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Lose-Lose?

Introduction

Why are governments around the world increasingly concerned about relative gains and losses? How can world leaders promote an open and rules-based international order that better delivers on its promised mutual benefits – and thus grows the proverbial pie for more states? How can a vicious cycle be avoided that leads to a world marked by zero-sum thinking in which everyone loses?

Key Points

  1. The geopolitical and economic optimism of the post–Cold War era has vanished. Although this era saw impressive absolute gains in wealth and security, the fact that these gains were far from equally distributed has led to dissatisfaction with the status quo.

  2. Against the backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions and economic concerns, key actors in the West, in powerful autocracies, and in the Global South have become increasingly worried about relative gains and losses and begun to de-risk their international relations.

  3. While these policies are rational responses to a changing geopolitical environment, they are costly, as they threaten to eat away at the absolute gains of global cooperation. They also risk triggering a vicious cycle, in which states' focus on relative gains and losses may bring about a zero-sum world.

  4. The transatlantic partners need to strike a balance between competing for relative gains and cooperating to realize inclusive absolute benefits. While they need to safeguard trust-based cooperation among like-minded democracies, they must also try to introduce guardrails for competition with autocratic challengers, search for areas of mutually beneficial cooperation with competitors, and build new global partnerships that ensure more inclusive benefits.

The last time the world was witnessing a global Zeitenwende, most observers believed things would change for the better. When the Cold War ended, the world seemed to usher in an era of global cooperation. The easing of tensions between the superpowers allowed for unprecedented reductions in nuclear arsenals. While violent conflicts did not disappear, the risk of interstate war involving the great powers was remote, prompting public intellectuals to argue that humanity was “winning the war on war.”[1] Savings in defense budgets led to a substantial peace dividend that could be allocated for other purposes. For some time, the members of the UN Security Council were willing and able to jointly assume primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Global summits were held to safeguard the environment, promote development, and protect human rights, and their promising results suggested that “global governance” could solve humanity’s most important challenges. Initially, democracy and free-market capitalism were spreading, and more and more people around the world were slowly being integrated into what has been called the “liberal international order.”[2] In absolute terms, the combination of “open markets, individual rights, equality of sovereign states, and cooperation through rule-bound multilateralism”[3] was a win-win proposition for both established players and new entrants. The “pie” of global prosperity grew substantially: although the global population increased from 5.27 billion people in 1990 to 7.27 billion in 2019, the share living in extreme poverty decreased from 37.8 percent in 1990 to 8.4 percent in 2019.[4]

The end of the Cold War brought with it the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalization, human rights. And indeed, the post–Cold War era ushered in remarkable progress. […] But what we’re experiencing now is more than a test of the post–Cold War order. It’s the end of it.[5]

Antony Blinken•US Secretary of State, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, September 13, 2023

But the optimism of the early post–Cold War era has long vanished. Today, rather than promoting effective global governance, the international community is “gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction” and “not ready or willing to tackle the big dramatic challenges of our age.”[6] The initial liberal- democratic advances have been reversed: the number of liberal democracies has declined from 44 in 2009 to 32 in 2022, and almost three quarters (72 percent) of the world’s population lives in autocracies compared to less than half 
(46 percent) a decade ago.[7] Within democracies, the rise of illiberal forces has resulted in shrinking space for civil society and political competition, a crackdown on opponents, and the subversion of independent courts and media.[8] Instead of adopting liberal norms, autocratic leaders have exploited the liberal order to strengthen their power at home and abroad. Geopolitical tensions between the great powers have steadily increased as several non-Western powers have lashed out against perceived Western dominance and the order that the United States and its allies have shaped. As the world moves toward some new form of multipolarity – or rather, toward a “multiplex order” or “multi-order world” – cooperation inside the existing order has been crowded out by competition about the order itself.[9]

The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear. […] The issue is much broader and more fundamental and is about the principles underlying the new international order.[10]

Vladimir Putin• Russian President, Valdai International Discussion Club meeting, October 5, 2023

The Doubt of the Benefits 

Citizens' views on whether their country will be more secure and wealthy in ten years' time

