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Ramesh Thakur: Toward a new world order

Edward Campbell

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Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright At from the Ottawa Citizen is the first in a four parts series by Prof Ramesh Thakur (Waterloo) based on the premise that power, in the broadest sense of that word, is shifting from the West to Asia:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Toward+world+order/2627068/story.html
Toward a new world order

The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore -- global power is shifting to Asia. This is the first in a four-part series of articles examining how the world will manage a shift in power and influence from west to east.

BY RAMESH THAKUR, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

MARCH 1, 2010

2627069.bin

A German carnival float features U.S. President Barack Obama giving money to China's President Hu Jintao. China and India will be major players in setting energy, mineral and commodity prices. The new scramble for Africa is between them.
Photograph by: Reuters, The Ottawa Citizen


From 1000-1800 AD, Asia, Africa and Latin America -- today's developing world -- accounted for 65 to 75 per cent of global population and income. Europe rode to world dominance through the industrial revolution, innovations in transport and communication, and colonialism, during which the developing countries suffered dramatic relative losses.

According to economist Deepak Nayyar, from 1870 to 1950, Asia's per capita income plummeted from one-half to one-10th of West European levels. Asia has been bouncing back since in economic output, industrialization and trade.

The importance of Brazil, China and India lies in their future economic potential which has already translated into present political weight. The early 19th century saw the displacement of Asia by Britain as the dominant actor of the times; the early 20th century, of Britain by America. Is the early 21st century witnessing the beginning of the end of U.S. influence and the re-emergence of China and India?

The demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of "superior" western power. Abusive practices in the "war on terror" and the great financial collapse have made them less respectful of western values.

The leading developing countries have strongly outpaced the industrial world in GDP and trade. In 2009 China overtook Germany as the world's top exporter of manufactured goods, having previously edged past the U.S. as the world's biggest auto market in unit volume. China and India will be major players in setting energy, mineral and commodity prices. The new scramble for Africa is between them.

As China, India and Brazil emerge as important growth centres in the world economy, the age of the West disrespecting the rest's role, relevance and voice is passing. As power and influence seep out of the trans-Atlantic order and migrate towards Asia and elsewhere, how, and by who, will the transition from the Westphalian to a replacement system of structuring world affairs be managed? Conversely, how will the newly empowered big players of the Global South manage the transformation from perennial spoilers to responsible globalizers?

The Copenhagen Accord on climate change was a deal struck by Brazil, China, India and South Africa with the U.S. The problem of global warming was created by the developed countries who have deeper carbon footprints and greater financial and technological capabilities for mitigation and adaptation. But the deadly impacts of climate change will not be distributed in proportion to those responsible for it. The poorest will suffer the most. The problem will continue to worsen not because developing countries aspire to western affluence but to affordable food, housing, clean water, sanitation and electricity.

Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution. Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.

Western leaders and commentators pinned the blame for the Copenhagen fiasco on China and, to a lesser extent, India. This is hard to fathom. Like China, the U.S. came not to negotiate but to sign an agreement on its terms. Both were equally constrained by domestic growth requirements and political compulsions.

The scattergun information noise from western countries has obscured their culpability in refusing to honour Kyoto and Bali pledges, instead pointing a collective finger at developing countries' rejection of binding emission cuts. The latter blame the West's past industrialization for the present crisis. Westerners highlight present and future growth in energy consumption by China and India as the main factors taking us to and beyond the tipping point. Developed countries talk of net national emissions, developing countries of per capita emissions. In some respects the West is effectively "outsourcing" its pollution to China as the world's factory. Multinationals set up business in China which produces goods for western consumers and pollution for Chinese cities.

On another front, soft power is a complement to hard power, not its substitute. Major media voices from the globally dominant powers wield matching international influence. Waning hard power shrinks soft power, including media influence.

Last fall, the New York Times told Manmohan Singh to resist calls for more nuclear tests which "would be a huge setback -- for India's relations with Washington, for the battle against terrorists, and for global efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons." It advised India to focus on economic growth, not more nuclear weapons, and urged Washington to "leave no doubt about how much India would have to lose if New Delhi makes the wrong choice."

The editorial drew a swarm of angry responses from online commentators.

