{"id":45511,"date":"2019-02-18T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T19:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=45511"},"modified":"2019-02-15T17:12:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T06:12:26","slug":"the-puzzles-of-a-post-american-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-puzzles-of-a-post-american-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The puzzles of a post-American world"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

For any state, regime change is a fraught and dangerous moment. So when the regime that\u2019s changing is the international system of states, the hazards and complexity multiply enormously.<\/p>\n

With all the alarums and agonies that now crowd the international stage, it\u2019s easy to miss an overarching reality: the nature and shape of the global order is morphing rapidly.<\/p>\n

I grasped towards that fundamental puzzle in debating the question: Is the world entering a new cold war or a hot peace?<\/p>\n

The cold war\/hot peace debate is about defining what we see around us, trying to understand the international system coming into view.<\/p>\n

As foreshadowed in my previous column<\/a>, that debate was run and won on Wednesday at the Canberra HQ of the Australian Institute of International Affairs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I argued that what\u2019s in front of us should be called a hot peace. The former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin put the case for calling it a new cold war.<\/p>\n

The debate was a champagne challenge (because alcohol is an operational fluid of defence and diplomacy) and the winner had to buy the champagne.<\/p>\n

I got to pop the cork because the AIIA meeting gave 36 votes to hot peace and 15 votes to new cold war.<\/p>\n

Tony argued it\u2019s all the fault of Trump administration (he had a wonderful slide of the villains\u2014Donald Trump\u2019s hair, John Bolton\u2019s moustache). Just back from another trip to Russia, Tony spent most of his presentation giving a Russian perspective. To caricature his approach (in debating tradition), Tony offered a variation of standard Putinism: Russia is a victim of the irrational hatred of the West which doesn\u2019t understand how much Russia has changed; Russia is under attack and must defend itself. My response: Russia is doing plenty of attacking: Crimea, Ukraine and the US presidential election.<\/p>\n

The Russia flavour allowed me to use a story from Kevin Rudd\u2019s memoirs that deserves its place under the anecdote rule (even if of marginal relevance, wonderful yarns must get a run).<\/p>\n

During his second stint as prime minister in 2013, Rudd had a telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, when the Russian leader enthused that there were no \u2018fundamental contradictions\u2019 in the bilateral relationship with Australia and therefore no impediments to taking relations to a whole new level. As Rudd recounts:<\/p>\n

I agreed with Putin enthusiastically. But I then added one final point. I said, \u2018Of course, Mr President, you understand why there are no deep contradictions between our two countries. And why we have such a good bilateral political relationship?\u2019<\/p>\n

Putin became curious. He asked, \u2018Why do you think that is the case, Prime Minister?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The reason I believe, Mr President,\u2019 I replied, \u2018we have such a good bilateral political relationship is that for much of the last hundred years we\u2019ve had practically nothing to do with each other!\u2019<\/p>\n

There was a long pause. Followed by a much longer, sustained belly laugh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whenever they\u2019ve met since, Rudd wrote, Putin has recalled that \u2018conversation on the deep advantages of geographical separation in fostering a first-class diplomatic relationship!\u2019<\/p>\n

While Tony Kevin and I disagreed on how to label our new era, there\u2019s much we agreed on. And that reflects the point about peering through the immediate struggles and complexity to understand the changing system, to see where the trends are going.<\/p>\n

Asia\u2019s biggest challenge in the 21st century<\/a> will be to do a better job of avoiding the world wars Europe initiated in the last century. A question almost as potent is how Asia will reshape a global order created by Western ideas about the role of the nation, the purpose of the state and the rights of the people.<\/p>\n

Henry Kissinger in World order<\/a><\/em> calls this the ultimate problem of our day, \u2018the crisis in the concept of world order\u2019. The ultimate challenge for statesmanship, Kissinger writes, will be \u2018a reconstruction of the international system\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the AIIA debate, I several times talked about what we\u2019re facing as the \u2018post-American world\u2019. The image\/definition is drawn from a fine book Fareed Zakaria published in 2008 amid the great financial crash: The post-American world and the rise of the rest.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The rise of the rest is the point. After the bipolar cold war frigidity, America basked in its unipolar moment, coinciding with a golden period of globalisation that was based on America\u2019s idea of how the world works and trades. Since the financial crisis, globalisation has become slowbalisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The multipolar era is upon us in all its fascinating messiness.<\/p>\n

America is still the military superpower, but as Zakaria argues, \u2018in every other dimension\u2014industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural\u2014the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. That does not mean we are entering an anti-American world. But we are moving into a post-American world<\/em>, one defined and directed from many places and by many people.\u2019<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018America First\u2019 policy is a declaration that the hegemon is declining back to the status of normal big power, worried more about itself than the nature of the international system.<\/p>\n

In the remaking of the global order, Trump is the first president of the post-American world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For any state, regime change is a fraught and dangerous moment. So when the regime that\u2019s changing is the international system of states, the hazards and complexity multiply enormously. With all the alarums and agonies …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":45515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,1428,2385,31],"class_list":["post-45511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-new-cold-war","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe puzzles of a post-American world | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-puzzles-of-a-post-american-world\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The puzzles of a post-American world | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For any state, regime change is a fraught and dangerous moment. 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