The new world order that threatens
Pastor Dale Morgan
The new world order that threatens *
America's next President faces the daunting task of countering Russia
and China as they aggressively challenge struggling Western liberal
democracies
Henry Porter
Sunday December 23, 2007
The Observer
Two events last week make me wish I could have just a few words with
American thinker Francis Fukuyama. The first was Time magazine giving
Vladimir Putin the accolade of person of the year. The second was the
purchase by the China Investment Corp of nearly 10 per cent of American
bank Morgan Stanley as it announced the write-off of $9.4bn in bad debts
In 1992, I met Francis Fukuyama when he was touring his book The End of
History and the Last Man and explaining to anyone who would listen that
the world had reached a point where there was no longer any meaningful
dispute between Marxism and the market. More particularly, he said, it
looked as though Western liberal democracy was becoming 'the final form
of human government'.
It was such an alluring and hopeful phrase, as though a process of
evolution was about to reach its happy conclusion. The rest would be
simply a matter of management and education. I wonder how he accounts
for the state of affairs at the end of the 2007 in which Russia and
China appear to be doing rather well without following the example of
Western liberal democracy and, indeed, challenge the model with disdain.
The Russians, for instance, rather than becoming more democratically
inclined have become less so. In a recent poll, just 20 per cent of
Russians said they favoured democracy and a market economy.
For a vast number of the world's people, democracy is an aspiration that
comes some way after security and prosperity. The two great powers of
the communist era end this year more confident than at any moment since
the fall of the Wall. And what is interesting is that their sense of
purpose and defiance is accompanied by doubts in the West about the
strength of our economies and uncertainty about the direction of our
democracies. Forget Islam and Islamism: these are the important
undercurrents of 2007.
Within less than a decade or so of the founding of the slightly risible
organisation the Project for the New American Century, Time magazine has
honoured - even though it says it is not an honour - Putin for making
his country 'critical to the 21st century'. The dollar has collapsed to
hover at 50p and America's war in Iraq, which now well exceeds its
involvement in the Second World War, has cost $600bn, a sum which Nobel
Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz believes will reach $1 trillion.
This is a credit-card war. Americans will be paying Chinese banks for
years after George W Bush has left office. Even though the current war
costs about 1 per cent of America's annual $13,247bn GDP (Vietnam
represented about 9 per cent), it is difficult not to see a perfectly
plotted story line in this. America, the only superpower of the moment,
is financed by its chief competitor in a prolonged exercise of
distraction that absorbs a huge amount of money and much of its policy
making and diplomatic energies. At the same time, the very nature of
that distraction weakens US influence all over the world.
While the US frets about surges and troop withdrawal and bringing
democracy to people who do not necessarily see its advantages, China
extends its influence across the world, increases its defence budget by
17 per cent, fires something called a direct ascent anti-satellite
missile to atomise one of its own weather satellites, the implications
of which were certainly not missed by the Pentagon, and launches massive
computer hacking operations against Western governments and businesses.
There have been some 37,000 attempts to breach American security which
emanated from China.
A few years ago, I visited Sudan with a friend. In our few days there,
we encountered just two or three Americans. Other than the impotent rage
about Darfur, there appeared to be no useful American engagement with
Khartoum. The Chinese, on the other hand, were flying planeloads of oil
and construction workers into the country, building Chinese hotels that
would be exclusively serviced by Chinese staff. Nothing seemed to
represent the rise of one influence and the decline of another. If you
want a further example, it is the acquiescence of the fifth most
valuable company in America, Google, to Chinese censorship.
The project for the new Chinese century has been well underway for some
time and it is striking how intelligent the Chinese have been, extending
their influence while rarely indulging in the big swinging dick
diplomacy which can so easily sidetrack a government. That is not true
of Russia, which over the last year has opted to challenge the West at
practically every turn, whether by planting a flag on the seabed beneath
the Arctic icecap, testing the massive ordnance air blast bomb with all
the joy of kids letting off fireworks in the park or disputing the
siting of US early-warning defence systems in eastern Europe. All this
goes down very well at home, where people are beginning to feel the
benefits of a GDP which is three times what it was in the 2002. Oil
prices account for most of the rise, but there is a growing middle class
with more money to spend and a sense of renewed national pride.
Putin has done little to update the infrastructure of his country, but
Russians see that the modest improvements in the standard of living have
been achieved at the same time as their President was moving against a
free press and political opposition. The phrase used by the Kremlin is
'sovereign democracy', which makes a nationalist virtue of the decline
of civil society and the rule of law, presenting both as an unwholesome
foreign influence.
So much for Fukuyama's 'final form of human government'. Putin openly
denies America's right to claim moral superiority or to know the secret
of how governments should act in the 21st century. People who lecture
Russians about democracy and the rule of law are told by Putin that
'they do not want to learn the lessons themselves'. It is a bully's
argument, but he can at least demonstrate that the West's record is not
perfect in this regard. Guantanamo, the Patriot Act and the general
attack on constitutional rights in America and Britain do not help our case.
A recent poll published in the International Herald Tribune showed that
a majority of Americans believed that their country is a threat to world
peace and a similar proportion say that America is weaker today than at
the start of the Bush administration. These are the great challenges
that face the individual who will succeed Bush this time next year.
America is still vastly more powerful and wealthy than any other nation
on earth. With just one-fifth of China's workforce, America's GDP is
nearly five times that of China's. Whatever the economic crisis of the
year ahead, that relationship is not going to change overnight.
The new President will need to go on a charm offensive that must begin
before he or she is even elected. America has to find a way of speaking
more quietly while still carrying that big stick and if it is going to
persuade the new middle classes of China and Russia that it has a moral
leadership to offer the 21st century, it must adhere to the democratic
values that it wishes to seed elsewhere and lead rather than follow on
climate change.
To sound a note of optimism at the end of this rather scratchy, chaotic
year, there are definite signs that opinion in both these areas is on
the move among Americans.