|
Fading
superpower?
Like all empires before it, the U.S. will slip from the top
of the heap. Let's start getting ready.
By David Rieff
09/09/07 "Los
Angeles Times"
-- -- In Washington these days, people talk a lot about
the collapse of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that
existed during the Cold War. But however bitter today's
disputes are about Iraq or the prosecution of the so-called
global war on terrorism, there is one bedrock assumption
about foreign policy that remains truly bipartisan: The
United States will remain the sole superpower, and the
guarantor of international security and global trade, for
the foreseeable future. In other words, whatever else may
change in the decades to come, the 21st century will be
every bit as much of an American century as the 20th.
This assumption rests, in turn, on two interrelated beliefs.
The first is that because no country or alliance of states
has shown any great desire to challenge U.S. preeminence --
or demonstrated the means of doing so -- no country is going
to. China's interests are regional at most, the argument
goes, and the European Union is too divided, too unwilling
or too weak to rebuild its once-formidable military machine.
As for Russia, believers in the durability of a world order
anchored in Washington insist that its declining population
and excessive reliance on its energy wealth will in the long
run preclude it from playing a central role in global
affairs.
The second is that the world needs the U.S. and appreciates
the role it plays. (In some versions of this argument, the
world needs the U.S. far more than the U.S. needs the
world.) If there have been no serious challenges to American
hegemony to date, it is asserted, it is because the U.S.
provides what are referred to by foreign policy analysts as
"global goods": It maintains political and economic
stability around the world, it guarantees a democratic
capitalist world order and, by virtue of its unparalleled
military strength, it acts as a world policeman of last
resort.
Whatever the merits of this case, surely it is significant
that it is most often made by U.S. policy analysts and
government officials (as well as, to a lesser extent, by
British officials). From Pax Romana through Pax Britannica
to the current Pax Americana, empires have justified their
own power by insisting that they were not simply serving
their own interests but rather the common good. Looking back
at the British imperial high-water mark of 1900, H.G. Wells
wrote that "the sprawling British Empire still maintained a
tradition of free trade, equal treatment and open-handedness
to all comers round and about the planet."
Such confidence in Britain's fundamental benignity as an
empire is matched today by figures across the American
political spectrum, from Barack Obama to Rudy Giuliani, from
the conservative policy analyst Robert Kagan to the liberal
academic Michael Mandelbaum. Whatever their other,
substantial differences, all seem convinced that the world
works best with the United States at the helm, and that
without American leadership, the world would soon become
more dangerous and anarchic and less prosperous.
Indeed, if they are to be believed, the only serious threat
to U.S. hegemony visible anywhere on the horizon is the
American people's potential unwillingness to support their
country as it plays this role.
But what if the Americans who hold these beliefs are not, in
fact, clear-eyed observers of the world scene stripped of
its anti-imperial mystifications? Instead, what if they are
people who have fallen for the same self-delusion that the
British ruling class entertained before World War I, which
was that their empire was so essential to world stability
and, at least when compared with the alternatives and with
empires past, so just that its hegemony could and would
weather all challenges?
It is hardly farfetched to scan the historical record and
conclude that self-love and imperialism go together, whether
it was the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes insisting that
British colonialism in Africa had been "philanthropy plus
5%" or President Bush insisting that it was America's
special mission to spread democracy throughout the world.
But what the historical record also shows is that imperial
moments are, in fact, fleeting, and that hegemony has a
shorter and shorter shelf life. The Roman Empire lasted more
than 700 years (more than a millennium if you count the
Byzantines); the British Empire lasted a little more than
300 years in India and less than a century in much of
Africa. The economic challenges facing the U.S. at least
suggest that America's time as sole superpower could be
shorter still.
Americans, who grow up believing in their country's
exceptionalism (which in foreign policy terms often seems to
mean not believing that the historical constraints that
apply to other nations apply to the U.S.), are not
predisposed to believe that American predominance could
possibly be coming to an end. And yet it seems more like
wishful thinking than rational analysis to believe that the
United States -- which in the coming decades will certainly
have to adapt to a multipolar world in geo-economic terms,
as China and India reoccupy the central place in the global
economy that they had 500 years ago -- can continue
indefinitely to play a hegemonic role.
The truth is that whether it is imperial Rome, imperial
Spain or imperial Britain, economic strength and political
strength have always gone together. Because no one denies
that the U.S. will decline in comparative terms economically
(though it will almost certainly remain one center of the
world economy), the only way one can believe that
geopolitics will not also become multipolar is to believe
that the U.S. is somehow exempt from what seems one of
history's few ironclad laws. And that is not analysis; that
is faith.
The war in Iraq has demonstrated the limits of even
America's vaunted military strength -- the one arena in
which the U.S. is likely to remain supreme for decades to
come. In an era of asymmetric threats, conventional military
power is rapidly becoming an anachronistic measure of a
country's strength.
None of this is to say that the U.S. will not continue to be
one of the most important powers -- only that its days of
first dictating and then guaranteeing the rules are numbered
in an era in which it has become a debtor nation. In any
case, the post-World War II structures of international
governance are crumbling -- as well they might after more
than six decades. Everyone knows they need to be revised.
For the moment, the U.S. is the sole superpower. But instead
of deluding ourselves that we will go on that way into the
indeterminate future, an intelligently self-interested
foreign policy would have us do everything in our power to
shape, according to our most urgent priorities, the
international rules that will govern relations between
states after the American moment has passed -- as it
inevitably will.
The alternative is to go the route of the British before
1914 and imagine that because a certain set of political
arrangements seems best to us, they must also be best for
the world -- and destined to endure indefinitely. The real
choice that confronts us is not between a second American
century and anarchy but between a multipolar world in which
we will play an important role and an anti-American century.
David Rieff is the author of many books, including "At
the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed
Intervention" and "A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in
Crisis"
Click
on "comments" below to
read or post comments
Comment
Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We
encourage engaging, diverse and
meaningful commentary. Do not
include personal information such
as names, addresses, phone
numbers and emails. Comments
falling outside our guidelines
– those including personal
attacks and profanity – are
not permitted.
See our complete
Comment
Policy and
use
this link to notify us if you
have concerns about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and
remove any inappropriate
postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
