Can the U.S. Adjust Sensibly to a Multipolar
World?
in World — by Medea Benjamin — 05/05/2023 by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies
In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United
States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and
not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious
threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to
adjust sensibly to the newer world order.”
Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the
end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the
rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust
sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in
flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting
global hegemony.
Kennedy observed that military power follows
economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate
and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s
economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day
in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers
quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.
While U.S. leaders have been losing wars and
trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been
emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another
endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments
that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth
watching:
De-dollarizing global trade
For decades, the U.S. dollar was the undisputed
king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking
steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan.
Illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions against dozens of
countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves
leaves countries vulnerable to U.S. financial coercion. Many
countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency
reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58%
by 2022.
Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem”
that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is
a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On
April 17, 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that U.S. sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the
dollar as the world’s global reserve currency.
And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican
Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no
longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will
be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we
won’t have the ability to sanction them.”
BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7’s
When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity,
the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is
now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of
total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared
with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected
to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.
Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge
foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw
materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations
with many countries.
Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted
by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new
president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil.
Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as
an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank
and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and
privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on
eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive,
resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized,
with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82
billion portfolio.
Movement towards “strategic autonomy” for Europe
On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together
than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s
recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane
that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic
autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of
the Atlantic when the interview was published.
But European Council President Charles Michel, the
former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side,
insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the
position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an
interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders,
and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.”
The rise of progressive governments in Latin America
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe
Doctrine, which has served as a cover for U.S. domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the
region are refusing to march in lockstep with U.S. demands. The entire region
rejects the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to
stay away or only send junior officials, and largely doomed the gathering.
With the spectacular victories and popularity of
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have
tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community
of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated
Organization of American States.
To reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, South
America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to
create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of
Mercosur — South America’s major trade bloc. While U.S. influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade
increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of
Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a
free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.
Peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia
One of the false premises of U.S. foreign policy is that regional
rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances
with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent)
ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators
like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of
military governments in Egypt.
Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of
driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with
wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore
diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity.
Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting
peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including
Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the
world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.
Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic
relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visited each others’
capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked
groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011.
At a meeting in Jordan on May 1st, the foreign ministers
of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial
integrity, and that Turkish and U.S. occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab
League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.
Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door
to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for
the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to
mediate peace talks, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and
other countries.
Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to U.S. war-making
The proposal by President Lula of Brazil for a “peace club” of nations to
help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new
diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic
element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring
peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and
instability.
While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show
that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country
that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and
partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the
paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of U.S. and Western power that has
kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.
This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for.
China is responding astutely to what the world needs
most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will
surely win China many friends, and make it more
difficult for U.S. politicians to sell their view of
China as a threat.
Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy
referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about
the U.S. ability to adjust. As he recently
warned, “Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a
multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With
countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and
diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to
finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.
