The very notion of a globally dominant power is a recent historical development. For millennia, people lived in isolated communities, unaware of the existence of their more distant neighbors. Migrations and sporadic collisions with outsiders took place in a setting of total ignorance of the world at large. It has only been within the last 800 years or so that an initial vague awareness of the presence of distant “others” permeated the human consciousness, first through expeditions and mapping of once-unknown areas and then through colonization and large migrations. Eventually, that knowledge led to imperial rivalries, which in turn led to two destructive wars for world domination, and then to the global systemic confrontation of the Cold War. In recent times, space exploration has dramatized the new appreciation of the relative “smallness” of the earth, while photographs from outer space taken at night have conveyed the vivid contrast between the illuminated concentrations of urbanized humanity — especially in what is usually described as the West — and the darker, less technologically advanced, but increasingly crowded regions of the rest of the world.
President Roosevelt made no secret of his conviction that the US commitment to the liberation of Europe during WW2 did not include the restoration of the colonial empires of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Portugal.
However, Roosevelt’s highly principled opposition to colonialism did not prevent him from pursuing an acquisitive US policy determined to gain a lucrative position for America in the key oil-producing Middle Eastern countries. In 1943, President Roosevelt not so subtly told Britain’s ambassador to the US, Lord Halifax, while pointing at a map of the Middle East, that “Persian oil is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it’s ours.” So began America’s subsequently painful political involvement in that region.
The practical acceptance of this new reality came with the 2008 admission of new entrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America into the G-8, a hitherto exclusively and largely Western club of financial decision makers, transforming the previously narrow circle into the more globally representative G-20. Symbolic of this change was the fact that the most significant roles in the G-20 meeting held in the US in 2009 were played by the presidents of two states: the USA and the PRC, respectively.
The EU could compete to be the world’s number two power, but this would require a more robust political union, with a common foreign policy and shared defense capability. But unfortunately for the West, the post-Cold War expansion of the European Economic Community into a larger European “Union” did not produce a real union but a misnomer; in fact, the designations should have been reversed. The earlier smaller “community” of Wester Europe was politically more united than the subsequently larger “union” of almost all of Europe, with the latter defining its unity through a partially common currency but without a genuinely decisive central political authority or a common fiscal policy.
A sequential ranking of other major powers beyond the top two would be imprecise at best.
It is far from certain how enduring that new convent of leading states will prove to be. One should be mindful of the fact that in the course of only one century — from approximately 1910 to 2010 — the ranking hierarchy of global power changed significantly no less than five times, with all but the fourth signaling a divisive deterioration in the global preeminence of the West.
First, on the eve of WW1 the British and French empires were globally dominant and were allied to a weakened Tsarist Russia recently defeated by a rising Japan. They were being challenged from within Europe by the ambitious imperial Germany supported by a weak Austro-Hungarian and declining Ottoman empires. And industrially dynamic America, though initially neutral, made in the end a decisive contribution to the Anglo-French victory.
Second, during the interlude between WW1 and WW2, Great Britain seemed internationally preeminent, though with America clearly on the rise. However, by the early 1930s the rapidly rearming and increasingly revisionist Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were already plotting against the status quo.
Third, Europe was shattered by WW2, which produced in its wake the 40-year-long Cold War between the American and Soviet superpowers, the might of each overshadowing everyone else.
Fourth, the ultimate “defeat” of the Soviet Union in the Cold War led to a brief unipolar phase in the world affairs dominated by America as the sole global superpower.
And, fifth, by 2010, with America still preeminent, a new and more complex constellation of power containing a growing Asian component was visibly emerging.
The ongoing dispersal of global power is furthered by the emergence of a volatile phenomenon: the worldwide political awakening of population until recently politically passive or repressed. Occurring recently in Central and Eastern Europe and lately in the Arab world, this awakening is the cumulative product of an interactive and interdependent world connected by instant visual communications and of the demographic youth bulge in the less advanced societies composed by the easy-to-mobilize and politically restless university students and the socially deprived unemployed. Both groups resent the richer portions of humanity and the privileged corruption of their rulers. That resentment of authority and privilege is unleashing populist passions with unprecedented potential for generating large-scale turmoil.
