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The May-June issue of Foreign Affairs will have an article “The
Age of Nonpolarity—What follows US dominance?” by Richard Haass,
president of the US Council on Foreign Relations. CFR is the
independent, non-partisan, well-respected, scholarly and
authoritative research and publishing institution. It publishes
Foreign Affairs.
Haass says the era of American hegemony is over.
He argues that unipolarity will not be followed by bipolarity or
multipolarity. The emerging international system will be nonpolar
and the world order won’t have much order at all.
The United States has lost some of its power and
influence over other states and major institutions. And other states
that have more material wealth, armed might and seniority relative
to other states have also lost some of their power to command or
influence other states and nonstate institutions and civil society
players.
“One of the cardinal features of the
contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost
their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as
well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and global
organizations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a
variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations.
Power is now found in many hands and in many places,” he writes.
Therefore Washington must change its ways.
US still most powerful
Haass writes that in this nonpolar world, “the
United States is and will long remain the largest single aggregation
of power . . . But the reality of American strength should not mask
the relative decline of the United States’ position in the
world—and with this relative decline in power an absolute decline
in influence and independence. The US share of global imports is
already down to 15 percent. Although US GDP accounts for over 25
percent of the world’s total, this percentage is sure to decline
over time given the actual and projected differential between the
United States’ growth rate and those of the Asian giants and many
other countries, a large number of which are growing at more than
two or three times the United States.
“The increasingly nonpolar world will
have mostly negative consequences for the United States—and for
much of the rest of the world as well. It will make it more
difficult for Washington to lead on those occasions when it seeks to
promote collective responses to regional and global challenges . . .
Nonpolarity will also increase the number of threats and
vulnerabilities facing a country such as the United States,” he
says.
But “The United States can and should take
steps to reduce the chances that a nonpolar world will become a
cauldron of instability. This is not a call for unilateralism; it is
a call for the United States to get its own house in order.
Unipolarity is a thing of the past, but the United States still
retains more capacity than any other actor to improve the quality of
the international system. The question is whether it will continue
to possess such capacity . . . The United States will no longer have
the luxury of a ‘You’re either with us or against us’ foreign
policy.”
GMA saw and acted
President Arroyo saw the coming age of a weaker
USA. That is why she decided to set this country on the road to
being also a China dependency.
She saw that America’s influence on world
affairs is stymied by the moves of emerging military, political and
economic powers like China, the EU as a bloc, the Organization of
the Islamic Conference, Iran, Russia, etc. The USA has to moderate
its power and influence relative to NGOs (like Greenpeace), the
transnational corporations, blocs like OPEC and APEC, and new and
enlarging political groupings like those being formed by leftist
governments in Latin America. Even Asean once in a while makes
Washington rethink. And don’t forget Al-Qaeda, Hizbollah and their
ilk. Terrorism limits the powers of governments and citizens.
The nonpolar world differs from that post-WWII
one where the USA led the so-called “Free World” and Russia
headed a socialist bloc fragmented into the Soviet Empire, a
renegade Yugoslavia and the anti-Russian China-Albania alliance.
Earlier, the bipolarity was that of Western European or the Allied
powers (ultimately joined by the USA) and the Axis powers
(Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Japan).
The Age of Nonpolarity may turn out to be
exceedingly pleasant for those who thrive in the thrills of living
in a democratically pluralist environment. But it could be nightmare
for those who wish to have maximum predictability in their lives.
Unipolar Philippines
I see it degenerating into a gigantic mess. Some
nation-states will have leaders who will be aggressive—or
desperate—and cause regional conflicts (as North Korea is now
doing). Some countries will have more food while countries of other
regions will sink into deeper levels of despondency.
Filipinos can feel proud about all this. For we
will maintain our unipolar national order under President Arroyo and
at the same time continue to experience all the mess the new
nonpolar world can offer.
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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