India's government is answerable to the people of India, not to Washington. The Times should have tendered the same unsolicited advice to China, like India a poor country. On nuclear arms, inspections and threats to cut off aid for non-compliance, the U.S. should apply the same policy and standards towards Israel, a "close buddy." Why should India, which lives in a tough neighbourhood with unstable, undemocratic nuclear powers and state sponsors of terrorism, bear the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) cross for the rest of the world? If the roles were reversed and the U.S. had to deal with an unstable nuclear neighbour launching terrorist attacks with the support of the military, would the Times still write the same piece? It should examine America's own repeated violations of nuclear disarmament obligations under the NPT. Moreover, Washington had knowingly winked at Chinese transfers of nuclear materials and design to Pakistan since the 1980s.

As this shows, newspapers are read in real time in countries around the world. Educational levels and standards and reading habits have improved greatly from previous generations. A better informed global readership can make instant comparisons of like cases and detect double standards and hypocrisy immediately. Far from influencing policy of other countries, offering advice to foreigners that is obviously at odds with its own country's policy risks loss of credibility for globally branded newspapers.

A much needed global moral rebalancing is in train. Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behaviour for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations. All sides must be prepared to make adjustments and accommodations. A bullying take it or leave it approach will not do. Not just the process but the structures and rules of the game for conducting negotiations must be agreed to jointly.

The New York Times could devote one column a week on a rotating basis to a commentator of its choice from Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Each is capable of providing one columnist a month to sensitize Americans to alternative perspectives, not merely on their own country but on the critical international issues of the day.

Nelson Mandela reportedly said that the terms of a struggle are usually set not by the challengers but by the dominant elite whose power, status, privileges and authority are under assault. Equally, once the aspiring new members are inside the club, they too must adapt their behaviour and accept the burden of shared management of a fragile world order.

History is shaped by the interplay of power and ideas. China, India and others must use their new power to advance ideas for the common good; multilateralism is more than the pursuit of national interests by international instruments.

Ramesh Thakur is director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. His new book on 'Global Governance and the UN' will be published shortly by Indiana University Press.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen


I will comment at the end of the series, which is not going to be too popular in some circles for what appears to be an unabashedly anti-American/anti-Western tone.

Those who follow my ramblings here will know that I do not believe Brazil will be able to manage to join America, China, India and, maybe, a very few others, in the top tier or, rather, I believe Brazil will find a way to deny itself that opportunity. I put South Africa in the same boat. Equally, I think China and India “won” whatever was on offer in Copenhagen by ensuring that they left uncommitted to much of anything, as if there was much of anything worth committing to. (I know, I know, a preposition ought not to dangle but remember Churchill and “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”)
 
Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29)of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, is more from

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/reluctant+giant/2763548/story.html
The reluctant giant
Even China doesn't know how it will play its unaccustomed role as world power This is the second in a four-part series examining how the world will manage a shift in power and influence from west to east.

BY RAMESH THAKUR, CITIZEN SPECIAL

APRIL 5, 2010

The China-U.S. relationship will be the pivot of the post-unipolar world order. Western perceptions of China tend to oscillate between confrontation and fascination, either inflating or downsizing its importance. The benign view sees China taking its rightful place as a responsible stakeholder in the management of regional and world order; the pessimistic assessment worries about its potential for mischief across a broad range of issues around the world.

Driven by strategic narcissism, the three-trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have helped to bankrupt the United States and, by outsourcing manufacturing to China and services to India, enfeeble its capacity to produce enough goods and services to pay its bills.

The U.S. economy used to be the biggest, best-balanced and most productive and innovative. Now it is saddled with debts, deficits and distortions. The U.S. deficit, projected at around 11 per cent of economic output for the next year, will still be around five per cent of GDP in 2020. A seemingly dysfunctional political system neuters all efforts to address structural problems. If by the end of the decade the U.S. is still the world's biggest borrower -- 10-year economic forecasts lack credibility -- will it still be the world's biggest power?

China is the world's largest auto market by unit volume, the biggest exporter of merchandise and will account for the largest growth in world trade for some time. The U.S. remains the finance and consumption capital of the world but the new production capital is China. It is dependent no longer on U.S. markets, managerial know-how and technology, nor on U.S. power as a counterweight to a Soviet threat. A dominant player in setting energy, mineral and other commodity prices, China is the world's major net (but not per capita) emitter of greenhouse gases and determinant of climate change.

