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eports about the death of the state amongst international relations scholars seem premature just yet. In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. By 2050, forty percent of the planet’s population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates: polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, diversity, and complexity.

Modern statecraft has attempted to adapt to the challenges of globalization, interdependency, and population increase, bringing piling responsibilities to the states. How can superstates manage the burden of their growing scale? Can such states be effectively governed at all? Looking at other model modern states offers only an incomplete picture; however, while there is not much experience to be drawn from today, empires may offer a guide.

Alasdair Roberts, professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, likens these superstates to the empires of the past. After all, it was the age of empires that gave way to the age of states, and later the hybrid polity superstates. In the coming decades, the least populous superstate, the U.S., will contain as many people as the vast British Empire did at its peak in 1914.

Roberts first attempts to decipher the nature of this ongoing experimentin light of new dilemmas of governance. He argues that, for the most part, superstates wrestle with the same problems of leadership, control, and creed that plagued empires for centuries. Yet, there are no simple solutions.

Could superstates be more durable? What are the pros and cons of a superstate in comparison to an empire? A postulate of empires is the assumption of their eventual death. Size and complexity led to fragility, and imperial rulers improvised constantly to put off the day of reckoning—leaders of superstates are doing the same today.

However, superstates now differ from traditional empires in the responsibilities that they bear, and most importantly in the obligation to improve life for ordinary citizens. They pursue radically different strategies for governing at scale that have profound implications for democracy and human rights. While technology provides more ease to superstates for surveillance and many other tasks, their populations are more restless and demanding, they need to govern more intensively and provide more services.

Roberts takes the reader through each superstate one by one to understand their unique challenges and complementing strategies, and reveals common themes amongst these giants in the process. He, then, takes the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study to analyze how these superstates reacted to a common problem in a different way and how they bared during a shock at the global level.

How should superstates be governed? What must their leaders do to hold these immense polities together? How can these superstates withstand the extraordinary strains and shocks of the contemporary world? If they survive, will they thrive? Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century attempts to answer these and other questions by looking into history for ways to govern these sprawling and diverse polities.

With a groundbreaking twist in thinking about the art and methods of statecraft, Roberts considers the decisions leaders must make to devise and redevise strategies for governance at such a grand scale. Pragmatism, a little bit of reservation, and sometimes unorthodox policies may be necessary.

Alasdair Roberts, Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century (Polity Press, 2022) ISBN: 978-1-509-54449-3, 224 pages

The saying “Money makes the world go round” takes a more powerful meaning in a globalized capitalist economy. But what happens when the ones at the very top of the money chain are corrupted? In this month’s book bundle, we share with you three books that explore the influence of the rich and powerful, discuss how the world really goes round, and expose the staggering cases of how corruption hides itself often in plain sight with its effects rippling into the depth of systems, societies, and the lives of each one of us.

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he COVID19 pandemic revealed to many an eye-opening trend of wealth centralization: the rich are getting richer, and governments around the world are hardly able to protect those who are most vulnerable from the detrimental economic and social effects of a crisis. Who is the culprit?

The New York Times‘s award-winning global economics journalist Peter S. Goodman presents a page-turning exposé of the global billionaire class, the “Davos Man,” and its hostile takeover of the world. Davos Man documents billionaires’ exploitation of the COVID19 pandemic, which turned “taxpayer-financed bailout packages into corporate welfare schemes.” This global billionaire class instrumentalized its power to conceal the truth by hiring lobbyists, PR managers, and journalists in media.

Furthermore, Goodman uncovers the concealed impacts of their oligarchic control reaching into every branch of society and modern life, from wages to housing, healthcare to everyday products and taxation. He argues that their systematic plunder ultimately destabilized democracy by widening wealth inequality, leaving governing systems vulnerable, and triggering the rise of anti-democratic nationalism. He provides the answer to the problem of wider context: how did the liberal democratic order become a breeding ground for the right-wing hate?

