What to read to understand international relations
Five books that explain the forces shaping geopolitics
“THE WORLD today is undergoing great changes, the likes of which we have not seen for 100 years.” This observation by Xi Jinping, China’s president, may exaggerate, but he is surely right that international relations are changing more now than at any time since the second world war. The “unipolar moment” of 1990-2010, when America had no rivals, is over. China presents a military, economic and technological challenge more pervasive than that mounted by the Soviet Union. In some ways the world is reverting to the disorder of the cold war, except that, unlike the Soviet Union, China does not champion, or even believe in, universal values. The two sides trade far more than the cold-war antagonists did. Countries allied to neither, such as Brazil, India and Saudi Arabia, are playing more important roles than during the cold war.
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