I inaugurate this new series of columns in a new year and a new beginning for Brazil with the inauguration of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. His well-wishers poured out across the country in a revival of hope for Brazil after four years of disastrous rule under his right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who fled Brazil for Florida on the eve of Lula’s inauguration.
Bolsonaro left behind a mob that rampaged government office buildings before being arrested in large numbers by the police.
The mob tactics are unlikely to stop Lula, and they would not have a long-term effect in the US, where former US president Donald Trump’s similar maneuvers on Jan. 6, 2021, were also shut down. In both cases, demagogic politicians used social media to rile up a mob, and in both cases, the mob was put down within the day.
The real issue is not the mob, but the deeper changes in the world that are generating growing tensions in world politics and economy. The deep changes cannot and would not be stopped by mobs. The challenge is to understand the deeper changes at play so that they can be managed for the common good. Such an understanding is the aim of my future columns.
The biggest turmoil is geopolitical. We no longer live in a US-led world, nor in a world divided between the US and its rival, China. We have entered a multipolar world in which each region has its own issues and role in global politics. No country and no single region can determine the fate of others. This is a complex and noisy environment — with no country, region or alliance in charge of the rest.
One reason why Lula’s return to the presidency is so consequential is that Brazil is likely to be a key regional and global actor. Lula would work closely with like-minded progressive presidents in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and elsewhere in South America.
Brazil would also hold the presidency of the G20 next year, part of a four-year run in which major emerging economies hold the G20 presidency — Indonesia last year, India this year and South Africa in 2025.
The management of a multipolar world is fraught with difficulties. We urgently need more dialogue with other countries, and to move beyond the simplistic propaganda of our governments. The West is bombarded daily with ridiculous official narratives, most originating from Washington: Russia is pure evil, China is the greatest threat to the world and only NATO can save us.
These naive stories, endlessly spun out by the US Department of State, are a great hindrance to global problem-solving. They trap people in false mindsets, and even in wars that should never have occurred and which must be stopped by negotiation rather than escalation.
When the reality of this multipolar world is accepted, we can finally solve problems that have so far eluded us. First, we can understand that military alliances such as NATO offer no answers to the real challenges.
Military alliances are a dangerous anachronism, not a true source of national or regional security. It was, after all, the US attempt to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine that triggered the wars in Georgia (in 2010) and in Ukraine (2014 until today). Nor did the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999, the 15-year failed mission in Afghanistan or the bombing of Libya in 2011 accomplish any real objectives.
China is not the grave threat that is portrayed in the West. The US tries to pretend that it is still a US-led world, and that China is a dangerous pretender that must be stopped.
However, the reality is different. China is an ancient civilization of 1.4 billion people — about one in five people in the world — that also aims for high living standards and technological excellence. Global problems cannot be solved by vainly trying to “contain” China, but they can be by trading, cooperating and also competing economically with China.
Other great global challenges lie elsewhere: the deep dangers of environmental catastrophe; rising inequalities; and the onrush of new technologies that can disrupt the world if they are not properly harnessed and controlled.
Brazil is the epicenter of the environmental challenge. Can the Amazon rainforest, which constitutes half of the world’s rainforests, be saved? Lula came to power promising to do just this. He won the vote of the Amazon states of Brazil.
Globally, Europe is in the environmental lead with the European Green Deal. Europe’s main geopolitical opportunity is to encourage other regions, including the African Union, China, India, the Americas and others, to adopt their own bold green deals. That is a far better task for Europe than expanding NATO, fighting an endless war in Ukraine, or confronting China.
Brazil is also an epicenter of inequality, with one of the highest degrees of inequality in the world. That inequality was originally created by European imperialism that suppressed indigenous peoples and enslaved millions of Africans. Their descendants continue to pay the price. Social justice is Lula’s calling, and a global calling, after centuries of racial and social injustice.
Brazil can also be an epicenter of new technologies. For example, a leader in the new bioeconomy in which the wonders of the Amazon’s and Brazil’s biodiversity are not destroyed for more cattle ranches, but is instead used to produce new life-saving medicines, nutritious foodstuffs or advanced biofuels for green aviation.
Technological change is perhaps the deepest driver of global change. New technologies are needed to confront the crises of climate change, hunger, education and health.
However, people also suffer when new digital technologies are misused, such as to mobilize mobs or produce killer drones in Ukraine. Advanced biotechnology might have even created the virus that causes COVID-19 — it is still unknown. Every day we confront the disruptions and inequalities caused by artificial intelligence, robotics and the rapid overturning of jobs.
The confluence of global change, disruption and danger is astounding. Solutions lie in understanding, cooperation and problem-solving. A better understanding of the New World Economy is the aim of this column in the months ahead.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The views expressed in this column are his own.
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