纽时时报: 再见霸权 全球将迎来中美欧三极时代
[size=4][color=DarkOrange]Waving Goodbye to Hegemony[/color][/size][color=RoyalBlue]By [/color][b][i]PARAG KHANNA[/i][/b][color=RoyalBlue]Published: [b]January 27, 2008[/b][/color]
[b]Turn on the TV today,[/b] and you could be forgiven for thinkingit’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and howto intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind ofworld America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a resetbutton, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go.It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — andalmost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution ofpower in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidentialterms of [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per]George W. Bush[/url],both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybethe best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look justa bit ahead.
It is 2016, and the [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Hillary Clinton[/url] or [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_mccain/index.html?inline=nyt-per]John McCain[/url] or [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Barack Obama[/url]administration is nearing the end of its second term. America haspulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent stateof Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Forcepresence in [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/qatar/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Qatar[/url]. [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Afghanistan[/url] is stable; [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Iran[/url]is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing itsnaval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port ofGwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org]European Union[/url] has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Russia[/url] and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline.
Why? Weren’t we supposed to reconnect with the [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org]United Nations[/url]and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it tocollective security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to America’simage may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/condoleezza_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Condoleezza Rice[/url]has said America has no “permanent enemies,” but it has no permanentfriends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as thesymbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs ofimperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armedforces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the formof terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons likesuicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic andfinancial countermovements to block American bullying and construct analternate world order. That new global order has arrived, and there isprecious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist itsgrowth.
[b]The Geopolitical Marketplace[/b]
Atbest, America’s unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that wasalso a decade adrift. The post-cold-war “peace dividend” was neverconverted into a global liberal order under American leadership. Sonow, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing —in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers:the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century:the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse runby Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; andnot [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]India[/url],lagging decades behind China in both development and strategicappetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without anyone of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitorsin this post-American world.
The more we appreciate the differences among the American, European andChinese worldviews, the more we will see the planetary stakes of thenew global game. Previous eras of balance of power have been amongEuropean powers sharing a common culture. The cold war, too, was nottruly an “East-West” struggle; it remained essentially a contest overEurope. What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global,multicivilizational, multipolar battle.
In Europe’s capital, Brussels, technocrats, strategists and legislatorsincreasingly see their role as being the global balancer betweenAmerica and China. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_parliament/index.html?inline=nyt-org]European Parliament[/url],calls it “European patriotism.” The Europeans play both sides, and ifthey do it well, they profit handsomely. It’s a trend that will outlastboth President [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/nicolas_sarkozy/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Nicolas Sarkozy[/url] of France, the self-described “friend of America,” and Chancellor [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/angela_merkel/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Angela Merkel[/url]of Germany, regardless of her visiting the Crawford ranch. It maycomfort American conservatives to point out that Europe still lacks acommon army; the only problem is that it doesn’t really need one.Europeans use intelligence and the police to apprehend radicalIslamists, social policy to try to integrate restive Muslim populationsand economic strength to incorporate the former Soviet Union andgradually subdue Russia. Each year European investment in Turkey growsas well, binding it closer to the E.U. even if it never becomes amember. And each year a new pipeline route opens transporting oil andgas from [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/libya/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Libya[/url],Algeria or Azerbaijan to Europe. What other superpower grows by anaverage of one country per year, with others waiting in line andbegging to join?
[url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/robert_kagan/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Robert Kagan[/url]famously said that America hails from Mars and Europe from Venus, butin reality, Europe is more like Mercury — carrying a big wallet. TheE.U.’s market is the world’s largest, European technologies more andmore set the global standard and European countries give the mostdevelopment assistance. And if America and China fight, the world’smoney will be safely invested in European banks. Many Americans scoffedat the introduction of the euro, claiming it was an overreach thatwould bring the collapse of the European project. Yet today, PersianGulf oil exporters are diversifying their currency holdings into euros,and President [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/mahmoud_ahmadinejad/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad[/url] of Iran has proposed that [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/organization_of_petroleum_exporting_countries/index.html?inline=nyt-org]OPEC[/url] no longer price its oil in “worthless” dollars. President [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hugo_chavez/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Hugo Chávez[/url]of Venezuela went on to suggest euros. It doesn’t help that Congressrevealed its true protectionist colors by essentially blocking theDubai ports deal in 2006. With London taking over (again) as theworld’s financial capital for stock listing, it’s no surprise thatChina’s new state investment fund intends to locate its main Westernoffices there instead of New York. Meanwhile, America’s share of globalexchange reserves has dropped to 65 percent. Gisele Bündchen demands tobe paid in euros, while [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/jayz/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Jay-Z[/url] drowns in 500 euro notes in a recent video. American soft power seems on the wane even at home.
