Wednesday, September 02, 2009
American Prominence pt.2
Who are these superpowers? From the 1950's through the 1970's, it was the Soviet Union, and in the 1980's it was Japan. Now, Khanna fingers the European Union and China. For Europe, it is the second time around the block- the old continent was touted as the multipolar muscleman by the previous generation of doomsters.
Finally, two foreign voices. One is that of Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, whose bid to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary-general was thwarted by Washington. As the title of his 2008 book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, suggests, he chronicles not the degeneration of the United States as much as the triumph of Asia. His tone is avuncular, if not patronizing: "Sadly,....Western intellectual life comes to be dominated by those who continue to celebrate the supremacy of the West." So the West, in this case, the United States, is losing its grip on not only power but also on reality- going from Chapter 11 straight to the psychiatrist's couch. In contrast, "the rest of the world has moved on. A steady delegitimization of Western power... is under way." And who shall inherit the earth? Mahbubani suggests China, which "should eventually take over the mantle of global leadership from America." This is subtly contemptuous version of America perdita- wishful thinking posing as sober analysis.
A second voice is that of Dimitri Orlov, a Russian-born writer who saw the Soviet empire disembowel itself and, in an act of psychic revenge, has projected the same fate onto the United States. "At some point during the coming years, he wrote in his 2008 book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, "the economic system of the United States will teeter and fall... America's economy will evaporate like the morning mist." He calls both the Soviet Union and the United States "evil empires."
This brief history of declinism shows that doom arrives in cycles and what comes and goes, logically, does not a trend make. Today, as after past prophecies of imminent debility, the United States remains first on any scale of power that matters- economic, military, diplomatic, or cultural- despite being embroiled in two wars beset by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The question, then, is how well can the projections dreams and fantasies chronicled above stand up to this enduring reality?
Finally, two foreign voices. One is that of Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, whose bid to succeed Kofi Annan as UN secretary-general was thwarted by Washington. As the title of his 2008 book, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, suggests, he chronicles not the degeneration of the United States as much as the triumph of Asia. His tone is avuncular, if not patronizing: "Sadly,....Western intellectual life comes to be dominated by those who continue to celebrate the supremacy of the West." So the West, in this case, the United States, is losing its grip on not only power but also on reality- going from Chapter 11 straight to the psychiatrist's couch. In contrast, "the rest of the world has moved on. A steady delegitimization of Western power... is under way." And who shall inherit the earth? Mahbubani suggests China, which "should eventually take over the mantle of global leadership from America." This is subtly contemptuous version of America perdita- wishful thinking posing as sober analysis.
A second voice is that of Dimitri Orlov, a Russian-born writer who saw the Soviet empire disembowel itself and, in an act of psychic revenge, has projected the same fate onto the United States. "At some point during the coming years, he wrote in his 2008 book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, "the economic system of the United States will teeter and fall... America's economy will evaporate like the morning mist." He calls both the Soviet Union and the United States "evil empires."
This brief history of declinism shows that doom arrives in cycles and what comes and goes, logically, does not a trend make. Today, as after past prophecies of imminent debility, the United States remains first on any scale of power that matters- economic, military, diplomatic, or cultural- despite being embroiled in two wars beset by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The question, then, is how well can the projections dreams and fantasies chronicled above stand up to this enduring reality?
