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Twilight of Pax Americana

The new millennium however began in chaos alright – a different kind of chaos perhaps. And what an eventful decade this has been. A breathtaking and bedazzling era of colossal events and developments, almost apocalyptic in their sweep and impact!

The first decade of the 21^st century began with a catastrophe when the reigning superpower and the most advanced civilization the world has ever seen was ostensibly attacked by individuals sitting thousands of miles away in a country that is seen as still living in the Stone Age.

And those confronting the United States couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate target. Downtown Manhattan with the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers and other towering spires piercing the skies is the nerve-centre and most potent symbol of the world’s largest economy and financial superpower. But I believe 9/11 or no 9/11, President George Bush and his cohorts would have unleashed the with-us-or-against-us war on the Muslim world anyway. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, they would have invented another excuse, just as they did in Iraq.

But if this remarkable decade began with Osama bin Laden and Bush’s yet to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Abu Ghraib, the Guantanamo Bay, CIA’s torture flights, water-boarding, 7/7 and 26/11, Asian tsunami, the Kashmir quake, the war on Gaza, Iran’s nuclear tiff with the West and the global financial crisis, it is concluding on cautious hope and optimism as represented by Barack Obama.

Osama and Obama seem to be the antipodes that hold this decade of great disasters and developments together. Many of my colleagues in their conversations and written communications often mix up Osama and Obama. I am not sure if this is a Freudian slip or in their subconscious they really believe both Osama and Obama represent and mean the same thing and can pass off for each other. Obama himself visits this dilemma in his amazing book, The Audacity of Hope, which came out when few in the US, let alone the world, knew about him or his extraordinary background and inheritance.

Of course, Obama has yet to earn the Nobel honour in the real sense and justify the extraordinary mandate American voters have gifted him. But it’s the expectations and hopes the first black man in the White House has raised around the world, especially in the Middle East and Islamic countries, that have put an extraordinary burden on Obama’s shoulders. It’s now up to him to turn this decade of war and terror into a new opportunity for peace and reconciliation.

For, this decade marks a real turning point in human history. As my favourite Harvard historian Niall Ferguson argues, this decade could mark the beginning of the end of the Western dominance. We may be living through the end of 500 years of Western ascendancy that began in Western Europe following the Renaissance and Reformation. The cause of European—or Western—hegemony was helped, promoted and perpetuated by the Industrial Revolution and Europe’s imperial projects in far-flung lands across the world.

But the situation has changed dramatically and decisively over the past ten years, resulting in a tectonic, unparallelled shift of power. We are living in truly epochal times. Power is shifting from the West to the East, and this not a feverish fantasy of overzealous political scientists and pundits any more. It’s a reality that becomes starker by every passing day. China is fast emerging as the next big player and economic superpower on the world stage. Enough has been said about the Asian giant’s hunger for growth and its growing, breathtaking dominance of the global bazaar with its mind-boggling capacity to manufacture and market everything under the sun. It’s nearly impossible to capture in words the breathtaking sweep of China’s growth and the extent it has come to affect our lives. Even at a time like this when just about everyone is fighting hard to survive the disastrous effects of the global downturn, the country presiding over the second industrial revolution has hardly paused to catch its breath.

Interestingly, this phenomenal growth of China has been commensurate with the decline of the US and Western economies. In fact, China has grown at the expense of the US, even as it continues to buy trillions of dollars in US government bonds. The US, the world’s biggest capitalist economy, is in socialist China’s debt – literally. At the beginning of this decade, US GDP was more than eight times that of China’s. It’s barely four times larger today. And economists suspect the country known as the world’s factory floor could overtake the US by 2027, in less than 
two decades.

When way back in 2006, Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick coined the word ‘Chimerica’ to describe the unusual relationship between the rising superpower and declining Pax Americana, few really understood it. That uneasy equation is at its peak now—and is in favour of the Red Dragon.

(In this endless adulation over red China though, the other big story, India, is often ignored. India may not be growing at the break-neck pace of its larger neighbour. But its growth has been healthier and more harmonious. India’s progress hasn’t come at the expense of political freedom and civil liberties of its people.)

Of course, whoever is the next superpower, the US could remain a military power and big political player for a long time to come. And the cultural and intellectual empire of Pax America and the West, thanks to Hollywood, Western media and English language, may live even longer. Especially considering China’s growth has been largely focused on economic front and it has steadily avoided overt military ambitions so far despite being a nuclear power and having one of the largest armies in the world. However, economic power is invariably followed by military muscle, often to consolidate and protect it. Look at the history of the British empire, Prussia (Germany), Soviet Union and the United States. So who knows China could also follow suit! But the land of Confucius would do well to learn from the mistakes of others, especially the US.

If America eventually fails and implodes like the Soviet Union did, it would not be because of its extravagant lifestyle and financial excesses or even devastating terror strikes of 9/11 proportions. If Pax Americana goes down, it would be because of its unreasonable policies and unjust wars. The policies and wars that are not even driven by its own interests but are dictated by scheming lobbies and self-serving allies.

Can President Obama turn this decade of doom into a decade of new opportunities and peace for America and the rest of the world? I have my fingers crossed.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is Opinion Editor
of Khaleej Times and can be reached
at aijaz@khaleejtimes.com