[b]And Europe’s influence[/b] grows at America’s expense. While Americafumbles at nation-building, Europe spends its money and politicalcapital on locking peripheral countries into its orbit. Many poorregions of the world have realized that they want the European dream,not the American dream. Africa wants a real [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/african_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org]African Union[/url]like the E.U.; we offer no equivalent. Activists in the Middle Eastwant parliamentary democracy like Europe’s, not American-stylepresidential strongman rule. Many of the foreign students we shunnedafter 9/11 are now in London and Berlin: twice as many Chinese study inEurope as in the U.S. We didn’t educate them, so we have no claims ontheir brains or loyalties as we have in decades past. More broadly,America controls legacy institutions few seem to want — like the [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/international_monetary_fund/index.html?inline=nyt-org]International Monetary Fund[/url]— while Europe excels at building new and sophisticated ones modeled onitself. The U.S. has a hard time getting its way even when it dominatessummit meetings — consider the ill-fated Free Trade Area of theAmericas — let alone when it’s not even invited, as with the new EastAsian Community, the region’s answer to America’s Apec.
The East Asian Community is but one example of how China is also toobusy restoring its place as the world’s “Middle Kingdom” to bedistracted by the Middle Eastern disturbances that so preoccupy theUnited States. In America’s own hemisphere, from Canada to Cuba toChávez’s Venezuela, China is cutting massive resource and investmentdeals. Across the globe, it is deploying tens of thousands of its ownengineers, aid workers, dam-builders and covert military personnel. InAfrica, China is not only securing energy supplies; it is also makingmajor strategic investments in the financial sector. The whole world isabetting China’s spectacular rise as evidenced by the ballooning shareof trade in its gross domestic product — and China is exporting weaponsat a rate reminiscent of the Soviet Union during the cold war, pinningAmerica down while filling whatever power vacuums it can find. Everycountry in the world currently considered a rogue state by the U.S. nowenjoys a diplomatic, economic or strategic lifeline from China, Iranbeing the most prominent example.
Without firing a shot, China is doing on its southern and westernperipheries what Europe is achieving to its east and south. Aided by a35 million-strong ethnic Chinese diaspora well placed around EastAsia’s rising economies, a Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere hasemerged. Like Europeans, Asians are insulating themselves fromAmerica’s economic uncertainties. Under Japanese sponsorship, they planto launch their own regional monetary fund, while China has slashedtariffs and increased loans to its Southeast Asian neighbors. Tradewithin the India-Japan-Australia triangle — of which China sits at thecenter — has surpassed trade across the Pacific.
At the same time, a set of Asian security and diplomatic institutionsis being built from the inside out, resulting in America’s grip on thePacific Rim being loosened one finger at a time. From Thailand to [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/indonesia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Indonesia[/url]to Korea, no country — friend of America’s or not — wants politicaltension to upset economic growth. To the Western eye, it is a bizarrephenomenon: small Asian nation-states should be balancing against therising China, but increasingly they rally toward it out of Asiancultural pride and an understanding of the historical-cultural realityof Chinese dominance. And in the former Soviet Central Asian countries— the so-called Stans — China is the new heavyweight player, itsmanifest destiny pushing its Han pioneers westward while pullingdefunct microstates like [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/kyrgyzstan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Kyrgyzstan[/url] and Tajikistan, as well as oil-rich [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/kazakhstan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Kazakhstan[/url],into its orbit. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathers theseCentral Asian strongmen together with China and Russia and mayeventually become the “[url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/north_atlantic_treaty_organization/index.html?inline=nyt-org]NATO[/url] of the East.”
[[i] 本帖最后由 城阙九重门 于 2008-1-30 02:40 编辑 [/i]] The Big Three are the ultimate “Frenemies.” Twenty-first-centurygeopolitics will resemble nothing more than Orwell’s 1984, but insteadof three world powers (Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia), we have threehemispheric pan-regions, longitudinal zones dominated by America,Europe and China. As the early 20th-century European scholars ofgeopolitics realized, because a vertically organized region containsall climatic zones year-round, each pan-region can be self-sufficientand build a power base from which to intrude in others’ terrain. But ina globalized and shrinking world, no geography is sacrosanct. So invarious ways, both overtly and under the radar, China and Europe willmeddle in America’s backyard, America and China will compete forAfrican resources in Europe’s southern periphery and America and Europewill seek to profit from the rapid economic growth of countries withinChina’s growing sphere of influence. Globalization is the weapon ofchoice. The main battlefield is what I call “the second world.”
[b]The Swing States[/b]
Thereare plenty of statistics that will still tell the story of America’sglobal dominance: our military spending, our share of the globaleconomy and the like. But there are statistics, and there are trends.To really understand how quickly American power is in decline aroundthe world, I’ve spent the past two years traveling in some 40 countriesin the five most strategic regions of the planet — the countries of thesecond world. They are not in the first-world core of the globaleconomy, nor in its third-world periphery. Lying alongside and betweenthe Big Three, second-world countries are the swing states that willdetermine which of the superpowers has the upper hand for the nextgeneration of geopolitics. From Venezuela to Vietnam and Morocco toMalaysia, the new reality of global affairs is that there is not oneway to win allies and influence countries but three: America’scoalition (as in “coalition of the willing”), Europe’s consensus andChina’s consultative styles. The geopolitical marketplace will decidewhich will lead the 21st century.
