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With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States
stood tall—militarily invincible, economically unrivalled,
diplomatically uncontestable, and the dominating force on information
channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true “American
century,” with the rest of the world moulding itself in the image of
the sole superpower.
Yet, with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already
witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are
challenging different aspects of American supremacy — Russia and China
in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the
second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode American
hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.
How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The Bush
administration’s debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this
transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming
with hubris, over-extending itself. To the relief of many — in the U.
S. and elsewhere — the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking
limitations of power for the globe’s highest-tech, most destructive
military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser
to two U.S. Presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, “We are being
wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organised state
adversary.”
The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the
mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the
credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba, along with the widely publicised murders
of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America’s moral
self-image. In the latest opinion poll, even in a secular state and
member of NATO like Turkey, only 9% of Turks have a “favorable view”
of the U.S (down from 52% just five years ago).
Yet there are other explanations — unrelated to Washington’s glaring
misadventures — for the current transformation in international
affairs. These include, above all, the tightening market in oil and
natural gas, which has enhanced the power of hydrocarbon-rich nations
as never before; the rapid economic expansion of the mega-nations
China and India; the transformation of China into the globe’s leading
manufacturing base; and the end of the Anglo-American duopoly in
international television news.
Many Channels, Diverse Perceptions
During the 1991 Gulf War, only CNN and the BBC had correspondents in
Baghdad. So the international TV audience, irrespective of its
location, saw the conflict through their lenses. Twelve years later,
when the Bush administration, backed by British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, invaded Iraq, Al Jazeera Arabic broke this duopoly. It relayed
images — and facts — that contradicted the Pentagon’s presentation.
For the first time in history, the world witnessed two versions of an
ongoing war in real time. So credible was the Al Jazeera Arabic
version that many television companies outside the Arabic-speaking
world — in Europe, Asia and Latin America — showed its clips.
Though, in theory, the growth of cable television worldwide raised the
prospect of ending the Anglo-American duopoly in 24-hour TV news, not
much had happened due to the exorbitant cost of gathering and editing
TV news. It was only the arrival of Al Jazeera English, funded by the
hydrocarbon-rich emirate of Qatar — with its declared policy of
offering a global perspective from an Arab and Muslim angle — that, in
2006, finally broke the long-established mould.
Soon France 24 came on the air, broadcasting in English and French
from a French viewpoint, followed in mid-2007 by the English-language
Press TV, which aimed to provide an Iranian perspective. Russia was
next in line for 24-hour TV news in English for the global audience.
Meanwhile, spurred by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Telesur, a
pan-Latin-American TV channel based in Caracas, began competing with
CNN in Spanish for a mass audience.
As with Qatar, so with Russia and Venezuela, the funding for these TV
news ventures has come from soaring national hydrocarbon incomes — a
factor draining American hegemony not just in imagery but in reality.
Russia, an Energy Superpower
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has more than recovered from
the economic chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. After effectively renationalising the energy industry through
state-controlled corporations, he began deploying its economic clout
to further Russia’s foreign policy interests.
In 2005, Russia overtook the United States, becoming the second
largest oil producer in the world. Its oil income now amounts to $679
million a day. European countries dependent on imported Russian oil
now include Hungary, Poland, Germany, and even Britain.
Russia is also the largest producer of natural gas on the planet, with
three-fifths of its gas exports going to the 27-member European Union
(EL). Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, and Slovakia get 100% of their
natural gas from Russia; Turkey, 66%; Poland, 58%; Germany 41%; and
France 25%. Gazprom, the biggest natural gas enterprise on Earth, has
established stakes in sixteen EU countries. In 2006, the Kremlin’s
foreign reserves stood at $315 billion, up from a paltry $12 billion
in 1999. Little wonder that, in July 2006 on the eve of the G8 summit
in St Petersburg, Putin rejected an energy charter proposed by the
Western leaders.
Soaring foreign-exchange reserves, new ballistic missiles, and closer
links with a prospering China — with which it conducted joint military
exercises on China’s Shandong Peninsula in August 2005 — enabled Putin
to deal with his American counterpart, President George W. Bush, as an
equal, not mincing his words when appraising American policies.
“One country, the United States, has overstepped its national
boundaries in every way,” Putin told the 43rd Munich Trans-Atlantic
conference on security policy in February 2007. “This is visible in
the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes
on other nations... This is very dangerous.”
Condemning the concept of a “unipolar world,” he added: “However one
might embellish this term, at the end of the day it describes a
scenario in which there is one centre of authority, one centre of
force, one centre of decision-making. It is a world in which there is
one master, one sovereign. And this is pernicious.” His views fell on
receptive ears in the capitals of most Asian, African, and Latin
American countries.
