A Quantum Global Order

To many of us, it seems that the familiar global order based on national self-interest, conflict, competition, and zero-sum solutions to challenges and disputes is breaking down. The cost of conflict, in terms of lives and mass destruction of infrastructure, is now too great. Any military conflict between super-powers today poses an existential threat to all, perhaps to the very existence of human civilization itself. It is also the case that the very concept of “national independence” makes no sense in a boundaryless, “zero distance” world of entangled interdependence. And the six or seven great and impending crises threatening today’s world order, and perhaps all civilization, are global problems, requiring global cooperation. I see the material presented in this book, based on the RenDanHeyi model, as suggesting a very different kind of, multi-polar, regional global order based on mutual purpose and shared interest, basic universal values, cooperation, and win–win solutions. What Xi Jin Ping has described (whether sincerely or not) as a networked “community of shared futures” cooperating for the good of all in a global system. The chapter will look at two existing, smaller scale models of such system: The European Union, and China’s “Belt & Road” infrastructure project.