Power and the World Order: Who Sits at the Table?
In April 1955, twenty-nine nations gathered in the Indonesian hill town of Bandung. They came from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East — countries that had recently been colonies, countries that were still fighting for independence, countries that the great powers of the world rarely bothered to consult about anything. Together, they represented more than half the world's population. Together, they controlled almost none of its wealth or power.
The host was Sukarno, president of Indonesia, a man who had fought the Dutch for independence and won. The most prominent guest was Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India, who had helped lead the largest independence movement in history. Also present were Zhou Enlai of China, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and leaders from places the Western press rarely mentioned — Burma, Ceylon, Ethiopia, Gold Coast, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Liberia, Libya, Nepal, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey, and others.
These were not powerful nations by any conventional measure. They had no nuclear weapons. They controlled no international institutions. Their currencies were not traded on global markets. Their militaries, where they existed, were modest. By every metric that the superpowers used to measure importance, these countries barely registered.
And yet something happened in Bandung that shook the great powers. These twenty-nine nations declared, together, that they would not choose sides. In a world being carved into American and Soviet spheres of influence, they announced a third option: non-alignment. They would not be pawns in someone else's chess game. They would determine their own path.
The reaction from Washington and Moscow was revealing. Both superpowers were irritated. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called non-alignment "immoral." The Soviets viewed it with suspicion. The message from both was clear: in our world, you pick a side. There is no third option.
But Bandung said: there is. And that assertion — that the weak could refuse the terms dictated by the strong, that nations without power could still assert dignity — remains one of the most important political statements of the twentieth century.
This chapter is about the world order — the invisible architecture that determines who writes the rules, who benefits from them, and who must simply follow. It is about power: who has it, how they use it, and whether the current arrangement is destined to last.
Look Around You
The next time you hear about a decision at the United Nations Security Council, notice who has veto power: the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. These are the five nations that won World War II — eighty years ago. India, with 1.4 billion people, has no veto. Brazil, the largest country in South America, has no veto. The entire continent of Africa has no veto. Nigeria, with over 200 million people, has no veto. The structure of global governance was designed in 1945. The world has changed beyond recognition. The structure has not.
What Is a "World Order"?
The phrase "world order" sounds grand and abstract. But it describes something quite concrete: the rules, institutions, power relationships, and unwritten understandings that govern how nations interact.
At any given moment in history, there is an order — a way things are done. Some nation or group of nations sets the rules. Others follow, either voluntarily or because they have no choice. The rules cover trade, finance, diplomacy, war, and the resolution of disputes. They are sometimes written (in treaties and charters) and sometimes unwritten (in norms and expectations).
The order is never permanent. It is built by the powerful, and it serves the powerful. When the balance of power shifts, the order shifts too — sometimes gradually, sometimes violently.
For the last eighty years, the world order has been primarily shaped by one country: the United States of America. Understanding how that happened — and whether it is changing — is essential for understanding the world you live in.
The American Century: How One Country Built the World
In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II in a position of dominance unlike anything in modern history. The war had devastated every other major economy. Europe was in ruins. Japan was in ruins. The Soviet Union had won, but at the cost of 27 million dead and much of its western territory destroyed. China was in the middle of a civil war.
America, by contrast, was untouched. No bombs had fallen on its factories. Its economy had doubled during the war. It produced half the world's industrial output. It held two-thirds of the world's gold reserves. It had the atomic bomb. It had the most powerful navy and air force in history.
This was the moment of maximum American power, and American leaders used it to build a world order in their image. The architecture they constructed was breathtaking in its ambition and remarkably durable.
The United Nations was established in 1945, headquartered in New York, with the explicit purpose of preventing another world war. But its structure reflected American power. The Security Council — the only body with enforcement authority — gave permanent seats and veto power to the five victors of World War II. The General Assembly, where every nation had one vote, could debate and recommend but could not compel. The structure ensured that the major powers, and especially the United States, could never be outvoted on matters of consequence.
