Worries for the Rise of a Chaotic World
At a Shanghai conference in 2011, historian Deepak Lal was “appalled to hear that China wanted to challenge and replace the Pax Americana.” He set out to investigate and understand how and why it had this “insane” ambition — and how likely was it to succeed.
Amply footnoted, this book is the result of that journey through recent economic and geopolitical history. Lal’s earlier work concluded the importance of empires, including the American empire, in undergirding civilizations. But in recent years, disheartened by Barack Obama’s attempt to dismantle the “US imperium,” Lal worried about the rise of a chaotic world. Searching through today’s resentful states likely to challenge US leadership, he finds China the prime candidate and fears nothing short of a path to war. Unless China can be stopped, he worries, a Third World War is inevitable. The Bjp-led India could perhaps claim world leadership, he writes, if it could sustain a GDP growth rate of 10-11 percent for two decades and avoid narrow Hindutva communal politics. On both, though, Lal would be disappointed: Growth under a second BJP government has dipped below 5 percent, and a recent pogrom killed more than 50 in Delhi, mostly Muslims. The author’s final recommendation is a Us-led “coalition of states with overwhelming military and economic power” to achieve an “explicit containment of China” to avoid war.
Unless China can be stopped, Lal worries, a Third World War is inevitable.