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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 December 2019
Imagining an alternative institutional and normative architecture for global governance must proceed on the bases of an identification and understanding of the principal challenges facing the international system. In my view, the gravest challenge facing the international system, and perhaps the greatest political drama of the twenty-first century, is the ongoing shift in the global balance of power. As we move from a U.S.-led unipolar system to a world in which non-Western powers, particularly China, exercise greater influence in international affairs, the foremost priority for global governance is to ensure that this transition proceeds peacefully and to minimize the potential for Great Power conflict, especially between the United States and China.
1 The rise of China and other non-Western powers is the “greatest political drama of the twenty-first century” because it potentially signifies the end of a 500-year epoch of western dominance, which Niall Ferguson considers “the preeminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.” Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest 18 (2011).
2 See Peter Stearns, Western Civilization in World History (2003).
3 Alexander Orakhelashvili, The Idea of European International Law, 17 Eur. J. Int'l L. 315 (2006).
4 Bardo Fassbender & Anne Peters, Introduction: Towards a Global History of International Law, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law 1, 7 (Bardo Fassbender & Anne Peters eds., 2012) (noting that “[o]ften both persuasion and intimidation will have played a decisive role” in the application of European law to non-Western regions).
5 Robert Art, The United States and the Rise of China: Implications for the Long Haul, 125 Pol. Sci. Q. 359 (2010).
6 Michael Cox, Power Shifts, Economic Change and the Decline of the West?, 26 Int'l Rel. 369, 371 (2012).
7 Larry Summers, The Age of Secular Stagnation, 95 For. Aff. 2 (2016).
8 Larry Diamond, Democracy in Decline, 94 For. Aff. 151 (2016).
9 See generally Richard Haass, A World in Disarray (2017); Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017); Rein Müllerson, Dawn of a New Order (2017); Jennifer Walsh, The Return of History (2016).
10 Aaron Friedberg, Competing with China, 60 Survival 7 (2018).
11 Joshua Shifrinson, Should the United States Fear China's Rise? 41 Wash. Q. 65, 67 (2019) (“Although China is not yet a full peer economic and military competitor to the United States, it is well on its way.”).
12 Graham Allison, Destined For War, at xv (2018).
13 See Ernst Haas, Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes, 32 World Pol. 357 (1979–1980).
14 See Robert Keohane, Reciprocity in International Relations, 40 Int'l Org. 1 (1986).
15 Mohamed Helal, Am I My Brother's Keeper? The Reality, Tragedy, and Future of Collective Security, 6 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 383 (2015).
16 Yan Xuetong, The Age of Uneasy Peace, 98 For. Aff. 40 (2019).
17 Miles Kahler, Global Governance: Three Futures, 20 Int'l Stud. Rev. 239, 240–41 (2018).