THE formalisation of the G-20, in place of G-8 with the US as chairman of the board of governors, is now expected to monitor and guide politico-economic affairs of the world. Yet, despite Thomas Friedman's claim the world is not flat enough, conflicting interests abound among G-20 and non-G-20 nations. At the recently held G-20 meeting at Pittsburgh, China and other developing countries got greater say in the IMF while the USA maintained its veto power, but the non-G-20 got nothing. They wanted more resources for development through a new concessional fund, a disproportionate share of the IMF gold sale, a more liberal interpretation of the debt sustainability framework, and funds for climate change devastation. All they got were promises. Still, the very fact that the G-20 was formalised at Pittsburgh was a positive step.
Robert Blackwill of the Rand Corporation thinks that over time, the G-20 will become more influential than the G-8. In the next decade or so, the G-20 will exert more influence on the IMF, but is unlikely to shape the UN Security Council. Blackwill lists the G-20's significance lies in greater influence in national and international financial regulations, triggering more pressure on defence budgets of most nations, magnifying world protectionism, and weakening national efforts around the globe to reduce carbon emission. Blackwill's prediction is based on reading transcending events in history like the French Revolution bringing in Napoleon, Bolshevik Revolution producing the Soviet empire, the Great Depression reinforcing the demise of the Weimar Republic, the advent of Adolph Hitler, among others.
Though a unipolar moment may have passed, the US, as Leslie Gelb writes in his book Power Rules, the global power is decidedly pyramidical -- with the US alone at the top, a second tier of major countries (China, India, the UK, France, Germany and Brazil) and several tiers descending below will be the key determinants of security in the 21st century. If power is the capacity to make people do what they do not want to do, then the US may not want to force the doctrine of pre-emption as the way to solve global issues and instead, as the Nobel Committee said in its citation while awarding Barack Obama the Peace Prize, the US may opt for a global reconciliation among different groups pledging allegiance to different faiths and opposing further dissipation of national sovereignty. The US, with its global reach and surplus wealth (discounting the current recession that may be on the mend) will remain the determining power in the world for the foreseeable future.
One may tread the fault lines of global politics if one assumed that peace and tranquillity would rule the world. China's resurgence in Asia would worry Japan and, to an extent, India, given Chinese objection to the Indian prime minister's visit to Arunachal Pradesh for its election campaign, with China's ire at the refuge given by India to the Dalai Lama, who fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and at his visit to Arunachal Pradesh, and India's objection to the building of a dam in Tibet by China that may affect water flow in the rivers flowing into India and Bangladesh. Europe in this matrix may continue its efforts for a more internationally acceptable legal framework for a new global construct. The opposing views are not exceptional in most countries. In Australia, for example, the differences between the Conservatives and Labour were based on realism and idealism.
In this evolution of a new global architecture, it has become necessary to discern and defeat the religious factor in the al-Qaeda and Taliban sponsored terrorism.
The most engaging issue today is the Taliban problem in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The terrorism perpetrated in the two countries has become a daily narrative in the subcontinent with the possibility of its dark shadow being cast far and wide. Pulitzer winning journalist Steve Coll, in a testimony to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in October, observed that "any durable American exit strategy from Afghanistan will depend upon the emergence of a stable Pakistan that is moving towards normalisation with India and the reduction of extremism within its borders." Coll felt that it was critically important to persuade Pakistani military and intelligence that Pakistan's national interests demanded normalisation and economic integration with India and abandonment of proxy Islamic groups such as Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and others. Many think that in US policy-making circles, there is a growing realisation of the centrality of Pakistan to US interests and regional strategy. Perhaps General McCrystal's initial assessment in August, that increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan could exacerbate regional tension and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India, is such an indication.
In the ultimate analysis, the Taliban menace, believed by some as having no central command and presently owned by different terrorist groups, still has its epicenter in South Asia, and hence, the region is in imminent danger of instability as evidenced by daily terrorist activities in Pakistan and the Pak army's determined efforts to destroy the Taliban stronghold in South Waziristan. The affluent countries of the erstwhile G-8 have the great responsibility of adopting a strategy of smart power to tackle this menace. It would be wrong to let Afghanistan and Pakistan slide back into the Stone Age.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and ambassador.