PROFESSIONALISM: WHAT WILL IT MEAN IN THE LATE 21st CENTURY?

The historian and American essayist Randolph Bourne spoke about 'transnational' history, a notion replicated in Ferdinand Braudel's oeuvre: Bourne urged, 'It is for us to educate, and be educated'. As the Helleno-Medittarenean supremacy of Western rationality recedes and meets Eastern mobility, what will an expanded knowledge base mean for professional work in the West?

As a moonshot prediction, I would suggest that the professions shall decline in importance in comparison to the tidal nodes and modalities of international commerce. The biggest and most sought-after employers will belong to global business and to global civil society. (Richard Falk, an international lawyer, for instance, has explored the concept of a Post-Sovereignty world in respect to the human rights "industry").

HOW HAS THE MARKETPLACE CHANGED? POST-WESTPHALIA

As Henry Kissinger discussed in Diplomacy, the West - through the Treaty of Westphalia - settled upon the European conception of Statehood and the Balance of Power to delineate sovereign territory. (The remaining discussion is my own, not Kissinger's). States, through the profession of arms and the law, monopolised the threat of force for the preservation of their commonweal. However, the devastation of WWI and II and mass-mobilisation, militarily and economically, established a new global balance of power: the principal actors, of course, were the USSR and the United States.

Following the Cold War strategies of  'triangulation', great power containment and regional security alliances such as SEATO, the Berlin Wall - symbol of ideological separation - came down and the Soviet Union itself fell together with the Eastern bloc and non-aligned movements in Africa. Proclaiming the 'end of history' and a global 'peace dividend', post-Glasnost and Detente, the West led by America oversaw dissolution of the Warsaw Pact as NATO-led disarmament in Europe and events such as the Madrid Summit set in train the process of marketisation/liberalisation, transnational governance and the opening up of new markets in Eastern Europe and East Asia. In many ways, these were halcyon days for international lawyers who advised on cross-border merger activity and financial deregulation. 

In the wake of the GFC, the sub-prime mortgage explosion and the near-economic collapse which followed in Europe,nevertheless,  the Anglo-European economies have imposed severe austerity and reregulation whereas China has spurred export-driven growth through a managed exchange rate. Although the CCP has permitted some relaxation of the RMB/$ band and instituted limited deregulation of the banking sector, the Chinese leadership have repeatedly pledged the country to the notion of the 'Harmonious Society' and have reoriented the country toward a consumption economy. Clearly, China and neighbouring Asia have not adopted the West's Westphalian doctrine of sovereignty.

Until we have a truly representative global architecture beyond the G20, the primary links between East and West will be market-based. Since the Western world, broadly speaking, will be unable to impose its conception of the rule of law and statehood upon the East, specialised Western legal advice will not carry such prestige. The West will not be able to prevail through force of arms. And, in consequence, the most effective links between the East and the West's rival conceptions of territory will be diplomatic, cultural and economic. In an internationalised workforce, money and management  expertise will count for more than social pedigree or Western rule-based order.