We always knew that 2008 would be a historic year. Next week is going to be the climax to the most exciting US election in history. Yes, on Tuesday, November 4, we will know, finally, who the next American president will be. The Republicans have all but conceded defeat, making the idea of a President Barack Obama even more exciting. But instead of being remembered for the changes taking place in US elections, this vote will be for the new world order that accompanies it.
No, I’m not just subscribing to some new conspiracy theory. This really is the dawn of the “post-American world.” The America that the next US president inherits will be nothing like the America we have known. The outcome of this upcoming election will be relatively inconsequential. The American Empire is in decline, for reasons beyond the Bush presidency, and regardless of who the next president will be.
Economically, it’s undergoing the most crippling financial disaster since the Great Depression. Europe is taking the lead in rebuilding the world economy while China, India and a handful of other emerging economies are speeding ahead.
On the international stage, the Imperial America has lost its prestige. At the height of its glory America was the master of the universe from which all power emanated, the 20th-century Rome. In the 1990s, it intervened in countries left and right on ideological grounds. Upon invading Iraq for the first time, George Bush Sr. had announced the beginning of the “new world order.” Within a month of 9/11, the US invaded Afghanistan and threw the Taliban government out into the wilderness. Two years later and exuding confidence, it invaded Iraq, breaking international law and without caring about what the rest of the world — and the United Nations — had to say. Those were the days of the American superpower we know, uncontested in ruling the world.
Those days are gone.
Today, America is standing by, watching other countries play the bully instead. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was eerily similar to America’s second invasion of Iraq. And the US reacted in the same way as its own critics did in 2003 — helplessly condemning the invasion from the sidelines.
Even American ideals of capitalism and democracy are on the decline. Rogue states like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela now find themselves at liberty to defy the world’s enfeebled superpower. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s impulsive, nationalistic leader with a black belt in judo antagonizes America on a level more appropriate to the 1960s than the 1990s. Meanwhile, China is picking up countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East that were once safely under America’s wing.
This isn’t the “change” we had expected at the time at the time of the US election.
The history books commemorating the death of the American Empire have already been written. The Post-American World by Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria illustrates the systematic rise of China and India contrasted with America’s strategic blunders after the Cold War. Another obituary for America is The Second World by Parag Khanna, which shows how China and the EU are gaining ground in the newly emerging world order. The Return of History by Robert Kagan scoffs at those who thought that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American Empire would singularly rule the world forever. He argues that America’s fall was inevitable. Its moment of glory was a dream, its decline merely the natural forces of history at work.
Today, the decline of the American Empire is being compared to Rome’s. But according to Zakaria, comparing it to the British Empire — the one that dominated the world a little over a hundred years ago — would be more appropriate.
For the British, the beginning of the end was the Boer War of 1899. After conquering the rest of the African continent, the British entered South Africa expecting that they — the Empire that ruled over one fourth of humanity — would have no trouble facing off against simple, ill-equipped local militias. They were wrong.
The empire’s best soldiers fought a long, drawn-out war against the Boers who knew their terrain and used guerilla tactics against the colonialists. Britain eventually won, but not without suffering 45,000 casualties, accumulating massive debt and facing widespread condemnation from the international community. This overseas adventurism, a hobby of theirs, led to the undoing of the empire.
Basically, it was their Iraq.
Many other factors led to the decline of the British Empire like the fierce competition its businesses faced abroad (today, Asian sweatshops), the emergence of other great powers (China, India, the EU, Russia) and even cultural decay (TV?). But these might have even been inconsequential.
Like Britain in the 19th century, America’s global hegemony was borne out of a series of unusual circumstances — it was a fluke. Britain had a head start in the industrial revolution and the rest of the great powers (like America) lay dormant at the time. What was America for the British then is China and India for the Americans now. The power vacuum after the fall of the Soviet Union afforded America a singular hold on global power — albeit, a momentary one.
Now that moment is over.
By some estimates, we have already broken into the “post-America world,” and there is nothing that the next American president can do about it. This change in the world order goes beyond military adventurism or cultural decay. It is the result of something called gravity — a realization heralded by 2.3 billion Indians and Chinese. It was only a matter of time before history threw America’s dreams out the window (as it did Britain’s).
But are we ready to enter a world that isn’t dominated by a single superpower — that isn’t dominated by America? Most political scientists think that the world is most stable under a single superpower. Think of the relative peace of the American-dominated 1990s.
A new world order may be exciting, but it’s also uncertain. Parag Khanna, author of The Second World, uses globalization, economic interdependency, interconnectedness and other catchphrases of the time to reassure us that we aren’t entering a new era of wars between great powers vying for supremacy. Wars are obsolete, he argues. Robert Kagan, who wrote The Return of History, disagrees, arguing that the reemergence of renegade nationalist leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin show us that the world still hasn’t matured past the 19th-century reality of countries and their egotistic leaders jostling for power. Whichever theory proves true, we will know soon enough.
Still, the American Empire’s dramatic fall affords us a chance for nostalgia. I grew up in the 1990s, at the height of America power. Back then, times were good. The world was insulated from major conflicts and going through roaring economic growth. If you turned on the TV, you’d see a confident superpower steering us into the brave new world. International politics were one-sided and predictable, the world rallying around America in complete subordination; America wasn’t a part of the international community — it was the international community; and the last remaining threats to world peace were petty terrorists on the fringe of society; it was as if we’d arrived at “the end of history,” the happy ending where, in a world of freedom-loving democracies, America would lead us in singing songs around the campfire. Those of us who didn’t want to join in on the singing could do nothing else but cry — perhaps in the corner or on the Internet.
Sadly, the next US president will be missing out.
History is being made, though not in the prospects of a black American president. Rather, in the emergence of a new world order. We are witnessing today the most dramatic events of recent history. Here is the emergence not of radical Islam, but of China, India and the peaceful, developing world at the beginning of the century. Globalization seems to have spread international power around, reassured us against World War III and ushered in an excitingly different world. The year 2008 — or thereabouts — will be marked as the turning point in the history of mankind.
So a post-American world is good news. When the historians will write about our exceptional times (as they already have), it won’t be about “the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.” That’s a good thing, and America isn’t really any worse off because of it. It just means that America is now part of an international community far greater than itself. America must now learn to share — to coexist with other global powers in a world where it’s lonely at the top. This “change we can believe in” that we were convinced would come around in November, 2008, turns out to be something far greater than the US elections: it is a new world order. And I’m sure that the young President Obama will do a good job in being a part of it.