Robert Muggah is co-founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group and a senior advisor to the United Nations. Mischa Glenny is a British journalist and current director of the Institute of Human Sciences.
The rise of doomscrolling is a sick sign of the times. Compulsively viewing negative news is not only detrimental to our physical and mental health, but also to our very survival. Recent studies have confirmed that overexposure to social media can cause the brain's natural self-defenses to fail, leading to disorientation and depression. It turns out that optimism is good for us. People reinforced with an optimistic mindset are less prone to conspiracy theories and are generally happier, healthier and live longer lives.
But there's a reason for the lack of optimism. Part of the cause of the headline anxiety, especially among young people, is the prevalence of screen addiction. Another reason algorithms are winning is because the world today is objectively more unstable than at any time since World War II. Armageddon briefly became a reality during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but today's memes about nukes, pandemics, and climate change are disturbing because the risks are real.
In times of political crisis, there is no sanctuary for optimists. Polycrisis occurs when disparate shocks interact and their overall impact exceeds the sum of its parts. From the corridors of the United Nations to the elite gatherings of Davos, the picture of our current predicament is becoming increasingly confusing. Otherwise level-headed diplomats and academics now routinely end conversations with the words “we are doomed.”
So how bad is it?
Poland's new Prime Minister Donald Tusk has argued that Europe has already entered a “pre-war era”, citing the Russian threat. Journalist Jim Schutt describes the current moment as “Cold War 2.0,” and geographer Parag Khanna likens it to neo-medievalism. Historian Niall Ferguson recently suggested that World War III is a possibility. Wars in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially East Asia intersect. Although experts differ on the details, most agree that the risk of catastrophic conflict is rising.
As more nuclear-armed states become involved in actual wars, the risk of nuclear conflict increases. At least two “hot” conflicts could lead to tactical or strategic nuclear exchanges, and a third serious conflict could lead to world war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his nuclear rhetoric, raising the possibility that a war between Russia and Ukraine could spread to neighboring European countries. The conflict between Israel and Gaza involves the entire Middle East and could involve the United States and its allies. On the other hand, a Chinese attack on Taiwan would almost certainly elicit a reaction from the United States, trigger a major conflict, inflict $10 trillion in damage to the global economy, and greatly disrupt global trade.
And these aren't the only hotspots in the world. Another notable flash point is on the Korean Peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is accelerating military preparations. Tensions are rising between India and Pakistan, between India and China, and across sub-Saharan Africa, where civil wars are becoming increasingly international. By some estimates, there will be as many as 183 regional, national and local conflicts in 2023, the highest number in more than 30 years.
Polycrises are proliferating as the world order undergoes a severe transformation. The world is moving from a unipolar world briefly dominated by the United States to a multipolar system in which power is more distributed across states, corporations, and other non-state actors. In terms of spending, the United States remains the dominant military power, but political, economic, and technological power is gradually shifting to the East, or Asia. There is no consensus as to which systems are more or less likely to produce stable results. However, we agree that transitions between systems can be very unstable.
Western countries have played a leading role in shaping the world's destiny over the past half-millennium, laying the foundations for the liberal order that has prevailed since 1945. Now, as the US and Western Europe's grip on power declines, other players are taking center stage. To fill a new vacuum. Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote this at the beginning of the 20th century, when the world was undergoing a new transition: “The crisis lies precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new is not being born. During this interregnum, a wide variety of pathological symptoms appear.”
The relationship between the United States and China will be crucial in determining what Gramsci's New World Order will look like when it finally emerges from the womb of history. The two countries are fiercely competing not only for geographical advantage but also for technological superiority. The prize is superiority in artificial intelligence. Both China and the United States believe, not unreasonably, that technological leadership will play a decisive role in determining who sets the global rules of the game. There's a good reason for that. AI could impact the global economy by more than US$15 trillion by 2030.