Goodman not only provides a vividly written description of the realm of the ultra-rich but more importantly the realities of those who are dissipated by their appropriation all around the world including accounts from a blue-collar worker in Buenos Aires, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a doctor in Seattle during the COVID19 pandemic, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, and an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City. Davos Man is a must-read for those concerned about inequality, economic justice, the resilience of societies, democracy, and the great challenges of our time.

Peter S. Goodman, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (Custom House 2022) ISBN: 9780063078314, 472 pages

The anonymous leak of the Panama Papers in 2016 revealed millions of financial and legal documents that show how ultra-high-net-worth individuals hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. How were these structures set and who plays a role?

Spiderweb Capitalism uncovers the shadow economy and the mechanics behind the illicit movement of wealth across borders through the invisible, complex networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers.

Sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang traveled the globe to follow the money through a web-like supersystem and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with these ultra-high-net-worth individuals, private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals to find an answer.

Hoang reveals the strategies behind spiderweb capitalism and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones as she traces the flow of capital from offshore funds in places like the Cayman Islands, Samoa, and Panama to special-purpose vehicles and holding companies in Singapore and Hong Kong and risky markets in Vietnam and Myanmar. How are these smaller markets interconnected in a broader system of global capitalism?

Spiderweb Capitalism sheds critical light on how global elites capitalize on risky frontier markets.  Hoang argues that spiderweb capitalism explains the rapid rise of foreign capital in risky markets with low levels of trust and cooperation. Economic growth in such markets is a consequence of tightly embedded relations between the economic elite and political elites that result in a variety of corruptions.

Contrary to the “economic mantra that development can only occur in economies with a strong rule of law,” Spiderweb Capitalism shows a paradox of global economic growth sustained through states where the line separating the legal from the corrupt is not always clear. Hoang’s research further reveals that old paradigms like First World/Third World and Global North/Global South are no longer useful for framing the global economy.

Spiderweb Capitalism is a unique and worthwhile read, not only uncovering the dynamics of a global system of corruption but also the sociological backgrounds of playing in the grey.

Kimberly Kay Hoang, Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press 2022) ISBN: 9780691229119, 288 pages

I

n Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy, activist Dr. Vandana Shiva compiles essays and articles from more than 20 authors and organizations to show how ruthless capitalistic exploitation branded as philanthropic altruism forges a direct path to global destruction. According to David Orr, philanthrocapitalists are those who “promise to solve hunger, disease, poverty, and a rapidly destabilizing climate often by selling us more of the same things that made them very rich,” which oftentimes ignores the root causes and inequities.

How do global capitalists wield philanthropy to monopolize and privatize land use, food production, and the public health sector effectively? Through various initiatives, suborganizations, development schemes, and funding mechanisms. The book points out that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s empire, in particular, is an intricate network of power and influence solidified by targeted and well-financed PR campaigns to shape public opinion in pursuit of profit and market expansion.

Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy criticizes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and similar organizations’ many privileged relationships with private companies, governments, and the World Health Organization that allow them exclusively to set the global agenda on health. The book argues that simplified solutions based on technical and scientific developments introduced by these organizations are often narrow in scope and remain insufficient in solving complex problems. Furthermore, they corrode the integrity of democratic institutions guised under a banner of future-oriented innovation.

Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy reveals the destructive power of overly capitalistic systems that enable mass human suffering and environmental catastrophe via the entanglement of private investment and public policy, and aims to bring forward democratic discussions about transparency, accountability, and inclusivity.

Vandana Shiva, Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizen’s Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture (Synergetic Press 2022) ISBN: 9780907791911, 240 pages

Robert H. Latiff’s Future Peace, a sequel to Future War, specifically brings to attention a subtle, yet potentially destructive effect of technologies such as autonomous systems, advanced weapons, and AI: the provocation to violence. Against the backdrop of the brewing power rivalry between the U.S. and its adversaries, technology aggregates tension and catalyzes violence.