The key second-world countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, SouthAmerica, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are more than just“emerging markets.” If you include China, they hold a majority of theworld’s foreign-exchange reserves and savings, and their spending poweris making them the global economy’s most important new consumer marketsand thus engines of global growth — not replacing the United States butnot dependent on it either. I.P.O.’s from the so-called BRIC countries(Brazil, Russia, India, China) alone accounted for 39 percent of thevolume raised globally in 2007, just one indicator of second-worldcountries’ rising importance in corporate finance — even after yousubtract China. When Tata of India is vying to buy Jaguar, you know thelandscape of power has changed. Second-world countries are also fastbecoming hubs for oil and timber, manufacturing and services, airlinesand infrastructure — all this in a geopolitical marketplace that putstheir loyalty up for grabs to any of the Big Three, and increasingly toall of them at the same time. Second-world states won’t be subdued: inthe age of network power, they won’t settle for being mere exportmarkets. Rather, they are the places where the Big Three must investheavily and to which they must relocate productive assets to maintaininfluence.
While traveling through the second world, I learned to see countriesnot as unified wholes but rather as having multiple, oftendisconnected, parts, some of which were on a path to rise into thefirst world while other, often larger, parts might remain in the third.I wondered whether globalization would accelerate these nations’becoming ever more fragmented, or if governments would step up toestablish central control. Each second-world country appeared to have afissured personality under pressures from both internal forces andneighbors. I realized that to make sense of the second world, it wasnecessary to assess each country from the inside out. Second-world countries are distinguished from the third world by theirpotential: the likelihood that they will capitalize on a valuablecommodity, a charismatic leader or a generous patron. Each and everysecond-world country matters in its own right, for its economic,strategic or diplomatic weight, and its decision to tilt toward theUnited States, the E.U. or China has a strong influence on what othersin its region decide to do. Will an American nuclear deal with Indiapush [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Pakistan[/url]even deeper into military dependence on China? Will the next set ofArab monarchs lean East or West? The second world will shape theworld’s balance of power as much as the superpowers themselves will.
In exploring just a small sample of the second world, we should startperhaps with the hardest case: Russia. Apparently stabilized andresurgent under the Kremlin-[url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/gazprom/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Gazprom[/url]oligarchy, why is Russia not a superpower but rather the ultimatesecond-world swing state? For all its muscle flexing, Russia is alsodisappearing. Its population decline is a staggering half millioncitizens per year or more, meaning it will be not much larger thanTurkey by 2025 or so — spread across a land so vast that it no longereven makes sense as a country. Travel across Russia today, and you’llfind, as during Soviet times, city after city of crumbling, heatlessapartment blocks and neglected elderly citizens whose value to thestate diminishes with distance from Moscow. The forced Siberianmigrations of the Soviet era are being voluntarily reversed as childrenmove west to more tolerable and modern climes. Filling the vacuum theyhave left behind are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, literallygobbling up, plundering, outright buying and more or less annexingRussia’s Far East for its timber and other natural resources. Alreadyduring the cold war it was joked that there were “no disturbances onthe Sino-Finnish border,” a prophecy that seems ever closer tofulfillment.
Russia lost its western satellites almost two decades ago, and Europe,while appearing to be bullied by Russia’s oil-dependent diplomacy, isstaging a long-term buyout of Russia, whose economy remains roughly thesize of France’s. The more Europe gets its gas from North Africa andoil from Azerbaijan, the less it will rely on Russia, all the whileholding the lever of being by far Russia’s largest investor. TheEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development provides the kinds ofloans that help build an alternative, less corrupt private sector frombelow, while London and Berlin welcome Russia’s billionaires, allowingthe likes of Boris Berezovsky to openly campaign against Putin. TheE.U. and U.S. also finance and train a pugnacious second-world block ofBaltic and Balkan nations, whose activists agitate from Belarus to [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/uzbekistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo]Uzbekistan[/url].Privately, some E.U. officials say that annexing Russia is perfectlydoable; it’s just a matter of time. In the coming decades, far fromrestoring its Soviet-era might, Russia will have to decide whether itwishes to exist peacefully as an asset to Europe or the alternative —becoming a petro-vassal of China.
[b]Turkey, too, is a totemic[/b] second-world prize advancing throughcrucial moments of geopolitical truth. During the cold war, NATO wasthe principal vehicle for relations with Turkey, the West’s listeningpost on the southwestern Soviet border. But with Turkey’s bending overbackward to avoid outright E.U. rejection, its refusal in 2003 to letthe U.S. use Turkish territory as a staging point for invading Iraqmarked a turning point — away from the U.S. “America always says itlobbies the E.U. on our behalf,” a Turkish strategic analyst in Ankaratold me, “but all that does is make the E.U. more stringent. We don’tneed that kind of help anymore.”
