I wish to write about an article that appeared in the American Policy
Think Tank publication “”The National
Interest”(www.nationalinterest.com), in its July/Aug 2007 issue.
The writers of the article are Nazneen Barma and Ely Ratner, Ph.D
candidates at the University of California, Berkeley along with Steven
Weber, a professor of political science and director of the institute of
international studies, also at the University of California, Berkeley.
In these days of information overload, often controlled and tinted by
the handful of media moguls that control majority of mainstream media
around the globe today, few investigative original journalism and
articles find their way to the world reader****p, compared to a
generation or two ago. Nonetheless, there are people who at times come
out with views outside of the box.
That the rise of China and India, along with a plethora of smaller Asian
nations are altering the geopolitical center of gravity of the world
like never before since the advent of the modern industrial era.
This article highlights one more angle to it.
So what do they say?
It starts out by saying that for the first time in a century, a number
of large, populous and increasingly wealthy states are about to achieve
great power status. These states are China, India and Russia.
The biggest challenge for the American decision makers in the coming
decades would be to guess what the internal relation****p would be
between these rising powers, and they would assimilate rather than
confront the “western” international system sponsored by the US after
second world war.
Most international analysts and politicians like to think of these
nations as additional spokes to the hegemon’s hub, because they have
little choice but to strengthen the existing order, as they themselves
draw benefits out of the existing system.
The other option, they claim, is to directly challenge the United States
for international leader****p, leading to conflict that they are unlikely
to win. Therefore they benefit by integrating into the existing system.
This thinking, the article suggest, is simplistic and wrong. Following
this binary logic, the high level goal of the American foreign policy
should be encourage the rising powers to understand that integration
into the existing system is highly favorable while also hedging against
the possibility of conflict, without allowing this “hedge” to become a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
This thinking, especially regarding future US-China relation, has become
entrenched within the US Government, and enjoys wide bipartisan sup****t.
The only difference between the China hawks, the China doves and the
China realists, is about how much hedging is enough and how much is too
weak.
Things are unfortunately not that simple, argue Barma, Ratner and Weber.
Rising powers are not bound by US Government thinking, and this “with us
or against us” binary thinking. The writers explain that this wishful
thinking is convenient for Americans to believe. It simplifies choices
and goals for itself. But this thinking is wrongheaded, argues the
article.
The rising powers, they argue, has a third option. And it is this third
option that they are likely to adopt. This requires them to neither
confront, nor oppose, the existing Western dominated world order. They
intend to simply bypass the western system, and create one of their own
that neither seeks confrontation nor assimilation.
Their system, in short, aims to make the existing US dominated world
order simply less and less im****tant.
The rising powers will learn, and in fact are indeed learning fast, on
ways to “routing around” the West, avoiding both confrontation and
assimilation. With their rising collective might, this system will
eventually make the West in general, and American power in particular,
increasingly irrelevant.
What is emerging, argue the writers of the article from the University
of California, Berkeley, is a “World Without the West”. This world
relies on a rapid deepening of interconnectivity within the developing
world, and flows of goods, money, people and ideas - that is
surprisingly autonomous from the Western control, resulting in the
development of a new, parallel international system, with its own
distinctive rules, institutions and currencies of power.
They will be largely autonomous and democratic while dealing with each
other state at the international level, and yet each would refrain from
commenting on internal democratic reform, or lack of it, and the
national level.
Wishful thinking and conceptual blindness, claim the writers of the
article, are preventing Americans from seeing the emergence of a World
Without the West for what it really is. America’s foreign policy
choices, it claims, is going to become a lot more tough, less binary,
and more complex than Americans think.
----
The actual article is several pages long, but I guess you get the gist.
What do you think? Is the world going to be having two parallel systems,
one controlled by the west and the other without the West, with some
interaction between the two which are neither confrontational nor
integrating, and the "Without the West" system gradually gaining
increasing relevance while the other gradually losing relevance ?
Tony Mitra
Vancouver, Canada
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