World balances, the challenge between powers and the impact of war

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A fast-changing world, more out of necessity than strategy. Two global powers – the United States and China – who look at each other and challenge each other, intertwining often divergent interests and visions: in democracy and in politics, in the economy, in technological development, in national security. Two powers torn between the aspiration to primacy, hegemony, and the obligation to find a way to coexist.

Europe is in the middle, forced to pursue new technologies, to cash in on the protectionism of others. Pressed by emerging economies, but also capable of relaunching – overcoming vetoes and internal differences – rights, environmental policies, the rules of digital communication. And Europe within the geopolitics of the planet deserves more space also in the events of the Festival of Economics: for this reason, in the coming days we will specifically indicate the titles and protagonists that you can find from 25 to 28 May in Trento .

Here we focus on the constantly shifting global balance, tested by successive crises: the pandemic caused by Covid, the near war, with Russia’s aggression of Ukraine. And then the repercussions on supply chains, on energy prices, on the very stability of democratic systems. But side by side with the great crises, less striking, albeit serious, emergencies coexist and persist: the management of migratory flows, the difficulties of Africa, the contradictions of Asia.

«Even the 2023 edition of the Trento Festival of Economics cannot fail to focus on the two ongoing wars – the hot one in Ukraine and the cold one with China. Their evolution but above all the profound transformations they are generating starting with the renewed obsession with security, military but also food, energy and technology», says Paolo Magri, executive vice president of ISPI and professor of international relations at Bocconi University. «In tackling these issues, the emphasis – explains Magri, member of the Advisory Board of the festival – is on the impact of transformations on the main players: Europe, first and foremost, but also Asia and Africa due to the even more significant weight that they will have in the future”.

THURSDAY 25 MAY