The universal scope and the dynamic impact of this new social phenomenon is historically novel. For most of history, humanity has lived not only in compartmentalized isolation but also in a state of political stupor. Most people in most places were neither politically conscious nor politically active. Their daily lives were focused on personal survival in conditions of physical and material deprivation. Religion offered some solace while social traditions provided some degree of cultural stability and occasional collective relief from the hardships of fate. Political authority was remote, often seen as an extension of divine will, and frequently legitimated by hereditary entitlement. Struggles for power at the top tended to be confined to a narrow circle of participants, while group conflicts with adjoining communities focused largely on territorial or material possessions and were fueled by instinctive ethnic hatreds and / or divergent religious beliefs. Political conversations, political convictions, and political aspirations were a preoccupation of a privileged social stratum in the immediate vicinity of the ruler itself.
As societies became more complex, a distinctive class of people engaging in political discourse and in struggles for political power emerged at the apex of organized society. Whether in the court of the Roman or of the Chinese emperor, the courtiers or mandarins were active crypto-politicians, though focused more on palace intrigues than on wider policy issues. And as societies evolved even further and literacy increased, more participants entered the political dialogue: the landed aristocracy in the rural areas, wealthy merchants and artisans in the expanding towns and cities, and a limited elite class of intellectuals. Still, the populace at large remained politically disengaged and dormant, except for periodic outbreaks of violent but largely anarchistic outrage, as in the case of peasant uprisings.
The first socially inclusive but geographically limited manifestation of political awakening was the French Revolution. Its eruption was driven by a combination of atavistic rebellion from below and novel mass propagation from above. It occurred in a society in which a traditional monarchy was sustained by a politically literate but internally divided aristocracy and by a materially privileged Catholic Church. That power structure was then challenged by a politically literate but restless bourgeoisie engaged in public agitation in key urban centers and even by peasantry increasingly aware of its relative deprivation. Historically unprecedented political pamphleteering, facilitated by the printing press, rapidly translated social resentments into revolutionary political aspirations crystallized in emotionally captivating slogans: “liberte, egalite, fraternite.”
The resulting violent political upheaval produced a sudden unifying surge in collective and self-conscious national identity. Napoleon’s military triumphs in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1789 owed at least as much to the collective fervor of a politically awakened French national identity as to his military genius. And that fervor spread rapidly throughout Europe, with its contagion first favoring Napoleonic victories and then contributing, in a rebound (having aroused Prussian, Austrian, and Russian nationalistic passions), to Napoleon’s defeat. But by the “Spring of Nations” in 1848, much of Europe — notably Germany but also Italy, Poland, and soon Hungary — plunged into an age of fervent nationalism and socially self-conscious political awakening. By then, the more politically conscious Europeans had also become captivated by the democratic ideals of the socially less revolutionary but politically more inspirational humanism of the distant, open, and postaristocratic American republic.
However, less than a century later, Europe fell victim to wars inspired by its own conflicting populist passions. The two world wars coupled with the explicit anti-imperialism of the Bolshevik Revolution, helped make mass political awakening a global phenomenon. The conscripted soldiers of the British and French colonial empires returned home imbued with a new awareness of their own political, racial, and religious identity and of their economic privation. Concurrently, the increasing access to Western higher education and the resulting spread of Western ideas drew the minds of those in the upper strata of the indigenous populations of European colonies to captivating notions of nationalism and socialism.
It was for him at the time a trip literally into the distant unknown. He told me how gripped he became by the awareness of China’s relative social retardation compared to France and how his sense of national humiliation made him turn for historical guidance to Marxist teaching about social revolution as a shortcut for national redemption. That was when his national resentment, political awakening, and ideological formation fused into one, and came to shape his subsequent participation in two revolutions: under Mao, to break with China’s past, and then (when he became the leader) to shape China’s future.
The poem encapsulated the anti-imperialist sentiment of a significant part of the new intelligentsia in the postcolonial regions. If such hostile views of the West were to become the universal mindset of the politically activated populations of the emerging countries, the more benign democratic values that the West was so hopefully propagating that the outset of the 21st century could become historically irrelevant.
Two further and indirect consequences of the phenomenon of global political awakening are also noteworthy. The first is that it marks the end of relatively inexpensive and one-sided military campaigns by technologically superior expeditionary forces of the West against politically passive, poorly armed, and rarely united native populations. The dawn of political awakening has stimulated a wider sense of shared commitment, greatly increasing the costs of external domination, as demonstrated in recent years by the highly motivated, much more persistent, and tactically unconventional popular resistance (“the people’s war”) of the Vietnamese, Algerians, Chechens, and Afghans against foreign domination. In the resulting battles of will and of endurance, the technologically more advanced were not necessarily the winners.
