The World Needs Power-Sharing

MentalJumpstart (whoever you are, thanks!) sent us this powerfully infuriating article.

Infuriating because on face value, it's convincing, and within another paradigm, it makes sense.

Let's start off with this: the article is called "Why the World Still Needs Mr. Big: Rumors of its demise have been exaggerated. Just one country has the will and the wherewithal to take care of business." The will to take care of business. That's where this whole article goes wrong. In the subtitle. That might be a record. (Also, Joffe needs to go back and re-watch Sex and the City, because Mr. Big is an asshole but he definitely isn't a global hegemonist)

What exactly does that mean, "take care of business?" Let's speculate. The only things that superpowers are actually better at than normal-powers for are a)domination and b)war, which is a subset of domination. Not that superpowers have the monopoly on wars. The wars that we embark upon as an international community, at least, have come much closer to being ''just'' wars (Rwanda, former Yugoslavia) than anything America has lately embarked upon.

The point is, no one should be "taking care of business." No country should have a monopoly on domination of every lesser power, no country should be able to get away with the wars of "preemptive" aggression that we've flipped the world off with.

So I agree with Jaffe. Russia, China, Europe even should not be allowed to take power over the world in our stead. We shouldn't have been allowed to take power over the world in the first place. We should behave more like Europe--having the "means" but not the "will" to be a superpower, because in a perfect world, no one would have the will. In this one, however, we'll have to share power.

He got it right in the very beginning, "Washington faces two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it is not winning. Russia, China, Europe and perhaps even India are stepping forward to claim a piece of the leadership action; the "unipolar moment" is waning in favor of multipolarity. There goes the American century." And thank God.

Post-script: I very, very much resent Joffe's assertion that only Russia and China shelter corrupt, brutal, even evil governments. We installed, funded, supported, and armed, countless regimes, from Iraq to Indonesia to countless Latin American fascist dictatorships and much, much more, many informally through government-sanctioned, officially illegal arms dealers. I know I'm going to sound like Hugo Chavez here, but seriously, go read Hegemony or Survival.