Natalia Ruban:
The topic of „post-American world order" is not
new. A whole series of books dealing with the question of relative American
decline and Asian rise was recently published and discussed. Parag Khanna's The Second World is probably one of the most comprehensive and
thoughtful works among them. It combines different trends in one analysis and
describes in detail almost every region of the world.
Unlike other authors, Khanna believes that
there are three already existing empires which compete with each other in the
global geopolitical marketplace. Basing his statements on personal experience
gained during his two and a half year-long world travel, Khanna argues that Americanisation,
Europeanization and Sinicization are all happening at the same time. As so many
countries possess nuclear weapons, military strength is no longer as important
as economic. And as the
terms like global market share and natural resource endowment become more relevant, the future of the
superpowers depends on their relations with the rest of the world.
In this unprecedented situation of global
competition among empires, the countries of the second world gain in importance. This
group consists of about one hundred
states which are caught between development in their capitals and
underdevelopment in their provinces, and which belong neither to the first nor
to the third world. The power of this group is the power of the consumers. Most
of the second world states try to profit simultaneously from cooperation with
the US, EU and China. Some of them (like Russia or India) are even able to play
one empire off against another. Hence, their decisions to stick with one empire
or another will influence the global power allocation.
In order to attract these important allies,
superpowers use different strategies. The US employs a "coalition" model on
bilateral issue-by-issue basis. China magnetizes through a "consultative"
model, promising financial support without political interference. And the EU
with its "consensus" model allure through attractive social policies. However,
the only true ideology of our time is not democracy or capitalism but success.
And successful, in the words of Darwin and Khanna, are not those who are the
strongest or the smartest, but those who are the most adaptive. The worldwide military presence of the USA
should therefore not be taken for its global dominance. While previously
empires had to conquer colonies, now they have to buy them. The harder the
United States persists with its self-proclaimed position as "the only
superpower", the stronger resistance it will meet.
Khanna also believes that countries are like
people: they have characters, brains, hearts and stomachs. And, as with people,
the way to their heart leads through their stomach. Among the three empires,
the US seems to be the "person" who is the most diseased. While the further
rise of the EU and China is inevitable like biological evolution, the US is
quickly moving towards the conditions of the second world state. Its relative decline is caused not only by
imperial overexpansion and structural change in the system of foreign
relations, but above all by its inner crises. The biggest strength of the US
has always been its ability to renew itself. But with the rising polarisation
of the wealth, ideas and growing fear of the world outside its borders, a new
consensus seems to be improbable.
The main goal of the book is, however, not just
to describe the fall of the US, but to give a broader picture of global
processes. In his last chapter, Khanna raises the question of how important the
power equilibrium is in this new multipolar world order. Although all of the
current superpowers are interested in maintaining peace, history shows that
there were no peaceful rises of new empires. And the challenge of peace
preservation requires knowledge, not ideology based diplomacy.
Natalia Ruban is a graduate student of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin and a former intern at the Atlantic Community.
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- 6
September 27, 2008
Amarjyoti Acharya, author/commentator, Silver Contributor (45)
We are yet to see a state that matches any organism, in the twenty-first century - in the perfect constitution of its organisms with all its faculties, ceterus paribus. But, like all human imaginations and creations, states too have a life fuelled by those who believe in it - no matter how imperfect that imagination is and how imperfect are the imaginations of those that assume that they understand any state in question - perfectly well!
Should various states appear as persons - what would be their 'cultural/civilizational' orientations and how would one align oneself - within the inter-dependent relationship that such an imagination entails?
The more pressing question would be: what is the perfect state? If this question has been answered, prior to its comparison with any living organism, much of the problem within academia then has been solved.
In this new 'orientation' of the first, second and the third world of Khanna - what and how do they differ from the classifications employed by Daniel Bell that classifies states as post-industrial, industrial, industializing/pre-industriial states? Or the further mode employed by certain authors like Alvin Toffler that lloks at states and societies as the first wave, second wave and the third wave societies/states - with industrialization forming the basis for the First Wave society/state parameter?
Like any organism that has the capacity for self-realization and self-evolution (with the attendant conditions/questions of what would they be and what would this self-realization entail), any notion of the state and its imaginations also invite the very same questions, more so in the imagination of one's comprehension and its correctness.
Reactance thoeries within human psychology (again not final in its correctness or the end-of-theory within psychology) may not be applicabe to states and state behaviour, as Kenneth Waltz with his systemic approach or Alexander Wendt with his Constructive approach would agree, though the latter does employ a similar device in the description of states and inter-state relations, to a good effect.