Who will lead the new world?

The question posed in the title of this essay needs to explained before an answer - or answers - are attempted. The world in which we live in the third decade of the 21st century is new and changing rapidly. That is happening in part because of the enormous demographic transformation occurring all around the globe. Most developed countries as well as China have seen sharp declines in the rates of growth in their populations. Many have rapidly aging populations. This has resulted in the migration of people from the populous south to the demographically stressed north. This has reversed the demographic trend that in the 18th and 19th centuries peopled what came to be called the New World. However, demographic change is paid little attention in the literature on the changing world.

Also, unlike in the immediate post Second World War, there is no clear leader - a nation or a person - to which the world can look for guidance. Then the United States was the clear leader. Although it entered the war after some hesitation, once it was in the conflict it fought hard and spent enormous amounts of resources not only to send in a large force into first the European and then the Asian conflict. It also provided significant amounts of financial help to other nations who were fighting Germany, Italy and Japan. The first two were called the 'Axis Powers'.

Once the war was over, the Americans could have established themselves as the clear leaders, laying down the rules pf governance that would be followed by the rest of the world. Instead of going that route, Washington chose to become the leading partner in a universal arrangement that included both the winners and losers of the great war. New organisations were founded that required their members to follow clearly spelled-out rules.

The United Nations Organization as well as the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and what eventually became the World Bank Group opened their doors to all the nations that wished to join them. The IMF was designed to stabilise the financial system that had emerged after the war while the International Bank for Reconstruction , or the IBRD, was designed to provide the badly needed capital the war-torn European nations needed to rebuild their destroyed economies. The IBRD was to become the World Bank Group which raised funds in the capital markets to provide development finance needed by dozens of countries that gained independence with the withdrawal of colonial Europe from...