►►The world is facing a dark hour of global leadership in decades, as major countries fail to respond effectively to mounting crises and global disorder, said a Xinhua think tank report released on Thursday.
JOHANNESBURG-The stability of the international order depends on the institutional authority and moral legitimacy of leading powers. One of the fundamental principles governing the modern international order is that major countries are expected to play a leading role, said the report titled « Jointly Building a New Model of Global Leadership — Work Together in Pursuit of a More Just and Rational Global Governance System, » released by Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with Xinhua News Agency.
To this end, major countries should possess « the virtue of compromise » and « the spirit of giving » and, as the British political scholar Hedley Bull put it, must « meet the demands for certain just changes in the world, » said the report.
Yet, at a time when the world is beset by multiple crises and responsible major country leadership is most expected, what has emerged instead is a spectacle of great power dereliction of duty and violation of norms, it added.
From the UN system to the Bretton Woods institutions, the United States played a leading role in constructing the post-WWII international order. However, amid the surge of various « -isms » — populism, conservatism, racism and exclusivism — the United States is now « abandoning the very world it created » and continuing to unleash destructive forces, said the report.
The surge of « America First » and the MAGA movement is rooted in the deep-seated political and economic contradictions in the United States itself, the report noted.
From a politico-economic perspective, the global leadership deficit is a product of the contemporary world’s exposure to two layers of dual tension: One is the tension between the surge of contemporary crises and the shrinking capacity for governance; the other is the tension between the world’s economic base and its superstructure, it added.
By Xinhua