To be sure, Turkish pride contains elements of an aggressiveneo-Ottomanism that is in tension with some E.U. standards, but thiscould ultimately serve as Europe’s weapon to project stability intoSyria, Iraq and Iran — all of which Europe effectively borders throughTurkey itself. Roads are the pathways to power, as I learned drivingacross Turkey in a beat-up Volkswagen a couple of summers ago. Turkey’smaster engineers have been boring tunnels, erecting bridges andflattening roads across the country’s massive eastern realm, allowingit to assert itself over the Arab and Persian worlds both militarilyand economically as Turkish merchants look as much East as West.Already joint Euro-Turkish projects have led to the opening of theBaku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, with a matching rail line and highwayplanned to buttress European influence all the way to Turkey’sfraternal friend Azerbaijan on the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
It takes only one glance at Istanbul’s shimmering skyline to realizethat even if Turkey never becomes an actual E.U. member, it is becomingever more Europeanized. Turkey receives more than $20 billion inforeign investment and more than 20 million tourists every year, thevast majority of both from E.U. countries. Ninety percent of theTurkish diaspora lives in Western Europe and sends home another $1billion per year in remittances and investments. This remitted capitalis spreading growth and development eastward in the form of newconstruction ventures, kilim factories and schools. With the accessionof Romania and Bulgaria to the E.U. a year ago, Turkey now physicallyborders the E.U. (beyond its narrow frontier with Greece), symbolizinghow Turkey is becoming a part of the European superpower. Western diplomats have a long historical familiarity, however dramaticand tumultuous, with Russia and Turkey. But what about the Stans:landlocked but resource-rich countries run by autocrats? Ever sincethese nations were flung into independence by the Soviet collapse,China has steadily replaced Russia as their new patron. Trade, oilpipelines and military exercises with China under the auspices of theShanghai Cooperation Organization make it the new organizing pole forthe region, with the U.S. scrambling to maintain modest military basesin the region. (Currently it is forced to rely far too much onAfghanistan after being booted, at China’s and Russia’s behest, fromthe Karshi Khanabad base in Uzbekistan in 2005.) The challenge ofgetting ahead in the strategically located and energy-rich Stans is thechallenge of a bidding contest in which values seem not to matter.While China buys more Kazakh oil and America bids for defensecontracts, Europe offers sustained investment and holds off from givingPresident Nursultan Nazarbayev the high-status recognition he craves.Kazakhstan considers itself a “strategic partner” of just abouteveryone, but tell that to the Big Three, who bribe governmentofficials to cancel the others’ contracts and spy on one anotherthrough contract workers — all in the name of preventing the othersfrom gaining mastery over the fabled heartland of Eurasian power.
Just one example of the lengths to which foreigners will go to stay ongood terms with Nazarbayev is the current negotiation between aconsortium of Western energy giants, including ENI and Exxon, andKazakhstan’s state-run oil company over the development of theCaspian’s massive Kashagan oil field. At present, the consortium iscoughing up at least $4 billion as well as a large hand-over of sharesto compensate for delayed exploration and production — and Kazakhstanisn’t satisfied yet. The lesson from Kazakhstan, and its equallystrategic but far less predictable neighbor Uzbekistan, is how ficklethe second world can be, its alignments changing on a whim and causingheadaches and ripple effects in all directions. To be distractedelsewhere or to lack sufficient personnel on the ground can make thedifference between winning and losing a major round of the new greatgame.
The Big Three dynamic is not just some distant contest by which Americaensures its ability to dictate affairs on the other side of the globe.Globalization has brought the geopolitical marketplace straight toAmerica’s backyard, rapidly eroding the two-centuries-old MonroeDoctrine in the process. In truth, America called the shots in LatinAmerica only when its southern neighbors lacked any vision of theirown. Now they have at least two non-American challengers: China andChávez. It was Simón Bolívar who fought ferociously for South America’sindependence from Spanish rule, and today it is the newly renamedBolivarian Republic of Venezuela that has inspired an entire continentto bootstrap its way into the global balance of power on its own terms.Hugo Chávez, the country’s clownish colonel, may last for decades tocome or may die by the gun, but either way, he has called America’sbluff and won, changing the rules of North-South relations in theWestern hemisphere. He has emboldened and bankrolled leftist leadersacross the continent, helped Argentina and others pay back and boot outthe I.M.F. and sponsored a continentwide bartering scheme of oil,cattle, wheat and civil servants, reminding even those who despise himthat they can stand up to the great Northern power. Chávez stands notonly on the ladder of high oil prices. He relies on tacit support fromEurope and hardheaded intrusion from China, the former still thecountry’s largest investor and the latter feverishly repairingVenezuela’s dilapidated oil rigs while building its own refineries. But Chávez’s challenge to the United States is, in inspiration,ideological, whereas the second-world shift is really structural. Evenwith Chávez still in power, it is Brazil that is reappearing as SouthAmerica’s natural leader. Alongside India and South Africa, Brazil hasled the charge in global trade negotiations, sticking it to the U.S. onits steel tariffs and to Europe on its agricultural subsidies.Geographically, Brazil is nearly as close to Europe as to America andis as keen to build cars and airplanes for Europe as it is to exportsoy to the U.S. Furthermore, Brazil, although a loyal American ally inthe cold war, wasted little time before declaring a “strategicalliance” with China. Their economies are remarkably complementary,with Brazil shipping iron ore, timber, zinc, beef, milk and soybeans toChina and China investing in Brazil’s hydroelectric dams, steel millsand shoe factories. Both China and Brazil’s ambitions may soon alterthe very geography of their relations, with Brazil leading an effort toconstruct a Trans-Oceanic Highway from the Amazon through Peru to thePacific Coast, facilitating access for Chinese shipping tankers. LatinAmerica has mostly been a geopolitical afterthought over the centuries,but in the 21st century, all resources will be competed for, and noneare too far away.
