True

[tagryn]

from http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html

People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But that ’s not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe.

Comments

[erikred.livejournal.com]

Straw man. I, for one, believe that greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance, but only in the presence of a strong and meaningful United Nations that already embraces (and is empowered to enforce) the democratic and humanitarian principles the Hoover institute attributes to the United States.

Further, the Hoover Institute's argument implies that in the current configuration, the so-called predominance of the United States and its purported check on the spread of the power of Beijing and Moscow is unilaterally successful. Despite demonstrable human rights violations, continued aggression against so-called rogue territories, and threats (economical, military, and political) against their neighbors, the US _still_ extends MFN status to them, all in the name of protecting potential US business interests, thereby demonstrating that American predominance is already either waning or itself a myth.

We, the US, could do a lot to bolster our own predominance by reinstating a functional military (i.e., pulling out of Iraq) and enforcing our own stated goals vis-a-vis democracy in the world (i.e., sanctioning the PRC and Russia and backing Taiwan, Chechnya, and Kosovo in their bids for autonomy). This would certainly make a transition to the scenario laid out above smooth.

As I keep pointing out to my leftist buddies, anarchy is just detente thuggery.

[tagryn]

Problem is, if the U.N. actually did start living up to its mandate as a democratic institution, with power to enforce those values, a lot of nations that *don't* share that vision would probably withdrawal from it - that happened to the League of Nations before WWII. A UN without universal representation of nations loses a lot of its legitimacy across the globe, I think..."just another damn American puppet" would be heard a lot.

The unipolar world has been a good thing for democracy overall, I think - the increase in number of democratic nations has been steadily rising, for example. However, encouraging the stronger democracies like India and Japan, not to mention the EU, to actively take responsibility for their own national interests and defense would share out some of the pressures which the U.S. exclusively bears right now, and while their decisions may not be 100% in line with what the USA wants, I think that route is more sustainable (and safer) in the long-run.