A FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Compulsively readable... An essential course in geopolitical
self-help' - Adam Tooze
'Full of fresh - and often surprising - ideas' - Niall Ferguson
'Extraordinary... One of those rare books that defines the terms of
our conversation about our times' - Michael Ignatieff
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. Rising tensions
in global politics are not a bump in the road - they are part of the
paving.
Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from
individuals on social media all the way up to full-blown war in eastern
Europe. 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 the theatre of conflict expands to include
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 the Facebook HQ and facial recognition labs in
China to meetings in presidential palaces and at remote military
installations. In seeking to understand the ways that globalisation 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.
