West trade ties were extremely limited. It was much easier for one side to inflict harm on the other without damaging its own interests.
Today's U.S.-China relations, on the other hand, rest on some degree of interdependence -- a "mutually assured economic destruction" -- even if China succeeds in reducing its dependence on U.S. consumer purchasing power. The United States will need China to help finance U.S. debt for years to come, and China must be sure that America can and will pay its debts -- and that the currency it uses will be worth more than the paper it is printed on. This scenario also assumes the relative weakness of the world's other states, which is unlikely for the reasons cited above. This order is more likely to emerge than either the G-2 or Concert of Nations scenarios, but it is not the most likely post-G-Zero outcome.
World of Regions
The fourth scenario is one in which regional leaders provide some public goods within their respective spheres of influence, but political elites in these countries ignore calls for multilateral cooperation that demands sacrifice for the global good. The United States remains the world's only military superpower, but the growing economic muscle and technological sophistication of rising powers limit the importance of this advantage. The growth of regional powers is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon, but one that develops differently in each part of the world. This is the most likely of the post-G-Zero scenarios because it requires no compromises among powerful states and no multinational leaps of faith on problem-solving, and because it follows along the path the world is already on.
Each region would have its unique power structure. In Europe, a loss of confidence in the creditworthiness of several European countries leaves reserve-rich Germany in an enhanced leadership role -- whether German officials and taxpayers like it or not. Berlin will be crucial to any plan to reform the eurozone, the Schengen agreement on borders, or the European Union itself. And if Germany can persuade European leaders to forge agreements among eurozone member states that combine a new commitment to the single currency with much closer coordination on state spending and tax policies, the continent will emerge as the world's most efficiently run region.
Then there is a less voluntary form of unity imposed by a local heavyweight. If Russia can better diversify its domestic economy, or if oil prices remain high enough to continue to fill Russian coffers with cash, Moscow can build greater political and economic influence across much of the former Soviet Union. A state like Kazakhstan, which enjoys substantial commercial relations with outside powers like China and Germany, can limit its dependence on Russia, but countries like Ukraine and Georgia are much more likely to fall under Russia's shadow.
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