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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Sat Dec 18 2010 - 03:59:38 EST
On the way to a new global balance
By Philip Stephens
Published: December 16 2010 21:55 | Last updated: December 16 2010 21:55
We are living through one of history’s swerves. A multipolar world has been
long predicted, but has always seemed to be perched safely on the horizon.
Now it has rushed quite suddenly into the present. Two centuries of western
hegemony are coming to a close rather earlier than many had imagined.
The story is unfolding in dry economic statistics. Next year, just as this
year, the economies of the rising states – China, India, Brazil, Turkey,
Indonesia and the rest <http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/>– are likely to
grow by 8 per cent or more. Debt-burdened advanced nations will mostly
struggle to expand by more than 2 per cent. The pattern is well-established.
The global divide is between slow- and fast-growing nations as much as
between the rich and the rising.
The geopolitical balance is adjusting accordingly. China is asserting itself
in east Asia. India is building a blue-water navy. Turkey and Brazil are
seeking to translate regional power into international kudos. Indonesia is
hedging between Washington and Beijing. Europe battles against irrelevance;
America with a burgeoning budget deficit and political gridlock.
Predictions of the passing of US primacy are premature. For all its
troubles, America remains the sole superpower – the only nation able to
project power in every corner of the earth. One of the under-noticed stories
of 2010 has been the return of the US to Asia. Unnerved by Beijing and the
lethal unpredictability of North Korea, China’s neighbours have clamoured
for protection from Uncle Sam.
The picture of US power painted by secret diplomatic cables
<http://www.ft.com/world/us/wikileaks-revelations>is essentially flattering.
America’s pursuit of its national interest coincides most of the time with
the provision of public goods for the rest of us. Washington worries in
private as much as it does in public about the impact on global security of
nuclear proliferation, failing states, terrorism and regional conflicts.
The other side of the WikiLeaks coin is that the US is an inadequate
superpower. The diplomatic exchanges show how its unrivalled power has left
the US unable to impose its solutions in the world’s troublespots. Only this
month we saw Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu wreck Barack Obama’s efforts to
promote peace in the Middle
East<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2875487e-02f8-11e0-bb1e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18LSx5Xw4>
.
The world’s rising states are at a stage where they want to enjoy power
without responsibility. Putting a kind interpretation on its latest
muscle-flexing, China is the adolescent who has just discovered he has the
physical strength of an adult. In ignoring Deng Xiaoping’s admonition to
bide its time, Beijing is squandering soft power accumulated over a decade.
India wants the respect conferred by great power status, but is reluctant to
give up the street credibility conferred by its old non-aligned leadership
role. Delhi is also strangely incapable of confronting enmities in its own
neighbourhood. Turkey wants to look east as well as west, but has yet to
balance its new ambitions for Muslim leadership with its old attachment to
Euro-Atlantic integration.
Europe is in bad shape. What started out as a private sector banking crisis
has become a public sector debt crisis. The eurozone is under siege from the
markets. The real threat is political. The economic shock of the continent’s
relative decline against a rising Asia has merged with the continuing
political aftershocks from the fall of the Berlin Wall two decades ago.
A united, more unapologetically nationalist Germany, has upended the
European Union’s political equilibrium. The Union worked when leadership was
shared by France and Germany. But Berlin now wants to call the tune. The
single currency may be rescued, but I am not sure there is great enthusiasm
for a German Europe. As for Britain, its fresh-faced prime minister has
shown no interest in, nor aptitude for, crafting anything resembling a
foreign policy.
Japan, where I have spent this week at a series of security discussions
hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the US and the Tokyo Foundation, seems
trapped in semi-permanent denial. Though alarmed by clashes with China in
the contested East China
Sea<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cac4bfec-05d7-11e0-976b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18JWknnHi>,
Japan has had five prime ministers in three years. This game of political
musical chairs somehow seems easier than thinking about a strategic response
to the insecurities of east Asia.
Russia counts itself among the rising powers. But it is a declining state
trapped in its past. For reasons of domestic politics and of
attention-seeking abroad, Russian leaders continue to pretend that the enemy
lies in the west. National
pride<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6f5ba97c-da1c-11df-bdd7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18JX9aqbr>,
they judge, can be restored only by standing up to the US and Europe.
The real perils are closer to home – endemic corruption, demographic decay
and a hollowed out petro-carbon economy. Elsewhere, the strategic challenges
come from Islamist extremism and the possibility of China and India bursting
their borders in Russia’s depopulated eastern territories. Russia’s
long-term interests lie in closer integration with the west. Dmitry
Medvedev, Russia’s president, may grasp this. Vladimir Putin, his
predecessor and likely successor, sticks with the old story.
The lazy way to describe the new geopolitical landscape is one of a contest
between the west and rest – between western liberal democracies and eastern
market economy autocracies. Neat as such divisions may seem, they miss the
complexities. None are more determined, for example, than Russia and China
to keep India from securing a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Few
are more worried than India by China’s military build-up.
A more sanguine view of the re-ordered world looks to the Group of 20
nations as an instrument to forge a broader consensus about east-west and
north-south co-operation. There is some cause for optimism in respect of
global economic governance; far less so when it comes to security and
foreign policy.
The rising nations prize state power over international rules, sovereignty
over multilateralism. The transition to a new order is likely to see more
rivalry and competition than co-operation. The facts of interdependence
cannot be wished away but they will certainly be tested. It is going to be a
bumpy ride. A pity then that much of the west seems intent on hiding under
the bedcovers.
*More columns at *www.ft.com/philipstephens
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