Much discussion of the emerging world order focuses on relationships among established and emerging Great Powers. There is breathless talk of a multipolar world in which Great Power consortia will organise and manage the world's affairs. Reality will be different. The evolving international order is less likely to be shaped by Great Power condominium than driven by in-between peoples and spaces in a nobody-in-charge world.

Of course big powers are important. The established powers must find new patterns of cooperation with emerging powers and engage them as responsible stakeholders in institutions and mechanisms needed to address common challenges. But this will be difficult and take time. A number of emerging powers either do not support or are not members of the basic institutions that underpin the open rules-based international system, nor do they agree with such basic principles of good governance as transparency, non-discrimination and accountability. The global financial crisis and recession have damaged the credibility of the US and Europe in this regard as well.

In the meantime, the rest of humanity moves on. If key powers focus inordinately on relations with other major capitals in a quest to forge a multipolar world order, a far different and far more dynamic world of challenges is likely to pass them by, sending them scrambling either to react to forces beyond their control or to respond to initiatives and roadblocks set out by coalitions of secondary but like-minded states and non-state actors.

The 20th century was an age of states. The big powers faced off in two World Wars and a Cold War. Security concerns focused on defending states from one another. Influence was measured by traditional attributes of state power. Decisions could be routed through major capitals. Today, the Great Powers are at peace. Alliances and axes built for an earlier age are struggling to maintain relevance and meaning. We live in a world of more fluid alignments. A host of unorthodox challenges has arisen that cannot be tackled by states, whether alone or together – no matter how big or great they may be.

The changing nature of conflict

Despite the global economic downturn, globalisation will continue. It has generated more intercontinental connections than perhaps ever before.1 Revolutions in science, technology, transportation and communications are improving lives and freeing minds. Millions have been lifted out of poverty. But globalisation has not brought struggle or conflict to an end. In fact, in many cases it has exacerbated them. Terrorism, organised crime, and radical ideologies continue to aggravate regional tensions and transnational threats and fuel competition and instability. Turbulence generated by failing states and ungoverned spaces intrudes continuously on the security of Great Powers. Conflicts that once might have remained local disputes now can have global impact. The threat of global nuclear war between major powers may have gone down, but the risk of a nuclear disaster has gone up. The technology and knowledge to make and deliver agents of mass destruction is proliferating among some of the most ruthless factions and regimes on earth. The ability of individuals and groups to employ destructive power will continue, as governments struggle to meet the challenge of stateless networks that move freely across borders.

Moreover, continents are connected in concern about depletion of non-renewable resources, degradation of regional biotopes providing renewable resources, destruction of rain forests and disruption caused by climate change. Even the most optimistic scenarios for emissions reductions to tackle climate change will require significant measures to cope with desertification, flooding, other catastrophic weather events, more frequent and more complex humanitarian crises, large-scale migration of people, and other related consequences. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2020, up to 250 million Africans could face starvation and malnutrition due to lack of fresh water supplies, lower crop yields and drought. The Nigerian delta offers a vivid illustration of the violence and poverty that can accompany resource exploitation and environmental degradation. Mega-delta regions throughout Asia will face huge geopolitical challenges from climate-induced migration.2 Major powers will neither be immune nor able to tackle such challenges on their own.

The very nature of conflict has changed: most conflicts today are waged within states, not between them. Between 1945 and 1999, approximately 3.3 million battle deaths occurred in 25 inter-state wars. By contrast, a conservative estimate of the total number of dead as a direct result of conflicts within states is 16.2 million – five times the inter-state toll. These intra-state wars occurred in more than one-third of the United Nations’ member states, often beyond the reach or immediate interest of the Great Powers. Furthermore, whereas wars between states tend to be short, wars within states tend to be long. Researchers have calculated that civil wars have an average duration of roughly six years. These conflicts not only cripple nations, they can set back entire regions. The failure to solve festering or so-called frozen conflicts creates pockets of lawlessness for terrorists, drug and human traffickers and money launderers.3

