VISION

Opinion

A New New
World Order About the writer
Parag Khanna is Director of the Global
By Parag Khanna Governance Initiative of the American
Strategy Program at the New America
The emerging geopolitical and in diplomacy, but also cities, companies, Foundation. He is author of the
economic consensus is that the NGOs, religious groups, universities, trade international bestsellers How to Run
21st century will no longer be unions and others. the World: Charting a Course to the Next
dominated by nations such as This “New New World Order” actually Renaissance (2011) and The Second
America, Brazil and China, but, greatly resembles the Middle Ages of a World: Empires and Influence in the New
instead, by so-called global millennium ago. The Middle Ages was not Global Order (2008). In 2008, Khanna
cities such as Dubai only the time of Arab and Islamic glory, was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most
but also an age when cities, not states, Influential People of the 21st Century,”
When I was a young boy growing up in the dominated the world – and the webs of and one of 15 individuals featured in
UAE, we used to take long family drives in commerce they spun manifested in the Wired US magazine’s “Smart List”
our long blue Buick sedan from Abu Dhabi great Silk Roads traversed by Ibn Battuta
all the way to Khorfakkan to lay on the and Marco Polo.
beach by the sea. Sometimes there wasn’t Fast-forward one thousand years and
another car for miles. Along the way, Dubai is the 21st-century Venice, a “free
we would stop so I could climb up the zone” that efficiently re-exports the
sand dunes and tumble down under the world’s goods, confidently sitting at the
glaring sun. crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Today the same drive would reveal that, We now call the deepening trade routes
rather than cities growing in isolation, between the Gulf and Far East the “New
they are beginning to merge, both meta- Maritime Silk Road”. No matter who is
phorically and physically. Abu Dhabi and up or down, Dubai wins. When traffic
Dubai are reaching outward towards each between New York and Dubai dried up due
other, with Jebel Ali rapidly expanding in to the 2008 financial crisis, Emirates Airline
between. The emirates’ sandy coastline rerouted its Airbus A380 planes to Toronto,
is quickly being transformed into one whose banking system survived in better
long urban seafront necklace, a pulsing shape. Fortunately for a New Yorker like me,
reminder of the growing clout of the the A380 has resumed service to JFK.
country and region as a whole. Instead of But it is Dubai’s Terminal 3 that may
a rivalry between the capital Abu Dhabi well be the world’s most cosmopolitan
and the commercial entrepôt of Dubai, we building or the single most connected
now talk of “Abu Dubai”. node in the physical centre of the world, ‘Dubai is the 21st-century
This emerging global landscape in which constantly buzzing with the languages
cities are the dynamic drivers of economic of all the world’s civilisations. The Dubai I
Venice, a ‘free zone’ that
growth and innovation, and the locus of remember was and is ever more a melting efficiently re-exports the
political power and authority, is what I pot of peoples from all over the world.
call the “New New World Order”. When US From Emiratis to Western and Eastern
world’s goods, confidently
President George HW Bush addressed the expatriates, people have voted with their sitting at the crossroads of
United Nations two decades ago at the feet, and the time horizons for which they
end of the Cold War, he spoke of a “New plan to stay in Dubai is getting longer
Europe, Africa, and Asia.
World Order”. But the implicit assump- and longer. For this reason, Dubai’s multi- We now call the deepening
tions of the time – that America would national composition today makes it
be the world’s only superpower and that perhaps a leading experiment in moving
trade routes between
diplomacy would be channelled through beyond notions of citizenship to “stake- the Gulf and Far East
multilateral institutions like the United holdership”: responding to the ambitions
Nations – have been turned on their head. of all manner of residents who see their
the ‘“New Maritime Silk
Suddenly the world has multiple super- future in the bustling emirate. VRoad”. No matter who is
powers, including the European Union and Read more about Dubai’s status as a global
China, and nations aren’t the only players city in our Special Report on page 20
up or down, Dubai wins’

18 / Fresh Perspectives on Dubai