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August 8, 2008
After participating in a recent foreign policy conference call, it occurred to
me that analysts are speaking to one another on different modes, often talking
past one another. One mode is the classical balance of power conversation: Which
country has more power in various regional theaters? Another mode looks at foreign
policy questions in a global context: What are the most urgent problems facing
the world today?
Can these two modes of analysis be reconciled?
The biggest phenomenon in international relations today, the so-called rise
of the rest, presents fertile ground to test such a question. Many observers,
from Fareed Zakaria
to Kishore
Mahbubani to Steve
Weber, have noticed that "non-Western" states such as China, Russia,
and India, are growing more rapidly than Western states and are doing more business
with one another. They therefore have more foreign policy options—they
can "route around" the United States, as Nick
Gvosdev has put it. To further this conversation, Nick
and I assembled a group of experts at the Carnegie Council this summer as
a follow up to a panel at the Nixon Center in the summer of 2007.
A surprising consensus emerged from that panel: The current international system
is witnessing the birth of an "embryonic community," as George Washington
University professor Harry
Harding put it. Two camps are taking shape, providing more clarity about
the system than the amorphous notion of a "multi-polar system" that
has plagued foreign policy thinking for the past few years. According to Harding,
the world's two camps are the U.S.-led elitist reformers and the China- and
Russia-led populist conservatives. Harding noted that these two camps happen
to view the world in contrasting terms: The U.S. group wants democracy at home
and order in the world, while the other group (the rest) wants order at home
and democracy in the world.
To read this article in full, go to The
National Interest.
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