In one of his last interviews, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summed up the predicament: “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.” With the United States contesting the legitimacy of Chinese and Russian power (and vice versa), the world is left in disarray and turmoil with a growing resemblance to the periods leading up to the twentieth century’s world wars.

Whither a “New Bretton Woods Moment”?

A U.S.-led democracy-centered coalition and a Eurasian entente (China-Russia-Iran-North Korea) are both incrementally hardening in response to growing rivalry, particularly over Ukraine and Taiwan. Beyond the major powers, the Global South, whose fundamental objective is economic growth, is multi-aligned. For many developing countries, a war between the major powers would collapse the global economy, making the Global South’s development goals impossible. Most Global South countries want to avoid entanglement with either the Western or the China-Russia side, instead leveraging often competing economic and strategic partnerships.

Finding a stable balance of power among the different visions of world order seems a herculean challenge. To a considerable extent, coexistence may depend on how current areas of contention—Middle East, Taiwan, and Ukraine—play out. Regardless of how the great power game evolves, it is difficult to fathom how to attain the necessary resources and global cooperation to address the enormous burgeoning existential challenges and risks ahead.

Well-intended but mostly unfulfilled promises (such as redirected existing aid) have been the response to desperate calls for more engagement and reform of global institutions in the G20. A 2023 report commissioned by the G20 Independent Experts Group, led by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, tracks with the Global South’s calls for radical change:

Additional spending of some $3 trillion per year is needed by 2030, of which $1.8 trillion represents additional investments in climate action (a four-fold increase in adaptation, resilience and mitigation compared to 2019), mostly in sustainable infrastructure, and $1.2 trillion in additional spending to attain other SDGs (a 75% increase in health and education).

The UNSC’s inability to address urgent problems, from Gaza to civil wars in Sudan or Ethiopia, as well as failing states like Haiti, are harbingers of dystopian futures. U.S.-China competition increasingly resembles Juan Luis Borges’ quip about two bald men fighting over a comb.

The world faces a choice: either continue unbridled major power confrontation or cooperate to address existential threats to the planet, but not both. Turning the clock back to 1990s-style rapid globalization is impossible, but absent rethinking current economic nationalism, global prosperity will prove elusive and fuel greater rivalry. Remember the lessons of the Cold War: deterrence requires assurance, and diplomacy is a necessary complement to statecraft as much as military power. If the current “doom loop” of tit-for-tat rivalry is unchecked, the dystopian world outlined above will become a reality.

Mathew Burrows and Robert A. Manning are the curators of the Red Cell project at the Stimson Center, drawing from a long career in the intelligence community. 

Mathew Burrows serves as Counselor to the President and CEO of Stimson, is the Program Lead of the Strategic Foresight Hub, and was the former Counselor at the National Intelligence Council (NIC), where he set up and directed the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit, which is now known as the Strategic Futures Group. 

Robert A. Manning is now a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center working on Strategic Foresight, China, and Great Power Competition. He also served at the NIC and was a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State.

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