G1, but Leaning toward Zero

Remember the immense quantity of analyses on the New World Order, the decline of the American Empire, the ascension of China and more broadly, the BRIC bloc (Brazil, Russia and India, as well as the always cited China)?

Yes, but the crisis in the Middle East struck a hard blow to all of these discussions.

The only country that actually stirred itself, for better or worse, was the old empire, the United States of America.

Still, they were caught unprepared for the revolt. This Tuesday, Jackson Diehl, a columnist for the Washington Post, posted a link to an interview with American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the channel Al Arabiya in March 2009.

It went like this: the interviewer asked if the new administration would really pass over the government of George W. Bush’s (yes, the old G. W. Bush) criticisms of Hosni Mubarak’s repressive practices in Egypt, to the point of inviting him to visit the United States.

Hillary responded, “[W]e hope that President Mubarak will come as soon as his schedule permits. I had a great meeting with him this morning. I really consider him and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family, so I hope to see him often here and in the United States.”

Now, she will be obligated to delete the video that has been on the pages of the State Department.

It is obvious that the whole world knows that the USA, in past administrations as in the current one, was instrumental in supporting the Egyptian dictatorship, as well as other dictators around the world.

But a statement as affectionate as the one quoted above exposes its speaker to ridicule now that the United States says it wants to see Mubarak neither in Egypt nor the United States, not now or ever.

Still, the current rhetoric of the Obama administration, hesitant and contradictory, is better than the absolute silence of the other major world powers – and also those not as major, like Brazil.

Europe is foolish, and does not know what to do or say. France is entangled in revelations that the Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, traveled to Egypt in a plane later discovered as Mubarak’s. The Foreign Minister, Michelle Alliot-Marie, got benefits from people in the regime of neighboring Tunisia, where the dictator, Ben Ali, had already fallen.

And what of China? Its only action was to censor the word “Egypt” on search engines, which only demonstrates that the Chinese authorities, rather than trying to do anything in regard to Egypt, simply fear that Tiananmen Square one day could end up as a Tahrir Square.

In Brazil’s case, at least the relative silence makes sense (official statements released have been innocuous). The fact of the matter is that all the efforts of the previous government to be a part of the peace process in the Middle East ended in nothing. However, I must agree with these efforts, from the obvious conclusion that, if Brazil is in the world, everything that happens in the world is of interest to it.

And it should be of even more interest what happens in the country that owns the Suez Canal, through which around 15,000 ships pass per year carrying 14 percent of globally transported goods.

Anyway, it is clear that Brazil does not have the ammunition to involve itself in this formidable battle.

All in all, it becomes clear that the new world order may be economically driven, especially with the growth of China and India. When the curtains fall, it will leave the old G1, better known as the United States of America.