The Middle East — spanning from Morocco to Iran — lies between the hubsof influence of the Big Three and has the largest number ofsecond-world swing states. No doubt the thaw with Libya, brokered byAmerica and Britain after [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/q/muammar_el_qaddafi/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Muammar el-Qaddafi[/url]declared he would abandon his country’s nuclear pursuits in 2003, waspartly motivated by growing demand for energy from a closeMediterranean neighbor. But Qaddafi is not selling out. He and hisadvisers have astutely parceled out production sharing agreements to abalanced assortment of American, European, Chinese and other Asian oilgiants. Mindful of the history of Western oil companies’ exploitationof Arabia, he — like Chávez in Venezuela and Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan —has also cleverly ratcheted up the pressure on foreigners to share morerevenue with the regime by tweaking contracts, rounding numbersliberally and threatening expropriation. What I find in virtually everyArab country is not such nationalism, however, but rather a new Arabismaimed at spreading oil wealth within the Arab world rather thandepositing it in the United States as in past oil booms. And as Egypt,Syria and other Arab states receive greater investment from the PersianGulf and start spending more on their own, they, too, becomeincreasingly important second-world players who can thwart the U.S.
Saudi Arabia, for quite some years to come still the planet’s leadingoil producer, is a second-world prize on par with Russia and equally upfor grabs. For the past several decades, America’s share of the foreigndirect investment into the kingdom decisively shaped the country’sforeign policy, but today the monarchy is far wiser, luring Europe andAsia to bring their investment shares toward a third each. Saudi Arabiahas engaged Europe in an evolving Persian Gulf free-trade area, whileit has invested close to $1 billion in Chinese oil refineries. Make nomistake: America was never all powerful only because of its militarydominance; strategic leverage must have an economic basis. A majorcommon denominator among key second-world countries is the need foreach of the Big Three to put its money where its mouth is.
For all its historical antagonism with Saudi Arabia, Iran is playingthe same swing-state game. Its diplomacy has not only managed to creatediscord among the U.S. and E.U. on sanctions; it has also courtedChina, nurturing a relationship that goes back to the Silk Road. TodayIran represents the final square in China’s hopscotch maneuvering toreach the Persian Gulf overland without relying on the narrow Straitsof Malacca. Already China has signed a multibillion-dollar contract fornatural gas from Iran’s immense North Pars field, another one forconstruction of oil terminals on the Caspian Sea and yet another toextend the Tehran metro — and it has boosted shipment ofballistic-missile technology and air-defense radars to Iran. Severalyears of negotiation culminated in December with Sinopec sealing a dealto develop the Yadavaran oil field, with more investments from China(and others) sure to follow. The longer [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/international_atomic_energy_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org]International Atomic Energy Agency[/url]negotiations drag on, the more likely it becomes that Iran will indeedbe able to stay afloat without Western investment because of backingfrom China and from its second-world friends — without giving anyground to the West.
Interestingly, it is precisely Muslim oil-producing states — Libya,Saudi Arabia, Iran, (mostly Muslim) Kazakhstan, Malaysia — that seemthe best at spreading their alignments across some combination of theBig Three simultaneously: getting what they want while fending offencroachment from others. America may seek Muslim allies for its imageand the “war on terror,” but these same countries seem also to be partof what [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/samuel_p_huntington/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Samuel Huntington[/url]called the “Confucian-Islamic connection.” What is more, China ispulling off the most difficult of superpower feats: simultaneouslymaintaining positive ties with the world’s crucial pairs of regionalrivals: Venezuela and Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Iran, Kazakhstan andUzbekistan, India and Pakistan. At this stage, Western diplomats haveonly mustered the wherewithal to quietly denounce Chinese aid policiesand value-neutral alliances, but they are far from being able to domuch of anything about them. This applies most profoundly in China’s own backyard, Southeast Asia.Some of the most dynamic countries in the region Malaysia, Thailand andVietnam are playing the superpower suitor game with admirable savvy.Chinese migrants have long pulled the strings in the region’s economieseven while governments sealed defense agreements with the U.S. Today,Malaysia and Thailand still perform joint military exercises withAmerica but also buy weapons from, and have defense treaties with,China, including the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation by which Asiannations have pledged nonaggression against one another. (Indonesia, acrucial American ally during the cold war, has also been formingdefense ties with China.) As one senior Malaysian diplomat put it tome, without a hint of jest, “Creating a community is easy among theyellow and the brown but not the white.” Tellingly, it is Vietnam,because of its violent histories with the U.S. and China, which is mosteager to accept American defense contracts (and a new Intel microchipplant) to maintain its strategic balance. Vietnam, like most of thesecond world, doesn’t want to fall into any one superpower’s sphere ofinfluence.
