* The World America Made - Robert Kagan
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:NOTER_DOCUMENT: Robert Kagan/The World America Made (12125)/The World America Made - Robert Kagan.epub
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** The best chances for the world, China apart, seem to be either for the Chinese to be as rich as Western Europeans at least, and unless China democratises this will empower the illiberal trend, or, even better, for China to collapse and stop becoming a major power.
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The move from American-dominated ocean ways to a collective policing by multiple great powers—even if it occurred—might turn out to be a formula for competition and conflict rather than a bolstering of the liberal economic order. In the nineteenth century, British naval dominance undergirded peace and global free trade, except in times of war, when Britain itself closed the avenues of trade to its enemies and their trading partners. When the world’s navies became more equal—with the rise of not only the German navy but also those of Japan and the United States—both peace and the international free-trade system became imperiled. Historically, a liberal economic order has flourished under only one set of conditions—a great power with a globally dominant navy and a profound interest in a free-trade, free-market international system, the situation that existed in the latter half of the nineteenth century under British naval supremacy, and again after World War II, under American naval supremacy. The multipolar eras that preceded British supremacy and that existed between the two world wars, prior to American naval supremacy, did not give rise to liberal economic orders.

Even if one sets aside the problem of who will police the commons, it is not clear that the great powers in a new, multipolar era would be able to sustain a free-market, free-trade international system, even if they wanted to. They might kill the goose inadvertently, despite their dependence on it, simply because of the nature of their own political and economic systems.

By far the most important player in the future in this regard will be China. Its economy is projected to overtake that of the United States, at least in terms of sheer volume, at some point in this century. China’s ability and willingness to support the liberal economic order will go a long way toward determining whether or not that order survives. But even optimists about China’s development foresee possible problems.

Two aspects of China’s economy raise doubts about whether it could or would play the role of defender of the present system. One is the fact that although the Chinese economy may become the largest in the world, it will be far from the richest. The size of its economy is a product of its enormous population, but in per capita terms China remains a relatively poor country. In 2010, China’s GDP was the third largest in the world, behind the United States and the European Union. But while the United States, Germany, Japan, and other powers had a per capita GDP of over $40,000, China’s per capita GDP was a little over $4,000, putting it at the same level as Angola, Algeria, and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, by 2030 China’s per capita GDP will still be only half that of the United States, putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are today.

This will make for a historically unique situation.61 In the past, the largest and most dominant economies in the world have also been the richest. That was certainly true of the eras of British and American dominance. And consequences flowed from this. Nations whose peoples are such obvious winners in the relatively unfettered economic system have less temptation to pursue protectionist measures and more incentive to keep the system open. So although they are dominant, they use their dominance in such a way as to permit other nations to grow rich, too.

Chinese leaders, however, may face a different set of problems and temptations. As heads of a poorer and still developing country, they may prove less willing to open sectors of their economy. They have already begun closing some sectors to foreign competition and are likely to close others in the future. The pressure to find better-paying jobs for their people climbing out of poverty into a large lower middle class could lead them to protect certain industries that provide those jobs. A more protectionist China would be neither evil nor unprecedented. Many nations go through protectionist phases during their economic development. The United States certainly did. The problem is that China’s protectionist phase could coincide with its rise to dominance of the global economy. That would be unprecedented. The United States was highly protectionist throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, but as it grew to become the world’s dominant economy, it gradually shed protectionism because it could make more money in an environment of free trade. Britain similarly moved from protectionism to free trade as its economy became dominant. China may be different.

Even optimists about Chinese economic and political development believe the liberal economic order will require “some insurance” against a scenario in which “China exercises its dominance by either reversing its previous policies or failing to open areas of the economy that are now highly protected.” For were it to do so, “given its size, the resulting conflict could undermine the post–World War II system.”62 As the political scientist Ian Bremmer asks, “What happens when the Chinese leadership decides that its development strategy no longer depends on so much foreign investment and prefers instead to use all the tools at the state’s disposal to support local companies and shelter them from foreign competition?”63 American economic dominance was welcomed by much of the world because, by and large, like Hyman Roth in The Godfather, the United States always made money for its partners. Chinese economic dominance, however, may get a different reception.

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** Now that the world's largest autocratic powers are in demise, sooner Russia due to its military loss and later China due to demographic collapse, a more progressive US foriegn policy finally becomes tenable: less nation-shattering aircraft carriers and more ocean patrols, less arms sale and more other advanced technologies.
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The lesson of the twentieth century, perhaps forgotten in the twenty-first, is that if one wants a more liberal order, there may be no substitute for powerful liberal nations to build and defend it. International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others—in this case, the domination of liberal principles of economics, domestic politics, and international relations over other, nonliberal principles. It will last only as long as those who imposed it retain the capacity to defend it. This is an uncomfortable reality for liberal internationalists. We prefer to believe that a liberal international order survives because it is right and just—and not only for us but for everyone. We prefer to imagine that the acceptance of a liberal order is voluntary or, better still, the product of natural forces, not the wielding of power. That is why the “End of History” was such an attractive thesis to many, and remains so even after it has been discredited by events. The theory of inevitable evolution means there is no requirement to impose liberal order. It will merely happen. This resolves the moral ambiguity—and the practical and financial challenges—of imposing it and defending its imposition.

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