The Bretton Woods institutions — the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — were established to manage the global economy. As we discussed in Chapter 65, these institutions were headquartered in Washington, used the US dollar as their anchor currency, and were structured so that voting power was proportional to economic size (and financial contributions), giving the United States effective veto power over major decisions.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), later the World Trade Organization (WTO), set the rules for global trade. The rules generally favored open markets and free trade — principles that benefited the United States, which had the world's most competitive industries and wanted access to foreign markets.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a network of bilateral alliances in Asia (with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and others) created a military umbrella that covered much of the world. American military bases were established in dozens of countries. The US Navy patrolled the world's sea lanes, ensuring freedom of navigation — which, not coincidentally, meant freedom for American commerce.
The dollar became the world's reserve currency, giving the United States what French finance minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing called an "exorbitant privilege" — the ability to print the currency that everyone else needed to hold.
THE POST-WWII WORLD ORDER (US-LED)
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ UNITED STATES │
│ (Military, economic, and │
│ institutional dominance) │
│ │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌────────────┐ │
│ │ MILITARY │ │ ECONOMIC │ │ INSTITUTIONAL│ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
│ │ NATO │ │ Dollar as │ │ UN (HQ: NY)│ │
│ │ Pacific │ │ reserve │ │ IMF (HQ:DC)│ │
│ │ alliances │ │ currency │ │ World Bank │ │
│ │ 750+ │ │ Wall St. │ │ (HQ: DC) │ │
│ │ overseas │ │ as global │ │ WTO (rules │ │
│ │ bases │ │ financial │ │ written by │ │
│ │ │ │ center │ │ the rich) │ │
│ └─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └──────┬─────┘ │
│ │ │ │ │
└────────┼──────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┘
│ │ │
v v v
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE REST OF THE WORLD │
│ │
│ Western Europe: Allied, rebuilt with │
│ Marshall Plan, integrated via NATO │
│ │
│ Japan, S. Korea: Allied, rebuilt, │
│ protected by US military umbrella │
│ │
│ Developing world: Subject to rules │
│ they did not write, dependent on │
│ institutions they do not control │
│ │
│ Soviet bloc: Counter-order, rival │
│ system (collapsed 1991) │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
KEY INSIGHT: The order was not imposed purely
by force. It was also genuinely attractive —
it offered security, prosperity, and rules.
But the rules were written by the powerful,
and the benefits were not distributed equally.
This was — and largely still is — the world order. It was not imposed purely by force, though force was always in the background. It was also genuinely attractive to many nations. The American security umbrella allowed Europe and Japan to rebuild without spending heavily on defense. The open trading system created unprecedented prosperity. The dollar's stability facilitated global commerce. American culture — movies, music, technology, universities — exercised a "soft power" that made the American model aspirational for millions around the world.
But it was also, inescapably, an order designed to serve American interests. The institutions were headquartered in America. The rules reflected American preferences. The currency was American. And when the rules did not serve American interests, America felt free to ignore or change them.
"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, circa 400 BCE
This is not a uniquely American observation. It is perhaps the oldest observation in political science. And it applies to the current world order as much as it applied to ancient Athens.
What Actually Happened
The Non-Aligned Movement, born at Bandung in 1955 and formalized at the Belgrade Conference in 1961, represented the largest grouping of nations in the world — eventually including over 120 countries. Its founders — Nehru (India), Nasser (Egypt), Tito (Yugoslavia), Sukarno (Indonesia), and Nkrumah (Ghana) — argued that newly independent nations should not be forced to choose between the American and Soviet blocs. They advocated for disarmament, decolonization, and a more equitable global economic order. The movement had real achievements: it provided a platform for the Global South, it pushed decolonization forward, and it gave moral weight to the demand for a fairer international system. But it also had real limitations. Without economic or military power, the movement could declare principles but not enforce them. Its members were often played off against each other by the superpowers. And internally, the movement was riven by contradictions — its members included democracies and dictatorships, market economies and command economies, nations at war with each other. Nehru's vision of a moral force in world politics was noble. But in a world run by power, morality without power is a sermon, not a policy.
