It received precious lile aention. But the World Bank report earlier this
year indicating that, for the rst time, trade between developing coun-
tries – ‘South–South trade’ in the parlance – has surpassed their trade with
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations
is a milestone in the transformation of the global system.
1
Developing
nations now account for roughly one-third of world trade. This is a telling
sign of the new dynamics of globalisation, which are shifting away from a
US-centric economy towards a more complex and disorderly world order.
The Obama administration would do well to fully grasp the implications of
these realities and adjust US foreign policy accordingly. This essay seeks to
sketch the accommodations US strategists might be wise to consider.
Globalisation has wrought a diusion of power among nation-states and
increased the technology-driven empowerment of individuals, non-state
actors and networks. This is redistributing and redening power – a far cry
from the early 1990s, when the term globalisation was synonymous with the
United States. Solving problems such as poverty, disease, climate change
and those stemming from the Middle East’s dicult metamorphosis may lie
more in new collaboration between non-traditional partners – including, in
some cases, non-state actors – than in current arrangements among states. It
is a fragmented and messy, but not a classically multipolar, world.
US Strategy in a Post-Western
World
Robert A. Manning
Robert A. Manning is a Senior Fellow of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic
Council. He served as a Senior Strategist, DNI National Counterproliferation Center, 2010–12, and as Director for
Long-range Energy and Regional/Global Affairs, US National Intelligence Council, Strategic Futures Group, 2008–10;
and served on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff, 2004–08. This essay is adapted from Envisioning 2030: US
Strategy for a Post-Western World (Washington DC: Atlantic Council, December 2012), now available as an e-book.
Survival | vol. 55 no. 5 | October–November 2013 | pp. 115–132 DOI 10.1080/00396338.2013.841815
