The US, the ‘great transformation’ and the new world order – The Mail & Guardian

As America’s existential crisis unfolds, the nostalgic yearning for ‘big power’ politics of the Cold War era is rearing its ugly head

The United States is going through a great transformation not seen since 1945.  It is precipitated by the changing balances of power in the world characterised by the decline of the US as a global superpower, and the rise of China as a re-emerging hegemon. Much of the disastrous domestic and foreign policy coming out of the White House today is an attempt at dealing with this unstoppable great transformation. The US elite does not have a coherent strategic response yet. 

For eight decades, the US enjoyed unprecedented global power in global affairs with varying degrees of influence in each epoch. At the end of the Cold War, the US emerged as a superpower at the helm of a unipolar world order. Since then, the US system propagated the idea that Western-style ideas and institutions of governing human affairs were the best and good for everyone. The US appeared powerful and unchallengeable. The American Dream was great and America itself great, a status the Make America Great Again movement is attempting to recapture today as bizarre as it sounds.

Francis Fukuyama then, one of the leading American political thinkers declared that moment as the End of History and the Last Man. He argued that liberal democracy emerges as the final and most superior form of governing human affairs. He also thought it would bring about world peace. More than two decades later, he wrote in Liberalism and its Discontents that “it is clear liberalism has been in retreat in recent years” and that it needs reform. He appears to be blaming neoliberal capitalism for the woes or decline of liberal democracy.  

The decline of the US did not start with Trump 2.0. It started when the US began offshoring manufacturing to Asia in the mid-1990s and consolidated with the launch of the War on Terror in 2003, and then came to a serious decisive point when the Euro-American economic system collapsed on the pavements of Wall Street in 2007. Despite the economic recovery in large measure, the Euro-American brand of politics and its governance system has not recovered ever since — it is suffering an ideational and moral paralysis to this day. The rise of the political right in this transatlantic geopolitical region has offended the liberal project. It represented failure and provoked calls for reforms as Fukuyama argues lately.

Enter China and the Thucydides Trap?

The rise of China is about many things. But the most unsettling thing about the rise of China besides race, is ideological. It is about the idea that the state has a major role to play in the allocation of resources in society — an idea embraced by the US through infant industry protection policies and the Marshall Plan in the post-war era, but abandoned as neoliberal capitalism gained momentum in the mid-80s onwards. Ha-Joon Chang calls it the phenomenon of “kicking away the ladder”.

The strategic blunder of the US elite was to think that consolidating global power through the war machine was sustainable. It was not. Instead, it concentrated the domestic economy in the hands of the oligarchs and slowed it down, while its hegemony was waning over time in the world leading to its growing isolation. The American people themselves had grown tired of war, the offshoring of jobs and stagnant wages — all of which contributed to the rise of the political right inside the US. This blunder is not of the Americans per se, but the US elite. 

As this was happening, China had been consolidating the domestic economy and the state — the two things required to climb up the ladder and become a pivotal player in global affairs. And as the US was beating the war drums and alienating itself, China had been pursuing a foreign policy of “peaceful development” in its own interests. The foreign policy of peaceful development could be a realisation on the part of China that global sustainable peace is only possible if all countries develop and prosper together, not through guns and bullying, and the suppression of others. After all, the state gains legitimacy through economic development, and at a global scale, the global prosperity of all nations will give legitimacy to the global hegemons of the day.

Ideologically, this is important for the US and all of us. No matter the pitfalls of its governance model, the country has shown that there is an alternative to liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism, namely, state-led developmental capitalism. Although China has a growing free enterprise economy and capitalist class, including a burgeoning middle class, the difference between it and the US is that the capitalists in China do not control the government or the politicians in the same way that the American ones do. Instead, private business interests exist side-by-side with a strong state-owned business sector which counterbalances the influence of the capitalist class in the polity. This kind message strikes at the heart of the liberal democracy model promoted by the US thus far and Trumpism lately. It says: human development first.

Is the rise of China real? 

Yes, it is. In the 21st century, because of advances in science and technology, indicators of power have evolved to include both conventional and unconventional forms of power. Although the US still has significant power and influence, the indicators are showing a declining empire relative to China and other power poles in the world — the latter indicates a growing reality of a multipolar world.  Of the eight indicators above, the US has outright leadership on three, but not for long either. The rest of the indicators are showing a declining empire.

The Power Matrix 

There are nuances of quantity vs quality, relativeness or the dimensions that matter most in each indicator. 

Has the spectre returned, and will it lead to the Thucydides Trap?

Yes, the spectre has returned, unlike the European one seen by Marx and Engels in the mid-19th century, the 21st century spectre is about the fear of “new world order” where the governance of human affairs, especially the economy, cannot be left to the whims of unfettered capitalism in its neoliberal form. In essence, China poses a serious existential threat to American hegemony — but not American national security interests as the propaganda mill goes.

Some sections of the US political elite want us to believe that we have entered the “Second Coming” of the Cold War where we must kneel down in prayer before or choose which “big power” we must side with in the ongoing changing global balances of power. Africa and the Global South must resist this baiting.

The Thucydides Trap thesis is about an important question: what happens at the moment of the transition between a declining and a rising empire? Does a war break out? The long march of history indicates that in most instances, war breaks out. Does that mean the US and China are headed for war? It is too early to tell. In the interim though, the Trump administration considers China a threat to US national interests. One thing is for sure, the world, including both countries, cannot afford a war.  

As the great transformation goes on, what must Africa and the Global South do? It must build the economy and the state. Second, it must pursue an independent foreign and trade policy based on pragmatism, mutual interests and respect. Third, it must embrace and promote the emergence of a multipolar world where the promise of peace and development is greater for humanity. Anything that returns this geopolitical region to the Cold War era type of politics is going to ruin millions of lives and make the world unpeaceful. 

David Maimela is a researcher and writer in public policy with a specialisation on foreign policy and international relations based at Unisa. He writes in his personal capacity.