By Philip Stephens
Published: December 17 2009 19:55
Cast around for the figures who shaped the geopolitics of the opening decade of the 21st century and Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush spring to mind. Al Qaeda’s terrorist spectacular on September 11 2001 seemed to describe a new epochal challenge to a west grown complacent after the defeat of communism. The US president’s response defined first the reach, and then the limits, of American power.Some might add Vladimir Putin to such a list. I am not so sure. Mr Putin has salved Russia’s wounded pride. He now plans to win back the presidency. Yet neither high oil prices nor bare-chested machismo have reversed the underlying trajectory of Russian decline.
Eight years after the destruction of New York’s twin towers, Afghanistan and Pakistan are still the cockpit of a conflict rooted in fractured states, violent extremism and a wider struggle against modernity. Mr Bin Laden has evaded capture; Barack Obama, Mr Bush’s successor, confronts in the war against the Taliban the most dangerous enemy of his presidency. The risk of unconventional weapons falling into the hands of jihadists – think about Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile – amplifies western anxieties.
For all that, there have been bigger, more enduring, changes in the global landscape. Seen through the long lens of history, Mr Bin Laden and Mr Bush may turn out to be relatively minor players in an era of tumultuous upheaval. The big clashes of coming decades are more likely to be between states as ideologies. The prevailing tensions will be between co-operation and competition, rules and anarchy, order and disorder.
The rise of Asia maps the most obvious of the geopolitical shifts. At the turn of the millennium, the talk was of a unipolar world in which US hegemony stretched into an indefinite future. The startling speed of China’s rise has confounded all expectations. In a blink of history’s eye, the march of power from west to east has become the central, unnerving fact of geopolitical life.
It is not just China. India has made its presence felt, even if many of its political leaders cling to the mindset of a middle-ranking nation. After a century or more as a “coming” power, Brazil may finally be in sight of its destination. South Africa, Mexico, Indonesia and, in the unsettling context of its nuclear ambitions, Iran are among those clamouring for due recognition in the councils of world affairs.
The international financial crisis presented proof that the world has outgrown the multilateral institutions of the second half of the 20th century. Poignantly, the glut of cheap credit that saw global boom turn to bust was born of Asia’s determination to break free of the economic tutelage of the west’s Washington consensus.
The old powers still get together in the Group of 8, but these gatherings have been eclipsed by those of the more inclusive G20. With the European Union courting geopolitical irrelevance (a test: name the EU’s new president and foreign minister), the talk now is about a G2 of the US and China.
Such predictions are premature at best. One of the big lessons of the past decade has been that the world does not travel in straight lines. The Chinese officials I meet are far less secure about their country’s prospects than are western admirers. That said, the deference shown by Mr Obama during his visit to Beijing was a measure of how fast and far the rising nations have travelled. For two centuries the boundaries of global power were drawn by the Atlantic. Now they are being delineated by the Pacific.
There have been unpredicted upheavals also within emerging nations. While economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, rapid advances in communications technology has taken politics to the rural backwoods. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former US president Jimmy Carter, has dubbed this phenomenon the global political awakening.
Autocrats everywhere – including in China – eventually will feel the consequences. Satellite television and the web may one day be seen to have marked the beginning of a journey towards global democracy. In the short-term, the consequences of the awakening may be dangerously destabilising.
It is a mistake to imagine that the flow of power eastwards is a precursor to inevitable conflict between the west and what some have called “the rest”. To the contrary, the rivalries of the future are as likely to be between rising states as between established and emerging powers.
Asia bears uncomfortable resemblance to 19th century Europe – a region still to escape the half-buried rancour of the past, or settle enduring ethnic and border disputes. We must hope that the world has left behind the collisions between great powers that scarred the 20th century. But if the hope proves forlorn, it is easier to imagine a war between China and India than one between the US and China.
There are glimmers of optimism. For all today’s insecurities, we live in untypically peaceful times. Fewer people are being killed in wars between or within states than at any time since 1945.
A year into his presidency, Mr Obama is criticised for failing to defuse some of the most dangerous challenges – Iran’s nuclear programme, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Russia expansionism. The truth is that many of the problems can, at best, only be contained.
Mr Obama has grasped an essential truth about the emerging multipolar world. If the US is to remain the essential guarantor of global security – and there is no alternative – US power must be embedded in new multilateral coalitions. By understanding the limits of America’s reach, the president may yet succeed in sustaining it.
The Copenhagen summit is sure to disappoint, but the seriousness of the climate talks marks recognition of mutual interdependence. When China’s leaders talk about effective global governance, there is another flicker of hope.
The choice now is between a world in which powerful states are held in check by co-operative multilaterism; or one that is riven by the clash of narrow nationalisms. During the present decade everything changed. The next will be described by whether the great powers – old and rising – prove themselves masters or victims of a new global order.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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