The Two Biggest Global Trends Are at War
In the unlikely event that Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, or other aspiring world leaders ask for my advice on foreign policy, there’s plenty I’d be happy to talk to them about. There’s climate change, how to deal with China, why protectionism is stupid, what to do about Gaza, the role of norms, what balance of threat theory really means, and a host of other topics. But I might start by calling their attention to two competing trends in world politics, whose roots go back decades if not centuries. These two trends are at odds with each other in important ways, and failure to appreciate how they interact has led plenty of countries astray.
The first trend is the increasing range, accuracy, and lethality of modern weaponry. A century or so ago, airpower was in its infancy, and rockets and artillery were inaccurate and had limited range. Doing much damage to an enemy required defeating its military forces and then surrounding its cities with a besieging army. Today, however, powerful states have become quite adept at blowing things up, even if the target is hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Nuclear weapons and intercontinental-range missiles are the apotheosis of this trend, but thankfully these weapons have been used solely for deterrence since 1945. But steady improvements in long-range aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, and technologies of precision guidance now allow combatants to destroy targets hundreds of miles away. Even some nonstate actors (e.g., the Houthis in Yemen) are getting into the act.
With command of the air, powerful states can now wreak enormous damage on opposing armies or on helpless civilian populations. What the United States did at the beginning of the first Gulf War, what Russia is doing in Ukraine, or what Israel is now doing in Gaza shows how the ability to project destructive power has increased dramatically over time. One might add to this list the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists in so-called signature strikes or to assassinate foreign officials such as Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. The Israeli attack that killed Fuad Shukr, a prominent Hezbollah official, in Lebanon last week is just the latest example. For the world’s strongest states, the ability to reach out with lethal force has never been greater. And sophisticated cyberweapons may enable states to attack an opponent’s critical infrastructure with the click of a mouse, even if the target is on the other side of the world. For some states, in short, the ability to destroy has become global in scope.
The second trend is wholly different: the deepening political salience and tenacity of local forms of identity and loyalty and especially the sense of being a nation. As I’ve noted before, the “idea that humans form distinct tribes based on a common language, culture, ethnicity, and self-awareness, and that such groups ought to be able to govern themselves, has shaped the history of the past 500 years in ways that many people still do not fully appreciate.” The widespread emergence of a sense of nationhood and the belief that such groups should not be ruled by others is one of the main reasons why the multinational Hapsburg and Ottoman empires did not endure past 1918 and 1922 respectively; why the British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian colonies gained independence; and why the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact eventually came unglued, too.