Future Peace touches upon the ethical, security-related, behavioral, and technical aspects of technology and warfare. It consists of four chapters: “A Giant Armed Nervous System” (referring to the military), “Urge to Violence,” “Stumbling into War,” and “Avoiding War.”

Latiff’s book comes as a warning to practice caution when adopting new weapons technology, and aids in understanding human and technical behaviors to attenuate its harms and decrease the chances of war. Not only does technology make war easier and speedier, hence enabling the rush to war, but hinders human reasoning. Such technical changes make the process of sound judgement difficult; for example, thinking and acting in a diplomatic manner. Furthermore, these changes enhance the potential for human error to get out of hand.

Latiff argues that it is vitally important to avoid entering conflict in the first place. He highlights the importance of the cooperative efforts of many segments of society, from the public and technologists to militarists and decision-makers. He implies that it is criminal negligence to leave everything to automation processes or politicians. Therefore, Future Peace also lays out long to short term recommendations to maintain peace and reverse the rush to war.

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utonomous features are not a matter of the future; they have been used in warfare for years. However, it is quite evident that with the advancement of technology and the weaponization of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons systems are swiftly adapting and becoming accepted.

As these changes emerge, the question that is often raised by international organizations such as the UN, which set the norms of conduct in an effort to control and regulate the use of autonomous weapons, is “How will human beings maintain control of the use of autonomous weapons?” In their study, Ingvild Bode and Hendrik Huelss flip the script to reveal another perspective of this dynamic.

Bode and Huelss aim to explain how testing, developing, and using weapons systems with autonomous features shapes ethical and legal norms, and how standards manifest and change in practice. The authors also examine the consequences of autonomous weapons for international relations.

Bode and Huelss acknowledge the fear and risks that these developments bring but adopt the approach that autonomous weapon systems may push people away from taking immediate decisions on the use of force as norms adapt to the appropriate use of force.

In short, Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Norms analyses the normative repercussions of weaponizing artificial intelligence by examining them not as tools used by the military but as shaping forces. Chapters include “Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Relations,” “New Technologies of Warfare: Emergence and Regulation,” “International Law, Norms, and Order,” “Norms in International Relations,” and “How Autonomous Weapons Systems Make Norms,” and contain assisting tables and figures.

As the trend and debate of autonomizing weapons systems continues, Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Norms equips the reader with an understanding of the relation of human-machine interaction and the process of integrating new technologies into war.

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n War Virtually, Roberto J. González takes the reader behind the scenes to expose how scientists, programmers, and engineers developed technologies that automate war, predict conflict, and regulate human thought and behavior. Does this sound utopian? Not so when you factor in the persistent drive to arm for virtual warfare. In this quest, data comes a valuable commodity.

González evaluates autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, advanced surveillance programs, and psyops techniques. He examines the foundation of the latest version of warfare in order to explain how it has taken its current form through contemporary military operations and their high-tech and cultural underpinnings.

However, War Virtually transcends the design, innovative, and transformative aspects of technology and warfare, and touches upon human engineering. González reveals the relations between U.S. intelligence agencies and Big Tech, and its implications. It is no secret that algorithms construct behavioral models for anticipating or even predicting human behavior, and, therefore, all of us risk having our digital lives become part of the military-industrial economy.

Adopting a critical approach, González examines how the U.S. military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare, and questions the notion that technological advancements will lead to more efficient and less destructive warfare. In fact, he implies that such an aspiration comes at a great cost, and argues that in this world, there is little room for hubris.

War Virtually covers a large array of topics including automated battlefield robotics, social scientists’ involvement in experimental defense research, the blurred line between political consulting and propaganda in the internet era, and the military’s use of big data to craft new counterinsurgency methods based on predicting conflict.