Despite the tremendous achievements in the post–Cold War era, key actors in the West, powerful autocracies, and countries in the so-called Global South have all become dissatisfied with the status quo – and their own share of the proverbial pie. Given the fact that 50 percent of the respondents in the Munich Security Index agree that “we live in a world largely shaped by Western ideas” (and only 12 percent disagree), it is striking that the dissatisfaction with the contemporary international order seems particularly pronounced in the West. From the perspective of many citizens, while the global pie itself has gotten bigger, their shares of it are growing smaller and smaller. Today, few people in the G7 nations believe that their countries will be more secure and wealthy in ten years’ time (Figure 1.1).[11] Moreover, they expect China and other powers from the Global South to become much more powerful in the next ten years, while they see their own countries stagnate or decline (Figure 1.2). For many scholars, this widespread feeling of ongoing relative decline at least partly explains the success of populist politicians across the Western world. Against the backdrop of rising inequality, many citizens “have come to believe – with a good deal of justification – that the system is rigged.”[12] Conversely, populist forces have further amplified the sentiment that some actors are gaining at the expense of others, as an extreme form of liberalism “exacerbates who wins and who loses from economic globalization.”[13]

Citizens' views on other countries power trajectories, share of people who think a country will become more powerful minus share who think it will become less powerful in ten years' time

Moreover, Western populations and policy-makers have grown wary of the security implications of shifting economic relationships. Increasing interdependence, long seen as a recipe for continued growth and peaceful relations, has demonstrated its downsides. Trade ties have not turned rising powers such as China into “responsible stakeholders” of the liberal international order.[14] Rather, it has made democracies more dependent on autocracies and has allowed the latter to become increasingly assertive and threatening. This is epitomized by China’s “predatory liberalism”[15] in the economic field and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

The world’s most powerful autocracies, in turn, have also expressed their dissatisfaction with the current order and the distribution of its benefits. China has perhaps been the biggest beneficiary of the liberal economic order, which provided the conditions for an unprecedented economic expansion that lifted hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty and put the country on the path to superpower status. But Beijing has long regarded the US as a revisionist power that tries “to unscrupulously contain and suppress China” and prevent it from assuming its appropriate role in the global system.[16] In other words, Chinese leaders think their country deserves an even bigger share of the pie, suggesting that “parity [with the US] is the least that Beijing must aim for.”[17] Other countries also believe they are not getting what they are owed. Leaders in Moscow are determined to at least partly reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of Moscow’s control of Eastern Europe. For Putin, a West that “loses its dominance”[18] in international politics was unlikely to stop Moscow’s effort to take Ukraine by force. And unfortunately, Putin’s Russia is not the only country in which imperial legacies are regaining influence.[19]

Still others are not worried about their slice of the pie getting smaller – they feel they never really got a decent slice in the first place. From the perspective of many countries in the Global South, the international order has not delivered on its promise to grow the pie for the benefit of all. For many of them, especially in Africa, the peace dividend never materialized. Intrastate conflicts ravaged a number of countries, often preventing the types of investment that boosted prosperity elsewhere. Rather than providing equal benefits, for many countries, the global economic order was exploitative.[20] And while multilateral problem- solving may well have expanded, whenever global crises hit, developing countries usually took a much fiercer hit. The Covid-19 pandemic and the repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine are an obvious case in point.[21] According to IMF data, low-income countries have suffered a loss of 6.5 percent compared to their pre-pandemic growth trajectory, while the global economy in total only suffered a 3.4 percent loss.[22] From the perspective of the share of humanity living in poverty or suffering from protracted conflicts, calls to defend the abstract rules-based order and shoulder the costs that come with it seem tone-deaf. According to this view, Western emphasis on the “rules- based order” is hypocritical and aimed at preserving the status quo of Western domination, including over the Global South.[23]

When reality departs from rhetoric, we must have the courage to call it out. Without genuine solidarity, there can never be real trust. This is very much the sentiment of the Global South.[24]

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar• Indian External Affairs Minister, UN General Assembly, September 26, 2023

Theories of Relativity

Citizens' views on unbalanced cooperation, share saying their country should cooperate with the respective state even if their own country gains less than the other side

Amid geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty, many countries are now distrustful of others and thus more sensitive to the distribution of gains and losses. In their economic and security relations, they increasingly begrudge their counterparts gaining an advantage, concerned with being the relative “winner” – even at the expense of joint absolute gains.

