P

/span>Power is getting unaffordable for the old rule.

Asia is accelerating while Europe and the US are losing their grip. It is easy to see that the world is tilting to places that were once overshadowed by the major economies. The lowering cost of knowledge, communication and access to faraway places means hardly anyone is isolated these days. The barriers that once limited large parts of the world have gone.

The exuberance of the new collective force has resulted in the emergence of global powerhouses such as the BRICS ' Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa ' and the Next Eleven that includes South Korea, Iran, Turkey and Indonesia. While in more restrictive environments such as the Middle Eastern countries, forces accumulated into violent revolts that have toppled long-time autocrats during the Arab Spring.

The disruption brought by the new powers ' be it nations, companies or charismatic individuals ' emitted tectonic rattles on the global power map, which brings up the question of whether the David's of this world will ever bring down the Goliaths?

Such relevant, yet, geriatric questions of the old powers trying to catch up with their games, especially after the Internet enlightenment, are elaborated in The End of Power, the latest work from former Foreign Policy magazine chief editor and former Venezuelan trade minister Moises Naim.

The 'decay of power', he argues, comes from three broad revolutions: 'more' people overwhelming the means of control, 'mobility' that ends captive audiences and the 'mentality' change that nothing is taken for granted anymore. It is also a result of the corrupt practices of power that makes voters distrust their governments, the corporations they work at and even the religions that they believe in.

The book elaborates that the decay occurs in any centrum of power ' from the rise of the Tea Party in US, the evading significance of the 'Seven Sisters' in the global oil industry to the fall of US as 'the hegemon' of the world. Power is easier to achieve for the new or young that don't follow the established hierarchy, while it is harder to conserve for large establishments that are not as supple and adaptable.

The book is a deft portrait of the shift of power in the past three decades, meticulously pointing to the pivotal facts and events that made the transition. It also gives an insightful framework of the interaction of power and society based on a collection of theories from prominent thinkers.

The overemphasis on the laments of the decay, however, brings Naim, currently a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to pessimistically highlight the future evinced in the recurring prophesy of Thomas Hobbes' anarchy ' where there will be 'wars of all against all'.

Naim builds the case that the greatest inventions of the 20th century ' democracy, the Internet and technology in general ' makes the rise of the new powers different from how developed nations had it at the beginning of the century. While benefiting from more advanced technology, the nature of the rise is not completely new.

China, Brazil and even Indonesia have taken the same path with the US to develop their economic muscles. These countries are growing stronger by embracing openness and democracy, in the same way the US came to power after the Second World War.

These countries have fought autocracy, close-mindedness and poor governance, just like the Americans beat the odds of colonialism, slavery and racism to become a global power.

The waning prosperity among the developed nations today is not necessarily due to the rise of the emerging ones. The developed nations are so far developed that it takes more of an effort to create progress while among the emerging nations, even the small ones, progress makes significant impact.

The Global Footprint Network illustrates it best by measuring that it will take five Earths if everyone on the planet lives the lifestyle of an average American. If everyone lives like a Bangladeshi, our planet can support 22 billion people.

The current shift in power awaits a new regime to accommodate. In the spirit of democracy and globalization, the old way of hard rule through money and weapons may no longer be relevant. Soft power ' through culture and ideas ' exercised in and outside the formal boardrooms of negotiation is the new battleground, in which the old rule hardly loses their edge.

In the UN forum for climate change, UNFCCC, dubbed the most straightforward epitome of global diplomacy, it is clear that the US along with European countries still hold influence over other nations.

Under the lead of the European Union, the developed nations have pushed the rest of the world to agree on the abandonment of Kyoto Protocol. The only existing global commitment that mandated developed countries to cut emissions is now considered obsolete and the forum now is moving toward a new global agreement in which every country is responsible to cut its emissions. The format and how the responsibility is shared will reflect on how the old rule negotiates with the new global powers.

The unresolved dispute centering on the South China Sea is another global game that will realize the new structure of global power.

The race for supremacy in the Asia Pacific between China and the US has taken its toll on regional security.

ASEAN, the collective to strengthen economic and cultural corporations among Southeast Asian countries, is becoming another battleground on the exercise of power between the two major powers. The intervention of both countries has made agreement on one of the world's busiest waterways is hard to come by.

More US military exercises, this time in collaboration with South Korea, is clearly upsetting the solitary North Korea. As China reluctantly involve in the spat, it may signal that, in the end, China may not really mean war in the region.

Naim puts it right in his book when he says that it is time for political innovation to straighten up the complicated power struggles. The failure to do so may result in countries utilizing the ancient ways in which wars and weapons do the talk.