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Tags: alignment, china, cials, consensus, europe, india, indian diplomats, internal weaknesses, kazakh, marketplace, military assistance, nuclear deal, offi, patron, russia, weapons,Pages: 3
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Created: Mon Apr 21 11:40:35 2008
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ESSAY
ton consensus" or any other foreign action plan.
Kazakh ministers tout the "Kazakh way," Indian
diplomats boast of the "Indian way," Brazilian offi-
cials confidently assert the "Brazilian way." They all
want globalisation, not America, to be their patron.
They may all have big internal weaknesses, but they
are all players in the new geopolitical marketplace in
which Europe and China offer packages of aid, trade
and military assistance at least as attractive as the
American one. Why align with any one patron when
you can play off all sides to get what you want?
India's trade with China is booming, while it gets
many of its weapons from Russia and pursues a
nuclear deal with the US. Non-alignment is passé;
this is the age of multialignment.
There is a vast second world intermediate layer
between the first-world core and third-world
periphery. In his recent National Interest essay
"World Without the West," Steven Weber pointed to
Asian regionalism and new alliance blocs such as the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. But this is not
just about the rise of China and India. It is also a
story of oil-producing states around the world, Arab
Here comes the
statelets with big sovereign wealth funds and other
regional swing states from Brazil to Malaysia. In
many ways these "emerging markets" have already
emerged; they receive most of the world's foreign
second world direct investment, hold a majority of its currency
reserves, and are rapidly growing consumer markets
whose preferences western producers cannot ignore.
BY PARAG KHANNA The second world is shaking up the western order
most visibly in economic bodies like the World Bank,
IMF and WTO. Voting rights on the IMF's board
From Asia to eastern Europe to Latin are shifting, while each year brings new demands that
America, middle-income countries are neither the IMF nor World Bank leadership should
growing increasingly assertive. These automatically be chosen by Washington, London or
"second-world" states are forging links Paris. Both institutions are now just aid and advisory
bodies for Africa, since Asian nations have paid off
among themselves and are adept at playing their debts--and are launching their own Asian
off first-world powers against each other Monetary Fund--while Brazil and Argentina, previ-
ously the IMF's two largest debtors, have accelerated
T he term "second world" has fallen out of use. It
used to mean countries of the socialist world;
today I use the phrase to refer to those countries in
their payments of arrears (Argentina with the help of
Hugo Chávez's $2.5bn) and have washed their hands
of the Washington consensus. In the WTO, it is
eastern Europe and central Asia, Latin America, the increasingly clear who has to make the concessions to
middle east and southeast Asia which are both rich move the Doha round forward: the west.
and poor, developed and underdeveloped, postmod- But the second world phenomenon is more than
ern and pre-modern, cosmopolitan and tribal--all at economic. Consider UN security council reform,
the same time. This is not a temporary state between where Brazil, India, South Africa and Nigeria are
third world and first, but a permanent condition in leading candidates for new permanent seats. Then
which winners and losers are chosen by collectives there is the aforementioned Shanghai Cooperation
© AFP/GETTY IMAGES
like cities and corporations rather than entire states. Organisation (SCO), a young alliance led by China
I spent most of 2005-07 travelling through over
40 second-world countries, and the message I kept Parag Khanna is the author of The Second World: Empires
hearing was that each country plans to shape its and Influence in the New Global Order (Penguin), from
which this essay is adapted
future its own way, not according to the "Washing-
60 Prospect MAY 2008
PARAG KHANNA ESSAY
and Russia sometimes called the "Nato of the east." It Russia knows that in the long term its rhetoric of
sets the terms of trade, business standards and coun- strategic partnership with China cannot hold, for
terterrorism and narcotics policies for all of central China is exploiting the timber and mineral resources
Asia. Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan are soon to of the Russian far east at a rapid rate. Russians are
become members. At the SCO's most recent summit voting with their feet, migrating westwards out of
in Kyrgyzstan, Russia and others called for an inter- Siberia towards more amiable climes, and leaving
national conference to discuss options for stabilising behind them empty resource-rich expanses border-
Afghanistan--implying that Nato had failed. A Chi- ing the world's most resource-hungry nation. As
nese-led "provisional reconstruction team" is being Russia sees the real east rising, it will realise that it
planned for Afghanistan; China has acquired rights must throw its lot in with the west.
