Here we are a month and a half from the end of the decade, so I assume we are in for a tidal wave of not just 2019 retrospectives but 2010-2019 retrospectives. I am not too hopeful that we will ever pick a name for this decade, considering we have not even agreed on a name for the last one (I vote for the British entry, “the naughties”.) But anyway, “twenteens” is my humble proposal.
The first retrospective I have come across is from the podcast BackStory. This is a podcast where academic historians discuss current events, which I think is neat even though they sometimes try to make everything about race and gender when not everything is about race and gender. Anyway, I thought they might review some of the major geopolitical events of the decade, compare them to major geopolitical events of the past, and speculate on how we might view them in the future. But what they came up with was…social media. Well yeah, I guess the internet and our interactions with information and communication did continue to evolve in the past decade. I think one thing we have seen over the past decade is the democratization of propaganda – now anybody can try to confuse and misinform us, not just big governments and corporations.
Anyway, after I felt a little underwhelmed by that, I found myself needing to make a list of major geopolitical events and trends from the decade. Here is what I came up with.
- Evidence of accelerating ecological collapse, and some halting steps to do something about it. The Paris climate accord, followed by the US. backing out of the Paris climate accord. When we look back in a few decades, the Paris accord could be seen as a turning point where the world started to come together and address a problem. Maybe we look back and see that we built on these first steps and ultimately succeeded, or maybe we look back on this as the only time we tried, and ultimately failed. Of course, global warming and sea level rise are not the only ecological issues we face. The most shocking stories I have read recently are about the sheer magnitude of the losses in natural habitats and animals, from insects to birds to mammals. A big chunk of what the planet had has vanished in a matter of decades, and the trend is snowballing.
- Events in the greater Middle East. The initial hope of the “Arab Spring” followed by the grind of brutal and ongoing conflicts across the region, including the Syrian civil war and Yemen and U.S. military involvement across the entire region from Africa to Afghanistan. The Osama bin Laden assassination. The U.S. nuclear deal with Iran, followed by the U.S. backing out of the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. The Iran-Russia axis vs. the U.S.-Israel-Saudi Arabia-UAE(-Pakistan?) axis. The weird Saudi Arabia-Qatar spat. The fraying of the U.S.-Turkey alliance. Renewed protests in Iraq and elsewhere at the end of the decade.
- Nuclear proliferation and rearmament. The U.S. and Russia abandoning decades of treaties and gradual progress toward risk reduction. The never-ending Iran-Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan-India sagas.
- Evaporation of the UN and international cooperation in general. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 1991, it went to the UN security council and got approval to march across the borders of a sovereign UN member state. I naively thought that would be the new normal in post-Cold War conflicts. In the past decade, that has completely gone away with little or no consequences. The U.S. and Russia are in Syria, a sovereign UN member state, with no consequences. Russia is in Ukraine, a sovereign UN member state, with no consequences. So being a sovereign UN member state seems to offer no protection against invasion by a more powerful neighbor, and powerful countries don’t feel the need to consult the UN before invading a neighbor. It seems to me that this is a huge change in international norms over the past decade that could really raise the risk of a major war in the future. (By the way, Bernie Sanders is the only U.S. presidential candidate I have heard even mention reengaging with the UN.)
- A decade without a world war, nuclear war, global pandemic, famine, or severe economic depression. Because we shouldn’t take any of this for granted, and hey I wanted to end on a high note.