Regionalisation of the World
№43 Regionalisation and Chaos in Interdependent World: Global Context by the Beginning of 2016
#43_Valdai paper_Regionalisation and Chaos in Interdependent World
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The author sums up the development of the main trends in the global context of 2015, analyzing them through the prism of order and chaos ratio, noting the growing non-linearity and contrast of global development.

According to him, in the beginning of 2016 the chaos began to prevail over of the order, and political/geopolitical considerations - over the economy in terms of determining the behavior of states.

As a result, the world is increasingly reminiscent of the period before the First World War, with its split into opposing but economically related blocs. The difference between that period and the current one, as the author says, is the presence of nuclear weapons and much greater global interdependence that keeps the world from a new world catastrophe.

Among major political trends of the global environment in the beginning of 2016 the author names the return of great power rivalry over key rules of the world order (in 2015 a new "front" of such struggle became Syria); strengthening of the military force role and political factors in determining the behavior of states; and further emancipation of regional powers who began to behave in 2015 particularly defiantly, at times throwing a direct challenge to the global centers of power.

General control over the global environment by great powers continued to decline. According to the author, in the economic sphere the main trend in 2015 is a turn in the direction of regional and macro-regional instruments of global economic governance, reflected in the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and the Memorandum of cooperation between the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt project.

About the author:

Dmitry Suslov is Director of the Valdai Discussion Club Program “Globalisation and Regionalisation: How the Global Environment Changes”