Second, the pervasive spread of political awakening has given special importance to a previously absent dimension of competitive world politics: global systemic rivalry. Prior to the onset of the industrial age, military prowess (weaponry, organization, motivation, training, and strategic leadership), backed by an adequate treasury, was the central and determining asset in the quest for a dominant status, with the issue often resolved by just one decisive land or sea battle.
In our time, comparative societal performance, as popularly judged, has become a significant component of national influence. Before 1800, no attention was paid to the comparative social statistics — nor were they readily available — in the rivalries of France vs. Great Britain, or Austria-Hungary vs. the Ottoman Empire, not to mention China vs. Japan. But in the course of less than a century, societal comparisons have become increasingly important in shaping competitive international standings in public approval, especially for the top protagonists such as the US and the USSR during the Cold War, or currently the US and China.
Many of the almost 1 million students who study here each year remain, seduced by America’s opportunities.
The key to America’s prolonged historical appeal has been its combination of idealism and materialism, both of which are powerful sources of motivation for the human psyche.
Though driven by mass terror, forced labor, large-scale deportations, and state-sponsored murder, the Soviet formula stuck a chord with many in the politically awakened humanity shaken by two successive and enormously bloody wars. It was attractive to the poorer strata of the more advanced West, whose confidence in industrial progress was undermined by the Great Depression, to the increasingly anticolonial masses of Asia and Africa, and especially to radical intellectuals in search of historical certainty during a century of upheaval.
Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model of the world.
If America continues to put off instituting a serious reform plan that simultaneously reduces spending and increases revenue, the US will likely face a fate similar to the previous fiscally crippled great powers, whether ancient Rome or 20th-century Great Britain.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its 2009 report card of America’s infrastructure, put America’s overall grade at an abysmal D; this included a D in aviation, a C- in rail, a D- in roads, and a D+ in energy. Urban renewal has been slow, with slums and deteriorating public housing in numerous cities — including even the nation’s capital — a testimonial to social neglect. A mere train from NYC to Washington DC offers from its railcar windows a depressing spectacle of America’s infrastructural stagnation, in contrast to the societal innovation that characterized America during much of the 20th century.
America’s fifth major vulnerability is a public that is highly ignorant about the world. The uncomfortable truth is that the US’s public has an alarmingly limited knowledge of basic global geography, current events, and even pivotal moments in world history — a reality certainly derived in part from its deficient public education system.
America’s liabilities:
- National debt
- Flawed financial system
- Widening social inequality
- Decaying infrastructure
- Public ignorance
- Gridlocked politics
America’s assets:
- Overall economic strength
- Innovative potential
- Demographic dynamics
- Reactive mobilization
- Geographic base
- Democratic appeal
Ultimately, America’s long-term success in self-renewal may require a fundamental change of focus in America’s social culture: how Americans define their personal aspirations and the ethical content of their national “dream.” Is the acquisition of material possessions way beyond the requirements of convenience, comfort, and self-gratification the ultimate definition of the good life? Could patiently and persistently pursued domestic reforms turn America into an example of an intelligent society in which a productive, energetic, and innovative economy serves as the basis for shaping a society that is culturally, intellectually, and spiritually more gratifying? Unfortunately, such a far-reaching reevaluation of the meaning of a good life might occur only after the American public has been shocked into a painful understanding that America itself will be in jeopardy if it continues on a course that leads from the pursuit of domestic cornucopia to a plunge into international bankruptcy.
If the crash of 2007 provided an imperative lesson regarding the need to undertake a major reassessment of some of America’s basic systemic features, domestic values, and social policies, the date 9/11 similarly should encourage America to rethink seriously whether it has intelligently exploited the extraordinary opportunity of the peaceful yet geopolitically successful end of the Cold War.
It is now easy to forget how threatening the Cold War really was during its long four and a half decades. A hot war could have broken out suddenly at any moment with a decapitating strike that in minutes could have eliminated the US leadership, and in hours incinerated much of the US and USSR. The “Cold” War was stable only in the sense that its fragile mutual restraint depended on the rationality of a few fallible human beings.
