The Global Business Forum in Banff, Alberta, attracts business and geopolitical leaders every year to hear from experts about the burning issues and trends of the day. This year’s overriding theme was that instability, wars, excessive debts, technological disruption, and political division will increase and continue to dominate world events.
The kickoff speaker was distinguished American global thinker Robert Kaplan, author of 22 books on foreign affairs. He is with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC., is a Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board member and sits on the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel. He talked in detail about the Ukrainian and Israeli wars and also addressed the problematic American political situation: “The center is gone in US politics. There is a move to the edges, and each side considers the other an existential threat.”
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America’s polarity causes difficulties at home and abroad. Kaplan also suggested that another worldwide destabilizing factor is the limits on the planet's size, which will make the place more unstable as competing interests increasingly clash and fight for limited resources or wealth. The pace of confrontation is already “ferocious economically and militarily.”
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He pointed out the links to Russia, involving both wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He said the two conflicts will continue to shift the geopolitical landscape dramatically for some time. Interestingly, he calculated that “every month of the war in Ukraine weakens Russia economically and militarily.”
He agrees, as do many of us who follow events, that Russia’s costly fight for Ukraine will eventually break up the Russian Federation’s 11 time zones and 130 ethnic groups into new political entities. (I have written several newsletters about the possibility that, if the center is not held in Moscow, China will reoccupy Manchuria, which was seized 200 years ago by Russia, and that Russia’s Caucasus region will break away.)
If so, Russia’s collapse would curtail its destabilizing behavior globally, but it would also create new regional instability as its ethnic groups attempt to form new national entities.
Kaplan believes the Middle East will continue to roil until a major realignment occurs. “The 15-year paradigm with Israel and Saudi Arabia concerning Palestinians lasted but is over. October 7 (the attack by Hamas terrorists trained by Russia and funded by Iran) was designed to stop that paradigm and did.” Now, Israel fights a three-front war (against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen), which may last for years. “The Middle East war will last until there is a revolution in Iran,” he said.
The last Iranian revolution occurred in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran. A theocracy has ruled ever since, but in 2022, a movement by the country’s women was launched, and the society has been restive ever since. (Read “You Go, Girl,” I wrote in November 2022.)
Another political upheaval in Iran will occur, suggested Kaplan, especially now that Tehran has lit a regional fire with its ruthless and expensive strategy of proxy terrorists. “The Iranian regime is in its late phase, and polls show that 80 percent of Iranians hate the regime,” he said. In his view, Tehran’s next revolution is a matter of time.
Kaplan also believes two other trends—the gradual decline in the worldwide population and the rise of middle classes in developing nations—will increase global instability. “Bangladesh and Kenya” have emerging middle classes, which have made them more unstable as populations become engaged in politics, he explained.
However, on a positive note, he believes it’s “unlikely” that a war between China and the United States will take place over Taiwan. This is because both sides realize that “it would do irreparable harm to the global economy and financial markets”. Even if this comes to pass, ongoing and increasing cyberattacks and tariff threats will make the world less stable. Another factor affecting world peace is the growth of US deficits. “Interest rates on debts are higher than defense spending,” he said. This has resulted in the gradual degrading of American military power and will encourage more destabilizing activities around the world that challenge the U.S. world order.
Another keynote speaker was Gregory Copley, an Australian author of 37 books and President of the International Strategic Studies Organization in Washington, DC. He heads the Global Information Service (GIS), which collects and analyses intelligence on 289 countries and territories for governments. Like Kaplan, he takes a gloomy view of the future, but for different reasons.
He believes the world is on the “brink of the end of an era” of industrialization, urbanization, and electrification that began in the 18th and 19th Centuries. “We will see the electrical system broken, affecting our lifestyles. There will be patches of brownouts and blackouts in certain regions.”
He also believes the world is less secure because of government overspending. “After World War 2, governments started spending the wealth. By the mid-70s, they went from spending their wealth to spending debt,” said Copley. “Linear growth has ended, and we now have debt-backed poor and rich economies. We need new economic models for decline because debt now dominates and is unsustainable. It will lead to a breakdown in society. Late in the game, China is now [economically] fragile and degrading dramatically, and has debts that will impact its [internal] stability levels in the next 1 to 2 years.”
Copley agrees with Kaplan that China is risk-averse regarding Taiwan. But he also believes that Russia is, too, when it comes to outright confrontation with the West over Ukraine. However, he warned that North Korea is not risk-averse and now has a nuclear arsenal capable of mass destruction in Asia and beyond. This will be a constant threat going forward for all nations, including its neighbors in Asia.
“We’re in World War 4 now,” he said. The Cold War was not “kinetic” because of fears concerning the use of nuclear weapons. But now, war is conducted by other means, such as terrorism, proxies, economic warfare, cyber-attacks, space attacks, disinformation, or asymmetry. On the positive side, he said that Western nations are modernizing their militaries and are aware of the threats; China’s Politburo is more cautious than dictator Xi Jinping, and Russia is declining economically.
Both experts disagreed on the impact the two American presidential candidates would have on the world in terms of Ukraine and foreign policy in general. Kaplan believes that if Trump wins, the US will look weaker to Putin, and no deal will be possible for Ukraine. Copley said, “The next President will have his or her hands full. The problem is if VP Harris wins, it will be a largely domestic agenda and further degradation of our prestige and influence worldwide.”
This week, Harris unequivocally supported Ukraine, while Trump called Putin a “friend” in a brief press conference with Ukraine’s Zelensky. Overall, Copley believes that “leaders are not influential” but are as powerful as the military or economic power their governments project.
Reprinted from dianefrancis@substack.com – Diane Francis on America and the World. You can find the original here.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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