In the West, more and more governments prefer to restrict the pursuit of mutual benefits to politically like-minded states. Faced with autocratic revisionism and the “weaponization of economic interdependence,”[25] liberal-democratic leaders have successfully ramped up cooperation within values-based groupings – from the EU and NATO to the G7.[26] The growing sensitivity to relative gains vis-à-vis certain countries is also visible in public attitudes. According to data from the Munich Security Index, respondents in the G7 states are much more reluctant for their respective countries to cooperate with China, Russia, and other non-democratic countries than with democracies such as the US or EU members if their country gains less than the other side (Figure 1.3). While support for cooperation with unequal gains is generally low, many respondents agree with the statement that “we should trade more with our friends than with our adversaries or competitors, even if this means we incur welfare losses.”[27]

A clearer distinction between “friends” and “adversaries” applies to both security and economics. As a response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and growing Chinese assertiveness, democracies are refocusing on deterrence rather than cooperative security in their relations with autocratic challengers. From the perspective of most Europeans, security can no longer be attained together with Russia, but can only be achieved against it (Chapter 2). In the US, politicians from both sides of the aisle have concluded that deterrence must now trump trust in relations with Beijing (Chapter 3). In the economic field, “de-risking” has become the leitmotif, describing widespread efforts by Western countries to reduce their dependence on autocratic states. Again, public opinion supports this policy shift. In all G7 countries polled for this year’s Munich Security Index, there was strong agreement with the statement that “we should reduce our dependency on trade with China, even if this reduces our prosperity.”[28] Even members of the EU, an organization founded on a “win-win logic built around economic integration,”[29] now sense that reducing their dependence on Beijing is worth the price of some significant short-term economic pain. Amid increasing political tensions, Western democracies, the US in particular, are trying to protect – and possibly expand – their relative lead vis-à-vis autocratic rivals. As US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan put it, in the field of sensitive technologies (Chapter 8), the US is now determined to “maintain as large of a lead as possible.”[30]

China is not the same country as ten years ago. […] China pursues a global order that is Sinocentric and hierarchical. It pushes an agenda that downplays universal rules, while championing the primacy of national interests.[31]

Ursula von der Leyen• President of the European Commission, European China Conference, November 16, 2023

Beijing claims that, unlike the West, China prefers “mutual benefit over zero-sum games,”[32] is pursuing a “global community of shared future,”[33] and seeks “win-win cooperation.”[34] However, many outside observers point out that China’s rhetoric only “masks its ruthlessness.”[35] Indeed, its emphasis on global harmony is hard to square with Beijing’s stated aim to grow other countries’ “asymmetric dependencies” on China, its long-term violation of principles of reciprocal economic exchange, and its coercive “wolf warrior” diplomacy.[36] Many see these behaviors as bringing about precisely those zero-sum dynamics that Chinese leaders warn of. They worry that China’s increasing intimidation of Taiwan and militarization of its maritime periphery suggest that Beijing is trying to convert East Asia into its exclusive sphere of influence.[37] Moreover, while China complains about Western “decoupling,” it, too, is emphasizing security over economic growth (Chapter 6). Via policies such as “Made in China 2025” and its “dual circulation” strategy, Beijing is attempting to insulate its efforts to catch up with the US in what it deems an increasingly unfavorable international environment – characterized, as Chinese President Xi Jinping has put it, by China’s “all-round containment, encirclement, and suppression.”[38]  But these external pressures add to growing domestic troubles that have begun to stifle Chinese growth, among them a shrinking population, a property crisis, and high levels of local government debt. Faced with these challenges, Beijing will likely continue to talk about “win-win,” but become even more focused on “winning more.”

Standing at a critical juncture of history, human society must not repeat the old path of antagonism, division, and confrontation, and must not fall into the trap of [a] zero-sum game, war, and conflict.[39]

Wang Yi•Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Munich Security Conference, February 18, 2023

In the Global South, concerns about relative gains have been growing as well. Developing countries are well aware that they will suffer the most from global fragmentation along geopolitical lines.[40] For them, the massive resources that the West has marshalled in support of Ukraine are evidence that Europe and the US will deprioritize conflicts and crises that plague the developing world when battling for influence with Moscow and Beijing. These states also know that a fragmented world is a world at odds with inclusive global growth and impedes their ability to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis (Chapter 7).[41] According to the IMF, growing trade fragmentation will negatively affect both global poverty reduction and welfare in low-income countries.[42] It is thus unsurprising that many in the Global South try to defy the growing pressure to pick a side in the great-power competition, which would frustrate their ability to seek mutual benefits with a variety of states. Their call for multi-alignment and a multipolar world is thus a renunciation of zero-sum choices they worry could threaten their path to growth.

