That’s the title of a lead article in the New York Times Magazine. In it, Parag Khanna writes:
It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama
administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has
pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state
of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force
presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran
is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its
naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of
Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.
Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations
and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to
collective security and prosperity? … That new global order has arrived, and there is
precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its
growth.At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but
that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was
never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership.
So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing
— in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other
superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the
21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly
depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam
embroiled in internal wars; and not India,
lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic
appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any
one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors
in this post-American world.
There is lots and lots I could say about this, but I have a speech coming up so I’ll have to be brief.
1) I like the title a lot.
2) I’m sort of surprised the Times ran with it. But it means people who try to lead the thoughts must be nervous – or at least imagining that the US is no longer the center of the univivers.
3) The idea of a multi-polar world sounds reasonable.
4) Where are multinational corporations in this world?
5) Where is innovation, creativity, and innovation?
6) Do we really believe that big states will dominate in the post-empire age?
7) My guess is that the nation-state will radically decline in influence, in ways few people adequatrely recognize.
The new order will feature new institutions organized by global capitalists and global companies
9) It will take shape not around nations but increasingly around mega-regions
10) Class divides will grow increasingly salient and a key feature will be how to raise the valleys of the world economy in order to protect its peaks from attacks.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Great points and interesting piece.
If events trend as you predict, the global world economy might also finally bring about another awakening– world peace; as the competition will occur in the market with little to be gained on battlefields. But who will police the world? While nation-led violence will be in decline, individual-led crime, and white-collar crime in particular, will become much more of a world as opposed to national issue. Just an interesting aside.
The US will continue to be the world leader. If the US can survive the 80’s and loss of its manufacturing and automotive dominance, the very thing that led it into superpower status following WWII; it will surely survive the current challenges and emerge taller and prouder. Look at Google, Apple, Microsoft (sigh), etc. Despite all of the problems in the US and the many failures of its leadership, it’s still the most dynamic country on earth when viewed on balance and in totality. And we have the MIGHTY ERASER. Every leader can be replaced within 6 years and no one person or group can ever lay absolute claim to its seats of power. What other country can boast such deeply-rooted brilliance in form. The US remains the ultimate breeding ground of dynamic quality (see Robert Pirsig, ‘Lila’).
January 25th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Hayden – You have a book there: the Mighty Eraser. Made my day, week …
January 25th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Better take another look at the demographics. In addition to the haves and the have-nots (cut it any way you like, by wealth, by technology, by whatever), we’ll also have to contend with divisions along the lines of the nations of the young and the nations of the elderly. Eager to hear your take on this.
China, India, other parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East will need huge investments in infrastructure to support their growing economies. That is where large opportunity lies for American companies and American know how. We will export that knowledge and experience and it will be lucrative. And we may well be financing the captial projects once the costs catch up to the soverign capital piggy banks.
The bottom line: you can steal software, movies, fashions and other knock-off prone creative output, but you can’t steal a bridge or a sewer line or the talent and teams to build them.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Richard, thanks! I do have to credit Pirsig for that, I think he uses the term in ‘Lila’ (speaking from a 10 year old recollection). But I believed he used it in a slightly different context; he said the pencil is mightier than the pen because of its ability to erase. He discussed it in the context of dynamic and static quality, I believe; dynamic quality being that creative intrinsic surge on our internal radars when we hear a great song for the first-time for example; static quality being the ripples-changes left behind. Like when a new genre of music, or someone like Obama, appeal to us so directly and internally that they change the way we look at everything else; and then the markets and paradigms shift (to form static quality). But then dynamic quality comes along again (like Reagan to Obama) to erase the old static patters and ultimately create new one. He went on to describe New York City, how dynamic quality is so high there because the level of tolerance New York requires of its denizens (translating) shatters all paradigms and allows new forms to grow where they might be stamped-out in other places. In New York, and other creative class cities (speaking present tense now), the commingling of old and new, young and old, poor and rich, old-school professional and new-school entrepreneur; fashion and fiance; etc, etc,; because of all of this, it’s impossible to make to many judgments based on appearance (white-collar/blue-collar/”red”-nick) because the de facto standards blend beyond distinction. He tells the story of what looked like a thug sitting down in a cafe and pulling out a NY Times and reading it cover-to-cover; he’s not a thug, he’s an intellectual– blows away the would be judgment.
Actually, the more I write, the more I think there could be a book there. Pirsig’s abstract concepts but spot-on observations need to be applied in a different context 15 years+ later.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
On Point #7 … 15 years ago, I figured that free trade and globalization would lead to diminishment of the nation-state. But for every action, there is a reaction and nationalism is probably greater in the developed world now than a decade ago. In the US, it would have happened anyways but 9/11 has made that reaction stronger. Lou Dobbs has ridden that horse to fame on CNN with its #2 show behind Larry King (okay, so people still care more about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears) and the contagion has even infected the GOP, where a WSJ poll in November 2007 found 60% of members to be skeptical about globalization.
I like Professor Florida’s concept of mega-regions but sometimes they comprise areas of cultures with different ideas, including concepts of nationalism. Witness Switzerland, which is integrated with its EU neighbours but creates a donut hole in the European map.
January 27th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
It’s too bad, though, that the American electorate makes so little use of the mighty eraser. In 2004, 99% of Congressional reps who ran as incumbents got re-elected, and 96% of senators. Has the dynamic form been weakened over time by administrative details like campaign financing rules and redistricting?
(Of course, there’s such a thing as too dynamic, e.g. Italy’s 61 governments since WWII.)
January 28th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Matt, really good point!! I think all of the secret re-districting that has been quietly taking place is more dangerous to our political system than any of the Republicans and Democrats themselves. That, and sample ballots, and the shockingly high number of voters who vote straight-party line regardless of issues. I’ve worked polls in Democrat and Republican dominated precincts for independents and can tell you that they’re equally deplorable. The vast majority of voters crawl out from their homogenous neighborhoods and vote straight party lines no matter what the candidates actually represent. These mentally dead lobotomized voters march lockstep to the polls and vote blindly along party lines without a clue as to what and who they’re ushering into office. It’s sad on so many levels.