The changing relationship between Moscow and Washington was noted,
among others, by analysts and policy-makers in the hydrocarbon-rich
Persian Gulf region. Commenting on the visit that Putin paid to
long-time U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar after the Munich
conference, Abdel Aziz Sagar, chairman of the Gulf Research Centre,
wrote in the Doha-based newspaper The Peninsula that Russia and Gulf
Arab countries, once rivals from opposite ideological camps, had found
a common agenda of oil, anti-terrorism, and arms sales. “The altered
focus takes place in a milieu where the Gulf countries are signalling
their keenness to keep all geopolitical options open, reviewing the
utility of the United States as the sole security guarantor, and
contemplating a collective security mechanism that involves a host of
international players.”
In April 2007, the Kremlin issued a major foreign policy document.
“The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in
Iraq,” it stated. “A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an
integral part of positive changes in the world.”
The Kremlin’s increasingly tense relations with Washington were in
tune with Russian popular opinion. A poll taken during the run-up to
the 2006 G8 summit revealed that 58% of Russians regarded America as
an “unfriendly country.” It has proved to be a trend. This July, for
instance, Major General Alexandr Vladimirov told the mass circulation
newspaper Komsolskya Pravada that war with the United States was a
“possibility” in the next ten to fifteen years.
Chavez Rides High
Such sentiments resonated with Hugo Chavez. While visiting Moscow in
June 2007, he urged Russians to return to the ideas of Vladimir Lenin,
especially his anti-imperialism. “The Americans don’t want Russia to
keep rising,” he said. “But Russia has risen again as a centre of
power, and we, the people of the world need Russia to become
stronger.”
Chavez finalised a $1 billion deal to purchase five diesel submarines
to defend Venezuela’s oil-rich undersea shelf and thwart any possible
future economic embargo imposed by Washington. By then, Venezuela had
become the second largest buyer of Russian weaponry. (Algeria topped
the list, another indication of a growing multipolarity in world
affairs.) Venezuela acquired the distinction of being the first
country to receive a license from Russia to manufacture the famed
AK-47 assault rifle.
By channeling some of his country’s oil money to needy Venezuelans,
Chavez broadened his base of support. Much to the chagrin of the Bush
White House, he trounced his sole political rival, Manuel Rosales, in
a December 2006 presidential contest with 61 % of the vote. Equally
humiliating to the Bush administration, Venezuela was, by then, giving
more foreign aid to needy Latin American states than it was.
Following his re-election, Chavez vigorously pursued the concept of
forming an anti-imperialist alliance in Latin America as well as
globally. He strengthened Venezuela’s ties not only with such Latin
countries as Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and debt-ridden
Argentina, but also with Iran and Belarus.
By the time he arrived in Tehran from Moscow (via Minsk) in June 2007,
the 180 economic and political accords his government had signed with
Tehran were already yielding tangible results. Iranian-designed cars
and tractors were coming off assembly lines in Venezuela. “The
cooperation of independent countries like Iran and Venezuela has an
effective role in defeating the policies of imperialism and saving
nations,” Chavez declared in Tehran.
Stuck in the quagmire of Iraq and lashed by the gusty winds of
rocketing oil prices, the Bush administration finds its area of
manoeuvre woefully limited when dealing with a rising hydrocarbon
power. To the insults that Chavez keeps hurling at Bush, the American
response has been vapid. The reason is the crippling dependence of the
United States on imported petroleum which accounts for 60% of its
total consumed. Venezuela is the fourth largest source of U.S.
imported oil after Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia; and some
refineries in the U.S. are designed specifically to refine heavy
Venezuelan oil.
In Chavez’s scheme to undermine the “sole superpower,” China has an
important role. During an August 2006 visit to Beijing, his fourth in
seven years, he announced that Venezuela would triple its oil exports
to China to 500,000 barrels per day in three years, a jump that suited
both sides. Chavez wants to diversify Venezuela’s buyer base to reduce
its reliance on exports to the U.S., and China’s leaders are keen to
diversify their hydrocarbon imports away from the Middle East, where
American influence remains strong.
“The support of China is very important [to us] from the political and
moral point of view,” Chavez declared. Along with a joint refinery
project, China agreed to build thirteen oil drilling platforms, supply
eighteen oil tankers, and collaborate with the state-owned company,
Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA), in exploring a new oilfield in
the Orinoco Basin.
China on a Stratospheric Trajectory
So dramatic has been the growth of the state-run company Petro China
that, in mid-2007, it was second only to Exxon Mobil in its market
value among energy corporations. Indeed, that year three Chinese
companies made it onto the list of the world’s ten most highly valued
corporations. Only the U.S. had more with five. China’s foreign
reserves of over $1 trillion have now surpassed Japan’s. With its
gross domestic product soaring past Germany’s, China ranks number
three in the world economy.
