The Post-American Shift of Axis

The post-2008 atmosphere of euphoria and hope that followed President Obama’s election that year is long gone. Instead, pessimism and frustration now prevail all over the country. We have observed how one concept gained currency in virtually all academic conferences, think-tanks, and even in state planning reports: “post-American world,” namely, the world after the U.S. The concept of post-Americanism does not of course mean that “the U.S. is collapsing.” Yet, although it is not collapsing, the U.S. has been on a steady course of decline. The once American-centered economic and political world order has disappeared. We are now heading toward a brand new multipolar world order that sits on power balance. And there is a universal “shift of axis” of this new coming world order. The economic and political power balance has been shifting from the Northern and Western axes to the East and South. This is to say, the global domination that Europe and the U.S. have established since the 17th century has been gradually melting. While European and American powers have weakened, Asia and Brazil have been rising.

The rising strategic importance of Turkey, both economically and in terms of its foreign policy, is only a single part of this larger picture. This is in fact why we have recently discussed with John Ikenberry, Steve Walt, Joseph Nye, John Mearsheimer and Francis Fukuyama the new rising stars such as India, Brazil and Turkey in a conference entitled “The Rising Powers in a Post-American World.” The shift of axis to the East and South is an undeniable fact that has been taking place on a global scale. The engines of this axis shift are two rising Asian powers: China and India, with a combined population of 3 billion, tenfold of that of the U.S. with its 200 million people. Brazil’s population now equals that of Western Europe. China’s economy will have surpassed the American economy in about a decade. India has been growing economically, and it has the largest population living in a democratic system. The latter fact gives India its biggest advantage because this fact makes India more likely than China to have a stable future. As the Chinese middle class keeps growing and a capitalist economy takes even deeper hold in the country, it will be harder to keep intact the communist-authoritarian order in China. One could say that China might suffer from dire political troubles in about 20 years. For this reason, India might prove to be a better model than China in the long run. On the other hand, China’s military power is incomparably mightier than India’s. China and the U.S. are rivals in the Pacific because China now exerts more strategic influence on Japan, Korea, and Australia. This partially explains why the U.S. has kept close ties to India: to balance the Chinese rise in a post-American world. Obama tellingly uttered his support during his trip to India last week for India’s membership at the U.N. Security Council.

As a result, the post-American world sits on a tight balance between the U.S. and China. We have been witnessing the omens already in the balance that exists between their economies. The American economy is not accustomed to functioning with a low interest rate and high debt, which leads the analyst to ask how the U.S. manages to maintain such a low interest rate while the U.S. economy is swamped with oceanic amounts of debt. How can the U.S. afford to keep increasing its debt at such a low interest rate and low cost? The simple reason is that China has been purchasing American Treasury bonds. But why does China buy American bonds when these bonds earn China relatively little value in return? The employment balance in China hinges on American consumption. But how long can this post-American shift of axis and balance to the East and South continue? Well, when China finally breaks its economic dependency on the U.S., things will gain a totally new momentum.