The Cold War: Two Orders, One World
For forty-five years, from 1945 to 1991, the world was divided between two competing orders.
The American order — capitalist, democratic (mostly), market-oriented, and institutionally anchored — encompassed Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and much of Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
The Soviet order — communist, planned, authoritarian, and centered on Moscow — encompassed Eastern Europe, Cuba, and various client states in Africa and Asia.
Each order had its own institutions, its own ideology, its own economic system, and its own military alliance. Each claimed to represent the future of humanity. Each spent enormous resources trying to recruit the "Third World" — the countries that belonged to neither bloc.
The competition was fierce and often destructive. Proxy wars — in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan, Central America — killed millions, mostly in poor countries that had the misfortune to be strategically located. The Cold War was cold only for the superpowers. For the countries caught between them, it was anything but.
India navigated this division with remarkable skill, or remarkable luck, or both. Nehru's non-alignment was not neutrality — India leaned toward the Soviet Union on many issues, particularly defense, while maintaining a democratic political system and a mixed economy. India received Soviet weapons, Soviet-built steel plants, and Soviet diplomatic support. It also received American food aid, maintained Western-style democratic institutions, and sent its best students to American universities.
This balancing act — frustrating to both superpowers, who wanted firm allegiance — was, in hindsight, one of independent India's most significant strategic achievements. It preserved India's autonomy in a world that demanded conformity.
1991: One Order Triumphant
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the American order stood alone. There was no rival system, no alternative model, no competing bloc. Francis Fukuyama famously declared "the end of history" — not that events would stop happening, but that the great ideological debate was over. Liberal democracy and market capitalism had won.
For a brief period, it seemed like he might be right. Former Soviet states embraced (or were pushed toward) democracy and markets. China, which had begun market reforms in 1978, accelerated its integration into the global economy. India liberalized in 1991, opening its economy and moving toward the American model. The WTO was established in 1995, and country after country joined. Globalization accelerated. Trade expanded. For a few years, the American order seemed not just dominant but permanent.
It was not.
China's Rise: The Order Challenged
The most significant development in global politics in the twenty-first century is the rise of China. It is also the most significant challenge to the American-led world order since the Cold War.
The numbers are staggering. In 1990, China's GDP was roughly $360 billion — smaller than Spain's. By 2024, it exceeded $18 trillion, making China the second-largest economy in the world (and the largest by purchasing power parity). China lifted over 800 million people out of poverty in four decades — the largest poverty reduction in human history. It became the world's largest manufacturer, largest exporter, and largest trading partner for over 120 countries.
China achieved this not by following the American model but by modifying it. China embraced markets but not democracy. It opened to trade but maintained state control over strategic industries. It joined the WTO but subsidized its companies in ways that violated the spirit, if not always the letter, of the rules. It welcomed foreign investment but required technology transfer. It grew rich within the American order while increasingly challenging the premises on which that order was built.
As China's economic power grew, so did its ambitions. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched in 2013, is the largest infrastructure investment program in history — an estimated $1 trillion or more in roads, railways, ports, power plants, and telecommunications networks across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even Europe. The BRI serves multiple purposes: it creates markets for Chinese companies, builds strategic infrastructure that gives China influence, and provides an alternative to Western-led development finance.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), established in 2015 with China as its largest shareholder, is an explicit alternative to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Its creation was a signal: China was no longer content to operate within institutions controlled by others. It would build its own.
China's military buildup has been equally dramatic. China now has the world's largest navy by number of vessels. It has developed advanced missiles, stealth aircraft, space capabilities, and — critically — the ability to project power across the Pacific in ways that directly challenge American dominance.
