|
Edited on Thu Apr-29-04 02:58 PM by Dover
In a chapter of that title, from his book, The Grand Chessboard:
In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.
That is so not only because nation-states are gradually becoming increasingly permeable but also because knowledge as power is becoming more diffuse, more shared, and less constrained by national boundaries. Economic power is also likely to become more dispersed. In the years to come, no single power is likely to reach the level of 30 percent or so of the world's GDP that America sustained throughout much of this century, not to speak of the 50 percent at which it crested in 1945. Some estimates suggest that by the end of this decade (by 2000), America will still account for about 20 percent of global GDP, declining perhaps to about 10-15 percent by 2020 as other powers - Europe, China, Japan - increase their relative share to more or less the American level. But global economic preponderance by a single entity, of the sort that America attained in the course of this century is unlikely, and that has obviously far reaching military and political implications.
....What will America bequeath to the world as the enduring legacy of its primacy? The answer depends in part on how long that primacy lasts and how energetically America shapes a framework of key power partnerships that over time can be more formally institutionalized. In fact, the window of historical opportunity for America's constructive exploitation of its global power could be prove to be relatively brief, for both domestic and external reasons. A genuinely populist democracy has never before attained international supremacy. The pursuit of power and especially the economic costs and human sacrifice that the exercise of such power often requires are not generally congenial to democratic instincts. Democratization is inimical to imperial mobilization.
Indeed, the critical uncertainty regarding the future may well be whether America might become the first superpower unable or unwilling to wield its power. Might it become an impotent global power? Public opinion polls suggest tht only a small minority(13%) of Americans favor the proposition that "as the sole remaining superpower, the U.S. should continue to be the preeminent world leader in solving international problems". An overwhelming majority (74%) prefer that America "do its fair share in efforts to solve international problems together with other countries".
Moreover, as America becomes increasingly a multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. Such a consensus generally existed throughout WWII and even during the Cold War. It was rooted, however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the public sensed were being threatened, but also in a cultural and ethnic affinity for the predominantly European victims of hostile totalitarianisms.
In the absense of a comparable external challenge, American society may find it much more difficult to reach agreement regarding foreign policies that cannot be directly related to central beliefs and widely shared cultural-ethnic sympathies and that still require an enduring and sometimes costly imperial engagement. If anything, two extremely varying views on the implications of America's historic victory in the Cold War are likely to be politically more appealing: on the one hand, the view that the end of the Cold War justifies a significant reduction in America's global engagement, irrespective of the consequences for America's global standing; and on the other, the perception that the time has come for genuine international multilateralism, to which America should even yield some of its sovereignty. Both extremes command the loyalty of committed constituencies.
More generally, cultural change in America may also be uncongenial to the sustained exercise abroad of genuinely imperial power. That excercise requires a high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectural commitment, and patriotic gratification. Yet the dominant culture of the country has become increasingly fixated on mass entertainment that has been heavily dominated by personally hedonistic and socially escapist themes. The cumulative effect has made it increasingly difficult to mobilize the needed political consensus of behalf of sustained, and also occassionally costly, Amreican leadership abroad. Mass communications have been playing a particularly important role in that regard, generating a strong revulsion against any selective use of force that entails even low levels of casualties............cont'd.
Much More..
We've been played like a fiddle.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
