March 2011
Paper Series
Summary: The remarkable
global growth story of the
past two decades is already
beginning to manifest itself
geopolitically. The arrival of
new global powers presents the
West with a dilemma: whether
to prioritize players or principles
in creating a new international
architecture that contributes to
the continuity and efficacy of
international norms. If the West
fails to do either, there is every
likelihood that a competing
global system may emerge
with ruinous consequences
for all. Truly empowering new
players will require sacrificing
privileges, reaffirming principles,
consolidating space, and
privileging and engaging
emerging democracies.
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Why Principles — and not Players —
Should Determine the Nature of the
Emerging International Order
by Dhruva Jaishankar and Joshua W. Walker
The world today is unrecogniz-
able from the one that emerged at
the end of the Cold War in 1991.
While some point to the protests
and revolutions in the Arab world as
being the most recent examples of
the crumbling vestiges of the Cold
War, the more significant long-
term global trend is the remarkable
arrival of several new players to the
game of great-power politics. The
international system, which until
the 1990s saw power disproportion-
ally concentrated in North America,
Europe, and Japan, has since
witnessed a dynamic change in
distribution to other players, most
— but not all — of whom are in the
Asia-Pacific region. Brazil, once a
poster child for income inequality,
has seen its economy bounce back
following a prolonged lull. Indo-
nesia, although still manacled by
corruption, has evolved from an
insular military dictatorship into a
politically stable democracy with a
promising economy. India has gone
from an aid-dependent regional
power to a hotbed of entrepreneur-
ship, with its economy more than
doubling in size between 2002 and
2008. In that same period, Turkey’s
has more than tripled, accompanied
by a strong sense of identity and
a brash self-confidence. Last, and
certainly not least, is the dramatic
rise of China, which in 1990 had a
gross domestic product per capita
less than India’s, but is today almost
four times as wealthy.
The remarkable global growth story
of the past two decades — often
overlooked today in the aftermath
of the global financial crisis — is
not just relegated to a handful of
emerging powers and city-states
such as Dubai and Singapore.
Countries such as Bangladesh,
Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, and
Tanzania are among those seeing
rapid reductions in poverty and,
with it, the creation of new employ-
ment opportunities.1 The Economist
even coined the acronym CIVETS
to designate Colombia, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South
Africa as members of a second tier
of emerging big markets, beyond the
better-known BRICs identified by
Goldman Sachs (comprising Brazil,
Russia, India, and China).2
The economic awakening of long-
dormant powers has already mani-
fested itself geopolitically. Brazil
1
Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, “Poverty in
Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from
2005 to 2015,” Policy Brief 2011-01, The Brookings
Institution, January 2011.
2
The Economist, “BRICS and BICIS,” The World in
2010, November 26, 2009, http://www.economist.
com/blogs/theworldin2010/2009/11/acronyms_4
 under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Turkey
under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan chose to
play a more active diplomatic role on the Iran nuclear
standoff — much to the consternation of the United
States and Europe — and Erdoğan has boldly suggested
establishing a more equal relationship between Europe
and Turkey.3 India has become a critical player in global
negotiations related to climate change, nuclear disarma-
ment, and world trade, if only as a potent veto wielder,
and it has joined eight other developing countries as
members of the G20. China, meanwhile, has been most
active in its bilateral dealings in its neighborhood and
beyond, with its convening of 48 African heads of state
at the 2006 China-Africa summit in Beijing and recent
reports that it had surpassed the World Bank as a lender
to developing states being but two examples of its now
considerable diplomatic clout.4
This so-called “rise of the rest” presents the United States
and its allies in the West with a troublesome dilemma.5
On one hand, an institutional focus would suggest
immediately incorporating these new players into extant
systems of global governance so as to more accurately
reflect the distribution of power and strengthen inter-
national cooperative mechanisms. To a certain degree,
this has been done on the economic side. The G20 now
largely overshadows the G8 as the primary international
economic summit, while at last year’s spring meetings of
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the
voting shares of China, India, and Brazil — among others
— were increased. The challenge on the political side,
however, is to ensure that the inclusion of new actors
will, in fact, contribute to the continuity and efficacy of
international norms. Jorge Castañeda, the former foreign
minister of Mexico, has voiced concerns on this score,
pointing to the poor human rights records of several
emerging powers and their close relations with unsavory
regimes as reasons to exclude them from various interna-
tional high tables for the time being.6 But if the West were
to continue to resist or deny these new global players a
place at the high table on the grounds of maintaining the
purported sanctity of institutions, there is every likeli-
hood that the entire global system — which the West
created and carefully nurtured over the past half century
3
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “The Robust Man of Europe,” Newsweek, January 17, 2011.
4
Geoff Dyer, Jamil Anderlini, and Henry Sender, “China’s Lending Hits New Heights,”
The Financial Times, January 17, 2011.
5
Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008).
6
Jorge G. Castaneda, “Not Ready for the Prime Time,” Foreign Affairs, September/
October 2010.
2
— may be jeopardized. The West now faces a choice:
should it let players or principles determine the world
order of the 21st century?
“Do Not Pass Go”: New Rules or a New Game?
