The new Biden Administration offers a chance to reset many policies that are made obsolete by rapidly changing circumstances. All countries and communities now suffer from huge internal injustices/polarization that require healing. Demonizing each other only escalates the situation towards a general Thucydides Trap of nuclear war or climate burn. We need to get out of mental collective action traps. As Elinor Ostrom correctly identified: human beings cooperated for communal public goods more than they fought. Survival means common sense working for common good.
Competition and Cooperation are complementary, not false binaries. Peoples with diverse views share this planet. We recognize that geo-political competition will not go away; hence, in order to prevent an escalation towards nuclear conflict, we must identify practical pathways to cooperation on the critical, One Planet, mutual challenges of social inequities, climate change, natural disasters, civil strife and unrest.
No one is safe (or secure) unless we are all safe (and secure).
Quantitative easing (QE) has shown that the world is not short of financial resources, but is in a global liquidity trap, where short term money cannot be transformed into long-term investments in Social Development Goal (SDG) projects that help in alleviating poverty and address climate change. The present Bretton Woods international monetary system cannot address these fundamental issues and needs reform, which requires advanced country/major shareholder cooperation.
Market and State are not false binaries – they need to work together at all levels to ensure that there are checks and balance against fundamentalism on both extremes.