Shrinking Superpower?

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Parag Khanna's recent essay argues that the brief era of the single superpower is over. He describes a world dominated by not one but three superpowers -- the U.S., the E.U., and China. The competition is not primarily military, but political and economic as well. Each of the three contenders represents a political style and a worldview.

America's model is a coalition style with itself as the leader. But American exceptionalism no longer provides a uniquely attractive version of democracy and progress. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exemplify its method, but in a world in which it is no longer dominant, they represent imperial overreach. "Now its very presence in Eurasia is tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome in much of the Middle East, and has lost much of East Asia's confidence," says Khanna.

China is also extending its influence regionally, in both East and Central Asia, based on its economic power and on Asian identity and history. Its initiatives beyond, in Africa and Latin America, are building its global influence. Its rise represents the first time a power of non-European heritage is legitimately contending for supremacy.

According to Khanna, Europe sees its role as balancing between the U.S. and China. The European system is growing by steadily bringing peripheral countries into its orbit, then absorbing them. The U.S. political system can't do that, and in addition the process is giving Europeans a blueprint for building international institutions elsewhere.

The Big Three each dominate a north/south zone, but each will meddle in the periphery of the others. Therefore Khanna sees what he calls the "second world", the increasingly developed but not imperialist "swing states" whose alliances with the Big Three will determine the outcome. Russia and Turkey, Iran and Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Brazil, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, are no longer merely the pawns on the great powers' chessboard, but are able to play the great powers off against each other. Whether through independent-minded anti-imperial alliances, or through sovereign wealth funds which are buying up Big Three assets, the second world will determine the outcome of global politics in the next generation.

Khanna's essay updates the conventional paradigm, in which world politics is seen as a struggle among great powers. But it does not break from it, as he describes power trends as driven by national interests. The emergence of China's non-western cultural heritage in the epicenter of power is one dimension, but expressions of cultural diversity throughout the world are also on the rise.

Most importantly, Khanna does not ask whether everyone in a country has the same interests and will pull in the same direction. If globalization has made anything clear, it is that capitalists and workers, rich and poor, state and the people, have divergent interests in every country. The rise of mass communications will increasingly allow people to find their true allies worldwide, whether within their country or outside it.