U.S. columnist Thomas Friedman argues that the loss of faith in western prescriptions is leading to the discredited Washington Consensus of free-market, pro-trade and globalization policies being replaced by a Beijing Consensus: state-guided, strictly controlled capital markets and an authoritarian decision-making process that can make tough strategic choices and long-term investments without being distracted by daily polls.

The Chinese save as stubbornly as the Americans spend. President Barack Obama's China visit in November was of a supplicant paying tribute to his chief creditor. His refusal to meet the Dalai Lama before the trip reinforced the symbolism. Their subsequent White House meeting drew fresh warnings from Beijing.

Yet, while the U.S. needs China to finance its mounting debt, a collapse of the U.S. economy would mean drastic cutbacks to sales of made-in China products in the world's biggest consumer market and also erode the value of China's currency reserves.

China used to believe that the world order of one superpower and several great powers would continue. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars hastened the military, financial and moral decline of America. To protect their interests, some Chinese debated how they could arrest the pace of America's descent from heaven. Since the financial crisis, which proved China's remarkable resilience, there has been a flood of declinist commentary about the U.S. by Chinese analysts.

For the first time in 200 years, the world must engage with a united and powerful China that has become more aggressive on several issues, including climate change, Internet freedom and the border dispute with India. But so too must China come to terms with its new status: The Middle Kingdom has no historical, philosophical or literary tradition of diplomatic intercourse as a great power in a system of great powers. This will become especially relevant as China's footprint becomes increasingly global and its interests, presence and activities mushroom around the world.

Treating China as an enemy could turn it into one. But should the U.S. underwrite the rise of a one-party state that is its only plausible geopolitical rival? The Clinton and Bush administrations' China policies had rested on the assumption that exposure to free trade and the information age would release and strengthen the forces of liberalization and political change. What if the assumptions are false? The evidence to date is mostly in the opposite direction.

Washington approved arms sales to Taiwan worth $6 billion, calculating that, with more than 1,300 Chinese missiles pointed at Taiwan, bolstering the latter's military preparedness may be a prudent hedge against having to defend it from attack. It simultaneously raises the risks of failure and the costs of success should Beijing choose to go to war. Beijing retaliated immediately, suspending bilateral military exchanges and imposing sanctions on companies selling arms to Taiwan.

Yet calculations of relative U.S. decline are more likely to nudge Beijing toward exerting leverage over U.S. international policy than outright confrontation. It will want to recalibrate the multilateral order on its terms, setting aside questions of human rights and political values to focus instead on solving common problems. It will be more willing and able than before to shape the international environment and world order proactively rather than react passively to it.

China's rise has been welcomed by many as a counterweight to U.S. military muscle and political arrogance. China could also be the world's engine of growth. If it's not careful, though, it could encounter a grating wall of resistance as countries, multinationals and NGOs begin to push back against heavy-handed assertiveness.

Is China prepared to shed Deng Xiaoping's anachronistic adage to keep a low profile and not take the lead? Will it use growing wealth, power and influence for narrow mercantilism or the common good? How long can it question the dollar's status as the global reserve currency without loosening its iron grip on the yuan?

Google's threat to leave rather than become more complicit in Internet censorship may be a harbinger of a changing international mood. Google's fight with China is more likely to be motivated by commercial calculation than concerns about freedom of information.

As most foreign companies have discovered, it is not easy to move from China's massive potential to massive profits. Google's one-third share of China's search engine market provides just five per cent of its global revenue. On a level playing field, Google could potentially wrest a much larger market share from Baidu, its government-connected chief competitor in China. The risk assessment of the strategy of standing up to Beijing may reflect this cost-benefit analysis.

In China's implicit social contract, the citizens acquiesce to political control in return for the government overseeing continuing prosperity that delivers the same goods and services to them as to westerners. With communism discredited, the government lacks a legitimizing ideology to economic growth. If this is put under threat by Google and other major multinational firms pulling out, the strategic loss for the Chinese government could be bigger than the lost revenues for the firms.

China basks in the growing acknowledgment of its rising status. It is happy to take the benefits flowing from it but is less keen to stop being a free rider, exercise international public leadership and accept the burdens of being a great power.

That mindset helps to explain currency manipulation to protect exports at the expense of other countries, unwillingness to commit to internationally verifiable cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and courting of pariah authoritarian regimes to gain access to raw materials and resources.

China is as unwilling as the Bush administration was to bind itself to agreed global norms. It could find itself in somewhat lonesome company with arms-length relationships of convenience rather than true friends and allies, of which the U.S. still has plenty, including Australia, Canada, the EU and Japan.

Ramesh Thakur is director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. His new book on "Global Governance and the UN" will be published shortly by Indiana University Press.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen


This is all pretty old and tame stuff, and some of it, such as ”China used to believe that the world order of one superpower and several great powers would continue”, is opinion with a doubtful foundation. But, we, the whole world "we,” need to deal with a new, powerful, assertive China and Thakur is right when he says, ”Treating China as an enemy could turn it into one”. That would be a strategic miscalculation. So what to do? Do we reward one part rule and so on? The answer might lie in how American presidents dealt and still deal with Russia. How is China different?
 
China is winning over the heart of Africa – at the West’s expense
Doug Saunders From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Article Link

While we’ve been busy looking at noisier events elsewhere, a small boom has been taking place in the lands south of the Sahara. Still the poorest place in the world, the heart of Africa is nevertheless catching up fast this year, with huge improvements in infrastructure, industry and most importantly agriculture; it could soon become the world’s major food producer.

We North Americans and Europeans haven’t been paying much attention to this huge expansion for the simple reason that we’ve had little to do with it.

This week was a prime example. The jet traffic between Beijing and the capitals of sub-Saharan Africa these past few days has been tremendous. On Monday, Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping finished a two-day visit to Botswana in which he signed financing deals worth millions in infrastructure and energy development. Two days earlier, he’d made major deals in oil-rich Angola. On Wednesday in Ethiopia, Chinese private and state investors opened a $27-million leather-goods factory that will employ 500 Ethiopians; the same investment fund is also building cement plants and an airport hotel nearby. On Thursday, Sudan, which imports 80 per cent of its food, announced plans to quintuple its current wheat cultivation with backing from Chinese and Persian Gulf investors, increasing its acres under cultivation by 25 per cent a year for a decade.

And this is not an atypical week. The Chinese claim to have more than $1.5-billion invested in Africa now, up from $210-million; they employ at least 300,000 Africans in their own countries (and, increasingly, import African workers to the cities of the Pearl River Delta) and have built 60,000 kilometres of roads and 3.5 million kilowatts worth of power stations there – far more than any other country. Last year, China replaced the United States as the largest trading partner of South Africa, the continent’s biggest economy, and annual China-Africa trade topped $100-billion for the first time this year.

There are good reasons why African leaders are turning to China. The Chinese are often the only ones willing to pay for the stuff that Africans really need. Western aid spending has increasingly moved away from big infrastructure and industrial projects, or abandoned the continent more or less completely.

And “emerging market” investment funds, despite all their hype about seeking the best returns and untapped investments around the world, have never really gone near the world’s largest investment opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa. Our capitalists are too timid to go there. And our investment strategies are rarely more than short-term: While transforming Africa’s agriculture into a commercial success may be one of the biggest business stories of the century, Westerners are unwilling to tie up their money there for 20 years before seeing a good return. For China, with its huge current-account surpluses, this time scale is ideal.

And there’s a huge need for investment. According to the World Bank, Africa will need $93-billion a year in infrastructure investments in roads, electricity and telecommunications through the next decade; at least $31-billion of this will have to come from outside Africa. A study this week concluded that Africa could become a larger producer of rice than all of Asia – at a time when the world desperately needs more food output – with the right investments.

If China and other non-democratic states are left to fill this huge investment gap, it could come at a political cost. This week, we saw a warning written by Medard Mulangala Lwakabwanga, an MP from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who is watching his government turn to China for investment – in large part because they see Western countries as more interested in war-crimes tribunals and truth and reconciliation commissions than in building road links and irrigation networks. The Chinese don’t care if Congo’s government contains war criminals.

“China does not call on anyone to be sent to The Hague – it is not a signatory to the ICC treaty,” Mr. Lwakabwanga wrote. “Nor does it call on African nations to respect international conventions on corporate contracts, rights for workers, defend free speech or hold free and fair elections. So many African nations now have a choice: Why listen to the West, with its rules and regulations and demands, if you don’t have to?”

Mr. Lwakabwanga, like many freedom-seeking Africans, does not want growth at the price of tyranny. “The West can raise its game in the continent,” he writes, “meet the Chinese challenge and help to build a more transparent and content Africa.” If we want to do good on the continent, we’re going to have to start doing more business.
More on link
 
The Golden Rule (Do unto others, etc) is well established in Chinese thought and politics.

The Chinese demand that the outside world not interfere with China's internal affairs. Generally, but certainly not always, the Chinese do the same.

If you were unfortunate enough to get most of your information from the Chinese English language media you would probably believe that most countries in the world do not 'harass' China with complaints about civil rights and currency manipulation. In fact, you would read/see/hear, it is only a small minority of China's major economic competitors - led by America and Europe - who try to interfere in China's internal affairs.

China is, also, investing in Africa rather than just sending aid to corrupt dictators. Most All of those investments benefit China more than they serve the needs of Africa and Africans but they are steps in the right a better direction; they represent cooperation rather than colonialism's holdovers.

So, yes, China is 'eating our lunch' in Africa, but they need Africa's resources more than we do.

 
The Economist suggests who is following behind the BRIC nations. Edward has suggested that Brazil will be able to pull defeat from the jaws of victory, and I see little reason to disagree. Most of the nations being promoted here are (in my opinion) suffering from the same cultural defects, and I don't see them as being political and economic powerhouses in the near or mid future:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/12/emerging-countries-after-brazil-india.html#more

Emerging Countries after Brazil, India and China

There are suggestions for emerging countries after the BRICs. (Brazil, Russia, India and China). There have been several attempts to identify the next emerging countries. They have been CIVETS, VISTA, NEXT-11 and attempts to expand or alter countries in the BRIC group.

The CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa) is an acronym for favored emerging markets coined in late 2009 by Robert Ward, Global Forecasting Director for the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The term has also been used by HSBC's chief executive Michael Geoghegan. These countries are favored for several reasons, such as a dynamic and diverse economy and a young growing population.

VISTA is an acronym for Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina. It is used in economics in discussing emerging markets. The concept was first proposed in 2006 by BRICs Economic Research Institute of Japan.

The Next Eleven (or N-11) are eleven countries—Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam—identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank as having a high potential of becoming the world's largest economies in the 21st century along with the BRICs.

Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey and usually South Africa are included in each of the next emerging country lists.

The Economist published its annual series called The World in 2011. the Economist was bullish on Indonesia. It predicted that, with 245 million people in 2011, Indonesia’s GDP will reach around US$806 billion, resulting in a GDP per capita of $3,280. By this figure, Indonesia’s GDP is predicted to exceed those of Turkey and the Netherlands, making Indonesia the 16th largest economic power in the world. Indonesia is forecast to have 6% per year GDP growth in 2011 and 2012.

Vietnam is forecast to have 7% per year GDP growth in 2011.

Mexico and South Korea are currently the world's 13th and 15th largest by nominal GDP,just behind the BRIC and G7 economies, while both are experiencing rapid GDP growth of 5% every year, a figure comparable to Brazil from the original BRICs. Jim O'Neill, expert from the same bank and creator of the economic thesis, stated that in 2001 when the paper was created, it did not consider Mexico, but today it has been included because the country is experiencing the same factors that the other countries first included present. While South Korea was not originally included in the BRICs, recent solid economic growth led to Goldman Sachs proposing to add Mexico and South Korea to the BRICs, changing the acronym to BRIMCK, with Jim O'Neill pointing out that Korea "is better placed than most others to realize its potential due to its growth-supportive fundamentals.

A Goldman Sachs paper published later in December 2005 explained why Mexico and South Korea weren't included in the original BRICs. According to the paper, among the other countries they looked at, only Mexico and South Korea have the potential to rival the BRICs, but they are economies that they decided to exclude initially because they looked at them as already more developed. However, due to the popularity of the Goldman Sachs thesis, "BRIMC" and "BRICK" are becoming more generic marketing terms to refer to these six countries.
 
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