The Future of the World Order in 2050: A Turkish Perspective

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The Future of the World Order in 2050_a Turkish Perspective
Ibrahim Kocaman
Assistant Professor, Security Studies & International Affairs, Embry Riddle-Aeronautical University

Mustafa Kirisci
Assistant Professor, Homeland Security, DeSales University

Introduction

In 1992, our planet had a unipolar world order where the US was the only superpower left. Fukuyama’s “End of History” argument suggested that humanity had reached the “End of History” and Western liberal democracy would be the final form of government.1 In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the number of democracies in the world significantly increased.2 The collapse of Soviet Union has contributed to the decline in the number of left-wing militant groups as well as overall number of civil wars in the world. Even NATO was seen as irrelevant3 as Soviet Union no longer existed.

While the new world order immediately after Cold War apparently welcomed a more peaceful world, it didn’t necessarily prevent the emergence of new threats. Religious militancy became a growing threat to the extent that a religious terror group targeted a superpower on 9/11 which led to the highest number of casualties in the history of terrorism in one attack. A superpower later invaded a foreign country in 2003. A global financial crisis took place a few years later, which led to a political crisis in Europe. While the developed world was striving to recover from the 2008 crisis, Russia invaded certain regions of Georgia. Then, a protest wave started in Tunisia and spread to other Middle Eastern and North African countries, which was called Arab Spring. While it was initially called “Spring”, protesters in some Arab countries, such as in Syria, couldn’t remove their autocrats, which led to protracted civil war. The civil war in Syria was followed by a huge refugee outflow that affected nearby countries and even Europe. The refugee inflow into Europe led to another crisis in the region along with the Eurozone crisis. Furthermore, this crisis has triggered nationalism in the developed and developing worlds, and that led to the rise of populist leaders in the Western hemisphere, such as in Italy, Hungary, Brazil, and the US. Not to mention the role of nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiments on Britons’ decision to leave the EU. In the meantime, China continued its economic upheaval and emerged as the primary challenger to the US-led world order. Within the last decade, China’s quest towards challenging the US hegemony became pronounced to the extent that many argued the two have entered the Thucydides’ Trap4 and were destined to fight. Towards the end of 2010s, it became almost mainstream that the post-Cold war unipolar world order was no more.

Beyond such political turmoil, the world was also shaken by (and is still facing) a biological disaster (i.e., COVID-19), which has led to deaths of millions of people and has come with a huge economic toll. Governments around the world had to issue aid packages including direct cash payments to people. Beyond its health consequences, COVID also has given rise to two other global issues: the supply chain problem and rise of prices. But this was not enough. The negotiations between the US and Russia over the eastern Ukraine didn’t conclude with an agreement, and Putin declared what he calls “special operation,” which turned out to be a full-blown war against Ukraine. Europe and the US have imposed massive sanctions on Russia. Russia has played its energy card, and energy prices have risen. The war continues after almost 10 months, and it remains to be seen when it will end.

The gloomy picture described above suggests that while we expected that the end of the Cold War will be the harbinger of more peaceful and democratic world, we ended up with a world where major democracies are declining due to populists and global economic stability is being shaken by exogenous shocks, such as COVID and a major war in Europe that is declared by an autocrat who desires to conquer territories of another country. The unhappy end of the previous 30-year period (1992-2022) raises a question that the authors will focus on in this report: How will the world order look like three decades from now? What should we expect to see in different regions of the world during the next 30-year period until 2050 or early 2050s? The previous thirty-year period started with welcoming greater peace and democratization in the world but ended up with a very volatile world from economic, social, and political standpoints. The current thirty-year period started with one interstate war and one global pandemic. So, should we superstitiously believe that this thirty-year period will end up ending with more peaceful world? It absolutely does not necessarily so. To understand how the world order will change until 2050s, we argue that one should focus on analyzing the existing global threats with long-term implications for future world order. More specifically, we will analyze the effect of two threats that will have repercussions on future world order: climate change and great power competition. Although many other threats could also shape future world order, these two threats and their repercussions for the world order will be very impactful in terms of economic, political, and social sense over the next three decades as we will discuss these impacts in the next sections of this paper. We will also briefly touch upon how a middle/regional power like Turkey might fare in wake of these two broad trends.