"Hide your strength, bide your time." — Deng Xiaoping's advice to China, often quoted in Western analysis of Chinese strategy
Deng's advice served China well for three decades. Under Xi Jinping, China has stopped hiding. The question now is what kind of world order China wants to build, and whether the existing order can accommodate a power that does not share its foundational values of liberal democracy and individual rights.
THE SHIFTING GLOBAL ORDER
1945-1991: BIPOLAR WORLD
─────────────────────────────────────────────
US-led order ◄─── Cold War ───► Soviet order
(capitalist, (communist,
democratic, planned,
institutional) authoritarian)
| |
Both compete for the "Third World" |
(Non-Aligned Movement tries to |
stay out of both) |
|
1991: Soviet collapse ─────────────────┘
1991-2008: UNIPOLAR MOMENT
─────────────────────────────────────────────
UNITED STATES
(sole superpower,
"end of history,"
globalization triumphant)
|
Everyone joins the American order
(or so it seemed)
2008-PRESENT: EMERGING MULTIPOLARITY
─────────────────────────────────────────────
UNITED STATES ◄────────► CHINA
(incumbent power, (rising power,
military dominance, economic might,
dollar system, BRI, AIIB,
tech leadership tech ambition,
— eroding?) alternative model)
| |
| ┌───────────┐ |
└───►│ INDIA │◄──────┘
│ (balancing │
│ act) │
└───────────┘
|
┌─────────┼─────────┐
| | |
EUROPE RUSSIA GLOBAL
(economic (military SOUTH
power, power, (rising
declining energy voice,
strategic leverage, shifting
autonomy) revisionist) alignments)
KEY QUESTION: Is this a transition to a
new order, or a period of dangerous
instability between orders?
Think About It
When a new power rises, must the old power fall? History offers examples both ways. Britain's decline and America's rise was relatively peaceful — partly because they shared language, culture, and values. The rise of Germany and the decline of Britain led to two world wars. What determines whether a power transition is peaceful or violent? And what does this mean for the US-China relationship?
Economic Power as Geopolitical Power
Let us be precise about what "power" means in the context of world order. Military power — the ability to project force — is the most visible form. But economic power is in many ways more fundamental, because economic power funds military power, shapes alliances, and determines who writes the rules.
Consider how economic power translates into geopolitical influence.
Trade dependence creates leverage. If your country depends on another country for critical imports — energy, food, technology — that country has leverage over you. Russia's gas leverage over Europe. China's manufacturing leverage over the world. America's technology leverage over everyone. Trade is not just commerce. It is a power relationship.
Financial power is control power. The country whose currency is the world's reserve currency can impose sanctions that cut other nations off from the global financial system. The United States has used this power extensively — against Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, and others. The SWIFT messaging system, which underpins international bank transfers, is nominally a neutral utility. In practice, it is a tool of American foreign policy. When the US cut Russia off from SWIFT in 2022, it demonstrated that financial infrastructure is strategic infrastructure.
Investment creates dependency. When a country builds your port, lays your fiber-optic cables, and lends you money to do both, it is not just investing. It is creating a relationship of dependency. China's BRI investments across the developing world have been criticized as "debt trap diplomacy" — lending money to countries that cannot repay, then extracting strategic concessions (like control of a port, as happened in Hambantota, Sri Lanka). Whether this characterization is fully fair is debated, but the pattern of economic investment creating political influence is ancient and well-documented.
Technology leadership determines the future. The country that leads in the technologies that define an era — industrial machinery in the nineteenth century, nuclear energy in the twentieth, AI and semiconductors in the twenty-first — has a disproportionate influence over the global order. This is why the US-China technology competition is not just about chips and algorithms. It is about who will shape the twenty-first-century order.
"Money is coined liberty." — Fyodor Dostoevsky
For nations as for individuals, economic power is the foundation of freedom. A nation without economic strength can speak but not be heard. It can protest but not resist. It can participate in institutions but not shape them.
