Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

The rise and fall of great powers appear very clear only in retrospect.  However, while it is happening, even the most imaginative scenario-builders are nagged by the looming uncertainty and the gnawing thought about whether they are witnessing a permanent or even a long-term trend, or whether they are watching only a “tempest in a teapot.”  This is how I feel while witnessing the ostensible decline of the United States.  Unlike a number of strategic thinkers, I do not link the start of the seeming decline of the lone superpower to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  On the contrary, I relate it to the economic miasma that has been lurking over its horizon since 2008, and the related worsening mood inside the United States that is preventing members of the Democratic and Republican parties to agree on middle-of-the road compromises – which had long been one of the hallmarks of American political culture – to cure its economic decline.

What is making the emerging American decline more believable, if not ominous, is that the world seems to have run out of ideas  related to sustaining steady economic development and growth.  The EU and the dream of European integration seem to be unraveling.  The EU has always been looked upon by the states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a model to emulate sometime in the future.  If that arrangement falls apart, then what is to take its place?  Since no one has an answer to that, the best option for the Europeans, for now, is to do their utmost to save it.  But how?  No one knows that yet.

Looking at this evolving mega-change (or the impending mega-chaos) from Asia, a number of strategic thinkers of that region  have been touting the prospects of a power shift, without proposing which country will take the lead or emerge as heir-apparent to the United States.  One obvious answer is China, but China has a long way to go before it could emerge as an heir to the United States.  While thinking about China’s potential role as the next leader, Asian thinkers miss the point that that country’s economic growth, while a remarkable work in progress, is not providing much evidence from its leaders that they have been seriously thinking or debating the modalities of their potential leadership role.

America’s global leadership emerged from the visionary thinking of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who yanked his country from the jaws of isolationism, then used its economic wealth to fight the Second World War, and then applied its still-intact economic power to rebuild the post-WWII global order.  Even keeping in mind that history does not repeat itself by exactly following the trends of the past, Chinese leaders will have to develop something akin to the Rooseveltian leadership model, if China is to become a successor to the United States in the next decade or so.

One of the chief reasons the United States was able to persuade the non-communist countries of the world to become a member of the post-WWII global economic order was that it was also promoting an economic template that was based on free market, less-to-least regulations, and Keynesian economics.  At least the “developed” nation-states believed in that model.  The so-called non-aligned bloc never subscribed to it, due to the romanticism their leaders had developed about Fabian Socialism or even Marxism.  However, all of them – with India in the lead – realized later on how wrong they really were.  India emerged as a “convert” to capitalistic economy in the early 1990s, thereby becoming a promising rising power of the future.

While one examines China’s role as a successful economy, the so-called “Beijing consensus” is being viewed as one of the models that developing countries ought to consider emulating.  China’s Beijing consensus, according to Joshua Cooper Ramo, has three characteristics: “innovative policymaking,” “rejection of per capita GDP as the be-all and end-all” of developmental priorities – a trait that is envisioned as a rejection of Western policies – and “self determination.”  This last characteristic “emphasizes the need for developing countries to actively seek independence from outside pressure, as it is imposed by ‘hegemonic powers’ such as the United States.”   China’s economic growth is an export-based growth, while its economy is tightly controlled from within.  To top it all, China’s political system is an authoritarian one.  As such, it envisions sustained economic growth as the only way that its system is likely to survive, while allowing minimal political freedom.  So, the Beijing consensus will be attractive to authoritarian countries, where the autocrats are afraid of allowing political freedom to their peoples, and regard economic growth as the only way to sustain political status quo.  This limited appeal notwithstanding, it is too early to declare that another competing model – the Washington consensus, also referred to as the market-based approach – is either dead or proven irrelevant.

For the long-term “proof” of the success of the Beijing consensus, it has to prove its viability in the Chinese economy.  At the same time, it has to be applied, with noticeable success, outside of China.  Similarly, the alleged failure of the Washington consensus has to last for a long time.  There is little doubt that the long-term success and failure of the Beijing consensus and the Washington consensus, respectively, will bring about a power shift the likes of which the world has not seen in quite awhile.

A powerful side-effect of the seeming decline of the United States and the ascendance of the PRC is how those developments would affect East Asia and the Middle East.  East Asia is important to both China and the United States because China considers it as its backyard, while the United States has long maintained its strategic dominance in that region by building an intricate network of alliances with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia.  This is also a region where the United States also maintains a powerful naval presence.

Two conflicts of East Asia not only continue to simmer, but they also promise to bring about potential major changes, depending upon the outcome, if they are resolved through the use of the military.  They are North Korea and the Taiwan disputes.  China is very much involved in both of them.  In the case of nuclear-armed North Korea, China wishes to see some type of a political compromise, which would leave the regime of Kim Jong Il or his successor in power.  The PRC will do its utmost to avoid the outbreak of hostilities.  The second conflict of East Asia is the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China.  The PRC is determined to see reunification materialize even with the use of military power.

