Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are confronted with a new world order in which the major economic powers that promoted multilateralism have moved toward nationalism, localization of production, and de-legalization of dispute settlement in favor of balance of power diplomacy. A counterpart to this trend is declining interest in developmental assistance. It remains to be determined how countries that are not part of the new great power dynamic will acclimate to this new world. LMICs have the opportunity to leapfrog in the current technological environment. A key challenge is securing adequate capital investment, including through the private sector. There is a trend among the capital-exporting countries to negotiate bilateral and plurilateral agreements with LMICs that preclude regulatory measures requiring technology transfer as a condition of foreign direct investment. Because individual private investors within LMICs may lack substantial bargaining power, these agreements diminish LMICs’ capacity to secure favorable terms for technology transfer. LMICs confront terms of trade that favor high-income countries and, more broadly, the ascendance of managed trade policy among economically powerful states. These factors portend the perpetuation of the marked disparity in the distribution of global income and wealth. There are no “magic bullet” solutions on the horizon.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book arguments and reflects on the legacies of the war, the problems at restoring business as usual after a long period of state of exception, and the difficulties of squaring sovereignty, national interests, humanity and human rights. The war and its aftermath profoundly changed the population structure of vast territories and generated a proliferation of migration control policies and new citizenship claims from those who had fought on the battlefront or suffered because of the war. It reshaped economic relationships and the balance of power and had a big impact on reorienting migration flows. The First World War marked a departure from the quest for the universalism of rights and a shift from individuals to collectivities defined in terms of identity, belonging, language, ethnicity, religion or class. Establishing the equation between aliens and dangerousness, the First World War consolidated the idea that policing borders, selecting those who can live in the territory of a country, expelling the unwanted, preventing them from entering, granting and stripping people of their citizenship were (and after the war continued to be) the main prerogatives of the sovereign state, which had the power to decide whom to accept, expel, grant asylum to, include, exclude and endow with rights.