We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart.
In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting.
Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to nation-states in entrenched stand-offs. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change or pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as overseas troops are replaced by sanctions, cyberwar and the threat of large migrant flows.
As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard has been inside many of the rooms where our futures, at every level of society, are being decided - from Facebook HQ and facial-recognition labs in China to presidential palaces and remote military installations. In seeking to understand the ways in which globalization has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, Leonard explores how we might wrest a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.
We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart.
In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting.
Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to nation-states in entrenched stand-offs. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change or pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as overseas troops are replaced by sanctions, cyberwar and the threat of large migrant flows.
As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard has been inside many of the rooms where our futures, at every level of society, are being decided - from Facebook HQ and facial-recognition labs in China to presidential palaces and remote military installations. In seeking to understand the ways in which globalization has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, Leonard explores how we might wrest a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.
Mark Leonard is the Director and Co-Founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a council of 300 European leaders including serving and former presidents, prime ministers, economics and foreign ministers, and the author of Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century (2005) and What Does China Think? (2008). He lives in London and Berlin.
The "age of unpeace" [is] an apt phrase for an era in which wars
between states are uncommon but conflict is endemic... Leonard
adroitly captures evolving trends in geopolitics over the past
decade... Leonard's argument is all the more compelling because of
the way his own beliefs have evolved.
*New Statesman*
Thought-provoking... If Leonard is right, then every trade deal or
every new technology that brings people closer will also make the
world a more dangerous place.
*Irish Times*
Leonard is a creative and well-connected thinker, and his timely,
insightful book is useful for its explanations of the differing
ideological viewpoints found in Beijing, Brussels and Washington,
with an interesting section on Chinese thinkers in particular. Just
as important, he explains why the conflicts in our global era
remain so different from those in the cold war, in particular given
the role being played by new technologies from quantum computing to
machine learning as a new focus for geopolitical contestation.
*Financial Times*
Mark Leonard... has been a force in foreign policy thinking for a
quarter century... rich in data and anecdote... If you're feeling
intellectually disoriented after the fall of Kabul, start here.
*Matthew d'Ancona, Tortoise*
Compulsively readable, Mark Leonard's globe-trotting book not only
offers us a fascinating and disturbing panorama, it redefines
realism for an age of massive and toxic connectivity. Rather than
fleeing into anachronistic visions of grand architecture and Cold
War rhetoric, it demands that we face our actual problem. An
essential course in geopolitical self-help.
*Adam Tooze, author of Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises
Changed the World*
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
