John Kampfner wrings his hands:
What if the real challenge is posed not by failing states but increasingly successful ones? What if China and Russia are now setting the terms of engagement? What if, as is already the case in parts of the developing world, the Chinese message of rapid development, unencumbered by lectures about human rights and democracy, is proving more attractive? Meanwhile, leaders in the so-called developed countries scurry round the world ingratiating themselves with the chancelleries of Beijing and Moscow. The countries that complain the least secure the most lucrative contracts. The free market has been well and truly decoupled from the free society.Tell me John, when were they ever actually coupled? It’s precisely the form in which the free market was implemented in Russia that distorted its politics in the post Soviet era. In China the choice between lattes was supposed to lead ineluctably to choice between political parties: a fairly transparent cover story but pretty much the dominant theme of High Friedmanist coverage of China over the past ten years. And how is “rapid development unencumbered by lectures on human rights” different from our traditional policy towards Saudi Arabia and our current policy towards Libya?
It’s not clear to me that China’s foreign policies over the past ten years indicate that we’re going to inherit a worse problem set than the one we have that ensues from US hegemony. China treats everyone in the same way the US, Britain and Europe treats the Magic Kingdom and Russia’s dependence on energy exports gives it a monopsony problem. Neither of them, outside their near abroad, use their militaries aggressively. But it’s a problem set that you can’t even pretend to influence intellectually, something of a worry maybe if you’re the editor of the New Statesman. But there’s always the issue about what the US might do to reassert its primacy. The editor of the New Statesman can’t really influence that either, but he can complain about it in the same language.
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