For the last decade or so, international politics has been characterized by three trends: Emerging powers like China and India were not keen on upsetting the current world order. Quite the contrary, they were happy to get a free ride on it, while the US took the lead on global issues. Second, the world was seen as unipolar. Third, the period was an unusually benign moment in international relations. Relations between the major powers were not a zero sum game. There was some optimism that a globalizing world would make traditional balance-of-power politics, at best, be a sideshow, made more stable by the sinews of economic interdependence. Will these trends continue in the future?
In a way, countries like China, India and Russia should now take on more global responsibilities. But they will probably hesitate for four reasons: First, although they want a seat at the big table, they are unsure of the kind of world order they want. Their position on major deadlocks like the legitimacy of nuclear weapons, global warming and UN reform is still evolving. It is still very much driven by separate desires to maximize their own short-term advantage rather than create a rule-bound international order. Second, while China had some leverage in a crisis situation like North Korea, it is not clear anyone can have an analogous influence over the next likely crisis: Iran. And third, they can still continue to ride free. One suspects that leaders in Asia or Russia are not losing sleep over Iran the way the US is, with troops stationed in neighboring Iraq. Therefore it is not immediately clear what role they can play in evolving a stable world order.