Unstable and ungoverned regions of the world, or governance that breaks when challenged, pose dangers for neighbours and can become the setting for broader problems of terrorism, migration, poverty and despair. Since the end of the Cold War, failed or failing states and ungoverned territories within otherwise viable states have become a more common international phenomenon. Many of the crises that have required intervention by international forces were produced by the collapse or absence of state authority. These ungoverned territories generate all manner of security problems, from civil conflict and humanitarian crises to piracy and refugee flows. Terrorists can use sanctuaries in the most remote and often ignored regions of the world to mount devastating attacks against major powers.4

Projecting stability

Rather than focus inordinately on schemes to construct a multipolar world, major capitals would do well to engage secondary states and non-state actors to address challenges posed by the lands between the poles. Wider Europe beyond the EU and NATO, for instance, is still beset with historical animosities and multiple crises within or on its borders, including a number of simmering conflicts that in some way affect all the countries of the region. Successes in this region – more effective democratic governance grounded in the rule of law, progress against corruption and trafficking, peaceful resolution of conflicts, secure energy production and transit, more confident and prosperous market economies – could resonate significantly across the post-Soviet space and into the broader Middle East. Failure to deal with the region's problems risks causing destabilizing competition and confrontation among regional actors and a number of major powers, festering separatist conflicts, greater transnational challenges and dysfunctional energy markets, the negative consequences of which could also spill into Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East.5 Many Western leaders remain reluctant to acknowledge that a turbulent Europe without walls and barriers requires vigorous efforts to project stability eastward so that instability does not flow westward. It would be a serious mistake to dismiss democratic regression and unresolved tensions in this region as issues of lower-order strategic import. Whenever the Great Powers have either ignored or clashed over the twilight zones of Europe, they have always ended up paying a high price.

The broader Middle East, stretching to southwest Asia, remains the region of the world where unsettled relationships, religious and territorial conflicts, impoverished societies, fragile and intolerant regimes and deadly combinations of technology and terror brew and bubble on top of one vast energy field upon which global prosperity depends. Choices made here could determine the shape of the 21st century: whether agents of mass destruction will be unleashed upon mass populations; whether the oil and gas fields of the Caucasus and Central Asia can become reliable energy sources; whether catastrophic terrorism can be prevented; whether Russia's borderlands can become stable and secure democracies; whether Israel and its neighbours can live in peace; whether millions of people can be lifted from pervasive poverty and hopelessness; and whether the great religions of the world can flourish together. Leadership transition will test key regional powers, and could trigger regime failure and instability, opening doors to clan, tribal and regional rivalries that may transcend state borders and lead to turmoil and violence. Significant and protracted instability could become the defining characteristic of Central Asia, including failed and failing states, radical Islamic movements, organised crime and trafficking in weapons, WMD materials and narcotics.

Across South Asia, state authority is being challenged by strong armed non-state actors, and in some areas such non-state actors have wrested authority away from the state. Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the Swat valley, parts of Balochistan, parts of India, such as Chattisgarh, Assam, Nagaland, Jammu and Kashmir, parts of Sri Lanka and Nepal – in all of these regions non-state actors have used violence to undermine the writ of the state, either to impose their own order or to leave wide swaths of ungoverned territory.6

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be a major supplier of oil, gas and other commodities to the Great Powers, yet remains vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, economic disruption, population stresses, civil conflict, corruption and failed governance. Many states lack the capacity to break up terror cells, thwart trafficking in arms, drugs or people, or provide domestic security. The Darfur crisis is a tragic reminder of the potential for local strife to affect millions. The stability of some regions of West Africa is being undermined by drugs coming from Latin America.

Despite the rise of Brazil and Latin America's broadening commercial relations with North America, Africa, Europe and Asia, some areas of the continent continue to be among the most violent in the world, due to the activities of drug trafficking organisations, criminal cartels and persistent weaknesses in governance and the rule of law.