to develop what could be the world's largest copper For now, however, Russia fits the second world
mine in Logar province, where it will also build elec- archetype of an upstart power with a mind of its
tric power plants and a railway. own. So too does Turkey, which despite being a
Meanwhile, a new Arabism is emerging. It is Nato anchor in the cold war shunned America's
fuelled by Gulf oil revenues being reinvested within Iraq war in 2003 and has set its sights ever more
the region rather than in London or Geneva, build- closely on some kind of permanent relationship
ing hotels and housing, creating jobs, launching with the EU. It takes only one glance at Istanbul's
media such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, and even shimmering skyline to realise that even if Turkey
tacitly teaming up with Islamist movements to never becomes an actual EU member, it is becom-
inspire an overall rejection of western meddling in ing ever more Europeanised. Turkey receives over
Arab politics. You feel this energy most powerfully $3bn in FDI from EU countries, plus 23m tourists
in Dubai, the new capital of Arab civilisation (see last last year. Ninety per cent of the Turkish diaspora
month's Prospect). Here, first-world European tech- lives in western Europe and sends home $1bn per
nology and managerial skill has met the manpower year in remittances and investments. This capital is
coming from third-world Asia to create a 21st-cen- spreading growth and development eastwards with
tury Manhattan on the Persian Gulf. new housing, kilim factories and schools.
Yet growing Turkish wealth and confidence has
T he second world is reshaping the world, but it
does not control it. What can be felt just as pow-
erfully is the relative decline of the US and the
also fuelled a neo-Ottoman spirit that is tangible in
Istanbul and Ankara, a feeling that the Turks are
powerful enough to play by their own rules with
increasing assertiveness of both the EU and China. It respect to Iraq and its Kurdistan region, Syria, Israel
may not be a multipolar world--certainly not mili- and the Caucasus. With the rising volume of oil com-
tarily--but these three represent distinct imperial ing through the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline from Azer-
systems whose gravity is pulling on the second and baijan, Turkey is now the conduit for over 10 per
third worlds. The friction can already be felt in sec- cent of the west's energy needs.
ond-world zones such as South America, where We might ask: are the superpowers pulling the
China's growing economic presence, particularly in second world--or the second world pulling the
Venezuela and Brazil, has diminished America's superpowers? The answer is: neither. The second
Monroe doctrine--that Latin America is in the US's world is becoming a self-bootstrapping anti-imperial
exclusive sphere of influence--prompting a quiet belt, with links flourishing across its regional zones.
visit of US officials to Beijing to warn about not Russia has offered to build nuclear reactors for Iran
undermining democracy in the region. Meanwhile, and Libya, Kazakhstan and Malaysia are holding
China has extended a $50bn line of credit to Nigeria, trade conferences to link their regions, and an oil
more than the entire annual western foreign aid production alliance is sprouting between Iran,
budget. The shift of leverage away from the US is Indonesia and Venezuela. Chinese fly directly to
also noticeable in Saudi Arabia, where American Brazil, while Brazilians fly directly to Africa, Indians
bases are being vacated and the royal regime's invest- are investing from Syria to Vietnam and the Abu
ments are being distributed more equally to Ameri- Dhabi investment authority spreads its wealth from
can, European and Chinese recipients. Wall Street to Nanjing Road. The intensity, com-
The cold war, and its aftermath, was a geographi- plexity and density of second-world ties within
cal anomaly: America was able to run the world from itself--no longer routed through Washington or
the other side of it. But it is the rising Europe and Moscow--is more than any one power can control.
