A world without America as No 1
Kishore Mahbubani says US denial about its loss of dominance in a changing world will only undermine our ability to cope with new problems. Reform of global agencies remains the best hope
Long before anyone else, former US president Bill Clinton saw that America would have to prepare for the time when it would no longer be the No 1 power in the world. In his 2003 Yale University address on "Global Challenges", he said: "If you believe that maintaining power and control and absolute freedom of movement and sovereignty is important to your country's future, there's nothing inconsistent in [the US continuing to behaving unilaterally].
"[The US is] the biggest, most powerful country in the world now … But if you believe that we should be trying to create a world with rules and partnerships and habits of behaviour that we would like to live in when we're no longer the military political economic superpower in the world, then you wouldn't do that. It just depends on what you believe."
Long before 2003, Clinton wanted to begin preparing Americans for this new world. "Clinton believed … what we had in the wake of the cold war was a multilateral moment - an opportunity to shape the world through our active leadership of the institutions Clinton admired and [Charles] Krauthammer disdained," writes Strobe Talbott, former US deputy secretary of state, in his book . "But Clinton kept that belief largely to himself while he was in office … political instincts told him it would be inviting trouble to suggest that the sun would some day set on American pre-eminence."
Sadly, few Americans have heeded Clinton's wisdom. Few dare to mention that America could well be No 2. I discovered this when I chaired a panel on "The future of American power" at last year's World Economic Forum in Davos. After citing projections that America would have the second-largest economy in just a few years, I asked the American panellists - two senators, a congresswoman and a former deputy national security adviser - whether Americans are ready to become No 2. To my shock, none could acknowledge publicly this possibility.
America may become No 2 faster than anyone has anticipated. According to recent International Monetary Fund projections, China will have a larger share of global gross domestic product than the US by 2017: the US share will decline to 17.9 per cent, and China's will rise to 18.3 per cent.
Even if America becomes No 2, we will still have a better world. In many ways, the world is "converging" to American values and standards. The global middle class is booming, interstate war is waning and never before have people travelled and communicated across the world so easily. These changes are creating common values and norms across the world.
However, while humanity is well on its way to combating absolute poverty and interstate warfare, other problems are surfacing. Curtailing issues like climate change, human and drug trafficking, and financial crises requires co-operation among nation states, yet this is not happening. A simple analogy illustrates this.