Promoting resilience

The major powers cannot deal with these challenges alone, even if they were all to agree on what they could do together. But the prospect of agreement is low, given that they are competing with each other to establish influence and secure partners for their own political and commercial interests.

Moreover, in a world of fluid alignments and Great Power distractions, secondary powers are setting their own agendas. They are not waiting to fit into some supposed multilateral or multipolar order that the Great Powers will ‘shape’; they are creating their own alliances and coalitions while engaging the major powers in ways they believe can best advance their own interests. The result? Powerful states find themselves challenged by assertive coalitions of lesser states and non-state actors ready to stall or block negotiations until their interests are acknowledged, or scrambling to catch up with secondary states that press ahead with their own initiatives.7

Unfortunately, there is a growing mismatch between the scope and scale of global and regional challenges and the ability of either Great Powers or state-centric mechanisms to deal with them. As growing intercontinental interdependencies spawn new opportunities, they also generate new vulnerabilities along the interconnected arteries and nodes that support the movement of people, goods, services, capital, ideas and technology upon which most societies depend. As these interconnections widen and deepen, the vulnerability of societies in states – big and small – to breaks in these flows will increase. Mutual efforts are required to enhance the resilience of these networks and the critical functions of societies.

Today, countries are called to protect their connectedness, not just their territorial security, yet most of these connections are in the hands of the private sector. State-centric institutional links must give room to network-based solutions providing more effective interactions among governments, the private sector and non-governmental organisations. Solutions involving major powers alone, whether G20, G8, G2 or Gee Who, are inadequate to either the opportunities or challenges we face.

Many new challenges are stateless and network-centric. Yet government responses remain largely state-centric and are often caught in organisational stovepipes. Many businesses have moved from vertical hierarchies to flat structures and networked operations. Military planners have moved defence establishments to network-centric approaches. Foreign ministries and other agencies of government need to undergo a similar transformative process.

Some progress is being made. In a number of areas the rigid trappings of state-to-state diplomacy have given way, gradually and unevenly, to new forms of interaction among state and non-state actors. Beyond the glare of transatlantic squabbles, for instance, the US and its European allies have been forming their own complex, almost invisible and somewhat unconventional networks of cooperation that have become the foundation of joint efforts to freeze terrorist funds, toughen financial transparency measures, and impose sanctions on those not cooperating. National governments are linking with each other and with the private sector across the globe to tackle thorny issues such as money laundering, securities fraud and drug trafficking. International ‘non-organisations’ forged in the 1990s, such as the Financial Action Task Force, the Egmont Group, the Lyon Group, or more recent innovations such as the Proliferation Security Initiative or the Container Security Initiative, can make a difference by setting standards, mobilizing the like-minded, engaging key non-state actors and targeting nodes of criminal or terrorist activity.

Similar initiatives may be useful in other areas, for instance an international bio-security network linking public health authorities, medical laboratories and emergency responders to those charged with national security; or a Global Movement Management Initiative to align security and resilience with commercial imperatives in global movement systems, including shipping, air transport, and even the internet, and to provide mechanisms through which smaller actors can participate fully. Governance in each of these areas is characterised by the lack of a coordinated approach that can address networked risk.

Governments are finding that such networks can be fast, flexible, cheap and effective. They can lower the cost of collective action, engage relevant actors in and out of government, and enable large and disparate groups to organise and influence events faster and better than before. They can build capacities without building bureaucracies.

Of course, such approaches face the same challenge as efforts to forge more effective cooperation among established and emerging powers: key actors may not necessarily share the same sense of urgency about particular dangers or the same understanding of effective governance principles. Moreover, in areas such as cyber, governments are in fact scrambling to create their own networks to prey on those of other governments. Nonetheless, the new world rising will require coalitions ranging beyond the Great Powers and in fact ranging beyond traditional state action.