Though America’s interventions were reminiscent of 19th-century punitive imperial expeditions against primitive and usually disunited tribes, in the new age of mass political awakening, warfare against aroused populism has become, as the US has painfully discovered, more protracted and taxing. Last but by no means last, in the age of global transparency, a total victory, achieved ruthlessly by any means necessary has ceased to be a viable option; even the Russians, who did not hesitate to kill hundreds of thousands of Afghans and who drove several million of them into exile, did not go all out in seeking to prevail.
At the same time, however, both the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts — much like the West’s expeditionary wars of the past — left the American homeland largely unaffected, except of course for soldiers and their families. Though both wars cost America billions of dollars and though the totals were higher than all previous wars except for WW2, their cost as a percentage of America’s GDP was low because of the enormous expansion of the US economy. Moreover, the Bush administration refrained from increasing taxes in order to pay for the wars, financing them instead by more politically expedient borrowing, including from abroad. From a social perspective, the fact that the fighting and dying was being done by volunteers — unlike in the earlier Vietnamese and Korean wars — also reduced the societal scope of personal pain.
Some key international institutions, such as the World Bank or the IMF, are already under increasing pressure from the rising, poorer, but highly populated states — with China and India in the forefront — for a general rearrangement of the existing distribution of voting rights, which is currently weighted toward the West. That distribution has already been challenged by some states in the G-20 as unfair. The obvious demand is that it should be based to a much greater degree on the actual populations of member states and less on their actual financial contributions. Such a demand, arising in the context of greater disorder and percolating unrest among the world’s newly politically awakened peoples, could gain popularity among many as a step toward international (even though not domestic) democratization. And before long, the heretofore untouchable and almost seventy-year-old UNSC system of only five permanent members with exclusive veto rights may become widely viewed as illegitimate.
States, like individuals, are driven by inherited propensities — their traditional geopolitical inclinations and their sense of history — and they differ in their ability to discriminate between patient ambition and imprudent self-delusion. In reflecting on the possible consequences of a change in the global hierarchy of power in the first half of the 21st century, it may be useful therefore to remind oneself that in the 20th century two extreme examples of impatient self-delusion resulted in national calamities.
The most obvious was provided by Hitler’s imprudent megalomania, which not only vastly overestimated Germany’s global capacity for leadership but also prompted two personal strategic decisions that deprived him of any chance of retaining control even of continental Europe. The first, when already having conquered Europe but still at war with Great Britain, was to attack the Soviet Union; and the second was to declare war on the US while still engaged in a mortal struggle with both the Soviet Union and Great Britain.
The second case was less dramatic but the stake was also global power. In the early 1960s the Soviet leadership proclaimed officially that it expected to surpass the US during the decade of 1980s in economic power and in technological capability (dramatized by its Sputnik success). Vastly overestimating its economic capabilities, by the late 1970s the USSR was pursuing an active arms race with the US in which its technological capacity for innovation was central to the outcome, but in which its GNP limited the practical scope of its global political as well as military outreach. On both scores, the Soviet Union overreached disastrously. It then compounded the consequences of its miscalculation with the calamitous decision to invade Afghanistan in 1979. A decade later the exhausted Soviet Union ceased to exist and the Soviet bloc fragmented.
Accordingly, the Chinese leadership have been prudently restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership. By and large, they are still guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxim: “Observer calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our times; be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership.” That cautious and even deceptive posture happens also to be in keeping with the ancient strategic guidance of Sun Tzu who compellingly argued that the wisest posture in combat is to lay back, let one’s opponent make fatal mistakes, and only then capitalize on them. China’s official attitude toward America’s domestic travails and foreign adventures is suggestively reminiscent of that strategic guidance. Beijing’s historical confidence goes hand in hand with its calculated prudence and long-term ambitions.
The malfunctioning of the international mechanism today is the malfunctioning of the Western model dominated by the “American model.” At a deeper level, it is the malfunctioning of the Western culture. Even as it actively participates in global governance and properly fulfills its role as a large developing country, China should take the initiative to disseminate the Chinese concept of “harmony” around the world. In the course of world history, a country’s rise is often accompanied by the birth of a new concept. The concept of “harmony” is a theoretical expression of China’s peaceful rise and should be transmitted to the world along with the concepts of justice, win-win, and joint development.
