Is the Multipolar World Already Here?

Geostrategists have been debating for some time how long U.S. world hegemony will last and what will replace it. For example, Zbigniew Brezinski foresees a generation-long soft landing in which the U.S. will gradually transition its dominating role to a group of powers.

But as I previewed in January, Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation argues that this transition has already occurred - that we are living in a world dominated by three main power centers, the U.S., Europe, and China. In his recently published book The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, Khanna expands on his thesis. In his view, both Europe and China are working off independent agendas, building influence over many countries, and that the U.S. is no longer in any position to control much of the world's agenda. Though its military is still without peer, its spiraling indebtedness, ignorance of the rest of the world, stark inequality, and political paralysis are making the U.S. less and less able to sustain its advantages.

Does it matter to the world's people whether there is one dominant power or several? One reason Khanna thinks it does is that, in the words of one reviewer, "the empires use their power in very different ways. The U.S. works on a 'coalition' model, building alliances on an issue-by-issue basis — counterterrorism, democratization, economic liberalization. The E.U. employs a 'consensus' model, slowly working toward agreement on domestic issues, then using its huge market and attractive economic and social policies to draw countries into its orbit. And China uses a 'consultative' model, depending on other nations’ belief that doing business with China is advantageous economically and politically, and that it is necessary to put off other, more controversial issues involving labor rights, the environment, and governmental transparency."

In other words, a nation in the European or Chinese orbit will have a very different experience than one in the U.S. orbit. The mixed economies and the equal relationships between member countries of the EU, and the economic development programs and trade opportunities found in the Chinese sphere, contrast with the free market fundamentalism and plain neglect brought by the U.S. to countries under its wing. In an article published yesterday in Dawn, Khanna also pointed out that the EU's model of regional economic integration is being widely emulated, and he elsewhere points out that China's emergence marks the first time in the modern era that a non-Western power has done so. However, Khanna's arguments on all these points are sketchy. Since his account is essentially political, lacking any real analysis of exploitation or imperialism, the long term development of the countries within the three spheres of influence remains for others to address.

A second reason it matters is that the next tier of partially developed, partially poor nations - the "second world" - are increasingly able to play the major powers against each other, maneuvering for advantage as the hegemons seek allies and markets. Most of the book is devoted to a whirldwind tour of dozens of countries. These chapters are fun, informal, and useful, providing updates from many places we don't read much about, drawing comparisons and contrasts, and commenting in particular on the impact of the three major powers on each country. Europe and China are both extending their power geographically - the EU in East Europe and Northern Africa, China in East and Southeast Asia, and the two contending in the Middle East and in ex-Soviet Central Asia. Since the U.S., on the other hand, is still trying to dominate the whole world, it is spread too thin to achieve much and is even neglecting its own geographical backyard, Latin America.

Khanna is scathing about America's problems. "Empires collapse not long after they reach their fullest extent," and he says the U.S. may very well fall to second world status if it does not pull itself together and combat the inequality, collapse of public services, fear of the future and political dysfunction which are eating away at its sense of cohesion.

Khanna is vague about timelines. Are we really talking about three superpowers that are working independently and at cross purposes now? Is there danger that the struggle of three powers will lead to the next world war? Many times Khanna refers to "the West", acknowledging that the U.S. and EU still often operate as a unit, and it does not seem that this is out of a temporary tactical alliance but rather is based on fundamental shared goals. As for China, Khanna says that he does not expect it to move its main attention beyond the Asian region for decades. Khanna concludes by calling on the three powers to form a G-3, a managed equilibrium that replaces the current Western-dominated "international community" with a new division of labor.

I find much that rings true in this view. The U.S. is no longer operating as an effective hegemon as it has done for the last 60 years, but seems to be blocked at every turn. When Venezuela proceeds to build a Bolivarian socialist and pan-Latin-American project for eight years with little effective interference from El Norte, when Israel loses a fight with Hezbollah and signs a ceasefire with Hamas, and when Pakistan- yes, Pakistan!- publicly defies the U.S. over military policy and gets away with it - then this is no longer the U.S. imperialist world system we have long been accustomed to. This is a world in major transition.

A tale of two disasters

It's hardly a novel observation to point out that the U.S. government response to Hurricane Katrina was feeble, uncoordinated, wasteful, and racist. We can start with George Bush's own web site, whitehouse.gov, which posted an analysis of the failures. "[F]our critical flaws in our national preparedness became evident: Our processes for unified management of the national response; command and control structures within the Federal government; knowledge of our preparedness plans; and regional planning and coordination," according to The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned.

"The disastrous response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Katrina exposed the weakness of existing emergency management and response policies on all political levels - local, state, and federal," concluded William L. Waugh, professor of public administration at Georgia State, in Shelter from the Storm: Repairing the National Emergency Management System after Hurricane Katrina.

"[A] hastily improvised $10 billion effort by the federal government has produced vast sums of waste and misspent funds, an array of government audits and outside analysts have concluded," wrote Spencer Hsu in The Washington Post in April 2006.

In The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein argues that none of this is accidental. The ineffectual government response, coupled with enablement of unfettered capitalist power grabs, in New Orleans is of a piece with capitalist grabs after the Chile coup, the Sri Lankan tsunami, and the Iraq invasion, among other examples.

Recently, Scott Tong of "Marketplace" on American Public Media illustrated a very different kind of governmental response to a natural disaster - the earthquake in Sichuan, China, last month, which left 11 million people homeless. In its response to the earthquake, China reminded us that it retains some characteristics of a socialist economy.

Chen Juxiang, plant manager of Yangfan, which usually makes tents for outdoor equipment companies like Eureka, got a call the day after the quake. " '[G]overnment officials called us and asked us to send everything we had, so we worked until 2 in the morning to airlift more than a thousand tents.' Yangfan put its U.S. and European clients on hold and it shifted hundreds of workers from other product lines over to tentmaking," reported Tong.

" 'They moved so many people and so much assets right away. They commandeered every airplane to make this happen. It's something to kind of stand back and admire, kind of be in awe of, how fast they were able to go from zero to 60' ", summarized Richard Brubaker, a logistics coordinator who runs a charity doing earthquake relief.

Tong's conclusion: "It's the benefit of an economy that still retains its central planning roots -- in this case, cranking up the world's workshop for disaster relief."

Katrina and Sichuan, disaster capitalism and central planning. Which system would you like to see take charge of the next relief operation?