Can the World's "Two Camps" Cooperate?

How can we best understand the current international system? Is it America in decline... a post-America world... world without the west... second world... rise of the rest... return of the rest... new Asian hemisphere...pluralistic hegemony... flat world? I think of the world as having many layers and therefore centers of gravity. At the Carnegie Council, George Washington University professor Harry Harding pitched a new framework for understanding the international system--one of two political parties (or camps). One party is elitist reformers led by the United States. The other party is the populist conservatives led by China and Russia.

Can these two parties cooperate? I agree with Harry that the stakes are too high for countries not to cooperate. Here is how he answers it.

"World Without the West" at the Nixon Center

I had a chance to respond to Steve Weber in person yesterday at the Nixon Center on his excellent "World Without the West" article in the National Interest. Editor Nick Gvosdev (he blogs about it here) convened about 40 senior scholars, government officials, and writers to discuss Weber's provocative article, which warns of alternative power centers--namely in China, India, and Russia--in the international system.

Weber's research shows that these three economies are integrating more rapidly with the developing world than one would expect. He suggests that the United States either: 1. try to stop these economies from integrating more rapidly with the developing world; 2. vie for contested relationships (or "make more friends" as I put it); or 3. do nothing and allow this group of economies to do what they will.

I initially lead the critique online--on the National Interest's website here. As I mentioned yesterday, the World Without the West argument ignores the inevitability of economic change between the RICs. It is likely that one of the three economies will grow faster than the other two, changing their relationships and shared interests. As the gap between these economies grows, their relationships with the developing world will also change. Second, these three rising powers face pressures for more transparent, accountable governance from three sources—pressure from their citizens, bilateral partners and the international community.

Third, these three states have little in common with one another. Moreover, when I ask Russians or Chinese about the potential for cooperation between the two, they look at me like I am telling them a joke. As one commenter said yesterday, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is "meaningless." Meanwhile, India is a ball of paradoxes just like any other state. The National Interest actually published an article about this point in the same edition--the article is John Thomson's "Inconclusive India," which ends on an optimistic note about Indian society:

"...it became clear to me that India can continue to build on its current momentum if the people and government coalesce around principles of responsibility, charity and restraint. To do so, they will need to successfully embrace a broad spectrum of issues—most particularly values that are personified by the father of independent India," Thomson writes.

I ended my comments by offering a few thoughts for discussion. First, ethics and leadership are linked. A power that is unethical is unsustainable. In other words, if a rising power is viewed as immoral, illegitimate, or not benign, the classic balance of threat mechanism snaps in to place and countries will likely balance against the perceived divergence in values.

Second, which actors drive norms in the international system? It is no longer just the state. These days, civil societies, consumers, and corporations are increasingly at the forefront of addressing problems of climate change to labor abuse--far ahead of governments.

Finally, where do liberal values come from? Are they the result of a culture's experience with philosophical traditions or are they the pragmatic result of interactions between international businesses? In other words, transparency and accountability are not only right but they also facilitate business relationships.

The Nixon Center will be posting a summary of the event soon. To read more about it, visit their site here.

Alternative Leadership Still Requires Ethics

I responded to an article titled "A World Without the West" by Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber in The National Interest inaugural online discussion Report and Retort. I am reposting my (admittedly cosmopolitan) comment below:

Being number one means you have to constantly look over your shoulder. Groups of bogeymen appear in the shadows and observers looking out for America’s interests are justified in assessing the potential threats they pose to U.S. power. Over the past 35 years, these groups have included China and the Soviet Union; communists; Islamic nations; China and Japan; Iran, Iraq and North Korea; China and India; and Asians more generally.

According to Barma, Ratner and Weber, China, India and Russia comprise the latest group on the watch list. The authors seem to riff off of the acronym "BRICs" that Goldman Sachs’s Jim O’Neill "dreamt up" in 2001. While O’Neill argued the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) combined could grow larger than the current G-7 economies by 2050, the authors suggest the accompanying growth in political influence is worth examining. Never mind that O’Neill’s BRICs was partly a marketing tool for investors—these authors are rightly concerned about what China’s rise and Russia’s political backtracking mean for international norms.