We shall continue to criticize any attempts to divide the world into zones of influence and of reviving the Cold War.[43]

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva•Brazilian President, UN General Assembly, September 19, 2023

Yet the Global South also includes some of the greatest beneficiaries of the rise of relative-sum politics, in terms of both material gains and status.[44] Capitalizing on the fact that all great powers are actively courting them, powerful countries in the Global South are already taking advantage of geopolitical rivalries. States such as India and Mexico are benefitting from transatlantic attempts to reduce their own economic dependence on China by moving trade and investment to their shores.[45] And many more countries are hedging between the West on one side and China and Russia on the other, adopting what some have called “a hard-core transactional approach”[46] that allows them to “elicit […] the best possible deals from each.”[47] While this approach helps them level the global playing field, its focus on bilateral deals and short-term wins and its deprioritization of a more principled form of engagement clearly comes with downsides.[48]

Recipe for Disaster: How Zero-Sum Mindsets Eat Away at the Global Pie

Relationship between GDP growth during one's childhood and one's zero-sum thinking

The ubiquitous focus on relative gains, however, threatens to chip away at the absolute gains of global cooperation. The overall size of the pie, in other words, will decrease if everyone is only focused on their own slice rather than baking more together. Alas, this logic threatens to trigger a vicious cycle, which may well roll back prosperity gains in many parts of the world. The economic losses that will likely result from the “dangerous spiral into protectionism”[49] will likely further heighten domestic trade-offs between different policy goals. Shrinking national budgets will make it more difficult to compensate the “losers” of globalization, which will render governments even more sensitive to relative gains. Not to speak of the fact that among individual citizens, the experience of slower economic growth evidentially breeds zero- sum mindsets (Figure 1.4).[50] At their extreme, concerns about relative gains could then lead to a world shaped by zero-sum beliefs – the conviction that another actor’s gains necessarily entail losses for oneself.

An ever-growing emphasis on relative gains in the economic field will likely also contribute to greater geopolitical tensions and distrust. The risks are most evident in the military domain. In response to autocratic revisionism, many liberal democracies have raised their defense budgets, introduced sanctions, or reconsidered their policies of engagement with many non-democracies. While these measures are necessary responses to a more competitive environment, they could contribute to a downward trend, perhaps leading to trade wars or arms races in domains from nuclear weapons to artificial intelligence. Moreover, the vicious cycle of such a “geopolitical recession”[51] also means that less money and attention is available for critical global concerns. It is hard to see how a fragmented world, marked by a spiral of self-perpetuating rivalries, would be able to reach its climate and development targets, promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, or prevent another global pandemic.

If current geopolitical pressures result in far-reaching fragmentation of the world economy, it would deal a serious blow to growth and development prospects for poor countries.[52]

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala•WTO Director-General, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, October 3, 2023

Although many political leaders claim they are still committed to the notion of shared success and cooperation aimed at inclusive long-term gains, they seem unable to break vicious zero-sum dynamics and stop the rise of highly transactional exchange. Their individual policies may be rational responses to an increasingly competitive international environment. Collectively, however, they risk undermining cooperation that grows the pie for all. They are thus weakening an order that, despite its obvious flaws, could help facilitate the pursuit of shared growth and the search for solutions to common problems.
 

But at a time when our challenges are more connected than ever, the outcome of a zero- sum game is that everyone gets zero.[53]

António Guterres•UN Secretary General, press conference, September 13, 2023

The Balancing Act: No Peace of Cake

For the transatlantic partners and like-minded states, stopping this vicious cycle requires a difficult balancing act: between adequately bracing for a more competitive geopolitical environment, where relative-gains thinking is unavoidable, and reviving positive-sum cooperation, without which inclusive global growth and solutions to pressing global problems are hardly attainable.[54]

To begin with, the transatlantic partners and like-minded countries cannot afford to be naïve about the intentions of challengers. In the face of autocratic revisionism, there are no convincing alternatives to “friendshoring” and gradual de-risking,[55] to investing in deterrence, or to generally strengthening cooperation among like-minded democracies – in short: ramping up “collective resilience.”[56] Any debate about growing the global pie for the benefit of all is futile if democracies do not succeed in preserving the democratic island of trusted multilateralism – based on an understanding of diffuse reciprocity that allows for long-term positive-sum cooperation. 