China which sit on opposite ends of Eurasia, their
influence expanding towards each other to meet in
the middle around the Caspian sea. This is why Rus-
sia is the second world's ultimate swing state. But
T he way to understand these changes is to think
regionally: to evaluate how power dynamics are
evolving within eastern Europe, central Asia, South
Prospect MAY 2008 61
ESSAY PARAG KHANNA
through naval assistance, arms purchases and a
The state department is broken to an nuclear deal. Malaysia and Thailand continue to
extent that outsiders fail to appreciate. conduct joint military exercises with the US, but
And nobody seems to have much of an also buy ever more weapons from China. Geopoliti-
idea how to restore American prestige cal theories would predict that in such a period of
flux, and in such a region where the declining hege-
mon (America) and rising contender (China) experi-
ence a power transition, conflict is inevitable. We
will soon find out whether the theory is correct.
America, the middle east, Africa and southeast
Asia--and to assess the relative and changing influ-
ence of America, Europe and China in these regions.
America once dominated the Pacific through a
I t is time to stop pretending that the US will stay
on top until a clear rival emerges to directly chal-
lenge its pre-eminence. Look at its recent foreign
"hub-and-spoke" model of alliances with Australia, policy record: failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, failure
Japan, Korea and Thailand, but that is now giving to eradicate al Qaeda or to create peace in Palestine,
way to Asian regional institutions ranging from the failure to advance global trade talks or to reconcile
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to with Latin America--the list goes on. The present
the annual East Asian summit--to which America is caution on interventions and democratisation is
not invited. China will lead this new Asian hemi- motivated not by sudden enlightenment, but by the
spheric order, which ties together all countries shock of failure. America is waking up to soft power
falling in the India-Japan-Australia triangle, with and public diplomacy because hard power has failed
China sitting at the centre. Trade within this greater and no alternative remains.
Asian zone has surpassed trade across the Pacific. Getting America's house in order won't happen
The region's impressive network of global cities-- on a single chilly inauguration day in January 2009.
Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Seoul--increasingly serve The state department is broken to an extent that
as portals channelling capital and investments into outsiders fail to appreciate. And nobody seems to
China or into projects and companies with heavy know how to restore American prestige. One would
Chinese involvement. Overall, it is as if the Asian expect hard-headed guidance based on experience,
tradition of imperial hierarchy, which pre-dates the observation and connections, yet instead one
western, Westphalian nation-state system by millen- hears--from ex-administration officials from the
nia, is returning, with China at its the heart. Clinton or Bush eras--the platitudes of detached
China may be the imperial system which towers utopians. Grand acronyms for new multilateral insti-
over the region as America does in its hemisphere tutions are proposed--ignoring the fact that even
and the EU in the eurozone, but remember that in security council reform has not budged in over a
second-world zones everyone is playing all sides at decade. Massive civilian reserve corps are plotted--
once. First-world Japan maintains a close alliance while congress cuts the diplomatic budget by 10 per
with the US and could rearm rapidly, while third- cent. These are proposals suited either to a world
world India is drawing America ever closer as well that no longer exists, or a country that no longer has
the will or power to carry them out.
The test for the west is not whether an introspec-
tive Europe and a stubborn America can see eye-to-
eye again, but whether or not they can shape an
increasingly assertive second world. Can the transat-
lantic powers set global trade, labour and environ-
mental standards? Can they roll back radicalism in
the Arab world? Can they do anything about Chinese
arms shipments to Sudan or Burma? Can they thwart
Russia's attempts to regain control of its near abroad
and its manipulation of gas markets? These are ques-
tions Bush, Barack, Barroso, Blair and anyone aspir-
ing to a pan-western role must be able to answer if
they still believe in the power of the west. I
FROM THE PROSPECT ARCHIVE
Joshua Kurlantzick on the spread of Chinese soft power
"Prepare to repel boarders!" www.prospect-magazine.co.uk
62 Prospect MAY 2008