Climate Change and Future World Order

Climate change will be one of the major threats to the stability of international order as it has a wide range of security implications. While climate change will be impactful around the world, its impact will not be expected to distribute evenly around the globe.5 Some parts of the world could face increases in the frequency and intensity of heavy rains, but other parts of the world will experience more severe and longer dry conditions. Just as climate-related impacts will not be distributed evenly, its social, economic, and political impacts will vary by region. MIT scientists forecast that the North China Plain, where 400 million people are living, will be uninhabitable within a few decades, due to the combination of extreme heat and humidity.6 Food insecurity caused by climate change will be a major concern, especially in Africa. Heat stress, droughts, and flooding events may lead to reductions in crop yields and livestock productivity.7 In some African countries, for example, wheat yields could decline by as much as 35% by 2050.8 Coastal settlements are especially susceptible to climate change impacts, such as sea level rise. Both developing and developed countries, such as Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and Guyana, are vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise.9 Drought caused by extreme heat will have social consequences. Drought-related psychological anxiety increased in drought-declared regions of Australia especially for people facing loss of livelihood.10 Research shows that long-term drought has been linked to increased incidence of suicide among male farmers in Australia.11

These dramatic consequences described above will also have repercussions for the future world order. To understand how the consequences of climate change would affect the future of international politics, we may need to look at in what ways climate change would shape domestic and international reactions of major powers. The US’s National Climate Assessment in 2018 predicted that the United States will have to deal with diverse forms of consequences of climate change by 2050, such as drought, proliferation of wildfires, coastal storm surges, more intense hurricanes, damaged infrastructure, and declining harvests.12 It is also predicted that some of these adverse consequences will cut US agricultural production to the level of 1980s. The aging crisis in the US will compound the adverse effects of climate change. The Congressional Budget Office in the US predicts that federal spending (e.g., social security, Medicare, Medicaid) for people who are 65 or older will increase from 20 percent in 2019 to 50 percent in 2049, although the labor force and the economy will grow at a much slower rate than the previous decades.13 Such a dramatic increase in domestic spending is expected to leave less budget for overseas military bases of the country, which might reduce the US global presence. In fact, the US commitment to Middle East may also decline as it will be less reliant on oil and focus more on renewable energy resources.

The US will not be the only country whose global influence may diminish due to the adverse consequences of climate change. Besides the effects of climate change on European agriculture, energy consumption, and health, Europe will also face another major issue that will have social, economic, and political repercussions, which is what John Kerry calls “climate refugees”.14 Desertification, heat waves, lack of water, and tribal fighting over basic resources will increase human mobility into urban centers. Syrians, Afghans, and Africans from Sahel are flooding into Europe. Given that states in the MENA region does not have enough resources to tackle the climate crisis, the influx of climate refugees will remain an issue for the continent, along with existing Syrian and Ukrainian refugee issues.

These consequences of climate change on the major players of world politics may lead one to think that the rise of China will converge on the decline of Western major powers, thereby making China emerge as the new superpower of the upcoming decades. However, climate change does not recognize borders, and its adverse effects spread to all countries. Elisa Chih-Yin Lai from the Chinese Environment Forum notes decrease in water volume in major rivers, rising sea levels, increase in natural disasters are just some of the impacts of climate change that will hit China.15 Beyond these expected consequences, Yuan Ye also adds that food security will be impacted negatively as a warming climate will affect the yields of wheat, maize, rice, and fish.16. These consequences will have social implications as they overwhelm China’s underdeveloped social safety net programs,17 thereby more and more Chinese families will be less protected by the government against the adverse consequences of climate change.

The fact that the major players in world politics will have to deal with their own domestic issues that will be caused by the consequences of climate change indicates that climate change-related crises will induce them to focus more on domestic crises to deal with negative externalities of climate change. In addition, these externalities might also induce major powers as well as other states to seek cooperation, despite their differences in other policy issues, to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change because climate change would potentially threaten the stability of international economic and political order. U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry said, “obviously we have serious differences with China,” citing Beijing’s theft of intellectual property and aggression in the South China Sea as examples, but that “those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate. That’s not going to happen.”18

Climate change-induced effect on the potential decrease in major powers’ influence in world politics may also help regional powers to strengthen their grip on their regions. For example, Israel has recently recovered its strained relations with Arab countries through Abraham Accords, and that will help the country to economically benefit from these recovering relations. In addition, Israel is and will keep benefitting from natural gas exports, thanks to emerging gas reserves in Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey has also raised its profile as a middle/regional power utilizing several crises and conflicts in its region to re-arrange its relations with the U.S.,19 the EU,20 and Russia.21

Great Power Competition over Technology

Although climate change may cause a decline in major powers’ influence and even give rise to collaboration between them, the great power competition will continue, especially between the US and China. Two consecutive administrations in the US have acted to undercut the rise of China and prevent the possibility China will surpass the US economically in the very near future. While the Trump administration imposed significant amounts of tariffs on Chinese exports to the US, the Biden administration has recently targeted China’s semi-conductor manufacturing industry by prohibiting support to advanced semi-conductor fabs in China from the US people. Biden’s move aims to undermine China’s rise in technology realms and re-establish the US’s dominance on critical technology. We argue that the US will engage in a systematic campaign that incorporates policies like Biden and Trump administrations over the next three decades to make sure that the US will have as “large lead”22 as possible over cutting-edge technology, such as on semi-conductors and artificial intelligence.