The authors’ concerns derive from characteristics they see as unique to China, India and Russia (call them RICs)—in these societies, "communal, rather than individual, traditions are strong"; "state stewardship of the economy is the dominant ideology"; and "raw power trumps contract law." But do these perceived characteristics mean that they will create a "World Without the West", with its own set of norms, rules, institutions and "currencies of power?" I offer a few factors that suggest we are not headed toward a world divided into two—the West and the rest—in the near future.

First, the World Without the West argument ignores the inevitability of economic change between the RICs. It is likely that one of the three economies will grow faster than the other two, changing their relationships and shared interests. Even the Goldman Sachs forecast for 2050 has China’s economy at 45 trillion dollars, India’s at 26 trillion and Russia’s at less than 10 trillion. The U.S. economy would be at about 35 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the United States and Japan would remain the wealthiest (GDP per capita), while Russia would be the only RIC with wealth comparable to G-7 countries.

Second, while the authors mention states’ interests in the RICs, the three rising powers face pressures for more transparent, accountable governance from three sources—pressure from their citizens, bilateral partners and the international community. China, the one likely to have the greatest economic weight, just passed a more serious labor protection law last week and is facing calls from its economic partners all over the world for more transparency and accountability in its exports and foreign direct investment.

Investors, no matter where they are from, demand transparency and accountability. And human rights do matter in economic relationships: One of O’Neill’s recent reports talks about the roles and rights of women in the BRIC societies and their impacts on investment environments. Meanwhile, as nations acquire the capacity to contribute to global goods, calls for them to do so will grow louder.

The authors call the RICs communal and state driven, implying a model contrary to transparency and respect for human rights. But I cannot think of a better example of a communal and state driven economic success than Japan. Japan’s place in the world suggests that communitarianism is not inconsistent with supporting Western institutions.

Third, the RICs have little in common with one another at present. While China and India are manufacturing centers that are working to improve their human capital stock, Russia is banking on natural-resource-driven growth, making its economic future vulnerable to oil prices. India has a growing population, while Russia’s is shrinking and China will face a labor shortage. India is a democracy, Russia a quasi-democracy and China a single-party state. With China and Russia on the UN Security Council and Russia in the G-8, they are to varying degrees enmeshed in Western institutions. In the past week, I have tested the RIC thesis with senior Russian and Chinese experts and they said that lack of trust among the three RICs countries prevents them from teaming up in a meaningful way.

Fourth, the place of ethics in foreign policy has been growing globally for hundreds of years—and not just in the west. Justine Rosenthal and Leslie Gelb wrote in their 2003 Foreign Affairs article, "The Rise of Ethics in Foreign Policy: Reaching a Values Consensus":

From the dawn of human history, there have been laws about the initiation and conduct of war. The ancient Egyptians and the fourth century BC Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu set out rules on how and why to begin wars and how those wars should be fought. Saint Augustine argued that an act of war needs a just cause, and Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that battle requires the authority of a sovereign power and should be acted out with good intention.

Most international surveys show popular support for good governance and human rights—the liberal vision that is supposedly threatened by the RICs. Bruce Stokes, who recently gave a talk (listen here) with co-author Andrew Kohut at the Carnegie Council on their new book America Against the World, reported that, according to their surveys, "Support for democratic values is widely shared across the world." Those values include free speech, a fair judiciary and multiparty elections. Economist Marcus Noland wrote in a 2005 paper that he found a statistical correlation between acceptance of homosexuality and economic performance. Finally, groupings such as ASEAN are grappling with the need they feel for a codification of democratic values and the allowance for humanitarian intervention when necessary.

Barma, Ratner and Weber describe a mode of governing that may be attractive to individual governments but not necessarily to those governments’ citizens, the states’ bilateral partners and the international community. Moreover, they do not show how the "model" that the RICs are offering improves on current Western-led institutions, nor do they show how the RICs can solve the failures of those institutions. For the RICs to present a cohesive form of alternative leadership, they will need to be more than just big.