Welcome to The Call
Welcome to The Call, a blog I’ve created in partnership with Foreign Policy that I hope will give you plenty of useful insight into international politics and its impact on the global economy. Political futures may imply some crystal ball gazing. But that’s not my intention. I’m a firm believer in the idea that assessing risks has ...
Welcome to The Call, a blog I've created in partnership with Foreign Policy that I hope will give you plenty of useful insight into international politics and its impact on the global economy.
Welcome to The Call, a blog I’ve created in partnership with Foreign Policy that I hope will give you plenty of useful insight into international politics and its impact on the global economy.
Political futures may imply some crystal ball gazing. But that’s not my intention. I’m a firm believer in the idea that assessing risks has much more to do with understanding the world as it is today and all the factors that drive the behavior of those who will be making key decisions. In other words, I’m a political scientist, not a futurologist.
So I’d best be clear about my biases up front. I believe that political risk is becoming much more important for the workings of global markets over the next several years. There are four big structural reasons for this:
1) Energy supplies are coming increasingly from politically unstable parts of the world. Think the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea basin, West Africa;
2) Emerging markets-countries in which politics plays a particularly important role in how markets perform already have more influence than ever on the global economy. Their influence will only grow in coming decades, and they will have increasingly powerful seats at the table when important decisions are made;
3) Dangerous technologies are becoming readily available, even for small groups of people that until recently could not have imagined access to such powerful tools. Iran has new access to nuclear technology, and West African pirates are using GPS. Rogue states, organizations, and even individuals are becoming more important accordingly;
4) These trends are intensifying in a world in which the United States is increasingly unwilling and unable to fill the role of world’s only superpower. The current global institutional architecture isn’t keeping up with all these changes. It still reflects the post-World War II international system.
These realities produce all sorts of implications for globalization, for reactions to the financial crisis, and for determining winners and losers as the global balance of power shifts. My goal here is to provide you with ideas and information that will help you look beyond the day’s headlines to better understand the underlying forces that will drive international politics and global markets in 2009 and beyond.
I, together with my colleagues from Eurasia Group, will look at important political developments and consider how they’ll impact local, regional and international politics and the global economy. You’ll also find video conversations on key global issues and some of Eurasia Group’s special reports, including highlights from our monthly Global Political Risk Index.
So without further ado, the first Call is…
Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. He is also the host of the television show GZERO World With Ian Bremmer. Twitter: @ianbremmer
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