After the 9/11 mayhem, it has become fashionable to write off the United States as the world’s sole global power. Unfailingly newspapers carry articles penned by self-acclaimed political pundits of the emergence of India, China and Brazil. Reams of writings can be found on this topic in the Indian media and the Muslim world. In seminar rooms and during debates this subject is discussed with great passion that America is losing its shine. Many pseudo, particularly Muslim ‘intellectuals’, rant that the US will meet the same fate as that of the Soviet Union. This is very common in the Middle East.
We can understand their anguish because after the collapse of communism in 1991, a weak Muslim world is pitched against a far powerful West, including the US. And their perception has been hardened with war raging in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine – to name only a few. In Palestine the occupier Israel has the full backing of the mighty US.
However, things have become further complicated after the US falling into recession. Many thought it was the last nail in its coffin. For a while there was jubilation that the end of the empire was imminent. But it was short lived as the economy has started to recover. Despite all the setback, the US is far ahead than the rest of the world. Its economic and military strength, including the attractiveness of its ideals, will ensure its power for a long time to come.
The new US under a Black President Barrack Obama is far ahead of its arch rival China and other developing countries in economy, military, cultural, technological, intellectual and institutional strength. Even after the global slowdown, it is the world’s largest economy and spends more on the military than the next 14 countries combined.
Its popular culture outreach is unrivalled. Its films, music, fast food and sports have invaded most of the countries. Its universities that have high educational standards are the best in the world. Students from across the world flock these campuses to update themselves with latest innovations and developments. Above all the world’s most important institutions are either based in America (the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Band), and are dominated by Americans.
Even with the end of Cold War, the US is forking out an astronomical amount on its defence. The US defence budget for 2009 is $655 billion; China $70 billion and Russia spends $50 billion. India is far behind. The Muslim world, whose leaders like Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dream of teaching the “devil” a lesson stands nowhere. Its military budget is 23 times as large as the combined spending of the seven countries identified by the Pentagon as America’s enemies – Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. All of them just spend $14 billion annually.
America’s cumulative cost overruns add up to more than the total annual defence budgets of China, Russia, Britain and France combined.
The Pentagon is still on its way to produce 2,443 F-35s at a cost of $1 trillion. It spends $96 million a day on nuclear efforts. In which about $25 billion is used for operation and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal. The rest money is spent on clean up, arms control verification, and ballistic missile defence research.
All told, the rise of China and India cannot be ignored. Goldman Sachs thinks that China will overtake the US by 2027 (in real dollar terms), rather than by 2035 as previously predicted. The bank writes that even when the Chinese economy is larger than that of the US, the average American will still be far richer than the average Chinese. And some of American values, like political freedom, will remain much more attractive for the Chinese. Both India and China are surrounded by extreme poverty. A large number of Indians are still very poor and poorly educated. Female literacy in India is only 48 per cent. Corruption is widespread. In India’s heartlands where 70 per cent of its people reside there is no infrastructure. Even after 60 years of Independence India still depends on monsoon for agriculture products.
Farid Zakaria in The Post-American World argues that we are now living in a power shift, which he calls “the rise of the rest”. He writes the growth has taken place almost throughout the world, i.e. not only in Asia. In 2006 and in 2007, 124 countries grew at a rate of 4% or more. But it will take a century for India and China to tide over their miseries.
Another expert on international geopolitics, George Friedman, writes in New Statesman that the US has room to grow as it manages immigration well.
The founder of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor argues in his new book The Next 100 Years that a lot apart from economy there are other things that decide the emergence or decline of a great power. The extract of this book was recently published in a weekly magazine in London.
In that article, George Friedman writes: “Just as important, perhaps, is that while the population density of Japan is about 365 people per square kilometre and that of most European states between 100 and 300 per square kilometre, the US population density, excluding Alaska, is about 34 people per square kilometre.
“Consider China, most often mentioned as the challenger to the US. Han China is surrounded by four buffer states, Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. Without these buffers, the borders of China move inward and China becomes vulnerable. With these four buffers in place, China is secure – but as a landlocked island, bounded by mountainous jungle, the Himalayas, the steppes of Central Asia and the Siberian wasteland. China is blocked in all directions but the sea.
Despite the economic stride in the last 25 years, China is still a land of poverty. It is the hundred miles of coast where most of the industrial development has taken place and the rest of the areas are populated by mostly improvised people.
Militarily, China is weak. Its navy exists mostly on paper and could not possibly pose a serious threat to the US. But that does not mean China cannot overcome its problem. It can, but for this it has to introduce revolutionary measures for which the country is not prepared at the moment.
Great powers are not born every day. It takes centuries of toil to occupy the crown. The United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia have been there for more than two centuries. The emergence of new one usually produces tension if not turmoil, as it tries to overturn the rules to fit in. The rise of Germany and Japan in the early 20th century is the reminder.
The US knows that it cannot cling to number one position for ever. In past many great empires were demolished. That is why the US is making all efforts to maintain the status quo, which seems to be a difficult business with hostilities towards it increasing due to its aggressive foreign policies. However, a lot has changed after the departure of George W. Bush.
But the US is making all efforts to maintain the lead over its arch rival and encircling it. Its army has a plan at hand of how to limit China’s emerging power.
The balancing is not allowing to form a block. For this purpose the US is willing to work with Russia, Japan and India. It is backing up India as alternative to China in the continent. The Indo-US civilian nuclear treaty is part of its effort to isolate China in the continent. The US is adept in these games. It pursued the containment of the Soviet Union for almost 50 years. Even after its collapse, the American troops are still on the banks of the Rhine, along the DMZ in Korea and in Okinawa. The US does not want to take any chance.
The great efforts to retain the Empire are firmly in place.