[b]The Anti-Imperial Belt[/b]
Thenew multicolor map of influence — a Venn diagram of overlappingAmerican, Chinese and European influence — is a very fuzzy read. Nomore “They’re with us” or “He’s our S.O.B.” Mubarak, Musharraf,Malaysia’s Mahathir and a host of other second-world leaders have set anew standard for manipulative prowess: all tell the U.S. they are itsfriend while busily courting all sides.
What is more, many second-world countries are confident enough to formanti-imperial belts of their own, building trade, technology anddiplomatic axes across the (second) world from Brazil to Libya to Iranto Russia. Indeed, Russia has stealthily moved into position toconstruct Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, putting it firmly in theChinese camp on the Iran issue, while also offering nuclear reactors toLibya and arms to Venezuela and Indonesia. Second-world countries alsoincreasingly use sovereign-wealth funds (often financed by oil) worthtrillions of dollars to throw their weight around, even bullyingfirst-world corporations and markets. The United Arab Emirates(particularly as represented by their capital, Abu Dhabi), Saudi Arabiaand Russia are rapidly climbing the ranks of foreign-exchange holdersand are hardly holding back in trying to buy up large shares of Westernbanks (which have suddenly become bargains) and oil companies.Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund has taken a similar path. Meanwhile,Saudi Arabia plans an international investment fund that will dwarf AbuDhabi’s. From Switzerland to Citigroup, a reaction is forming to limitthe shares such nontransparent sovereign-wealth funds can control,showing just how quickly the second world is rising in the global powergame.
To understand the second world, you have to start to think like asecond-world country. What I have seen in these and dozens of othercountries is that globalization is not synonymous with Americanization;in fact, nothing has brought about the erosion of American primacyfaster than globalization. While European nations redistribute wealthto secure or maintain first-world living standards, on the battlefieldof globalization second-world countries’ state-backed firms eitherouthustle or snap up American companies, leaving their workers to fendfor themselves. The second world’s first priority is not to becomeAmerica but to succeed by any means necessary.
[b]The Non-American World[/b]
[url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/karl_marx/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Karl Marx[/url]and Max Weber both chastised Far Eastern cultures for being despotic,agrarian and feudal, lacking the ingredients for organizationalsuccess. Oswald Spengler saw it differently, arguing that mankind bothlives and thinks in unique cultural systems, with Western idealsneither transferable nor relevant. Today the Asian landscape stillfeatures ancient civilizations but also by far the most people and, bycertain measures, the most money of any region in the world. With orwithout America, Asia is shaping the world’s destiny — and exposing theflaws of the grand narrative of Western civilization in the process. The rise of China in the East and of the European Union within the Westhas fundamentally altered a globe that recently appeared to have onlyan American gravity — pro or anti. As Europe’s and China’s spirits risewith every move into new domains of influence, America’s spirit isweakened. The E.U. may uphold the principles of the United Nations thatAmerica once dominated, but how much longer will it do so as its ownsocial standards rise far above this lowest common denominator? And whyshould China or other Asian countries become “responsiblestakeholders,” in former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’swords, in an American-led international order when they had no seat atthe table when the rules were drafted? Even as America stumbles backtoward multilateralism, others are walking away from the American gameand playing by their own rules.
The self-deluding universalism of the American imperium — that theworld inherently needs a single leader and that American liberalideology must be accepted as the basis of global order — hasparadoxically resulted in America quickly becoming an ever-loneliersuperpower. Just as there is a geopolitical marketplace, there is amarketplace of models of success for the second world to emulate, notleast the Chinese model of economic growth without politicalliberalization (itself an affront to Western modernization theory). Asthe historian Arnold Toynbee observed half a century ago, Westernimperialism united the globe, but it did not assure that the West woulddominate forever — materially or morally. Despite the “mirage ofimmortality” that afflicts global empires, the only reliable rule ofhistory is its cycles of imperial rise and decline, and as Toynbee alsopithily noted, the only direction to go from the apogee of power isdown.
The web of globalization now has three spiders. What makes Americaunique in this seemingly value-free contest is not its liberaldemocratic ideals — which Europe may now represent better than Americadoes — but rather its geography. America is isolated, while Europe andChina occupy two ends of the great Eurasian landmass that is theperennial center of gravity of geopolitics. When America dominated NATOand led a rigid Pacific alliance system with Japan, South Korea,Australia and Thailand, it successfully managed the Herculean task ofrunning the world from one side of it. Now its very presence in Eurasiais tenuous; it has been shunned by the E.U. and Turkey, is unwelcome inmuch of the Middle East and has lost much of East Asia’s confidence.“Accidental empire” or not, America must quickly accept and adjust tothis reality. Maintaining America’s empire can only get costlier inboth blood and treasure. It isn’t worth it, and history promises theeffort will fail. It already has.
Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted asits organizing principle and leader? It’s very much too late to beasking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither Chinanor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the world’s sole leader; ratherall three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own andbalance one another. Europe will promote its supranational integrationmodel as a path to resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa,while China will push a Beijing consensus based on respect forsovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itselfirresistible to stay in the game.
I believe that a complex, multicultural landscape filled with transnational challenges from terrorism to [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier]global warming[/url]is completely unmanageable by a single authority, whether the UnitedStates or the United Nations. Globalization resists centralization ofalmost any kind. Instead, what we see gradually happening inclimate-change negotiations (as in Bali in December) — and need to seemore of in the areas of preventing nuclear proliferation and rebuildingfailed states — is a far greater sense of a division of labor among theBig Three, a concrete burden-sharing among them by which they arejudged not by their rhetoric but the responsibilities they fulfill. Thearbitrarily composed Security Council is not the place to hash out sucha division of labor. Neither are any of the other multilateral bodiesbogged down with weighted voting and cacophonously irrelevant voices.The big issues are for the Big Three to sort out among themselves. [b]Less Can Be More[/b]
So let’s play strategy czar. You are a 21st-century Kissinger. Yourtask is to guide the next American president (and the one after that)from the demise of American hegemony into a world of much more diffusegovernance. What do you advise, concretely, to mitigate the effects ofthe past decade’s policies — those that inspired defiance rather thancooperation — and to set in motion a virtuous circle of policies thatlead to global equilibrium rather than a balance of power against theU.S.?
First, channel your inner J.F.K. You are president, not emperor. Youare commander in chief and also diplomat in chief. Your grand strategyis a global strategy, yet you must never use the phrase “Americannational interest.” (It is assumed.) Instead talk about “globalinterests” and how closely aligned American policies are with thoseinterests. No more “us” versus “them,” only “we.” That means no moretalk of advancing “American values” either. What is worth having isuniversal first and American second. This applies to “democracy” aswell, where timing its implementation is as important as the principleitself. Right now, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the hero ofthe second world — including its democracies — is [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/lee_kuan_yew/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Lee Kuan Yew[/url] of Singapore.
We have learned the hard way that what others want for themselvestrumps what we want for them — always. Neither America nor the worldneeds more competing ideologies, and moralizing exhortations are onlyuseful if they point toward goals that are actually attainable. Thisnew attitude must be more than an act: to obey this modest, hands-offprinciple is what would actually make America the exceptional empire itpurports to be. It would also be something every other empire inhistory has failed to do.
Second, Pentagonize the State Department. Adm. William J. Fallon, headof Central Command (Centcom), not Robert Gates, is the man really incharge of the U.S. military’s primary operations. Diplomacy, too,requires the equivalent of geographic commands — with top-notchassistant secretaries of state to manage relations in each key regionwithout worrying about getting on the daily agenda of the secretary ofstate for menial approvals. Then we’ll be ready to coordinate withindistant areas. In some regions, our ambassadors to neighboringcountries meet only once or twice a year; they need to be having weeklysecure video-conferences. Regional institutions are thriving in thesecond world — think [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/mercosur/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Mercosur[/url] (the South American common market), the [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/association_of_southeast_asian_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Association of Southeast Asian Nations[/url](Asean), the Gulf Cooperation Council in the Persian Gulf. We needhigh-level ambassadors at those organizations too. Taken together, thisallows us to move beyond, for example, the current Millennium ChallengeAccount — which amounts to one-track aid packages to individualcountries already going in the right direction — toward encouraging thekind of regional cooperation that can work in curbing both terrorismand poverty. Only if you think regionally can a success story have ademonstration effect. This approach will be crucial to the future ofthe Pentagon’s new African command. (Until last year, African relationswere managed largely by European command, or Eucom, in Germany.)Suspicions of America are running high in Africa, and acountry-by-country strategy would make those suspicions worse. Finally,to achieve strategic civilian-military harmonization, we have to firstget the maps straight. The State Department puts the Stans in the Southand Central Asia bureau, while the Pentagon puts them within theMiddle-East-focused Centcom. The Chinese divide up the world thePentagon’s way; so, too, should our own State Department.
Third, deploy the marchmen. Europe is boosting its common diplomaticcorps, while China is deploying retired civil servants, prison laborersand Chinese teachers — all are what the historian Arnold Toynbee calledmarchmen, the foot-soldiers of empire spreading values and winningloyalty. There are currently more musicians in U.S. military marchingbands than there are Foreign Service officers, a fact not helped byCongress’s decision to effectively freeze growth in diplomaticpostings. In this context, Condoleezza Rice’s “transformationaldiplomacy” is a myth: we don’t have enough diplomats for coreassignments, let alone solo hardship missions. We need a [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/peace_corps/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Peace Corps[/url]10 times its present size, plus student exchanges, English-teachingprograms and hands-on job training overseas — with corporatesponsorship.
