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By William Pfaff
The framework in which most Americans, including the foreign policy specialists, see the world has totally changed in a decade. In February 2002, the United States and Afghanistan's
Americans in 2002 believed themselves on top of the world, capable of anything. They took progress for granted. A leading neo-conservative of the time said, "we have something called the
One decade, more than a trillion American dollars and uncounted thousands of lives later, the Afghan War continues, and the Iraq War, nominally over, but with 6,000 American officials and their bodyguards left in the country, is not really over at all. A third American war against a Muslim society, Iran, is seriously likely.
The same time Washington conducts and enlarges this military involvement in the non-Western world, the American public, and again, many of its foreign policy experts and political leaders, have decided that the United States is in decline, its social coherence, its sense of unity and purpose lost, divided as never before by economic class and a newly felt and newly expressed hatred between the one percent monopolizing its wealth and the excluded 99 percent. The American and Western economies are badly weakened by a global recession and potential depression, wrought by Wall Street.
This is no illusion, nor is the widespread conviction that the American government and its electoral system suffer a crisis of function, accountability, competence and venomous political conflict.
Today a leading figure in the policy community, Zbigniew Brzezinski, writes in his new book that America "is in serious decline for domestic and/or external reasons" and that its loss of international authority risks stalling international efforts to deal with "issues of central importance to social well-being and ultimately to human survival."
The framework in which Americans now see international society is usually one of Chinese ascendance to take America's place.
This is a mistake based on China's economic development and financial power, widely misunderstood (see below), and on the intimidating size of China's population, 1.3 billion people. This ignores the fact that large numbers of people do not readily translate into economic prosperity and influence (as India is also finding out), nor into military power, as the Pentagon seems to think -- inaugurating bases and new American deployments in East Asia, so that if a new war breaks out there, the United States can automatically be at the center of it (which some might think a less than good idea).
While China has a very large gross domestic product, it has a very low GDP per capita (ranking 91 on an
It also is necessary to ask what China's ambitions are. It has never in the past shown much interest in international domination, other than in its own immediate area, considering itself the natural center of civilization, superior to everyone else. Its current global program of investments is never political -- attempting to exercise political or strategic influence -- but economic, concerned with sourcing resources needed for China's development. Its economic assistance to countries in Africa or elsewhere in Asia is usually payment to secure access to foreign mineral resources and energy.
A recent letter from a friend who lives in Beijing included the following observation: "A senior lawyer in Beijing told me a few months ago that much of his firm's business is winding up German-Chinese joint ventures, in order for the German partner to leave. The Germans are finding themselves competing in other countries against Chinese technology that's been copied from German companies, reengineered to lower costs." He adds that he feels "[China] is in the beginning phases again of an historical rejection of foreign influences ... [that will make it] impossible for China to develop the broad culture of innovation that exists in the West." My friend is an engineer himself.
Americans might do better to give up their China obsession and go back to their traditional vision of a European threat. If the Europeans can get their indebtedness problem solved (imported from the United States; thank you, Wall Street), Americans will find that the
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World - American Decline Could Worsen with Focus on Iran and China | Global Viewpoint