In addition to exerting pressure on China to prevent its rise to achieve the sole superpower status, we also argue that the US will keep taking actions to constrain Russia’s aggressive foreign policy as it leads an aggressive sanction campaign against Russia during the Ukraine war. We contend that these sanctions, as Vladimir Putin has recognized, will have adverse consequences on the Russian economy in the long-term. In addition, Russia will face greater domestic instabilities due to unexpected Ukrainian resistance and retreats during the war. Seven Russian lawmakers demanded parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, charge President Vladimir Putin with treason due to his decisions during the war in Ukraine that led to a series of failures.23 It remains to be seen when the war in Ukraine will end as both sides do not show much willingness to come to the negotiation table. The West doesn’t seem to be intimidated by Russian threats about cutting gas flow as the US is persistent in sending large amounts of military aid and leading a massive sanction campaign. With these in mind, Russia will keep being weakened economically and militarily until the end of the war, and even after the war, it will have to deal with long-term consequences of the war. Not to mention Russia will be overwhelmed with dealing with the adverse consequences of climate change. Thus, we expect that Russia will be lagging behind the US and China in great power competition over the next three decades.

Based on the above discussion, we think the next three decades will be defined by US-China great power competition primarily over who will keep the technological edge and policies to counter climate change. Somewhat weakened Russia may provide China with greater leverage to consolidate its leadership of the nascent challenge to the US-led status quo. If Russia faces greater problems and struggles to keep its territorial integrity intact, China may also exert greater influence over Russia and may tap into some of Russia’s natural resources. On the other hand, the U.S. might try to counterbalance China with India, another rising Asian power that is also the largest democracy in the region and the world. India potentially can keep up with China in terms of demographic capacity thanks to its rapidly growing population. While we do think US-China strategic rivalry will constitute the defining characteristic of the next three decades these two powers are also
likely to remain economically interdependent. Thus, it remains to be seen if the two great powers will manage to escape the Thucydides’ Trap or whether strategic interests will transcend their interdependence.

2050 From Turkey’s Perspective: An imagined vision meets reality

Turkey has gained a regional power and even an emerging power status in international politics within roughly the last three decades thanks to its unique geostrategic advantages, its widely accepted role as a bridge between the East and West, strategic use of alliance relations, and reliance on more activist foreign policy. However, Turkish foreign policy has displayed three major and somewhat inter-related trends within the last decade; (1) traditional Westernism undertones were replaced with Islamism and neo-Ottomanism,24 which has grown to be more apparent over time, (2) multilateralism,25 and (3) aggressive almost revisionist approach.26 Judging by these shifts in Turkish foreign policy and its articulated vision for the future of global politics through explicit narrative of its political leaders, it is fair to argue that Turkey is not happy with how the current global governance and would like to see a much different world order in 2050, with a preferred
one in which it plays greater roles. This vision could be summarized by Erdogan’s maxim “the World is bigger than five,” which alludes to a pronounced unfairness of major power leverage at the UN Security Council.

On the other hand, it should be immediately noted that Turkey lacks both the material and moral power to assert its vision for a new world order. Material reasons simply include its continuously underperforming economy, dependence on external energy resources, and unimpressive performance in military and technological advances. Turkey’s non-material or moral vulnerabilities include its growing authoritarianism, related grievances of domestic societal groups, and discontent by Turkey’s traditional Western allies (most notably the U.S.) from Turkey’s democratic decline and aggressive foreign policy. While it should be admitted that Turkey has raised its status as a regional power and its outlook as a key player in foreign policy bargaining, in part due to its diplomatic efforts, aggressive foreign policy entanglement, and bargaining behavior (i.e., exploiting the refugee crisis) vis-à-vis its allies and adversaries, there hardly more room for improvement of its profile towards its aspired global power status due to the previously stated material and moral shortcomings.

Conclusion

All in all, it is fair to the world looks in disarray today. Considering the re-emergence of great power competition, the looming global economic crisis, and further strains induced on our planet by ongoing supply chain issues (thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic) and the forthcoming climate catastrophe, one can conclude that the next 30 years until 2050s are likely to only increase this global disorder. As we have discussed, we expect climate change and great power technological competition to constitute the defining trends of the future world order (or lack thereof). The Russo-Ukrainian War and its anticipated ramifications on Russia’s economy are likely to render Russia weaker as a global power. The great power competition between the U.S. and China is likely to continue and dominate world affairs within the next three decades. Middle and regional powers (as in the Turkish case that we included) are likely poised to taste a dose of Realpolitik that will offset their ambitions.

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