IN BED W/ LARRY AU

Partly due to the Beijing Olympics and Zakaria’s new book (The Post-America World, which I haven’t read yet), there’s been a resurgance of hubbub about American hegemony and whether a multipolar world will emerge in the near future.

Since there are so many things that we can talk about when it comes to this, and as I don’t exactly have a lot of excess time right now, I’ll just be excerpting from his book (well, actually articles of excerpts of his book).

From Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria writes:

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

These factoids reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I travel around the world. In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious—and vaguely French—so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, “they” have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

In a section titlted ‘the End of Pax Americana’, he write that:

At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now—one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.

The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

Possibly the most accurate point that’s been made here is the US’s military dominance–with its expenditures almost equivalent to the rest of the world added together. Meanwhile, China’s military budget is a mere 1/8 (the actual figure is lower) of the US’s. I mean, China can’t even build itself an aircraft carrier because they don’t have the quality steel needed for the take-off/landing strip. As for political dominance, virtually all of the IGO’s today are under American management. For potential rising powers (China, India, Rusisa…), they will have to enter a game who’s rules are set by America and its friends.

But the phenomena of anti-Americanism is something that threatens American hegemony. The idea of a ‘Pax-Americana’ is just a joke. In order to make such a profoud statement, you would have to ignore the many proxy wars that have sprung up under America’s watch. Not to mention the countless regimes (most of which were democratic) that America has overthrown to protect its interests–which often ended up with a senile dictator butchering his people. When you have a world that’s increasingly interconnected and when technology allows for even the faintest voice to be heard, there’s no wonder that these people, who were once oppressed by American puppet regimes, are now heard. Underneath that peace, there’s blood–lots and lots of blood.

In another of his articles in the May/June issue of Foreign Afairs, he writes that:

The emerging international system is likely to be quite different from those that have preceded it. A hundred years ago, there was a multipolar order run by a collection of European governments, with constantly shifting alliances, rivalries, miscalculations, and wars. Then came the duopoly of the Cold War, more stable in some ways, but with the superpowers reacting and overreacting to each other’s every move. Since 1991, we have lived under a U.S. imperium, a unique, unipolar world in which the open global economy has expanded and accelerated. This expansion is driving the next change in the nature of the international order. At the politico-military level, we remain in a single-superpower world. But polarity is not a binary phenomenon. The world will not stay unipolar for decades and then suddenly, one afternoon, become multipolar. On every dimension other than military power — industrial, financial, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from U.S. dominance. That does not mean we are entering an anti-American world. But we are moving into a post-American world, one defined and directed from many places and by many people.

There are many specific policies and programs one could advocate to make the United States’ economy and society more competitive. But beyond all these what is also needed is a broader change in strategy and attitude. The United States must come to recognize that it faces a choice — it can stabilize the emerging world order by bringing in the new rising nations, ceding some of its own power and perquisites, and accepting a world with a diversity of voices and viewpoints. Or it can watch as the rise of the rest produces greater nationalism, diffusion, and disintegration, which will slowly tear apart the world order that the United States has built over the last 60 years. The case for the former is obvious. The world is changing, but it is going the United States’ way. The rest that are rising are embracing markets, democratic government (of some form or another), and greater openness and transparency. It might be a world in which the United States takes up less space, but it is one in which American ideas and ideals are overwhelmingly dominant. The United States has a window of opportunity to shape and master the changing global landscape, but only if it first recognizes that the post-American world is a reality — and embraces and celebrates that fact.

What America has to realize is that the rise of the rest does not neccessarily mean the decline of the West. The book talks about the possibly policies that America can adopt to stay intact. Well, the most concrete step for America to remain relevant in a post-American system is to recognize its mistakes and to make ammends. Acknowledge to the world that they were wrong in overthrowing the democratic regimes of Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, Iran, Chile, Grenada, Honduras… and so on. They must realize that the national soverignty and the will of the people in these countries trumps American interests. They must realize that those who oppose the Washington Consensus are not terrorists. Only when they recognize the rights of these people, will the future governments of these people remain favorable to the US.
The US must also stop all (or withold on condition) aid to oppressive regimes. Israel, the largest recipient of US military aid recieved around $2.46 billion in 2007 and bought around $2.76 billion worth of munitions from the US in 2005.

Well, perhaps the reason why there’s so much talk on the rise of the rest is because China has just made the largest PRC flag ever. The flag measures 88.88m in height and 59.25m in width. Now that’s big. If there’s ever been a challenge to America, this is it.
I mean… size does matter.