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Is American world dominance a thing of the past?Is the Obama Administration's aggressive forward strategy to stabilize and reshape Afghanistan a glamorous, quick flashing cover for an over extension, then a lessening of American power?
Will China match or even win over American power?
Anyone can have an opinion.
Let's hear one.
Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna suggests that three centers of competing but cooperating power are emerging.
His argument emerges in his volume The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, Random House, February, 2009
Read Khanna's provocative views directly in this New York Times article, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," March 6, 2008.
Here is how Publisher's Weekly summarizes his thinking:
Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers a study of the 21st century's emerging geopolitical marketplace dominated by three first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China.
Each competes to lead the new century, pursuing that goal in the third world: select eastern European countries, east and central Asia, the Middle East Latin America, and North Africa.
The U.S. offers military protection and aid.
Europe offers deep reform and economic association.
China offers full-service, condition-free relationships.
Each can be appealing; none has obvious advantages.
The key to Khanna's analysis, however, is his depiction of a second world: countries in transition.
They range in size and population from heavily peopled states like Brazil and Indonesia to smaller ones such as Malaysia.
Khanna interprets the coming years as being shaped by the race to win the second world—and in the case of the U.S., to avoid becoming a second-world country itself.
The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life.
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And here is how The New York Times Book Review puts it:"No shots will be fired. Instead the three imperial rivals will woo and coerce, relying on distinct styles.
The United States offers military protection, along with the promise of democracy and human rights.
The European Union dangles the prospect of membership in, or affiliation with, the world’s most successful economic club, provided that applicants undertake specific reforms.
China talks trade, investment and infrastructure projects, with no annoying demands for political reform in its would-be client states.
“To a large extent, the future of the second world hinges on how it relates to the three superpowers,” Mr. Khanna writes, “and the future of the superpowers depends on how they manage the second world.”