India's Position: The Great Balancing Act
India occupies one of the most interesting and precarious positions in the emerging world order.
India is the world's most populous country, the fifth-largest economy (and third-largest by PPP), a nuclear power, and the largest democracy. It has a young, growing population, a vibrant technology sector, and the potential to become a major manufacturing hub. By most projections, India will be the world's third-largest economy in nominal terms within a decade, behind only the United States and China.
And yet India's power does not match its potential. Its per capita income remains low — roughly one-fifth of China's and one-thirtieth of America's. Its military, while large, depends heavily on imported equipment. Its technology sector, while impressive in software and services, lags in hardware, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing. Its infrastructure — roads, ports, power, logistics — is improving but remains below what its economic ambitions require.
India's strategic challenge is to grow its power while navigating between two giants — the United States and China — without being captured by either.
With the United States, India shares democratic values, a large diaspora, growing trade and technology ties, and a common concern about Chinese expansion. The "Quad" — the strategic dialogue between the US, India, Japan, and Australia — is widely seen as a counterweight to Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. American technology companies invest heavily in India. Indian students flock to American universities. The relationship is warm and growing warmer.
But India is not an American ally in the formal sense. It does not participate in American-led military alliances. It buys weapons from Russia — a fact that irritates Washington but reflects decades of defense partnership that India cannot easily unwind. India's strategic culture, shaped by Nehru's non-alignment and a deep historical suspicion of entangling alliances, resists the idea of being anyone's junior partner.
With China, India has the world's longest disputed border, a festering wound from the 1962 war that erupted into deadly violence as recently as 2020 in the Galwan Valley. The relationship is deeply competitive — India and China are vying for influence across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. China's close partnership with Pakistan, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor through disputed Kashmir territory, is a direct strategic threat.
Yet India and China are also major trading partners. China is India's largest source of imports in many categories. Indian manufacturers depend on Chinese components. Indian consumers use Chinese smartphones. The economic relationship is too large and too embedded to sever, even as the strategic relationship grows more hostile.
India's approach has been to maintain what some analysts call "multi-alignment" — engaging with everyone, allying firmly with no one, and maximizing strategic autonomy. This is non-alignment updated for the twenty-first century, and it carries both opportunities and risks.
The opportunity is that India can work with everyone. It can buy Russian oil at a discount (as it did after Western sanctions on Russia in 2022), participate in American-led technology initiatives, trade with China, and build relationships across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia — all without the constraints that formal alliance membership would impose.
The risk is that in a world that is polarizing, the space for balancing may shrink. If forced to choose — and both Washington and Beijing may eventually demand a choice — India may find that strategic ambiguity becomes strategic isolation.
What Actually Happened
In 2022, when the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, India did not join the sanctions. Instead, India dramatically increased its purchases of Russian oil, which was available at steep discounts because Western buyers had stopped purchasing. India's oil imports from Russia increased more than tenfold, from roughly 2 percent of imports to over 20 percent. This was economically rational — cheaper oil for a country that imports 85 percent of its crude — but it drew sharp criticism from the United States and Europe, who accused India of undermining the sanctions regime and indirectly funding Russia's war. India's response was that it acted in its national interest, that it was not obligated to follow sanctions it had not agreed to, and that European countries themselves were still buying Russian energy (which was true). The episode illustrated both the advantages and the tensions of India's multi-alignment approach. India got cheaper oil. It also got a reputation, in some Western capitals, as an unreliable partner.
The Institutions of Power: Who Votes, Who Vetoes
The institutions that govern the world order — the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO — were designed in the 1940s by the victors of World War II. Their structures reflect the power realities of that era, not this one.
At the United Nations Security Council, the five permanent members — the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK — have veto power. This means that any one of them can block any resolution, no matter how many other countries support it. India, with 1.4 billion people, has been campaigning for a permanent seat for decades. Brazil, Germany, Japan, and major African nations have similar aspirations. The structure has not changed because the current permanent members have no incentive to dilute their own power.