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n Proto-Algorithmic War, Stefka Hristova offers a unique perspective on the Iraq War and the history of algorithmic and digital logic that came to be a crucial element of today’s warfare. She examines the military policy of the United States going into the Iraq War: the U.S. approached the war with the logic of digital and emerging algorithmic technology alongside the preceding numerical logics of the British Mandate in Iraq. In a sense, the Iraq War became an experiment in the early stages of development and utilization of such technology in warfare, and moreover war culture.

Hristova provides a case study of a comparative historical framework reaching back to the quantification techniques harnessed during the era of Mandatory Iraq (1918-1932) and analyzes the parallels and diversions between the numerical logics in both cases.

The author further evaluates the logic that moved beyond the British mandate for Iraq and reduced culture, society, and the physical body and environment into visual data-driven, sterilized, reproducible warfare, highlighting that it lacked cultural and historical context. Indeed, the actual experience of the Iraq War resulted in massive-scale death and destruction.

Proto-Algorithmic War offers an insight into the digitization and automation of war. Hristova aptly scrutinizes the ways in which the Iraq War attempted and often failed to see and incorporate population and territory as digital and further proto-algorithmic entities.

B

en Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie use fire as an analogy to showcase how AI has a dual nature: destructive and constructive. Just like our distant ancestors learning to operate their newly discovered, full of potential tool, our responsibility is to understand and use AI potential wisely. With AI revolutionizing the world, democracies have a responsibility to harness that power constructively and come out on top. Transformation is on its way—can humanity use AI to light the way? Or will the fire burn wildly and ignite a new type of war?

In The New Fire, Buchanan and Imbrie help us understand AI better by breaking it down into its “sparks,” which are data, algorithms, and computing power. They further explain the tangible and potentially destructive consequences of these sparks such as disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons.

On a larger scale, The New Fire shows the urgency of democracies to adapt to the powerful tool that is AI, as autocrats may use it for domestic centralized control and asymmetric advantages in combat. In that sense, they argue that harnessing the power of AI is crucial for holding democracy in balance in the world. The New Fire also acknowledges that democracies have a harder time adapting to the age of AI given ethical and civil concerns, but that new ways could be forged based on the advantages of democracy.

Drawing on examples from geopolitical competition and its analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy while respecting civil rights. In the age of AI, this crucial topic may determine the choice of course between war and peace.

Written by Dilara Özer

With the Ukrainian ports blocked for three months, the “bread wars” began in Africa. States whose food supply security depends on imports are nowadays facing similar situations even more so as they face the worst food crisis in living memory. Many of them predictably hope Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon reach an agreement with Ukraine to stop the war and prevent the food crisis.

The Russian leader is accused of blocking exits from major Ukrainian ports since the beginning of the war and has been asked by the West to remove barriers hindering access to ports in order to resume the export of Ukrainian grain to the rest of the world. Approximately 15 million tons of grain are reportedly blocked in the ports of Ukraine, which currently accounts for nearly 10 percent of the world’s wheat trade. The war has interrupted international shipment of wheat, causing acute famines and increasing prices globally.

According to the report by the World Food Program released in early June 2022, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has forced more than 20 million people in Africa to suffer acute food shortages. With the start of the war, the situation worsened when, the Port of Odessa, the main port for agricultural exports, was blocked by Russian troops. The report warns that if emergency aid is not provided to several countries in Africa, the region will enter a further stage of famine. While the number of people suffering from hunger has quadrupled in the last two years in Kenya, more than 700,000 people in Ethiopia need urgent food aid every day.

Recent developments

Before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, the food supply security crisis was eminently in the making due to climate change and the COVID19 pandemic. Now, the grain crisis and states’ protectionist self-sufficiency policies rub salt into the wound.

Ukraine’s wheat export is interrupted by Russia. China, which has 51 percent of the world’s wheat stock, increased its own stocks by 20 percent. The world production of wheat increased  by 8 percent (from 732 to 790 million tons) in the last four years but, at the same time, stopped its wheat export.

