A Quarter into the Twenty-First Century: From Promise to Peril

As the world enters the second quarter of the twenty-first century, it appears more perilous than its first quarter. In the late twentieth century, many imagined the new century with hope: a new century for a new world. At that time, few could have foreseen the phenomenal advance in digital technology, which has proved to be a great advantage for humanity, almost beyond the horizon of contemporary imagination.

That period was also marked by an unmistakable movement towards greater freedom. Iron curtains and other barriers were being dismantled; walls were coming down, and borders were becoming less forbidding. The world was moving towards greater integration and shared prosperity. A landmark moment in this historical trajectory can be identified: Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech in Vladivostok in 1986. From that point onward, however, the world today appears to have returned to square one, perhaps even worse, notwithstanding the great technological gains of the era and humanity’s unprecedented capacity to overcome, or at least substantially reduce, distances among itself.

In that earlier phase, realism in international relations was still wrapped in certain values, and power politics was at least accompanied by proclamations of idealism. What we witness now is a crass display of naked power, unembellished and unapologetic, shaping global affairs. The cumulative human effort to make the world more responsible to itself seems to have come to nought. A genuine promise of cooperative internationalism was rebuffed and ultimately thwarted.

This is, therefore, a moment for serious introspection about the ideas, institutions, and people who have failed the world. In my view, no one can claim innocence: the so-regarded lowliest individuals influence the so-regarded events at the summits, and the most seemingly innocuous conversations and actions of ordinary people carry consequences far beyond their immediate contexts. If the twenty-first century is not to be surrendered to cynicism, coercion, and conflict, it must be reclaimed consciously. The task before humanity is not merely to diagnose failure, but to rethink and renew the moral and institutional foundations of global order itself.

Niraj Kumar Jha