Responding to Crises

Ian Bremmer is an American political scientist and founder and president of the Eurasia Group. The firm is a leading global research and consulting company, assessing political risk for major business and investment decisions around the world. He is foreign affairs columnist for TIME magazine and his work has appeared in Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Fortune and others.

He recently published his eleventh book, The Power of Crisis: How three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World. In it he discusses what he calls the three powerful threats facing the world in the immediate future: pandemics, climate change, and life-altering new technologies.

Two political realities work against effective management of these challenges: Division and dysfunction in U.S. government and society; and the intensifying US-China rivalry. Bremmer looks to history for guidance in addressing conflicts between international rivals.

Once upon a time there were no rules to govern the development of nuclear weapons and the missiles that deliver them. Then came the Cuban missile crisis, and governments that otherwise didn’t trust one another forged a few early agreements that prevented another crisis …the common menace was clear enough to force the leaders of competing systems, men who despised each other’s values, to sit together and cut deals.

To reach such agreements, Bremmer writes, “We need a crisis frightening enough to force us to look squarely at the risks posed.” Who will take up the gauntlet and lead the world’s response to the three crises? For leadership in forming international partnerships, Bremmer looks to institutions like banks and energy companies “that invest in projects that take years to produce profits” and “must think longer-term than most governments do.”

This week the New York Times published an essay by William MacAskill, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University. The title is “The Case for Longtermism,” which he defines as “the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” In his essay he wrote

… as I learned more about the history-shaping events that could occur in the near future, I realized that we might soon be approaching a critical juncture in the human story. Technological development is creating new threats and opportunities, putting the lives of future people on the line. Whether we get a future that’s beautiful and just, or flawed and dystopian, or whether civilization ends and we get no future at all — that depends, in significant part, on what we do today.

MacAskill cites climate change and advanced technology as challenges threatening future generations. MacAskill does not suggest what leadership will emerge to assure there is a future for humanity, but he acknowledges the importance of this point in history: “To be alive at such a time is both an exceptional opportunity and a profound responsibility.”