Aside from these issues, what worries the East Asian countries is a palpable Chinese determination to increase its hegemony in East Asia by such actions as declaring the South China Sea as an area of its “core interests.”  Such a declaration implies that leaders in Beijing would unilaterally determine the modalities of their behavior involving the strategic interests and sovereignties of a number of East Asian nations.  It is this unyielding Chinese resolve that also forces the United States not to allow China’s bullying of its East Asian neighbors.  Consequently, the United States has been consistently conveying to China that it is siding with the East Asian countries in their resolve to seek a political solution and will not allow China to follow the principle of “might is right.”

The Middle East is also quite important to both the U.S. and the PRC.  The former has been a dominant strategic actor in that region for the past several decades.  Plus, that region has large oil reserves that both China and the United States need for their continued growth.  Without making too much publicity, China does envision the Middle East as an area where it could enhance its presence and influence as America’s clout dwindles.

The Arab Awakening in the Middle East and North Africa has created different challenges for the United States and China.  First and foremost, it has established once and for all that the long-term American idiosyncrasy of promoting a political status quo that guaranteed autocratic rule and the related subservience of that region to the American hegemony are things of the past.  Second, since the Arab Awakening has already resulted in the ouster of three notorious and enduring dictators from Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the chief American worry is about what political arrangements will replace those dictatorships.  The best case scenario is that a pluralistic democracy emerges in all three countries, and the political subservience of those countries to the United States does not materialize.  What that means is that the policies of the future governments of those countries – and of other Arab states where dictatorships are under constant challenge – toward the Palestinian conflict will also undergo radical change, thereby forcing the United States to revisit its own long-standing policy of remaining at peace with Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine.  The worst case scenario for the United States is the capturing of political power by the Islamists in one or more of these countries.

Speaking of changes in the Middle East, Israel’s policy toward the Palestinian conflict has been anachronistic.  It also belongs to a era when sustaining Israeli dominance of the Palestinians was envisaged only through its continued occupation or, at the most, offering the Palestinians paltry changes that would still retain their status as an occupied nation.  As such, that era appears to be already under a lot of pressure from the Arab side.  As the Arab Awakening is radically altering the nature and style of politics of the Arab Middle East, there is a dire need for the birth of an “Israeli Awakening,” whereby its leadership foresees living with the Palestinians as free people with all the dignity that the acquisition of sovereignty promises them.

The Chinese leadership is very apprehensive about the repeat of the Arab Awakening inside its borders.  The mere mention of the phrase “awakening” triggered an overreaction in February 2011, whereby the security thugs were sent to suppress any outbreak of anti-regime demonstrations.

Even assuming that there will not be an outbreak of a Chinese version of an awakening in the future – a rather audacious assumption, to say the least – leaders in China know that they will have to change their ways of doing business with a democratic Middle East.  The report that Chinese officials met with the officials of the regime of Muammar Qaddafi in July of this year to sell arms – when the uprising to his rule was in full swing – underscores how serious the PRC was in its attempt to forestall the tide of internal change in Libya.  China now knows that gone are the days when the representatives of the dictators from the Middle East were sent to Beijing, or representatives of the Chinese government would sneak into Arab capitals to sign lucrative arms or economic deals without any fear of publicity or its related negative spillover effects.  The PRC also understands that it has to adapt and adopt a new style of doing business with a democratic Arab world.

All changes almost inevitably are analyzed along the continuum of good news and bad news for the winners and losers, respectively.  However, given the global implications and attendant intricacies of the impending power shift, it cannot be all good news for the emerging superpower and bad news for the declining one.  The winner and the loser will have to deal with a mixed bag of good and bad news.

The greatest challenge for the United States is that it has to come to grips with becoming a second- or even a third-rate nation.  It will also have plenty of opportunities to do its utmost to reverse its decline, and even to become an ascendant power.  It has not been successful in its attempts to reverse its fortune between 2008 and 2011.  However, that does not mean that it will continue to fail in the coming years.  The good news for the United States is that, even its reduced global power status will not affect its political stability.  So, being able to maintain its system stability while it looks for avenues to regain its global power status is indeed better than just good news.  On the contrary, we cannot think along the same lines about the PRC.  As an authoritarian system, it has no choice but to sustain its economic prosperity.  Otherwise, the revolution related to the “rising expectations” is likely to prove deadly for survival of the Chinese political system.  No one is more aware of that reality than the Chinese leadership.

As a democracy, the United States’ chances of adaptability to the radically altering global realities are very good.  As a weakened, but still a stable polity, it can continue to find avenues for new ways of dealing with change and even in terms of coming out on top of rising challenges.  The same cannot be said about the PRC.  In this sense, China has more reason to ensure its success both globally and internally, in order to survive.