III. The problems of plenty

Abstract

The underlying structure, incentives and costs shaping international relations, state behaviour and the nature of power are profoundly different today to how they were in the past, in ways that are scarcely recognised and widely misunderstood. For much of history, world politics was marked by profound scarcity in resources, information and security. A series of historical revolutions has largely tamed this scarcity in ways few could have imagined. These revolutions, however, have generated new, potentially catastrophic challenges for the world – the problems of plenty.

In this Adelphi book, Francis J. Gavin argues that the institutions, practices, theories and policies that helped explain and largely tamed scarcity by generating massive prosperity, and which were sometimes used to justify punishing conquest, are often unsuitable for addressing the problems of plenty. Successful grand strategy in this new age of abundance requires new thinking. New conceptual lenses, innovative policies and processes, and transformed institutions will be essential for confronting and solving the problems of plenty, without undermining the expanding efforts against scarcity.

Notes

48 Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., ‘The Decline of War’, International Studies Review, vol. 15, no. 3, September 2013, pp. 396–419. No one disputes that the number of great-power wars has declined since 1945 nor that the percentage of people likely to die in war is historically low. There is argument over the causes of these trends, whether they will continue or reverse, and how broadly or narrowly to define war.

49 Emily Elhacham et al., ‘Global Human-made Mass Exceeds All Living Biomass’, Nature, vol. 588, no. 7838, December 2020, pp. 442–4, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-3010-5.

50 Martin McGuigan, ‘The 6th Mass Extinction Hasn’t Begun Yet, Study Claims, but Earth Is Barreling Toward It’, Live Science, 11 August 2022, https://www.livescience.com/sixth-mass-extinction-underway/.

51 Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman, Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2024), p. 17.

52 Margaret Osborne, ‘Carbon Dioxide Levels Now Higher Than Ever in Human History’, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 June 2022, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/carbon-dioxide-levels-now-higher-than-ever-in-human-history-180980229/.

53 Robert Lee Hotz and Timothy Puko, ‘Some Climate Change Effects May Be Irreversible, U.N. Panel Says’, Wall Street Journal, 9 August 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-climate-change-effects-may-be-irreversible-u-n-panel-report-says-11628496000.

54 Blake and Gilman, Children of a Modest Star, p. 108.

55 Pamela Falk, ‘Earth Just Had Its Hottest Summer on Record, U.N. Says, Warning “Climate Breakdown Has Begun”’, CBS News, 7 September 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hottest-summer-on-record-2023-un-says-climate-change-global-warming-data/.

56 Ian Livingston, ‘Hot-tub-like Persian Gulf Fuels 158-degree Heat Index in Iran’, Washington Post, 9 August 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/08/09/iran-persian-gulf-extreme-heat/.

57 Lee Hotz and Puko, ‘Some Climate Change Effects May Be Irreversible, U.N. Panel Says’.

58 Joshua M. Pearce and Richard Parncutt, ‘Quantifying Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Human Deaths to Guide Energy Policy’, Energies, vol. 16, no. 16, 2023, https://doi.org/10.3390/en16166074.

59 Ville Lähde, ‘The Polycrisis’, Aeon, 17 August 2023, https://aeon.co/essays/the-case-for-polycrisis-as-a-keyword-of-our-interconnected-times.

60 Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay, ‘Global Boiling’, The Polycrisis, 3 August 2023, https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/global-boiling/.

61 Joe Zadeh, ‘Concrete Built the Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It’, Noema Magazine, 6 December 2022, https://www.noemamag.com/concrete-built-the-modern-world-now-its-destroying-it/.

62 Ibid.

63 For suggestions on minimising these dangers, see Henry A. Kissinger and Graham Allison, ‘The Path to AI Arms Control: America and China Must Work Together to Avert Catastrophe’, Foreign Affairs, 13 October 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/henry-kissinger-path-artificial-intelligence-arms-control.

64 Arden Koehler and Benjamin Hilton, ‘Preventing Catastrophic Pandemics’, 80,000 Hours blog, April 2020, updated July 2022, https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/.

65 Fyodor Urnov et al., ‘Don’t Edit the Human Germ Line’, Nature, vol. 519, no. 7544, March 2015, pp. 410–11.

66 Trevor Johnston, Troy D. Smith and J. Luke Irwin, Additive Manufacturing in 2040: Powerful Enabler, Disruptive Threat (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE283.html.

67 Zia Qureshi, ‘Rising Inequality: A Major Issue of Our Time’, Brookings Institution, 16 May 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rising-inequality-a-major-issue-of-our-time/.

68 Blake and Gilman, Children of a Modest Star, p. 11.

69 Dirk Helbing, ‘Globally Networked Risks and How to Respond’, Nature, vol. 497, no. 7447, May 2013, pp. 51–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12047.

70 Henry A. Kissinger, ‘How the Enlightenment Ends’, The Atlantic, June 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/.

71 Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman, ‘The AI Power Paradox: Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence – Before It’s Too Late?’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/artificial-intelligence-power-paradox.

72 Joshua Rovner, ‘Information Overload and International Order’, unpublished memo for the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Workshop on World Order, Bologna, Italy, 13 October 2023.

73 Mackenzie and Sahay, ‘Global Boiling’.

74 ‘The Pandemic’s True Death Toll’, The Economist, 18 November 2023, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates.