Moving on from the past
The US and its allies must accept the reality of a multipolar world and put resources to better use
In 1972, former US president Richard Nixon met Chairman Mao Zedong. Nixon acted pragmatically under pressure from a political situation where the war in Vietnam had turned into a disaster for the United States and the entire Western camp was experiencing a legitimacy crisis.
As a result of his trip to China, Nixon secured his reelection. China later embarked on its reform and opening-up path that would eventually turn it from an impoverished nation of farmers into an industrial giant and, in some fields, a technological leader of the world.
Pragmatism prevailed over dogmatism.
The importance of the rapprochement can hardly be overstated, as it paved the way for cooperation between the established and the emerging power.
Today, that means working together to address the potentially fatal challenges to humanity, which include the enduring threat from the nuclear arsenals of an increasing number of states, the climate catastrophe which is rapidly moving toward tipping points that may make parts of the planet uninhabitable, and pollution and depletion of non-renewable resources.
Also, problems such as economic inequality, ignorance and oppression, religious extremism, and the threat from pandemics, as we have just painfully learned, and last but not least, extreme hunger, which affects about 800 million people, about 10 percent of the world’s population, mainly in parts of Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.
Letting people starve in a world of plenty that could decently sustain a population more than one and a half times the present number is not a regrettable side show but a fundamental defect of the world economy.
Unfortunately, the opportunities from global cooperation of responsible leading powers in a multipolar world have been largely wasted. Some politicians, think tanks and media have created a poisoned atmosphere, in which the real problems are ridiculed. The public in the West is increasingly made to believe that a freedom and peace loving camp is under pressure from rogue states.
The term Thucydides Trap denotes a movement toward aggressive foreign policies and potentially war, when an emerging power threatens an established hegemon.
Is this what we are observing? The hegemony of the US, as of all hegemons in history, is based on a combination of economic strength and military power. Its track record leaves no doubt about its willingness to resort to the use of armed force.
The first truly global hegemon to emerge was the United Kingdom after the Napoleonic Wars. After World War I, the US became the undisputed global hegemon until 1945, when the victories of the Soviet Red Army in Europe established the bipolar world of the Cold War.
Having defeated their common enemies, Germany and Japan, the political antagonism between the Western allies and the Soviet Union became so manifest by 1948 that both parties proceeded to secure their spheres of domination. Unsurprisingly, Soviet influence stretched as far as the Red Army had advanced in May 1945.
The antagonism between the US and the Soviet-led blocs lasted until the latter disintegrated in 1991. The silent departure from power of the latter was seen by some as proof that there is seemingly no alternative but to a capitalist world, under the guidance of the US.
What is missing in this story is the “sleeping giant” — China. Its economic reforms started in 1978 and paved the way for one of the most spectacular socioeconomic transformations in human history, concerning not only the number of people affected — roughly 20 percent of the world population throughout these years — but also the pace and depth of the transformation.
The US is deeply worried that China will challenge its global supremacy, as the economic rise of China is turning it into the world’s largest economy. Exactly when that will happen is yet to be seen. However, looking at GDP adjusted for purchasing power shows that the Chinese economy had already overtaken the US in the production of goods and services in 2017.
I lived the first 30 years of my life during the Cold War and the second 30 years in a time of wasted global opportunities and disappointments. I fear that in the remainder I may witness tragedy. Like the “sleepwalkers” of 1914, who, by combining grandstanding, militarism and incompetence, led the world into the completely pointless disaster of World War I, politicians and opinion makers in the West are now advancing the idea that confrontation is inevitable.
They could prefer to pull the rest of the world into an abyss rather than getting used to the idea that executing global hegemony bears high costs, financially and morally, as the US war expenditure and the scandals caused by its excessive military violence vividly demonstrate. The US and its allies should come to accept the emergence of a multipolar world and henceforth use the enormous means required to maintain global supremacy to ensure better lives for their people.
Meanwhile, global warming is accelerating and poverty and inequality persist. This is not fate, but global policy failure. Technological progress harbors enormous potential for sustainable and better lives, conditional on an implicit or explicit global contract with the categorical imperative of securing the basis of human existence: progressive reduction of resource intensity in economic activity, a change from material growth to sufficiency, starting in the rich countries, after global poverty has been overcome in the periphery as well. It is thus clear what is required to succeed. It is not clear that we will succeed.
Without a reconsideration of the wasteful rivalry and hostility among the great powers and a move to accept that the times when the world had only one hegemon has come to an end, humanity will fail its hardest test.
There is an alternative to doom and it must be chosen. Doing so will ensure that future generations will view the Thucydides Trap as a bizarre concept from a foolish past.
The author is a professor and head of the macroeconomic forecasting division at ETH Zurich. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.