Gist: America under Obama seeks to enlist the aid of rising great powers in shaping the international order for the better. Problem is, most of these powers are just feeling their oats, and their fist instinct ain’t to take orders from Washington.
Hence, say I, all this “world without the West” bravado, which is thrilling for those pushing it, but it will wear off once larger realities set it.
Hillary Clinton quote: “Convincing people to go alone with us requires different skills and ways to exercise our power than it did 50 or 100 years ago.”
True enough for 50 years ago, but 100 years ago WE were the rising power that required difference skills from established ones seeking to enlist our help, so some finer sense of the historical sequencing here, please.
Series of cool charts in the piece lay out a logic I first spelled out in PNM: politics follows trade nowadays, unlike during the Cold War when trade (and investment) followed the flag. That too is part of the Cold War peace dividend staring us in the face. The charts show how, for Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey, China now trades with each to the same degree—or better—than the US did in the past or trade.
This is an inescapable reality: first comes the trade, then the investment, then the infrastructural network ties, then the political friendship, and then the confluence of security interests.
Expecting anybody to choose us over China with those dynamics unfolding inexorably over time is to ignore reality.
So no, we won’t be fighting China, and neither will any other rising power—save maybe India, but even that seems far fetched.
And yeah, that too is part of the Cold War peace dividend, although it’s really part of America’s larger international liberal trade order-cum-globalization peace dividend, and it should most definitely be viewed that way. No hegemonic power before us was ever able to structure a system in which numerous great powers could rise simultaneously and peacefully.
But again, America “doesn’t do grand strategy” because we’re all dreamy pinheads, according to the East Coast liberal establishment’s conventional wisdom.