The picture is not entirely that grim. The outlook for global food supply remains positive. But the food prices have risen sharply due to higher shipping costs and trade cuts because of the war, as well as the rising import of inputs such as fertilizer prices and thus import bills. This affects the world’s poorest countries and developing countries the most.

Food prices have been high before, and the war is driving food prices even higher. The most affected commodities are wheat, corn, edible oils, and fertilizers. Global commodity markets face upside risks from reduced grain supply, higher energy prices, higher fertilizer prices, and disruption to trade due to the closure of major seaports such as Pivdennyi, Odessa, Mykolaiv, and Chornomorsk, which account for about 80% of the total throughput of Ukrainian seaports.

After the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, trade interventions by countries increased. From January to early June 2022, 268 policy measures were announced and implemented by 75 countries. The number of policies regarding food and fertilizers stood at 85 percent of trade interventions, while the percentage of policies regarding raw materials and fuels stood at 15 percent.

Globally, hunger levels continue to rise at an alarming rate, with close to 193 million people reportedly having experienced severe food insecurity in 2021. According to the Global Report on Food Crises, it is predicted that by the end of 2022, all figures will be exceeded, and approximately 40 million more people will suffer from food insecurity compared to 2020. Surveys recently conducted in 83 countries to detect the effects of the recent food crises show that a significant number of people run out of food or already reduced their consumption in the first two years of the COVID19 outbreak.

Russian position

Russia and the West play a blame game over the export of Ukrainian grain. Putin announced that Russia does not prevent grain exports from Ukraine claiming that those exports can be made through ports on the Black Sea and neighboring countries, putting the blame on the West, which claims that Russia blocks exports from Ukraine.

Putin noted that there are several ways to export grain to the Danube River and then Romania, Hungary, and Poland via the Ukrainian-controlled ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol. He also called for “clearing” the waters of mines around the ports held by Ukraine, saying that the ports under the control of Kiev, especially Odessa, could also be used. However, he added that the simplest, easiest, and cheapest way to transport agricultural and food products to the Baltic ports is by exporting them through Belarus and from there to any part of the world. But, he added, exports via Belarus would be conditional on the West “lifting sanctions” against Minsk.

As the Russia-Ukraine war entered its fourth month, Ukrainian officials accused Russia of obstructing exports, claiming that Putin’s forces had already stolen 500,000 tons of grain. Alerted by possible food shortages, several Western countries urged Moscow to stop its military offensive.

On the other hand, UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that he is trying to reach a “package deal” to restart Ukraine’s food exports and Russia’s food and fertilizer exports, adding that the situation is volatile. Dujarric also said that with the Secretary General and UN staff, they will go wherever is needed to finalize this project.

United States’ position

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the Biden administration supports Russian grain and fertilizer shipments to address growing global food insecurity caused by the war in Ukraine. He said there were no U.S. sanctions on Russia’s grain and fertilizer shipments, but that companies were backing down because they were “a little nervous.”

It has been stated that the United States is ready to issue “letters of relief” to grain and fertilizer exporters and insurance companies to get much-needed agricultural products out of Russia. The U.S. supports the UN’s efforts to allow grain exports from Ukraine by train and via the Black Sea, as well as to ensure the unrestricted access of Russian food and fertilizers to global markets.

Turkey’s role in opening ports

Around 30 percent of the wheat traded across the world is produced in Russia and Ukraine. Dozens of container ships are stranded in Ukrainian ports, surrounded by Russian forces and protected by mines, preventing the transfer of wheat, sunflower oil, and other goods, as well as agricultural fertilizers.

President Putin reiterated to President Erdoğan that the Kremlin would support “unhindered” exports of Ukrainian grain from ports, but demanded the lifting of the Western embargo on Moscow in return. The meeting between the Turkish and Russian leaders reveals that Russia is ready to export large amounts of fertilizers and agricultural products if the Western sanctions are lifted.