At the IMF, voting power is based on "quotas" — roughly proportional to economic size and financial contributions. The United States has approximately 17 percent of the voting power, which gives it an effective veto over major decisions (which require 85 percent approval). China's quota has been increased but remains far below what its economic weight would justify. India's quota is similarly underrepresented. Reform has been discussed for decades and implemented in increments so small as to be almost cosmetic.
The World Bank has always been led by an American. The IMF has always been led by a European. These are unwritten rules that have never been broken, despite repeated calls for leadership to reflect the institution's global membership.
The WTO operates by consensus, which in theory gives every nation an equal voice. In practice, the major trading powers — the US, EU, China, Japan — dominate the negotiations, and smaller nations often accept rules they had little role in shaping.
This institutional imbalance matters because institutions are not neutral. They embody the values, interests, and priorities of their creators. An IMF that requires austerity as a condition for lending reflects a particular economic philosophy — one that the borrowing countries may not share but cannot resist. A Security Council that gives veto power to five countries reflects a particular view of who matters — a view that 188 other member states may find deeply unjust.
"International institutions are the lengthened shadow of the nations that built them." — Adapted from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is the American Order Ending?
This is the most debated question in international relations today, and honest analysis requires acknowledging that the answer is uncertain.
Arguments that the American order is in decline:
China's economic rise has reduced the relative weight of the United States in the global economy. In 1960, the US accounted for roughly 40 percent of global GDP. Today, it accounts for roughly 25 percent. China's share has risen from negligible to approximately 18 percent. This shift in economic weight is gradually shifting political weight too.
The dollar's dominance is being questioned. China is actively promoting the yuan in international trade. Russia and China conduct bilateral trade in their own currencies. Saudi Arabia has discussed pricing oil in yuan. BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have explored alternatives to the dollar-based financial system. The dollar remains dominant, but its monopoly is eroding at the margins.
American domestic politics has undermined the credibility of the order's champion. The 2008 financial crisis — caused by American banks and exported to the world — damaged the prestige of the American economic model. Political polarization, democratic backsliding concerns, and unpredictable shifts in foreign policy between administrations have made allies wonder whether American commitments are reliable.
Alternative institutions are being built. The AIIB, the New Development Bank (BRICS Bank), the BRI, and bilateral arrangements between non-Western powers are creating parallel structures that do not depend on American leadership or American rules.
Arguments that the American order endures:
Military dominance remains overwhelming. The US spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined. Its network of alliances and overseas bases has no parallel. No country, including China, can project military power globally the way the United States can.
The dollar is still used in roughly 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves and 88 percent of international transactions. No alternative currency comes close. The euro is second but a distant second. The yuan accounts for less than 3 percent. Displacing the dollar would require not just an alternative currency but an alternative financial system — including deep, liquid, transparent capital markets — that no country has built.
Technological leadership in many critical areas — AI, biotechnology, aerospace, advanced software — remains American. Silicon Valley, American universities, and American research institutions continue to attract talent from around the world.
The network of alliances — NATO, the US-Japan alliance, the US-South Korea alliance, the Quad — gives America influence far beyond its own borders. China has no equivalent alliance network.
The most accurate assessment may be that the American order is not ending but evolving. It is becoming less unilateral and more contested. The United States can no longer dictate terms as it could in 1945, or even in 1991. But neither has any alternative order emerged to replace it. We are in a period of transition — a multipolar interregnum — where the old order is weakening but the new order has not yet been born.
Think About It
If you were designing a world order from scratch — with no historical baggage, no existing power structures — what would it look like? Who would get a seat at the table? How would decisions be made? Would economic size determine voting power, or would every nation have an equal say? Would there be a veto? These are not hypothetical questions. They are the questions that will define the twenty-first century, and the answers will shape the world your children inherit.
