America and the rise of Asia

Here's a very interesting (and long) survey article in the New Yorker surveying the flurry of recent books about the rise of Asia.

Fareed Zakaria, in "The Post-American World," sees international institutions as the key to preventing conflict between the U.S. and the rising Asian states (the "liberal internationalist" view). I tend to agree that bringing China and India (and eventually others) into organizations like the G-8 will be a good thing, but won't necessarily prevent conflicts. Membership in those organizations won't really make China (and let's be honest, it's China we're worried about) more likely to do what we want them to do - after all, Rssia is in the G-8, and they're not exactly our best buddy. Still, Zakaria's idea isn't a bad thing.

Robert Kagan, in "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," says that Zakaria's idea is basically full of it, and that Asian nations will compete with themselves and with us for power just as states have in the past. I'd more be more inclined to agree than disagree with that cynical view. However, his solution is the good ol' neocon cure-all - aggressive and interventionist American military power. That's like reacting to a jerky colleague who wants to take your job by going out and beating up random kids on the street. Uh, no thanks.

Parag Khanna, in "The Second World," once again proves himself to be America's least eloquent public intellectual, with sentences like “Located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai subsumes China’s best and brightest into a culture of doing in the way New Yorkers are known for, its first world urban culture and cosmopolitan design already earning it the status of a global hot spot.” Uh, what? Khanna's thesis - that a rising Asia will unify against a decadent West under the ideological banner of efficient, effective authoritarianism - is hardly more coherent. Reading Parag Khanna feels a bit like...um...like getting clocked in the head from the side by a giant blob of foul-smelling Jell-O. Not that I'd know what that feels like, mind you...

The one book that the article doesn't discuss in detail is Bill Emmott's "Rivals," which largely ignores Asia's relationship with the West and focuses on the rivalries between the big Asian powers (Japan, China, and India). To me, this is the right way to look at the situation (plus Bill Emmott looks cool). Europe didn't become a union until it had fought each other in increasingly bloody wars for three hundred years. Hopefully we're past the point of that kind of bloodshed, but we still shouldn't expect India and China to combine themselves into a benevolently-authoritarian Chindian superstate bent on exacting revenge for years of Western imperialism. More likely, the rising nations of Asia will bicker, squabble, and fight each other for local supremacy.

It's true that power is shifting toward the East, mainly because those countries used to be so poor, and have so many people. But that doesn't mean the West is finished, and it certainly doesn't mean we should launch ourselves into a frenzy of aggression to try to maintain our relative power. Better, in my opinion, to sit back, put our own house in order, and help out our democratic allies in Asia to help make sure the political system we like wins the contest of ideologies in that part of the world.

And please, get Parag Khanna back to his home planet.