China will be the next superpower: already it’s in competition with the US for the hearts and minds of the developing world
At the time of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the US stood supreme with barely a challenge visible on any meaningful time horizon. Almost five years on, we can clearly see both the inadequacies in the then-prevailing common sense, and the fallacies intrinsic to the neoconservative view of the world. There are, of course, always limits to power, even if they are not visible. The last five years have made the limits of American power plainly visible.
It is Iraq that has exposed those limits. The idea of US omnipotence always depended on its overwhelming military power, and the neoconservatives saw the latter as the key to a new era of American ascendancy. Iraq has demonstrated the limits of military power when it comes to subduing and governing a society. This failure has curbed the desire to intervene elsewhere: even if military action is contemplated in Iran, which now seems less likely, there will be no Iraq-style invasion and occupation. The idea that Iraq would be a precursor to a new kind of American empire – as advocated by Niall Ferguson, for example, in his book The Colossus – is dead in the water.
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Eleven years before the epochal events in Germany, a seismic change was taking place in China
It is, of course, common sense that 1989 was the defining moment of the last quarter of the 20th century. Who could possibly disagree? It closed a chapter of history that had been ushered in by the October revolution in 1917. It brought to an end the systemic challenge that communism had posed to capitalism, the belief that there was, indeed, an alternative. It allowed the United States to emerge as the undisputed superpower of a new century. It gave globalisation access to the former Soviet bloc from which it had been excluded: henceforth, globalisation could live up to its name.
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China’s opposition to action against Iran shows how it is increasingly at odds with the United States. It is a shame Washington hasn’t noticed.
There is a fascinating difference between the international diplomacy on Iran as compared with that on Iraq prior to the invasion. The opposition to the Anglo-American action was led by France, with somewhat muted support from Russian and China. Indeed, China remained as quiet as could possibly be. Nearly four years later we are in very different waters. The opposition in the United Nations is being led by Russia and China with France on the opposite side.
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For the sake of all of us, Hu Jintao and George Bush need to get on
The meetings between the US president and the Chinese president are now the most important events on the international calendar. The former represents the most powerful country in the world, while the latter represents the second largest economy and the next superpower. They need to meet and, for the sake of us all, they need to get on. But the mood music surrounding this latest meeting is a reminder that there are growing tensions and conflicts in the US-China relationship.
The issue that most preoccupies is economic. There is mounting pressure within Congress for tariffs against various Chinese imports, together with demands that China revalues the yuan. The problem is not China. It is the fact that the dollar is seriously over-valued. Nor will tariffs mean that the US will make the goods that China now exports. The real problem is not China but the fact that the US economy is living beyond its means with its huge budget deficit and trade deficits. These economic tensions, however, aren’t going to go away. On the contrary, they seem likely to grow more serious.
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Increased contact with other countries has led many to believe that the western model should be applied everywhere
I have just read Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. It is a classic. Published in 1947, it analyses the nature of Japanese culture. Almost 60 years and many books later, it remains a seminal work. Like all great works of scholarship, the book manages to transcend the time and era in which it was written, ageing in certain obvious respects, but retaining much of its insight and relevance. If you want to make sense of Japan, Benedict’s book is as good a place to start as any. Here, though, I am interested in the origins and purpose of the book.
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The disastrous foreign policies of the US have left it more isolated than ever, and China is standing by to take over
‘Our power, then, has the grave liability of rendering our theories about the world immune from failure. But by becoming deaf to easily discerned warning signs, we may ignore long-term costs that result from our actions and dismiss reverses that should lead to a re-examination of our goals and means.”
These are the words of Henry Hyde, chairman of the House international relations committee and a Republican congressman, in a recent speech. Hyde argues that such is the overweening power of the US that it may not hear or recognise the signals when its policy goes badly wrong, a thinly veiled reference to Iraq. He then takes issue with the idea that the US can export democracy around the world as deeply misguided and potentially dangerous. He argues: “A broad and energetic promotion of democracy in other countries that will not enjoy our long-term and guiding presence may equate not to peace and stability but to revolution … There is no evidence that we or anyone can guide from afar revolutions we have set in motion. We can more easily destabilise friends and others and give life to chaos and to avowed enemies than ensure outcomes in service of our interests and security.”
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Liberal imperialists, 1990-2006, RIP? Hardly, but their tails are down. And so they should be. I am referring, of course, to a school of thought associated with the left that took wind after the end of the cold war and came to believe that the US was a benign power that could intervene around the world for the good of democracy and human values.
In the mood that prevailed after 1989, it was perhaps not entirely surprising: the left felt defeated, and many busily took the road of rejecting everything from their past as mistaken. This, for some, included the warm embrace of the US. The first Gulf war was easy to support, and so was American intervention in the Balkans tragedy. The US was not just the global policeman: it was the friendly bobby down the street, waiting to deliver good sense and virtue to some faraway country.
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Europeans and Americans fail to realise that the future lies in the east
I feel sometimes as if I live in two worlds. When I am back in old Blighty, I am surrounded by the old and familiar concerns: New Labour, Europe, the Middle East and the rest. If you live in Britain, you will know what I mean – except you won’t, because you will take it for granted that this is what the world is all about. But it provides a very misleading perspective. Why? Because we are increasingly a sideshow, living on the margins of the forces that are transforming the world. When I am back home I sometimes feel as if I am living in a time warp.
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A continent that inflicted colonial brutality all over the globe for 200 years has little claim to the superiority of its values
Is the argument over the Danish cartoons really reducible to a matter of free speech? Even if we believe that free speech is a fundamental value, that does not give us carte blanche to say what we like in any context, regardless of consequence or effect. Respect for others, especially in an increasingly interdependent world, is a value of at least equal importance.
Europe has never had to worry too much about context or effect because for around 200 years it dominated and colonised most of the world. Such was Europe’s omnipotence that it never needed to take into account the sensibilities, beliefs and attitudes of those that it colonised, however sacred and sensitive they might have been. On the contrary, European countries imposed their rulers, religion, beliefs, language, racial hierarchy and customs on those to whom they were entirely alien. There is a profound hypocrisy – and deep historical ignorance – when Europeans complain about the problems posed by the ethnic and religious minorities in their midst, for that is exactly what European colonial rule meant for peoples around the world. With one crucial difference, of course: the white minorities ruled the roost, whereas Europe’s new ethnic minorities are marginalised, excluded and castigated, as recent events have shown.
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The defeat of colonial rule will come to be seen as the defining event of the 20th century
What was the most important event of the 20th century? The answer might once have been 1917. More recently, the favourite has been its historical nemesis, 1989. The different vantage points offered by history provide different perspectives and, as a consequence, different judgments. What might seem incontrovertible to one generation appears less obvious to the next, and perhaps not at all obvious, even perverse, to the one that follows.
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