Technology as the New Battleground
The competition for global power is increasingly fought not with aircraft carriers and missile silos but with algorithms, chip fabrication plants, and data centers.
Artificial intelligence is often called the "electricity of the twenty-first century" — a general-purpose technology that will transform every industry, every institution, and every dimension of power. The country that leads in AI will have advantages in military applications (autonomous weapons, intelligence analysis, cyber warfare), economic productivity (automation, optimization, prediction), and social control (surveillance, censorship, information warfare). The US and China are the clear leaders. India, despite its large pool of software talent, is far behind in AI research, computing infrastructure, and AI-focused semiconductor design.
Semiconductors, as we discussed in the previous chapter, are the physical foundation of all digital technology. Control over advanced chip manufacturing is control over the future. The US has used its leverage over the semiconductor supply chain — particularly its control over design software and ASML's equipment — to restrict China's access to cutting-edge chips. This is arguably the most consequential economic weapon deployed since the oil embargo of 1973.
Data is sometimes called "the new oil," though this analogy is imprecise. Data is not scarce — it is generated in ever-increasing quantities. But the ability to collect, store, process, and monetize data is concentrated in the hands of a few companies and a few countries. American tech giants — Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Apple — operate platforms that collect data from billions of users worldwide. Chinese tech giants — Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu — do the same within China and increasingly across Southeast Asia and Africa. India, with 1.4 billion people generating vast quantities of data, has only recently begun to assert sovereignty over where that data is stored and how it is used.
Quantum computing, still in its early stages, has the potential to break current encryption systems, revolutionize materials science, and transform optimization problems. The race for quantum supremacy is primarily between the US and China, with significant efforts in Europe, Japan, and Canada.
Biotechnology — including genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and mRNA technology (the platform behind the COVID-19 vaccines) — is another domain where leadership will confer enormous power. The country that leads in biotechnology will have advantages in healthcare, agriculture, and — troublingly — biological weapons.
The common thread across all these domains is that technology leadership translates directly into economic power, military power, and institutional influence. The country that controls the critical technologies of the twenty-first century will shape the world order of the twenty-first century — just as the country that controlled industrial production shaped the nineteenth century, and the country that controlled nuclear weapons and financial systems shaped the twentieth.
POWER IN THE 21ST CENTURY: THE NEW PILLARS
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GLOBAL POWER STRUCTURE │
│ │
│ TRADITIONAL PILLARS NEW PILLARS │
│ │
│ Military force AI / Machine │
│ (still matters) learning │
│ | | │
│ Economic size Semiconductors │
│ (GDP, trade) (who can make them) │
│ | | │
│ Financial system Data control │
│ (currency, markets) (who collects, │
│ | processes, owns it) │
│ Energy resources | │
│ (oil, gas, Quantum computing │
│ renewables) (still emerging) │
│ | | │
│ Alliance networks Biotech │
│ (who are your (health, food, │
│ friends?) military) │
│ | | │
│ └──────────┐ ┌────────────┘ │
│ │ │ │
│ v v │
│ ┌──────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ POWER = the ability to │ │
│ │ write the rules that │ │
│ │ others must follow │ │
│ └──────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ WHO LEADS? │
│ US: strongest across most pillars │
│ China: rising fast in all, leading in some │
│ India: potential, but underperforming │
│ EU: economic weight, declining strategic │
│ autonomy │
│ Russia: military power, energy leverage, │
│ economic weakness │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Global South: Finding a Voice
For most of the post-war era, the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America — the "Global South" — have been rule-takers, not rule-makers. They participate in institutions they did not design, follow rules they did not write, and operate in a financial system centered on a currency they do not control.
This is changing, slowly but perceptibly.
The BRICS grouping — originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, now expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — represents an attempt to create an alternative center of gravity. The expanded BRICS accounts for approximately 37 percent of global GDP (by PPP) and over 45 percent of the world's population. The New Development Bank provides development finance outside the Bretton Woods system.
