Westernization Has Come to an End

In 2002, two of my American colleagues wrote in the leading international affairs magazine Foreign Affairs, “The United States does not have a single competitor by any important criterion of power. Never before has there existed a system of sovereign governments where one country has had such a degree of domination.” This opinion was genuinely shared by many Americans and those living in the rest of the world.

A couple of weeks ago, Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, answered the question as to why the U.S. is not asking other countries for financial assistance. “America is big and strong Daddy. But let’s be realistic! We are no longer a domineering power in the world,” he replied. Six years lie between these two points of view. Iraq, Afghanistan and the financial crisis have clearly signified the limits of the American might.

Yes, the U.S. remains the only superpower, but it is far from being the only power. It is not capable of handling all of the challenges, especially at the same time. A strategy of world domination involves acting not only as a global policeman, but also as a global manager. Contemporary American politics does not assume any responsibility for controlling the world; it only suggests unilateralism and striving for achieving freedom of action to solve problems directly affecting the exclusive interests of the United States and its constituents. The status of the U.S. as a moral leader is at a very low point. Nevertheless, America demonstrated an unprecedented ability to cause damage to the rest of the world population by starting off the global financial crisis. Famous journalist Roger Cohen has recently noted, “Let’s be clear: This is an American mess forged by the American genius for newfangled financial instruments in an era where the mantra has been that government is dumb and the markets are smart and risk is nonexistent.”

The American model of liberal capitalism is giving rise to more and more questions. I believe that one tenth of the measures currently taken by Washington, such as nationalization of banks and insurance companies and the government’s purchase of “toxic” assets, would have been enough to declare Medvedev and Putin as authoritarian dictators and enemies of free market if Moscow had taken similar steps. The history, which Francis Fukuyama was too quick to bury in the beginning of the nineties, has come back.

A balance of powers on the world stage is changing visibly and quickly. The rising powers, such as China, Russia, and the Persian Gulf countries, hold more gold reserves than all the Western countries put together (excluding Japan). The new growing powers are demonstrating high growth rates of GDP and consumption even in the times of the crisis. Countries that were asking America for help a decade ago are now helping the United States stay afloat. The total sum of the U.S. treasury bonds acquired by Russia has by far exceeded the amount of U.S. investments in Russia. China is supporting its main trading partner, America, with nearly half a trillion dollars. At the same time, China recently provided a loan to Nigeria for an amount which exceeds the total international financial aid Western countries have provided for all developing countries put together.

It looks like Westernization has come to an end. In the 2020s, three out of the four largest economies in the world will be in Asia: China, leading the U.S., and India with Japan following them. The fifth and the sixth will be Russia and Brazil. Meanwhile the West-centered point of view that dominated intellectual discourse in the last century will disappear much sooner–over a few months, rather than the 2020s. The growing centers of power are no longer talking about copying the models of the West like they were in the nineties, but instead are going their own way. More and more often we hear of Indian, Brazilian, Russian or Kazakhstani models as something completely natural. Unlike in previous times, developing countries are not remaining excluded from the process. In fact, they are uniting in various multilateral unions, a lot of which are not inviting America, for example SOC, BRIC, EvrAsEs, ASEAN, etc.

This trend is also symbolized by a growing crisis of the institutions in charge of managing the international system that were created in a different era. The United Nations mechanisms, remaining to be the most influential, have not made the world secure, especially when certain leading global players tend to ignore international approval. Bretton Woods institutions formed after the Second World War (IMF, World Bank), an expert club of rich countries, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) created in 1961, the World Trade Organization-–all of these institutions are successfully holding conferences and symposiums, writing declarations, issuing special mandates and implementing anti-dumping procedures. IMF and the World Bank, which were created as a source of financial help for struggling economies, have less available money at their disposal than any of the developing country. The G7, which gathered in Washington to rescue world finances, is no longer in control of global finances. Such discussions are unlikely to make much difference without China, Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

After the end of “cold war” and bipolar confrontation the expectations of demilitarization of international affairs were not unfounded. This is what happened in the 1990-ies. However, a short period of unipolarity has led to drastic re-militarization in the world (the USA accounts for over a half of global military spending), collapse of the military control system (America dropped out of negotiations to prohibit nuclear tests, SNV2, missile defense system; none of the Western countries has ratified the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe), revival of the role of nuclear disarmament, and an increase in the number of nuclear powers. The crisis creates a new reality that might make demilitarization pressing again

Thus, a unipolar world is moving into the past. But what is going to replace it? To be continued.