It might help to compare the international system to
the board game Monopoly. Both are characterized by
multiple players, limited resources and influence, and
friendly but intense competition. In both cases, there
are variants, but as long as the rules are agreed to at the
outset, the game can be played to everyone’s satisfaction
(if not always to their benefit). The international system
today is a long-running game whose main players are the
United States, the major member states of the European
Union, and Japan, and to a certain degree China and
Russia. India, Brazil, Turkey, and others want to join,
but their inclusion would necessitate a consolidation of
weaker players to make room for new ones and flexible
redistributions of power, but ultimately the same set of
The challenge is to ensure that
the inclusion of new actors
will, in fact, contribute to the
continuity and efficacy of
international norms.
rules in an altered game. The alternative is worse. As the
power of these emerging economies grows, so will their
frustrations at being excluded. And the risk is that these
new players may start a new game of their own, excluding
certain long-established powers, such as member states of
the European Union.
The implications of a competing new system would be
monumentally destabilizing, even if some may benefit.
At the very least, the uncertainty of a new system is
cause for collective concern. History suggests that
momentous transitions — those resulting in new inter-
national political orders — have always been tumultuous,
following destructive conflict and the utter collapse of an
earlier system. The Westphalian order that established
modern conceptions of sovereignty and nation-statehood
 was a direct consequence of the Thirty Years’ War and
the demise, once and for all, of the respublica christiana.
The Concert of Europe rose out of the ashes of the French
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and the end of the
precarious 18th century balance-of-power system. Our
modern system of global governance centered on the
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is largely an
outgrowth of World War II. It is in the collective self-
interest of all powers, both established and emerging,
to ensure that the transition to a successor system is
accomplished without any of the trauma or ruin of these
devastating conflicts.
One alternative to the gradual incorporation of emerging
powers into a liberal international order — although by
no means the only one — is a future marked by eroding
institutions and heightened competition: a 21st century
that closely resembles the world of the 19th century,
with competing regional powers carving out spheres of
influence, possibly to correspond to their former impe-
rial domains.7 Asia, home to a large percentage of the
world’s population, as well as several major economic and
military powers, is likely to be the main theater of such
competition. China and India, between them, account
for a third of the world’s population and a significant
percentage of its growth, and will likely be the two largest
markets for military equipment, making their rivalry
relevant not just for the region but for the entire interna-
tional community. Asia is also sharply divided between
developed societies (Japan primarily, but also South
Korea and Taiwan) and developing nations such as India,
Vietnam, and Indonesia. Ripe for polarization and secu-
rity competition, Asia’s future will almost certainly neces-
sitate a central role for the United States, although the
emerging adversity may not necessarily involve Europe.
A Way Forward: Prioritizing Principles
The West is no stranger to accommodating and incor-
porating non-Western states into its orbit. During the
Cold War, Japan and South Korea benefited from decades
of U.S. military presence and security guarantees, while
Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Turkey were all
involved in security alliances with Western powers. But
truly empowering and privileging new global players
inevitably involves breaking with the status quo and
sacrificing certain privileges.
7
Robert Kagan, The Return of History and The End of Dreams (New York: Knopf,
2008).
3
Europe, even more than the United States, is in danger of
being caught off guard by the ongoing global power tran-
sition and, as a consequence, losing out. The moribund
and ineffective UNSC represents the starkest problem
with the global system as it stands. Europe has three
permanent veto-wielding players out of five at the table
(if Russia is included along with Britain and France),
while its largest economy, Germany, has no say. Asia,
meanwhile, has only a solitary representative in China,
which has been anything but accommodating of its Asian
neighbors. Solutions and suggestions for restructuring of
the UNSC range from a complete re-ordering to some-
thing more like the G20 group of nations, or simply the
addition of a few more significant players such as Brazil,
Germany, India, and Japan.
Truly empowering and privileging
new global players inevitably
involves breaking with the status
quo and sacrificing certain
privileges.
At the same time, Europe may also have much to gain
by ensuring the viability of norms and institutions that
have served it well since World War II. Cooperation with
Asian powers in dealing with the potentially destabilizing
effects of a rising China will be offset by the benefits of
involving East Asian powers more closely in security
priorities for the Atlantic allies, such as combating global
terrorism.
The enduring memory of the September 11, 2001,
attacks in the United States makes it difficult to ignore
or downplay the potential havoc that can be wreaked
by transnational and nonstate threats. Yet the ongoing
war in Afghanistan — waged to ensure that a safe haven
for groups engaged in terrorist activities does not exist
— offers a powerful example of the failure to translate
converging international interests into tangible results.
On a more promising note, preventative cooperation in
combating piracy, particularly off the coast of Somalia,
has brought both traditional Western and modern-
izing Asian navies together for joint patrols, although
 problems still remain with regard to coordinating these
various efforts. Closer cooperation in any effort against
transnational or nonstate actors that threaten the system
requires an institutional architecture grounded in shared
principles.