Such reactions reflect not only a rising historical self-confidence on the part of China — a confidence that could easily become overconfidence — but also a more assertive Chinese nationalism. Chinese nationalism is a potent and potentially explosive force. Though deeply rooted in historical pride, it is also driven by resentment over past but not-so-distant humiliations. It can be channeled and exploited by those in power. Indeed, in the event of internal social disruptions, the appeal of nationalism could become the expedient source of social cohesion for the preservation of the political status quo.
At some stage, however, it could also damage China’s global image, at some cost to its international interests. A highly nationalistic and assertive China — boastful of its rising power — could unintentionally mobilize a powerful coalition of neighbors against itself. The fact is that none of China’s important neighbors — Japan, India, and Russia — are ready to acknowledge China’s entitlement to America’s place on the global totem pole if it becomes vacant. Perhaps China’s neighbors might eventually have no choice, but they almost certainly would first maneuver against such an ascension. They might even be inclined to seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting scramble could become regionally intense, especially given the somewhat similar susceptibility among these three major neighbors of China toward passionate nationalisms of their own.
Afghanistan is a country in shambles. It has little economic output outside of its illegal narcotics trade, with 40% unemployed and a global ranking of 219th in GDP per capita. Only 15-20% of Afghans have access to electricity.
In that geopolitical context, and contrary to those who believe that Israel’s long-term security would benefit from an America locked into a hostile relationship with the world of Islam, Israel’s long-term survival could be placed in jeopardy. Israel has the military capacity and the national will to repel immediate dangers to itself, and also to repress the Palestinians. But America’s long-standing and generous support for Israel, derived more from a genuine sense of moral obligation and less from real strategic congruity, could become less reliable. The inclination to disengage from the world could grow as America declines, despite public support for Israel, while much of the world would blame America for the regional upheaval. With the Arab masses politically aroused and more inclined to engage in prolonged violence (“people’s war”), an Israel that could become internationally viewed — to cite Deputy PM Ehud Barak’s ominous warning in 2010 — as an “apartheid” state would have doubtful long-term prospects.
Just 35 years ago, the US benefited from strong relationships with the four most important countries in the Middle East: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey. As a result, American interests in the region were secure. Today, American influence with each of these four states is largely reduced. America and Iran are locked in a hostile relationship; Saudi Arabica is critical of America’s evolving regional policy; Turkey is disappointed by the lack of American standing for its regional ambitions; and Egypt’s rising skepticism regarding its relationship with Israel is setting it at odds with America’s priorities. In brief, the US position in the Middle East is manifestly deteriorating. An American decline would end it.
The existing international system is likely to become increasingly incapable of preventing conflicts once it becomes evident that America is unwilling or unable to protect states it once considered, for national interest and / or doctrinal reasons, worthy of its engagement. Furthermore, once awareness of that new reality becomes internationally pervasive, a more widespread tendency toward regional violence, in which stronger states become more unilateral in their treatment of weaker neighbors, may ensure. Serious threats to peace are likely to originate from major regional powers inclined to settle geopolitical or ethnic scores with their immediate but much weaker neighbors. The fading of American power would create an open space for such an assertion of force, with relatively little short-term cost to its initiator.
Americans tend to take Mexico’s relative stability for granted, assuming it poses little direct threat to America’s strategic position and to the security of the entire Western Hemisphere. A significant deterioration in the US-Mexico relationship and its resulting consequences would thus come as a painful shock to the American public, generally not aware that the Mexican and American versions of their countries’ past relations tend to vary.
However, a decline in American power would likely undermine the health and good judgment of America’s economic and political system. A waning US would likely to be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others’ development. Hence stable cooperation with Mexico would enjoy less popular support.
The global commons, those areas of the world that are shared by all states, can be reduced to two main sets of global concerns: the strategic and the environmental. The strategic commons include the sea and air, space, and cyberspace domains, as well as the nuclear domain as it pertains to controlling global proliferation. The environmental commons include the geopolitical implications of managing water sources, the Arctic, and global climate change.
In addition, the control of global nuclear proliferation is essential to the stability of the international system. For some years now, the US has been the most vocal proponent of minimizing proliferation, even setting its goal a world with zero nuclear weapons. Moreover, the US provides security guarantees to specific non-nuclear weapon states that fear their nuclear neighbors by extending to them them US nuclear umbrella. Because the US is the largest and most advanced nuclear weapon state and because its global position depends on the stability provided by its nuclear umbrella, the responsibility for leadership in the nuclear nonproliferation domain sits squarely on American shoulders. In this domain above all others the world still looks to the US to lead.
