Managing Country Risk

Chapter 8

Shifting Pendulums, Pressing Concerns, and the State of the World

History is a relentless master. It has no present—only the past rushing into the future.

John F. Kennedy¹

Introduction

As we have seen throughout the course of this book, the dynamics driving global economics and politics are changing at a dramatic pace. There is every reason to expect the trend to continue in the long term, as the global power pendulum is in the process of shifting between the post-World War II “great” powers and the rising powers of the twenty-first century. One of the things that is happening with greater frequency is that countries that were not previously participants in the global political arena or were peripheral players are now becoming central ...