The Power of Crisis:  How Three Threats – And Our Response – Will Change the World

by Ian Bremmer

Review by Dave Gamrath

One-liner:  In his 2022 book The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World, Eurasia Group’s President and Founder Ian Bremmer makes a strong argument that humankind had better learn to cooperate and work together, or else we might not be around much longer, as a culture, or as a species.

Book Review: 

In his 2022 book The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World, author Ian Bremmer writes that “there’s no guarantee our world will survive the next fifty years.”  Bremmer, as founder of the Eurasia Group, is a pretty credible guy.  So, what’s he talking about?

Bremmer writes that over the next decade, we will face three major crises, “each of which might do more damage to our species than any other crisis in history.”  These crises include a new global pandemic, unchecked climate change, and new, disruptive technologies.  History has shown that often it takes a crisis to bring people together, thus his book’s title, “The Power of Crisis.”  The world failed to meet this test with the Covid crisis.  Can we learn from this?  Can world leaders create a new international system to address all of these crises?  Bremmer believes it’s possible, but questions if we can move at the speed that these crises necessitate.  “Unless leaders of the world’s most important countries can build enough trust to work together on the threats we share, we will all suffer catastrophes.”

Bremmer details two current conflicts detrimental to global cooperation.  The first is America’s dysfunctional political system.  Americans now tend to think their most dangerous enemies are other Americans.  The US is the only country “that can project political, economic, cultural, and military power into every region of the world.  And it’s at war with itself.”  Bremmer writes that widening wealth gaps are driving our dysfunction, and that money in politics is making things worse.  Politicians are working to destroy American trust in media, and social media has worked to exacerbate suspicion and anger.  Unless America’s conservatives and progressives can “learn to cooperate just enough to renew the country’s strength,” America will be unable to lead global efforts to solve these crises.

Conflict between the US and China is the second great threat for needed global cooperation.  Bremmer writes that a new Cold War with China “would itself be a form of mutually assured destruction.”  A war between the US and China “will make effective global cooperation impossible.”  Bremmer writes extensively on China’s efforts at becoming an economic and political powerhouse, and their efforts to spread authoritarianism globally.  China’s massive investments in new technologies, including cyberweapons, is especially threatening.  But Bremmer writes that even though the US and China “won’t become allies anytime soon,” they “can step off the current collision course to become pragmatic partners.”  Due to our economies already being tied together, Bremmer writes that the US and China can’t live without each other.

It's not a matter of if, but when a new pandemic will engulf us.  “Scientists have discovered more than forty new lethal pathogens in the past half century that leapt from animals to humans,” and the pace of new discoveries is rising.  Bremmer writes that our Covid failure was “the inevitable breakdown in international governance created by a fragmented world order.”  Covid “produced far more finger-pointing than cooperation.”  Effective global pandemic response requires investment, moral imagination and political will.  Bremmer calls for a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness. 

Bremmer writes extensively about the catastrophic risks that we face from climate change, including severe impact on farming, and increased draught and flooding.  The lack of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people will lead to mass migration and tens of millions of “climate refugees.”   Climate change threatens our collective future, and will drive an untold number of species into extinction.  By 2070, nearly twenty percent of the earth’s surface will be too hot to support life.  Damage from climate change will be far greater and last far longer than another global pandemic, yet “world leaders have done extraordinarily little to prepare.”  Voters continue to prioritize “the economic needs of today over the climate needs of tomorrow.”  Again, surviving climate change necessitates world leaders working together, with cooperation, compromise and coordination.  Rich countries will need to absorb much of the cost.  Bremmer calls for two key new global institutions.  First is a World Carbon Organization, to discourage carbon emissions by making them more expensive.  Second, Bremmer calls for the international expansion of the Green New Deal into a global Green Marshall Plan.

Bremmer believes that new, disruptive technologies are the greatest threat facing humans.  These include automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, autonomous drones and cyberwarfare.  We will soon see mass replacement of humans with machines in the workplace, especially with white collar jobs.  “Entire economic sectors will disintegrate, and many forms of human labor will disappear.”  We will see rapid growth of disinformation and digital propaganda.   “Digital authoritarianism” will undermine democracy, with massive digital surveillance.  Bremmer writes that “the greatest risk that AI presents is the possibility that one country will develop an insurmountable lead in its development, an achievement that would allow it monopolistic control over the world order,” which seems an outcome unlikely to promote peaceful cooperation against a common crisis.  China currently has an advantage over the US with AI.

Bremmer writes how cyberwarfare has “leveled the playing field” with military weapons.  Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have already developed “offensive cyber-capabilities that cut deeply into US advantages.”  These weapons can be powerful enough to shut down a country’s critical infrastructure, yet can be kept hidden, making them especially dangerous.  The risk of falling behind with cyberweapons could lead to a preemptive strike, and even trigger World War III.  Arguably more likely, these new technologies could be the driver of a new Cold War.  To avoid this, again, countries need to cooperate.  Bremmer calls for a new World Data Organization to create international rules for data management, and an “annual UN Politics of Technology Summit.”  America’s goal should be not to “defeat” China, but to get China to work with the rest of the world. 

So, are things hopeless or can we establish “practical cooperation on a few important issues,” as Bremmer puts it?  Bremmer hopes we can, in that “given the stakes, if we fail, we won’t get another chance.”  I was impressed with Bremmer’s ability to succinctly define complex topics, and found his arguments compelling.  Hopefully global leaders will too. 

Reviewer Opinion:  Well written.

Reviewer Rating of Book:  Thumb up.