On August 22, 1991, with the collapse of the hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the post-World War II geopolitical era came to an end. The end of the Cold War, the end of Mutual Assured Destruction, the end of the bipolar world. With the fall of the Soviet Union, for the first time in human history, a single nation stood astride the world as a colossus, the United States of America as uncontested hegemon. Yes, economic challenges were rising; in the east, Japan was at the height of its boom years, China was finally awakening from its centuries-long slumber, and several smaller nations, the so-called "tigers" of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore were pumping an increasing range of goods onto the world market. In the west, the slow and steady process of European economic integration continued to roll forward. At home, the American political system had yet to come to grips with the fiscal and social deficits resulting from the policies of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and nothing had been done to begin weaning the nation away from its petroleum addiction.
Nonetheless, America stood alone and uncontested, as the most dominant nation in world history, its vast wealth, global political, diplomatic, cultural and economic reach, and its unparalleled military might so overwhelming that most reasonable observers could only conclude that an extended era of unipolar American preeminence was at hand. Surely the US would be an unchallenged hegemon for the foreseeable future, its overarching power radiating around the world as McDonalds and F-16s, Hollywood blockbusters and soybeans.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 brought the US the one thing missing for its hegemony to be complete, the sympathy and affection of the people of the world. From Mexico City to Manila, in London and Paris and Tokyo, but also in Moscow and Beijing and Teheran, throngs filled the streets to express their sorrow and solidarity with the people of America. The headline of the French newspaper of record, Le Monde, screamed "We are all Americans!" (Yes, that would be those same French, the cheese-eating surrender-monkey ones.)
But a funny thing happened on the way to that projected new American century. Instead of responding positively, powerfully and maturely to the challenges and threats that come with hegemony, instead of reaching deep into its traditional values of fair play, non-intervention, of "speaking softly and carrying a big stick", instead of a powerful nation of 225 years coming to maturity as the greatest power in human history, America indulged its worst traits, of juvenile selfishness, willful ignorance, reactionary violence and thoughtless self-indulgence. When given the greatest opportunity any dominant class has ever been handed, America's elite squandered history's unique gift, and set a course toward spectacular and permanent decline. And around the world, sharp-eyed observers are beginning to see new frameworks for the post-American 21st century taking shape.
Not to say these matters are being reported in the American media. The quiet rise of the multipolar world is equally ignored by the New York Times and FoxNews, by Rush Limbaugh and Newsweek. Well, the Newsweek American edition, at least. In the January 31, 2005 edition of Newsweek International, Andrew Moravcsik tells another story in his article, "Dream On, America":
"Not long ago, the American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square..."
But those were the halcyon days of less than a generation ago. And while Americans may believe that the world has stood still:
"Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively...
Former Brazilian president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God bless the rest of the world."
The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions--globalization, in a word.
Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways--none made in America."
In another current article, this one published in the January 25, 2005 edition of the UK's bastion of conservative common sense, the Financial Times, Michael Lind begins to tease out the details of "How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation":
"A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.
Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.
Consider, as well, the EU's rapid progress toward military independence. American protests failed to prevent the EU establishing its own military planning agency, independent of the Nato alliance (and thus of Washington). Europe is building up its own rapid reaction force. And despite US resistance, the EU is developing Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of the US global positioning satellite system.
The participation of China in Europe's Galileo project has alarmed the US military. But China shares an interest with other aspiring space powers in preventing American control of space for military and commercial uses. Even while collaborating with Europe on Galileo, China is partnering Brazil to launch satellites. And in an unprecedented move, China recently agreed to host Russian forces for joint Russo-Chinese military exercises."
"Nor is American democracy a shining example to mankind. The present one-party rule in the US has been produced in part by the artificial redrawing of political districts to favour Republicans, reinforcing the domination of money in American politics. America's judges -- many of whom will be appointed by Mr Bush -- increasingly behave as partisan political activists in black robes. America's antiquated winner-take-all electoral system has been abandoned by most other democracies for more inclusive versions of proportional representation.
In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.
A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.
It is true that the US remains the only country capable of projecting military power throughout the world. But unipolarity in the military sphere, narrowly defined, is not preventing the rapid development of multipolarity in the geopolitical and economic arenas -- far from it. And the other great powers are content to let the US waste blood and treasure on its doomed attempt to recreate the post-first world war British imperium in the Middle East.
That the rest of the world is building institutions and alliances that shut out the US should come as no surprise. The view that American leaders can be trusted to use a monopoly of military and economic power for the good of humanity has never been widely shared outside of the US. The trend toward multipolarity has probably been accelerated by the truculent unilateralism of the Bush administration, whose motto seems to be that of the Hollywood mogul: "Include me out."
In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation.
In 1998 Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, said of the U.S.: "We are the indispensable nation." By backfiring, the unilateralism of Mr Bush has proven her wrong. The US, it turns out, is a dispensable nation.
Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size."
In the chaos of the fall of Baghdad, as statues of Saddam were toppled for global TV audiences, as the relics of the hegemons of old, of Hammurabi and Ashurbanipal, of Nebuchadnezzar and the Caliphs, were looted from their sanctuaries, it went unnoticed that another hegemon was falling.
Cross-posted from Surviving Ourselves Magazine