CHINA
Leadership in the face of Cold War 2.0
Democracies are finally taking seriously the geopolitical threat posed by the autocracies, and the G7 should leverage this moment to pave the way for a ‘Global Alliance Treaty Organization’ built upon technology, industry and security imperatives
programmes will have to decrease to make way for augmented defence spending. Words, and clarion calls, matter. In 2014 the G7 should have labelled as Cold War 2.0 the combination of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Xi Jinping’s militarisation of non-Chinese islands in the South China Sea. The democracies should have responded with much more muscle to these autocratic actions. Had they done so, Putin could have been deterred from launching his subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Xi would not be menacing Taiwan today. History teaches us that an investment in deterrence is far cheaper than the war brought on by appeasement. THE RECOMMENDATIONS The good news, though, is that the democracies are much better at technological innovation than the autocracies for fundamental structural reasons. Therefore, recommendation number 1: the democracies need to keep their research and development markets robust, well financed and staffed with the globe’s best and brightest people through enhanced domestic education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and augmented by carefully managed immigration, especially in the domains of artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductor chips, quantum computing and biotechnology. At the same time the democracies need to produce these marvels of innovation at scale. For example, a
T he autocracies are on the march again, but the democracies, led by the G7, can once more prevail if they stay laser-focused on facilitating private-sector technology innovation, building military industrial capacity at scale and expanding collective security arrangements. The bad news is the autocracies have dragged the world into another cold war. Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine, Iran supplies weapons to proxy militias throughout the Middle East, and China aggrandises and militarises the South China Sea while coercing Taiwan with grey zone tactics. Calling this Cold War 2.0 serves several critical purposes. It shows the democracies are finally taking seriously the geopolitical threat posed by the autocracies. It alerts citizens in the democracies that sacrifices will be required, particularly on the financial front, as the funding of domestic social
By George S Takach , author, Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle Between China, Russia and America
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G7 ITALY: THE APULIA SUMMIT — 2024
globalgovernanceproject.org
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