Privileging Emerging Democracies
Europe and the United States make this task more
difficult when they fail to properly distinguish between
emerging powers and the values they espouse. On one
hand, countries such as India, Brazil, Turkey, and Indo-
nesia, while not always exemplars of democracy and
human rights, generally adhere to the spirit of interna-
tional norms, remain committed to the ideals of liberal
democracy, and are for the most part transparent about
the internal workings of their governments and their
relations with other states. China, on the other hand,
remains an avowedly single-party state with an opaque
government and uncertain intentions. Nevertheless,
there is a tendency to group them all together for failing
to conform perfectly to Western-established traditions
of liberalism and human rights. But given the increasing
irrelevance of global institutions, the traditional powers
may not have the luxury to be so discriminating.
When faced with the choice of which of the increas-
ingly powerful developing states to let into clubs — not
whether they should be let in at all — it would be in the
interests of the West to encourage those who adhere most
closely to its own notions of norms and values. In this
case, the stakes are high enough that the perfect cannot
be made the enemy of the good.
When faced with the choice
of which of the increasingly
powerful developing states to
let into clubs, it would be in
the interests of the West to
encourage those who adhere
most closely to its own notions of
norms and values.
4
The newly emerging democracies therefore offer the West
its best opportunity to reaffirm and perpetuate the inter-
national order based on rules established in the wake of
the last major great-power conflict, World War II. This
order enshrines principles such as freedom of the seas,
the moral superiority of democracy, and the primacy of
free trade. With economic malaise in Europe and Japan,
and looming fiscal constraints in the United States, new
partners are needed to sustain this order. Although
institutional reform on a macro scale is an obvious — if
overambitious — solution, deeper engagement with such
emerging democracies as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and
Turkey could include the following concrete steps:
• Instituting a more systematic exchange of
lawmakers. Personal connections between members
of European and American legislatures are robust
thanks to frequent interaction, but relations with
newly emerging democracies remain superficial. For
example, Western Congressional and parliamentary
delegations still visit Asia relatively infrequently, and
engagements need to involve sustained and serious
consultations. A regular annual conclave of influen-
tial lawmakers from major democracies can produce
a more durable network.
• Establishing a CEO forum for global business
leaders. As countries’ democracies have matured,
business leaders have become increasingly influen-
tial. Effective engagement must actively involve the
private sector, whose search for new markets and
cheap labor could easily undermine the principles
that democratic powers seek to uphold.
• Launching a program to immerse Western offi-
cials in partner governments. Programs compa-
rable to the Mansfield Fellowship, which currently
provides U.S. federal employees with a year of
Japanese language training, followed by an assign-
ment with the Japanese government, can be proposed
for other major emerging democracies. Among other
benefits, the best practices and lessons of democratic
governance can be shared.
• Increasing the number of exchange programs
between Europe and Asia. Although Europe is
perhaps better placed to engage emerging Latin
American and African states, it lags behind the
United States in having area-specific expertise on
Asia. Exchange programs will help EU institutions
 and member states develop a larger cadre of Asia
experts and, more importantly, will help develop a
future generation of Asian leaders with close ties to
the West.
Deeper engagement is a long-term process, one that will
at times be marked by short-term frustrations as these
emerging powers fail to meet the expectations of the
West — and vice versa. But over the long term, deeper
engagement will enable the West to shape the rise of a
new international order.
Deeper engagement is a long-
term process, one that will
at times be marked by short-
term frustrations as these
emerging powers fail to meet the
expectations of the West — and
vice versa.
Reaffirming the Principles
and Rules of a Sustainable Global System
On a longer-term basis, what can the United States and
Europe do to increase the odds of a smooth transition
to a more sustainable global system? The first may be
to push for comprehensive reform of the UN Security
Council and, in its absence, consider creating a security
analogue to the G20 — a regular forum for major global
powers to discuss key challenges to global stability and
security and avenues for cooperation. The second would
be to clearly articulate the rules that should underpin the
global system. This could involve the establishment of a
set of guiding principles upholding not just state sover-
eignty, but also universal human rights, WMD nonpro-
liferation, transparent governance, respect for open
markets, the security of global public goods, and rules
governing intervention and preemptive conflict. Third,
Europe, for its part, can capitalize on its recent integra-
tion attempts — embodied by the Lisbon Treaty — and
transform itself into a potent unitary global actor. This
5
would make Europe the preeminent U.S. ally in global
affairs while making space for qualified emerging powers
to join various multilateral fora. The inclusion of Turkey
within this framework would further bolster Europe’s
capabilities, anchor one of the region’s most dynamic
democracies, and serve as a powerful example of what
cross-cultural cooperation can look like.
If the principles and norms of the global system are to be
anything like those of the second half of the 20th century,
the transatlantic community has to seriously consider the
problem of how best to incorporate emerging powers in
general — and Asia in particular — into a more flexible,
inclusive, and liberal international order. If the current
international game is to continue, the time is ripe to
pause, make a little space, and reaffirm the rules for the
benefit of the new global players.
About the Authors
Dhruva Jaishankar is a program officer with GMF’s Asia Program.
Joshua W. Walker is an assistant professor at the University of
Richmond, a post-doctoral fellow at the Crown Center for Middle
East Studies at Brandeis, a research fellow with Harvard’s Belfer
Center, and a nonresident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of
the United States (GMF).
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