Long read: The Coming Entropy Of Our World Order

Parag Khanna is a popular speaker in the conference circuit in Asia’s major financial centres. In this piece, he shares his take on what sort of world will emerge in the wake of America’s decline as a great power. He begins by saying that we should NOT use the present or the post-World War II world as a model for the future that we will have to deal with:

“…the grander the vision, the further it likely lies from reality. Theories that inaccurately observe the present will inevitably fall short in predicting the future. This goes both for proponents of American hegemony as well as those aping the “return of great power rivalry” meme.”

Instead, Mr Khanna reckons we will be living in a world characterised by “entropy”:

“…the most accurate description of today’s world is high entropy, in which energy is dissipating rapidly and even chaotically through the global system. In physics, entropy is embodied in the Second Law of Thermodynamics (pithily summed up in a Woody Allen film as: “Sooner or later, everything turns to shit”). Entropy denotes disorder and a lack of coherence.

Robert Kaplan’s famous thesis of “The Coming Anarchy” three decades ago strongly aligns with the entropy mega-trend. Indeed, Kaplan memorably captured the decay underway, particularly in the “global south,” and the failed attempts by the post-Cold War West to sustain order in those regions.

Covid, supply chain shocks, inflation, corruption and climate volatility have all conspired to uphold his thesis alarmingly well: Swathes of Latin America, Africa and the Near East exhibit neither functional domestic authority nor regional coherence.”

In case you are worried that much of the above sounds like chaos, Mr Khanna reassures you that “entropy is not anarchy”. Instead, it is:

“a systemic property that manifests itself as a growing number of states and other actors seize the tools of power, whether military, financial or technological, and exercise agency within the system. There is still no consensus as to what to name the post-Cold War era, but its defining characteristic is clear: radical entropy at every level and in every domain of global life…

In global politics, entropy is captured by the term devolution, the transfer or surrender of power toward ever more local levels of authority.”

There are four interesting takeaways from Mr Khanna’s mental model. The first is the usual takeaway that is now trotted out in the newspapers on a daily basis, namely, in the Trumpian world, it is every nation for itself. Not just China and India but even lesser powers like Saudi and Brazil are trying to cut deals for themselves. In fact, even the Pakistanis are at it.

The more interesting takeaway is that even within nations, entropy is setting in as the Centre weakens and regional chieftains wrest power for themselves. Think of a second rung politician like Nigel Farage in the UK or the chief ministers of the larger Indian states like TamilNadu, Bengal or Andhra each of whom is trying to cut deals for their state.

Why is this happening? Mr Khanna says: “In global politics, entropy is captured by the term devolution, the transfer or surrender of power toward ever more local levels of authority.”

The third takeaway is that deals and alliances have little or no meaning in this sort of opportunistic world. This applies not just on a cross-border basis; it also applies to every region inside a country (think of the ruling coalition in Maharashtra). It is not just every country for itself; it is every man for himself every minute of every day.

The fourth and final takeaway is that in such a world there are no friends and no enemies as is evidenced by India’s increasingly fluid relationship with China and USA amongst others. One minute the powers that be in India are condemning the Chinese for helping the Pakistanis shoot down Indian jets. The next minute our PM is in China hugging Xi. Similar, acrobatics are being performed by other heads of state on a daily basis:

“Other powers once reliably in the Western camp are now confidently playing the multi-alignment game, whether from positions of strength or weakness. Saudi Arabia is riding the oil price surge to spread its wings globally and cut new energy and weapons deals with Russia, China and India. Turkey’s economy is in dire straits, but even as it alienates Europe, it can still rely on strategic investment from the United Arab Emirates, its membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and tap Russia and China to build its next nuclear power plants. Soon it plans to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a move sure to make heads spin in Brussels…

This is the reality of regional systems, overlapping spheres of influence, and ascending powers willing to say yes or no as it suits them….

In nearly every sphere or endeavor, the world has moved from a presumed monopoly to an active marketplace in which anyone with the capacity can offer their supply to meet another’s demand….

Geography is being reprogrammed before our eyes as the world devolves into a networked archipelago of functional hubs with varying degrees of control over hinterlands near and far.”

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