That’s right. In true American fashion, we must build adiplomatic-industrial complex. Europe and China all but personifybusiness-government collusion, so let State raise money from WallStreet as it puts together regional aid and investment packages.American foreign policy must be substantially more than what the U.S.government directs. After all, the E.U. is already the world’s largestaid donor, and China is rising in the aid arena as well. Plus, each hasa larger population than the U.S., meaning deeper benches of recruits,and are not political targets in the present political atmosphere theway Americans abroad are. The secret weapon must be the Americancitizenry itself. American foundations and charities, not least theGates and Ford Foundations, dwarf European counterparts in theirhumanitarian giving; if such private groups independently send more andmore American volunteers armed with cash, good will and local knowledgeto perform “diplomacy of the deed,” then the public diplomacy will takecare of itself.
Fourth, make the global economy work for us. By resurrecting Europeaneconomies, the Marshall Plan was a down payment on even greater returnsin terms of purchasing American goods. For now, however, as the dollarfalls, our manufacturing base declines and Americans lose control ofassets to wealthier foreign funds, our scientific education, broadbandaccess, health-care, safety and a host of other standards are allslipping down the global rankings. Given our deficits and politicalgridlock, the only solution is to channel global, particularly Asian,liquidity into our own public infrastructure, creating jobs andtechnology platforms that can keep American innovation ahead of thepack. Globalization apologizes to no one; we must stay on top of it orbecome its victim.
Fifth, convene a G-3 of the Big Three. But don’t set the agenda;suggest it. These are the key issues among which to make compromisesand trade-offs: climate change, energy security, weapons proliferationand rogue states. Offer more Western clean technology to China inexchange for fewer weapons and lifelines for the Sudanese tyrants andthe Burmese junta. And make a joint effort with the Europeans to offermassive, irresistible packages to the people of Iran, Uzbekistan andVenezuela — incentives for eventual regime change rather than fruitlesssanctions. A Western change of tone could make China sweat. Superpowershave to learn to behave, too.
Taken together, all these moves could renew American competitiveness inthe geopolitical marketplace — and maybe even prove our exceptionalism.We need pragmatic incremental steps like the above to deliver tangiblegains to people beyond our shores, repair our reputation, maintainharmony among the Big Three, keep the second world stable and neutraland protect our common planet. Let’s hope whoever is sworn in as thenext American president understands this.
[color=Gray][i]Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American StrategyProgram of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from hisbook, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New GlobalOrder,” to be published by Random House in March.[/i]
[/color] 纽时时报:再见霸权 全球将迎来中美欧三极时代 中评社
“无论是谁成为美国下一任总统，都无法阻止美国霸权的衰退和美国、欧盟（EU）、中国相互竞争的三极体制的到来。”
美国华盛顿特区智囊团“新美国基金会”的研究员巴拉格．坎纳（负责美国战略研究）向美国《纽约时报》星期天刊投稿，在题目为《再见霸权》（Waving Goodbye to Hegemony）的文章中，将美国霸权的没落指为既定事实。
坎纳分析说：“形成以美国为中心的单一世界秩序的可能性在10多年后落下了帷幕。美国、欧盟、中国3强相互牵制，争相聚集协助自己的理想(vision)和秩序的‘第二世界’（the second world）国家的21世界新地政学游戏已经开始。”
该地政学斗争脱离了现有的地理观念。在曾被看作是美国的前院的南美，中国和欧洲的影响力迅速扩大。产油国委内瑞拉主要致力于和中国、欧洲的合作，巴西为了运输中国货轮卸载的物资，欲建设贯通秘鲁，到达太平洋沿岸的高速公路。
越南、老挝等曾是中国盟邦的东南亚国家加强与美国的经济合作。而曾是美国盟邦的中东国家则将经济合作管道延伸到欧洲和中国方面。
坎纳从第二世界国家欲战略性地、主动地应对全球化（globalization）而做出的努力中找到了发生这种变化的原因。印度、巴西、俄罗斯、土耳其、泰国、越南、沙乌地阿拉伯、马来西亚等并不是单纯地选择了“新兴市场”，而是为了解决各自面临的政治、经济上的课题，战略性地选择了合 作伙伴。
对这些国家来说，欧盟的魅力在于世界最大规模的单一市场和稳定的欧元。还带来了政治、军事矛盾可以通过欧洲式统合来解决的理想。中国的力量来自庞大的人口和迅速成长的市场、制造业基础。扩散到东南亚乃至世界各地的华侨网路、丰富的天然资源也是强项。与此相比，美国的魅力正在减少。
对此，坎纳提出了5种美国的应对战略：舍弃美国的“国家利益（national interests）优先主义”，将世界普遍价值放在首位；国务院代替国防部负责安保的最前线；将和平服务团、英语教师派遣到海外等积极支援民间外交；让亚洲充裕的流动资金流入美国；与欧盟、中国举行G3会谈。 转载辛苦了
楼主 好长啊，看完要N久 这个看完需要好多功夫和能力啊
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