That’s the title of a lead article in the New York Times Magazine. In it, Parag Khanna writes:
It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama
administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has
pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state
of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force
presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran
is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its
naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of
Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.
Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the United Nations
and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to
collective security and prosperity? … That new global order has arrived, and there is
precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its
growth.
At best, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but
that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was
never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership.
So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing
— in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other
superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the
21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly
depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam
embroiled in internal wars; and not India,
lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic
appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any
one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors
in this post-American world.
There is lots and lots I could say about this, but I have a speech coming up so I’ll have to be brief.
1) I like the title a lot.
2) I’m sort of surprised the Times ran with it. But it means people who try to lead the thoughts must be nervous – or at least imagining that the US is no longer the center of the univivers.
3) The idea of a multi-polar world sounds reasonable.
4) Where are multinational corporations in this world?
5) Where is innovation, creativity, and innovation?
6) Do we really believe that big states will dominate in the post-empire age?
7) My guess is that the nation-state will radically decline in influence, in ways few people adequatrely recognize.
The new order will feature new institutions organized by global capitalists and global companies
9) It will take shape not around nations but increasingly around mega-regions
10) Class divides will grow increasingly salient and a key feature will be how to raise the valleys of the world economy in order to protect its peaks from attacks.