However, given widespread democratic backsliding, growing societal polarization, and rising right-wing populism in many of these states – and the real risk that these trends will be exacerbated in the 2024 cycle of elections – it is far from certain that democratic countries will emerge more resilient. Anti-internationalist impulses are threatening the benefits of close economic cooperation among democracies, although the economic costs of Brexit, the prime example of a popular rejection of political and economic integration, are now visible: an estimated five percent decrease of the United Kingdom’s GDP.[57] As the debate about the US Inflation Reduction Act has shown, increasing concerns about “unfair” trade patterns may hamper relations between the US and Europe and negatively affect their joint ability to push back against revisionist powers and work toward the global good (Chapters 6 and 7). Tighter budgets, combined with domestic skepticism, already risk undermining public support for Ukraine, whose survival as an independent state rests on the collective assistance of the world’s democracies – just as the global perception of the strength of the community of liberal democracies depends on Ukraine prevailing over Russian revisionism. Moreover, observers worry that an election of Donald Trump in the US this November could spell the end of trusted cooperation among democratic states.[58] Considering the combined wealth and power of the world’s democracies, there is no reason why they should not be able to collectively prevail against their foreign adversaries – if they can rein in the domestic enemies of democracy and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Yet, the ongoing and necessary course corrections must not result in a vicious cycle, whereby fears of unequal payoffs engulf more and more issues and positive-sum cooperation is limited to fewer and fewer states. The pursuit of mutual economic growth is not impossible if de-risking policies are pursued in a targeted and transparent way. In the security realm, too, the risk of escalatory dynamics can be reduced if efforts to ramp up deterrence are accompanied by serious attempts at credible reassurance – and if necessary guardrails, such as high-level military-to-military dialogue, are also put in place.[59] The fragile rapprochement between China and the US in recent months represents a hopeful sign.

A growing China that plays by international rules is good for the United States and the world. […] The United States does not seek competition that is winner-take-all.[60]

Janet Yellen•US Secretary of the Treasury, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, April 20, 2023

But the future of the international order will not be decided by the great powers alone. To strengthen cooperation with global partners, Europe and the US will need to demonstrate that their vision of an open and rules-based international order is in the interest of a broad global constituency. This demands greater pushback against Chinese and Russian propaganda. Both countries have been skillfully peddling the narrative that the Western countries are promoting the division of the world into blocs and, by regularly interpreting the “rules” of the rules-based international order to their own advantage, are guilty of practicing double-standards.[61] If current trends continue, the US and its allies risk losing the blame game in the global court of public opinion, being branded the culprits of the erosion of a cooperative international order and of a lack of effort to ensure more mutually beneficial outcomes.[62]

But winning the global battle of narratives about the type of order that best ensures widely shared success also requires a new approach toward the diverse group of countries in the Global South. Strengthening cooperation that benefits both sides starts with a better understanding of these countries’ long-term economic and strategic interests. A mindset in which these countries are true partners – practically, not just rhetorically – can pave the way for a new era of mutually beneficial cooperation and joint efforts to reform the rules-based international order into one that better caters to their needs. If policies win that prioritize diversifying economic relations over succumbing to ever-increasing protectionism, a strategy of de-risking may even end up strengthening and expanding mutually beneficial exchange with more countries and contribute to a more inclusive and more sustainable international economic order.

The order of the day is not less cooperation – perhaps packaged today as de‑coupling or as ‘cooperation only among the like-minded.’ Instead, we need more cooperation: existing alliances must be strengthened and new partners sought. For this is the only way to reduce the risks of excessively one‑sided dependencies.[63]

Olaf Scholz•German Chancellor, UN General Assembly, September 19, 2023

Yet in strengthening their engagement with emerging powers such as Brazil and India, the transatlantic allies and like-minded partners also have to avoid furthering transactional thinking that rules out cooperation beyond narrow, short-term gains. While the transactional approach that these countries adopt may help grow attention for demands and needs that have often been overlooked, it also comes with serious downsides.[64] If short-term reward becomes the main motivation, and long-term cooperation, which requires broad coalitions and demands painful compromises from all sides, is increasingly hard to obtain, global public goods might no longer be provided, international rules will rarely be developed and enforced, and efforts to address the gravest threats to mankind will simply no longer be made. 

