Let not us bother with Guyana for the moment: it was severely compromised by the previous American regime and unwilling to make political space for itself it must now lock-step with the will of the present international overlords. As such, it is worthwhile that we try to decipher the trends in the world today to authentically grasp our tomorrow.
It is one thing walking into high-stakes global negotiations as a leader of a grouping representing over 50% of global GDP, the highest levels of military, scientific/technological development, an incomparable level of soft power resulting from your commitment to human freedom, democratic values and equity, when your closest rival has only recently arrived at 21% of global GDP, with science/technology yet to match yours, and an infinitesimal level of soft power. It is, however, quite another matter confronting that closest rival with 30% of global GDP and a diminishing level of soft power, even if one is still, for the time being, the world’s military, scientific and technological leader.
It does not take much to see that without its allies, the United States of America is not nearly as powerful as some of its leaders claim it to be, and if there was still any doubt, this difference is clearly demonstrated by what is at present taking place in the Strait of Hormuz.
Firstly, if the US government ‘felt’ it had to convince allies that its approach was correct, it would have behaved more cautiously, whether or not it finally won all their support. Secondly, if it knew its allies were on board – regardless how tentatively – the Iranians would have been significantly more respectful of US power.
Of course, this kind of allied power comes at a cost that should be equitably distributed. It is also true that the notions of state sovereignty and equitability are still substantially conceptual, but they do provide universal aspirational markers against which regimes are usually judged, matters not how indefinite.
It appears to me that a powerful moral and actual global reach is indispensable if, in general terms, our world is to be optimally managed, and small states such as Guyana play some meaningful part in what constitutes their destiny. As I write, it appears that this is not the time to contemplate state anarchy, for our common destiny looks even more precarious!
A post is currently trending that suggests that there is at present a 10% certainty that AI (artificial intelligence) will kill all of us by 2030 unless governments come together and ‘collaborate’ on a new multinational treaty for the safe development of AI. ‘Unless governments take these warnings seriously enough and step up to it, the pace of development could mean that we end up with problems before we’ve started to look at whether it is an issue for us or not’ (www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgwy1k42w4o).
The Financial Times has reported that Anthropic (an American AI public corporation) has declined to comment on why it has withheld its latest AI model from the UK’s AI Security Institute, one of the leading bodies in the world for assessing AI risk.
I have argued many a time in this column that liberal political democracy is merely a natural first stage in the development of human freedom. US President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) noted that: ‘There can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching economic democracy’ (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/ 08/01/2025). Until then, there will be a continued many-sided struggle between capital and labour.
Liberal democracy is the outcome of largely autocratic, monarchical, contexts, some of which persist today. On the other hand, though wrongly framed by Vladimir Lenin and his associates as consisting of some kind of vanguard party dictatorship, communism and the entire cold war period and its remnants can be categorised as one contesting episode.
That is why, as we consider the inequalities that have developed in the world today, the famous 18th century French revolutionary motto ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’ (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) and the late 19th century American coinage of ‘robber baron’ resonate. The latter term was applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. ‘Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors, and to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market. The term combines the sense of criminal (“robber”) and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist).
President Roosevelt cracked down on the super-rich and his ‘square deal’ domestic programme ‘instituted 44 antitrust suits against big business, mandated safer conditions for miners, passed the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act (creating the FDA), eliminated the “spoils system” in federal hiring, broke up railroad monopolies, regulated the US’s biggest oil company and 146 indictments were brought against a bribery ring involving Oregon’s public forests, resulting in the conviction and imprisonment of a sitting US senator and fellow Republican senator John Hipple Mitchell’ (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/ 08/01/2025).
Inequality has been a perennial source of tension within liberal democracies, and at the heart of the rightist backlash that is taking place in the Western world today is the issue of how to deal with the levels of inequality that have materialised with globalisation. In 2024, Oxfam International estimated that the richest 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the world’s population. This is massively morally inequitable and environmentally unsustainable. It appears to me that the global commons cannot be optimally managed without strong rule-based international governance.
Many of the billionaires in liberal democratic countries are aware of this and assess that a political backlash such as that which led to the French revolution and the New Deal in the USA is fermenting with the growing contemporary support for notions like socialism. They have deliberately set about weakening the rule-based global order by latching on to and financially backing all manner of extremist nationalist and racist causes in the hope of destroying and then stymieing the development of a strong rule-based international order.
This is not the time to slink away and leave the global commons to be ravaged by the new robber barons and the traditional dictatorial/oligarchic types such as those in Guyana, who have already seen much value in a severely weakened international rule-based order.
Here it might be useful to note that it was the West that supported the rise of China within the global capitalist system, believing that such an attachment would automatically lead to a growing relatively wealthy middle class that would demand liberal democratic freedoms and China gradually becoming a member of the liberal democratic global order.
Unfortunately, economically, China has grown exponentially but has maintained its autocratic mode of governance. But it does appear that it is at present in a bit of a bind and may best weather the storm, particularly as it relates to any global hegemonic ambitions, if a strong Western led rule-based order does not exist.
It is argued that generally global trade imbalances are at present extremely large, and the coming adjustment is likely to be very difficult. ‘China looks the most vulnerable. Its debt burden is already among the world’s highest; the country has experienced perhaps the fastest increase in debt relative to GDP in history.
Using the IMF’s augmented definition, China’s general government debt is an estimated 124 per cent of GDP once off-budget local obligations are counted, while total non-financial debt stands well above 300 per cent (https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/09/20/chinas-debt-reckoning/). It has every incentive to maintain the largest possible trade surplus for as long as it can, allowing excess production to be absorbed abroad rather than forcing a sharp contraction in domestic production and employment.’(www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/06/29/)