In the diplomatic arena, Chinese leaders broke new ground in 1996 by
sponsoring the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), consisting of
four adjoining countries: Russia and the three former Soviet Socialist
republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The SCO started
as a cooperative organisation with a focus on countering
drug-smuggling and terrorism. Later, the SCO invited Uzbekistan to
join, even though it does not abut China. In 2003, the SCO broadened
its scope by including regional economic cooperation in its charter.
That, in turn, led it to grant observer status to Pakistan, India, and
Mongolia — all adjoining China — and Iran which does not. When the
U.S. applied for observer status, it was rejected, an embarrassing
setback for Washington, which enjoyed such status at the Association
of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
In early August 2007, on the eve of an SCO summit in the Kyrgyz
capital of Bishkek, the group conducted its first joint military
exercises, codenamed Peace Mission 2007, in the Russian Ural region of
Chelyabinsk. “The SCO is destined to play a vital role in ensuring
international security,” said Ednan Karabayev, foreign minister of
Kyrgyzstan.
In late 2006, as the host of a China-Africa Forum in Beijing attended
by leaders of 48 of 53 African nations, China left the U.S. woefully
behind in the diplomatic race for that continent (and its hydrocarbon
and other resources). In return for Africa’s oil, iron ore, copper,
and cotton, China sold low-priced goods to Africans, and assisted
African countries in building or improving roads, railways, ports,
hydro-electric dams, telecommunications systems, and schools. “The
western approach of imposing its values and political system on other
countries is not acceptable to China,” said Africa specialist Wang
Hongyi of the China Institute of International Studies. “We focus on
mutual development.”
To reduce the cost of transporting petroleum from Africa and the
Middle East, China began constructing a trans-Burma oil pipeline from
the Bay of Bengal to its southern province of Yunan, thereby
shortening the delivery distance now travelled by tankers. This
undermined Washington’s campaign to isolate Myanmar. (Earlier, Sudan,
boycotted by Washington, had emerged as a leading supplier of African
oil to China.) In addition, Chinese oil companies were competing
fiercely with their Western counterparts in getting access to
hydrocarbon reserves in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
“China’s oil diplomacy is putting the country on a collision course
with the U.S. and Western Europe, which have imposed sanctions on some
of the countries where China is doing business,” comments William
Mellor of Bloomberg News. The sentiment is echoed by the other side.
“I see China and the U.S. coming into conflict over energy in the
years ahead,” says Jin Riguang, an oil-and-gas advisor to the Chinese
government and a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Council.
China’s industrialisation and modernisation has spurred the
modernisation of its military as well. The test-firing of the
country’s first anti-satellite missile, which successfully destroyed a
defunct Chinese weather satellite in January 2007, dramatically
demonstrated its growing technological prowess. An alarmed Washington
had already noted an 18% increase in China’s 2007 defence budget.
Attributing the rise to extra spending on missiles, electronic
warfare, and other high-tech items, Liao Xilong, Commander of the
People’s Liberation Army’s general logistics department, said: “The
present day world is no longer peaceful and to protect national
security, stability and territorial integrity we must suitably
increase spending on military modernisation.”
China’s declared budget of $45 billion was a tiny fraction of the
Pentagon’s $459 billion one. Yet, in May 2007, a Pentagon report noted
China’s “rapid rise as a regional and economic power with global
aspirations” and claimed that it was planning to project military
farther afield from the Taiwan Straits into the Asia-Pacific region in
preparation for possible conflicts over territory or resources.
The Sole Superpower in the Sweep of History
This disparate challenge to American global primacy stems as much from
sharpening conflicts over natural resources, particularly oil and
natural gas, as from ideological differences over democracy, American
style, or human rights, as conceived and promoted by Western
policymakers. Perceptions about national (and imperial) identity and
history are at stake as well.
It is noteworthy that Russian officials applauding the swift rise of
post-Soviet Russia refer fondly to the pre-Bolshevik Revolution era
when, according to them, Tsarist Russia was a Great Power. Equally,
Chinese leaders remain proud of their country’s long imperial past as
unique among nations.
When viewed globally and in the great stretch of history, the notion
of American exceptionalism that drove the
neo-conservatives to proclaim the Project for the New American Century
in the late 20th century — adopted so wholeheartedly by the Bush
administration in this one — is nothing new. Other superpowers have
been there before and they, too, have witnessed the loss of their
prime position to rising powers.
No superpower in modern times has maintained its supremacy for more
than several generations. And, however exceptional its leaders may
have thought themselves, the United States, already clearly past its
zenith, has no chance of becoming an exception to this age-old pattern
of history.
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