The African Union is increasingly assertive in demanding representation in global governance — including a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. India leads the G20 process in advocating for developing country interests. The "Global South" is becoming not just a geographic description but a political identity.
Whether this translates into genuine power shifts depends on whether these nations can overcome their internal differences. The BRICS includes democracies and autocracies, oil exporters and oil importers, strategic rivals (India and China) and close partners (Russia and China). Unity is easy to declare and hard to maintain.
But the direction is clear: the world is moving from a unipolar order, dominated by the United States, toward a multipolar order where power is more distributed. This transition is neither smooth nor guaranteed. It could lead to a more equitable global governance — or to a more chaotic and dangerous world where competing power centers clash without shared rules or institutions to manage their differences.
Think About It
India was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Today it practices "multi-alignment." What is the difference? Is multi-alignment just non-alignment with better branding? Or is it fundamentally different — engaging actively with all powers rather than standing apart from all of them? And which approach is better suited to the world of the 2020s?
The Bigger Picture
We began in Bandung, in a hill town in Indonesia, where twenty-nine nations dared to say "we will not choose sides." We have traveled through the architecture of American power, the rubble of the Soviet collapse, the factories of Shenzhen, the corridors of the United Nations, and the chip fabrication plants that may determine who rules the twenty-first century.
What have we learned?
First, that the world order is not natural. It is built — by the powerful, for the powerful. The rules of the international system, the structure of its institutions, the currency that underpins its transactions — all of these reflect the interests and values of the nations that created them. Understanding who built the order is essential to understanding why it works the way it does, and who it works for.
Second, that economic power is the foundation of all other power. Military power costs money. Institutional influence requires economic weight. Technological leadership requires investment. Alliance networks depend on what you can offer. A nation that is economically weak is strategically weak, no matter how large its territory or how ancient its civilization. This is why economic development is not just about raising living standards — it is about securing the ability to shape your own future.
Third, that the current order is in transition. The American-led system, built on the rubble of World War II, is not collapsing — but it is being challenged, eroded, and supplemented by alternative institutions and rising powers. The world of the next generation will look different from the world of the last. How different — and how peacefully the transition happens — is the central strategic question of our time.
Fourth, that India's choices matter enormously. As the world's most populous country, a major economy, a nuclear power, and a democracy, India has the potential to shape the emerging order in profound ways. But potential is not power. India must build the economic, technological, and institutional capacity to translate its weight into influence. A billion people and a trillion-dollar economy are necessary conditions for great-power status. They are not sufficient conditions.
Fifth, that technology is the new battleground, and the stakes are higher than most people realize. The country that leads in AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, and biotechnology will have advantages that compound over decades — just as the country that led in industrial technology in the nineteenth century dominated the twentieth. India is far behind in this race. Catching up is not optional.
And finally, that the question asked at Bandung in 1955 — "who sits at the table?" — remains the most important question in international affairs. The table has gotten larger. More nations have a voice. But the chairs that matter — the chairs with veto power, with reserve currency status, with technological dominance — are still occupied by a very few. Whether the table can be expanded peacefully, or whether the excluded will eventually overturn it, depends on choices being made right now, by leaders and citizens in every country on earth.
"We do not inherit the world from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children." — Often attributed to Native American wisdom
The world order is not fixed. It is not permanent. It is not inevitable. It is a human construction, built by choices, sustained by power, and changed by those who have the courage and the capability to demand something different. The question is not whether the order will change. It always does. The question is whether we will have the wisdom to change it for the better — or whether we will repeat the old pattern of waiting for a catastrophe to force the change upon us.
The seats at the table are not reserved by right. They are earned — by economic strength, by institutional capacity, by technological leadership, and by the ability to offer the world something it needs. India has the potential to claim such a seat. Whether it does will depend not on destiny but on decisions — decisions about investment, education, technology, governance, and the kind of country India chooses to become.
That choice belongs to you.