At the moment, there is thus a real risk that more and more countries end up in a lose-lose situation, which is no longer about who gains more, but only about who loses less. If states increasingly define their success relative to others rather than in terms of an order that allows the international community to thrive, the world in which states seek to be “winners” will be an absolutely undesirable one. Stopping this trend is easier said than done. In recommitting to mindsets and policies geared at a growing global pie, including for many countries in the developing world, the transatlantic partners will also have to consider growing resource constraints at home – the inevitable result of the end of the peace dividend. But if the world’s liberal democracies fail to pursue a policy of enlightened interest, who else can be expected to step in?

Lose-Lose? — Munich Security Report 2024

Bibliographical Information: Tobias Bunde, Sophie Eisentraut, and Leonard Schütte (eds.), Munich Security Report 2024: Lose-Lose?, Munich: Munich Security Conference, February 2024, https://doi.org/10.47342/BMQK9457.

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Bibliographical information for this chapter:

Tobias Bunde and Sophie Eisentraut, “Introduction: Lose-Lose?,” in: Tobias Bunde/Sophie Eisentraut/Leonard Schütte (eds.), Munich Security Report 2024: Lose-Lose?, Munich: Munich Security Conference, February 2024, 13-25, https://doi.org/10.47342/BMQK9457.

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  3. [3] Mateja Peter, “Global Fragmentation and Collective Security Instruments: Weakening the Liberal International Order From Within,” Politics and Governance 12 (2023), doi:10.17645/pag.7357, 2.
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  5. [5] Antony J. Blinken, “Secretary Antony J. Blinken Remarks to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) ‘The Power and Purpose of American Diplomacy in a New Era’,” Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, September 13, 2023, perma.cc/4SJS-T2ZS.
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  7. [7] Evie Papada et al., “Democracy Report 2023: Defiance in the Face of Autocratization,” Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, Varieties of Democracy Institute, March 2023, perma.cc BXL7-LTFH, 11.
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  11. [11] Interestingly, this is in stark contrast to respondents in China and India, who are decidedly more optimistic.
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  14. [14] On the vision of China as a “responsible stakeholder,” see Robert B. Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?,” New York: National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, September 21, 2005, perma.cc/4C74-AXLA.
  15. [15] Victor D. Cha, “Collective Resilience: Deterring China’s Weaponization of Economic Interdependence,” International Security 48:1 (2023), 91–124.
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  18. [18] Vladimir Putin, “Valdai International Discussion Club Meeting,” Sochi: Valdai International Discussion Club, October 27, 2022, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69695.
  19. [19] Jeffrey Mankoff, Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
  20. [20] Kieron Monks, “Why the Wealth of Africa Does Not Make Africans Wealthy,” CNN, January 2, 2018.
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  22. [22] Sophia Busch et al., “By the Numbers: The Global Economy in 2023,” Washington, DC: Atlantic Council, New Atlanticist, December 2023, perma.cc/WQ66-4AVQ.
  23. [23] See Tim Murithi, “Order of Oppression: Africa’s Quest for a New International System,” Foreign Affairs, April 18, 2023.
  24. [24] Subramanyam Jaishankar, “National Statement by External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar at the General Debate of the 78th UNGA,” New York: United Nations General Assembly, September 26, 2023, perma.cc/5BGC-VQBM.
  25. [25] Cha, “Collective Resilience: Deterring China’s Weaponization of Economic Interdependence.” The term “weaponized interdependence” was coined by Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion,” International Security 44:1 (2019), 42–79, doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00351.
  26. [26] Tobias Bunde et al., “Munich Security Report 2023: Re:vision,” Munich: Munich Security Conference, February 2023, doi:10.47342/ZBJA9198, 23–28.
  27. [27] In the US, for instance, 54 percent of respondents agree with this statement, while only 11 percent disagree. Similar patterns can be found in the other G7 countries. Even in Japan, where this sentiment is less pronounced, 30 percent agree with the statement and 15 percent disagree.
  28. [28] In all G7 countries, those who support reducing dependency on China even if this reduces prosperity clearly outnumber those who don’t. In the US, 68 percent agree, while just 8 percent disagree. A similar pattern is visible in France (also 68 percent versus 8 percent), the UK (60 percent versus 11 percent), Canada (59 percent versus 10 percent), Germany (58 percent versus 13 percent), and Italy (51 percent versus 15 percent). Only in Japan (49 percent versus 13 percent) was there no absolute majority.
  29. [29] Gideon Rachman, “Europe’s Zero-Sum Dilemma,” The National Interest 119 (2012), 43–48.
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