America is now staring at a fast re-arranging world, with many of the pieces outside its grasp. Foreign policy analysts call it a ‘multipolar’ world, which has been radically rearranged from the bipolar one that existed during the Cold War. Then it used to be a simple, straight fight between the
American alliance and the Soviet bloc. America knew how to deal with that world of intrigue, force, power and naked military play. Today that black-and-white edifice has crumbled. The bad guys have gone, and the Soviet Union is no more.Today’s equations are far more complex, and still evolving. By far the most important equation is the one being crafted between America and China. “Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe,” said Theodore Roosevelt almost a century ago. Somewhat later, the prediction is finally ringing true. British Historian Niall Ferguson calls it Chimerica, a new ‘nation’ that was born after the end of the Cold War. “For a time it seemed like a marriage made in heaven,” Ferguson wrote in The Ascent of Money. “The East Chimericans did the saving, the West Chimericans did the spending”. China grew furiously, and Americans gorged on low interest rates and inflation.
America has often leaned on China to play the good cop in North Korea. Since China supplies Pyongyang with almost all its oil, it enjoys some persuasive powers over Kim Jong-Il. America has often called in those favours, and China has obliged; in 2003, it even cut off fuel supplies to North Korea for a few days.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to use ‘smart power’ — a clever potion of military might, economic clout and cultural influence, a mix of the traditional strategies of hard and soft power — to deal with China. She believes that the 21st century should be a ‘multi-partner’, not a ‘multipolar’ world. Other advisers in President Barack Obama’s administration would like to replace the earlier ‘engage-and-hedge’ approach with one that ‘maximises opportunity but also manages risk’. The phrase in vogue is ‘strategic reassurance’. Whichever words are used to dress it up, the strategy has to be a 21st century variant of the ‘carrot and stick’.
Read more at The Hindustan Times
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