#132 A (Non) Manchurian Candidate 🎧

<em>While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways.</em><br/><br/><em>Audio narration by </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>.  </em><br/><br/><strong>Global Policy Watch: G7@Cornwall: Return Of A Rules-Based International Order?  </strong><br/><br/><em>Bringing an Indian perspective to burning global issues</em><br/><br/>- <em>RSJ</em><br/><br/>A key geopolitical question to ask as most of the world gets back to normalcy following the pandemic is - what kind of a world will we be living in?<br/><br/>I was expecting the G7 meeting held in Cornwall last week to help with an answer. It didn’t entirely. But it did help in framing the key questions that will engage commentators discussing about the world order this decade. <br/><br/>The rhetoric at the end of the summit was summed by Boris Johnson: “the West is back”. <br/><br/>Johnson and Biden repeatedly made the point about the summit representing the coming together of the great democracies of the world. Others parroted the same line. Even PM Modi speaking on the final day as part of the outreach programme positioned India as a natural ally of G7 in its resolve to fight the challenges arising out of authoritarianism, terrorism and disinformation. <br/><br/>Democracies V Autocracies Now?<br/><br/>The need to counter the ideological and economic challenge of China has bipartisan support now in Washington. Naturally, Canada, UK and Japan are in the same boat. The summit succeeded in making the somewhat reluctant Germany, France and Italy come around to the same view. This looks like an attempt to roll back the Cold War years. But like we have written in the past, China is a very different threat from the erstwhile USSR. In fact, <a target="_blank" href="https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/47-hum-app-ke-hain-kaun">it is USSR on ster