KAGWANJA: Anarchic world order reshapes Africa’s fortunes

The centennial of World War I (1914-1918) is drawing attention to global governance, currently in a dire state of flux.

Foreign policy experts are fretting the implications of the prevailing “anarchy” in international politics for global power in the next three decades. And, certainly, the prevailing anarchic world order threatens to push Africa deeper into the margins of global power.

As such, leading foreign policy think-tanks are frenetically scanning the horizons to develop long-range models and strategies to keep pace with the fast-moving threats posed by the anarchy in global order.

This crystal ball gazing underpinned the high-level conference by Wilton Park, a think-tank of the British Foreign and Commonwealth, on January 13-15, 2014 which drew over 70 academics, foreign policy and national security strategists from 35 countries to reflect on “the future of power and its implications for global actors by 2040”.

It is also the subject of a seminal article, “The Unruled World,” by Stewart Patrick of the influential American Council on Foreign Relations published by the equally influential Foreign Affairs Journal (January/February 2014: 58-73).

In a nutshell, three salient geo-political developments account for the “anarchy” rocking international politics and now reshaping the fortunes of Africa, its business, people and power.

The story begins with the tragic decline of the US and the stagnation of Europe and Japan against the backdrop of the momentous emergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China, Turkey and Indonesia as new economic powers.

However, despite the tectonic geo-political shift, an alternative to today’s Western dominated global order is yet to emerge. But certainly the world is multi-power or what analysts Ian Bremmer and David Gordon described as the emergence of a “G-Zero World.”

China is emerging as the world’s undisputed economic superpower. But experts at the Wilton Park meeting observed that by 2040 the West will still be far from its sunset moment. America (and its Western allies) will most likely remain the dominant military power able to drive an international agenda or to provide global public goods.

AGING INSTITUTIONS

On their part, China’s foreign policy pundits are assuring the West that theirs is a “peaceful rise”.

But the West — still inscrutably operating on a 19th century mental map of power — is wary that with Beijing’s discernible capacity for long-range strategic planning and projection of power, it might turn its economic fortunes into global power.

Also unleashing anarchy in international politics is stalled reform of the outmoded post-war global governance architecture. During the 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama vowed to install a new era of global institution building to replace the “aging pillars of the postwar order”. But Washington has dithered on this promise.

The UN Security Council remains the centrepiece of contemporary global governance. But action on threats to global order are hampered by power intrigues and interests within an archaic system that arbitrarily grants veto powers to five out of 198 UN member states —America, Britain, China, France and Russia.

Broadly, Asia, Europe and North America are veto-wielding regions. This has left Africa as the “playground for furthering the interests of other regions”.

In this context, in January 2012, as South Africa occupied the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, President Jacob Zuma censured Western powers for exceeding the intent of Resolution 1973 in treating their mandate to protect Libyan civilians as a licence for regime change.

With this, the career of multilateralism looks bleaker. This is giving impetus to “minilateralism” as a new strategy of fighting for a just world order in a multilateral context.

The “minilateralism” strategy has taken the form of new multilateral alliances like the Brics: Brazil, Russia, India, China and, since 2012, South Africa. In Africa, minilateralism has taken the form of regional and sub-regional institutions such as the African Union.

While the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a relic of the Cold War era, is an example of security groups, the International Criminal Court has come to exemplify how key states are able to project their power and pursue their political interests in weaker regions through a multilateral institution.

The third development shaping the future of power is the emergence of what Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen (2013) have described as “the new digital age”. Significantly, the explosion of communication technologies in the first decade of the 21st century transformed the Internet into “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history”.

The number of Internet users spiralled from 350 million to more than 2 billion while that of mobile phone subscribers rose meteorically from 750 million to well over 6 billion by January 2014! As such, online social networking services such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Twitter and Linkedin are irreversibly shaping the future of people, nations and business.

These technology platforms have also created new forms of citizenship. Valued at $104 billion in 2012 and with about 1.15 billion monthly users (“citizens”) as of January 2014, Facebook is the third “largest country in the world” today — after China and India with 1.4 billion and 1.2 billion people respectively.

Studies of Internet users in 2012 as a percentage of a country’s population, however, highlighted Africa as the largest single area behind the “global digital divide”.

But scenarios arising from the geo-political shifts look dreadful. By 2040, it is likely that most of the major powers will have retreated into populist isolationism. As in the 19th century, this is likely to set off a new “21st century scramble for Africa” over the continent’s strategic resources, especially oil and gas.

Ultimately, African experts and governments must harness and develop capabilities for horizon scanning, long-range strategic thinking on politics and projection of power in order to prevent the continent from becoming a playground for the interests of powers from other regions.

This is an excerpt from a presentation prepared by Prof Kagwanja, who is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute, for the Wilton Park Conference, London, January 13-15, 2014.