The United States, once the world’s undisputed superpower, is losing its dominant position. Rising economies like China and India increasingly exert their influence, the West’s share of global GDP consistently declines—and America’s rules-based system risks becoming irrelevant. In business, competition brings efficiency, balance and innovation. But in the marketplace for global power, things look rather different.
Acclaimed economist Eswar S. Prasad argues that the very forces expected to stabilise the world order are fuelling disarray. Instead of promoting shared prosperity, globalisation has deepened inequality in many countries, stoked political backlash and prompted escalating trade wars. Economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization, founded to foster cooperation, have failed to adapt to twenty-first–century realities. The ascent of ‘middle powers’ like South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia once suggested a stable multipolar future; but today, such economies are forced to pick sides in an intensifying US–China struggle for hegemony.
In clear-eyed, bracing prose, Prasad contends that we are caught in a destructive feedback loop between economics, domestic politics and geopolitics. As instability becomes the status quo, we need radical new solutions to reinvigorate the world economy, prioritise common aspirations—and reverse our downward spiral into disaster.