As both candidate and President, Barrack Obama has delivered several remarkable speeches. He has spoken directly and in a historically sensitive manner to Europeans, Middle Easterners, Muslims, and Asians, addressing the necessarily changing relationship of America to their concerns. In particular, President Obama’s speeches in Prague and Cairo raised the world’s expectations regarding the orientation of America’s future foreign policy. International public opinion polls showed an almost immediate and positive reaction in the world’s perception of America as a whole because of President Obama’s image and rhetoric. Yet he has failed to speak directly to the American people about America’s changing role in the world, its implications, and its demands.
In that context, if it becomes clear that Iran is actually in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons, America could also seek commitments from other nuclear powers to participate in the collective enforcement of a UN resolution to disarm Iran, by compulsion if necessary. But it must be stressed: such enforcement would have to be collective and involve also Russia and China. America can provide a nuclear umbrella for the region by itself, but it should not engage in a solitary military action against Iran or just in cooperation with Israel, for that would plunge America into a wider, again lonely, and eventually self-destructive conflict.
That requires, however, a long-term vision and an equally long-term strategy for executing it. But today’s Europe — along with America — lacks both. It is ironic that even in the geographically distant Korea the country’s leading newspaper published in the fall of 2010 an apt indictment of Europe’s strategic self-indulgence, bluntly stating that:
It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that Europe has suddenly become a political backwater. But it is true that Europeans need to take a long, hard look at themselves and at where they will be in 40 years if the current trends continue. What is needed today is a clear definition of Europe’s interests — and its responsibilities. Europe needs a sense of purpose for a century in which many of the odds will be stacked against it, as well as a statement of the moral standards that will guide its actions and, one hopes, its leadership.
The Indians fear Chinese-Pakistani collusion; the Chinese feel vulnerable to India’s potential capacity to interfere with Chinese access through the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and Africa.
Since Deng, China has gone through three stable leadership renewals thanks, in part, to standardized procedures for firmly scheduled leadership succession. The Chinese leaders have made efforts to anticipate problems, and even to study jointly pertinent foreign experience in tackling the unavoidable complications of domestic policy successes. (In quite a remarkable exercise, the Chinese politburo periodically convenes to study for a whole day some major external or internal issue in order to draw relevant foreign and historical parallels. The very first session dealt, rather revealingly, with the lessons to be learned from the rise and fall of foreign empires, with the most recent identified as being the American.)
A less internationally troubling alternative to a nationalistic China motivated by 20th-century European-style chauvinism could be the emergence of what might be called a Confucian China with modern characteristics. China’s political culture has deep roots, and it is suffused with its won distinctive philosophical concepts of life, of hierarchy, and of authority. The notion of domestic “harmony” in which unity asserted by an authoritarian framework is said to originate from a generalized philosophical consensus, in which leadership emerges through meritocratic selection but not open political contestation, and in which policy is derived from “facts” but is not dogmatized is deeply rooted in China’s long past. It is noteworthy that Deng Xiaoping repeatedly cited the phrase “seek truth from facts,” pointedly echoing Confucius.
In any case, the notion of harmony is the message that China is increasingly and deliberately attempting to convey about itself to the world at large. Ruled by an officialdom that calls itself the Communist Party, China in its global outreach does not identify itself with the class struggle nor with an eventual world revolution (on the Soviet model) but relates itself more to its Confucian past and its Buddhist roots. Symptomatically, China’s main vehicle for an international dialogue about itself are the several hundred Confucius Institutes actively being established around the world, modeled on the French Alliance Francaise and the UK’s British Councils.
Hence to respond effectively in both the western and eastern parts of Eurasia, America must adopt a dual role. It must be the promoter and guarantor of great and broader unity in the West, and it must be the balancer and conciliator between the major powers in the East. Both role are essential and each is needed to reinforce the other. But to have the credibility and the capacity to pursue both successfully, America needs to show the world that it has the will to renovate itself at home. Leaving aside the increasingly questionable statistical presumption that current national rates for growth will continue indefinitely for decades, Americans must place greater emphasis on other dimensions of national power such as innovation, education, the ability to balance intelligently force and diplomacy, the quality of political leadership, and the attraction of a democratic life-style.