Despite the economic complexities, the United States is doing everything it can to maintain its advantage over China. The company supports Taiwan, particularly Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces 90 percent of advanced microchips. The United States recently blocked major chipmakers such as Nvidia from selling products to China and is helping TSMC build chip manufacturing plants in Arizona, Japan, and soon Dresden, Germany. The strategy is clear. Even if China attempts to retake Taiwan in the coming years, the United States will maintain its dominance in microchips.
China has responded to U.S. sanctions with its own export controls and directed massive subsidies to its champion companies, such as Huawei. China has also imposed restrictions on the distribution of critical minerals, including rare earths. The country processes about three-quarters of the critical minerals that all countries need to achieve a green transition, not to mention the drones, missiles, and combat needed to fight rampant wars. We also handle all of the high-tech circuitry for the aircraft.
The widespread shift from unipolar to multipolar systems is creating significant instability beyond Sino-American relations. The war in Ukraine has at least temporarily strengthened alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) due to shared concerns with Russia. But the wars in Europe and the Middle East have hardened anti-Western positions in dozens of countries that make up the so-called Global South, many of which do not share Western priorities and are seeking a more representative international I have been looking for a system for many years.
Global rules, norms, and institutions designed in the mid-20th century to prevent military escalation have become increasingly weak, dysfunctional, and irrelevant. The UN Security Council is paralyzed by divisions, with limited cooperation to address current threats, let alone new ones. As the world becomes increasingly fragmented into a mosaic of regional clubs and shrinking islands of stability, expansionist-minded politicians, opportunistic warlords, and intrepid criminals are venturing into the vacuum. Masu.
Faced with the prospect of the world going to war, many governments are preparing for military conflict. The international community is entering a new arms race, one that is becoming increasingly unpredictable with the emergence of new weapons powered by advanced robotics and AI. And despite widespread voluntary principles, there are no globally agreed guidelines on how to use or suppress this new generation of weapons. Meanwhile, US security agencies have warned that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are “bracing” for conflict both online and offline.
Global defense spending rose more than 9% last year to a record $2.2 trillion. For the first time since 2019, military spending increased in all major regions, including the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In total, Western countries are spending 32 percent more than when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And more than 30 percent of government spending goes to military spending in China and Russia. It is no surprise that nuclear-weapon states are actively updating and modernizing their nuclear arsenals. As the Latin proverb goes, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
To make matters worse, serious challenges are emerging on a global scale as stresses and rifts deepen at home, including in the West. The democratic deficit has widened over the past two decades as a result of deepening inequality and polarization. Levels of dissatisfaction with democracy have reached their highest level since the mid-1990s, according to a survey of more than 150 countries. Far-right populism is gaining influence in France and Germany, and is already well established in Hungary and Slovakia. And in the United States, the relentless deterioration of democratic norms and institutions by extreme groups is undermining trust and confidence in democracy itself. Almost half of Americans are concerned that their country will find itself in internal conflict within the next 10 years.
Domestic insecurity and social rifts are being relentlessly exploited by hostile forces, including in cyberspace. One of the ways this is being driven is through online disinformation and misinformation campaigns aimed at causing confusion, suspicion and polarization. Despite recent government and technology industry efforts to regulate and mitigate digital harm, the manipulation and proliferation of malicious synthetic content is already tearing at the fabric of society everywhere.
Distracted leaders and citizens are neglecting meaningful cooperation on common existential threats, from nuclear arms control to green energy transition to AI regulation. Ironically, at the very moment when the world needs to come together, it is spiraling apart. Trust, the currency of effective multilateralism, is in vanishingly short supply. A central question facing us all in 2024 is how to foster global cooperation in an era of global competition.
At a minimum, this requires developing processes that align interests and incentives in ways that benefit both people and the planet. It will require new forms of multi-stakeholder partnerships between states, businesses and non-profit organizations. We also need to elevate geopolitics to the highest levels of decision-making. Managing a transition to multipolarity in which we can all survive and potentially thrive requires a dramatic shift in thinking. One way we can move towards a more rational and manageable future is to doom scroll less and instead shape a more positive and optimistic future.
