Latin American and East Asian Challenges to US Hegemony
Now the U.S. has a plan and there’s another structure called the Summit of the Americas. And that’s met a couple of times and that gets all the heads of state of the Western Hemisphere, except for Cuba. They’re supposed to meet in April in Trinidad and Tobago. I wonder how many heads of state are actually going to show up.
But what Brazilian President Lula da Silva did was he undercut that meeting completely by this other meeting. This was absolutely inconceivable five years ago. Then what’s Obama going to do? He can’t change that. He can’t change the fact that the European Union hailed his victory and said in a unanimously passed resolution “we want to renew our friendship with the United States, but this time not as junior partners.” The picture is very clear. It’s very clear.
Just a couple days ago you had a China, Japan, South Korea meeting asserting what I’ve been arguing for sometime would come, which is a kind of political collaboration of some kind among these three countries -- none of which the U.S. wants and none of which Obama can change. He can bless it. He can talk a much more palatable language to the rest of the world, but that doesn’t make the U.S. the leader. He’s still thinking that the U.S. is the leader. He has to be disabused of this idea. Nobody wants the U.S. as the leader; people want the U.S. as a possible collaborator on many things that have to be done like climate change, but not as a leader. I think his hands are tied there in terms of the world economy. What he can do is what everybody else can do, which is use the state machinery at home to do social democratic things to keep from having an uprising nationally.
Everybody is worried about that in the United States, in China, in South Africa, in Germany. Everybody is worried that they’re going to have something like what happened recently in Greece -- a spontaneous uprising of angry people. That’s very hard for governments to deal with. When people are a little bit angry, which is what is basically happening now, they get even angrier. All the governments are trying to appease them. OK, fine. That’s what he can do. He will do things domestically. He will spend money on building bridges, which gives jobs. He will try to get a new health program through that will cover people. All good things, but they’re national things, they’re local things. They’re the same kind of good things that other leaders are trying to do in their countries. If he recognizes his limitations, he could be a great success. If he doesn’t recognize his limitations, he could be dragged into something.
I just wrote a piece on Pakistan; I called it “Pakistan: Obama’s Nightmare.” There ain’t nothing he can do about Pakistan. We’ve done enough damage already and if he tries to do any more... but he’s been very reckless. Part of his business of getting elected is to show “I’m a tough guy, too.” So he made statements about Afghanistan, which he can’t carry through on. He made statements about Pakistan he can’t carry through on. He made statements on Israel-Palestine he can’t carry through on. He should stop making statements. He should start, how shall I say, lowering the rhetoric. There’ll be all sorts of people who tell him that’s not what he should do, but I’m telling him that is what he should do.
Suh: We are now witnessing a very different world. The dollar, which has served as the world’s currency since the Bretton Woods system and survived the 1970s crisis, is significantly weak. It is facing the challenges of other currencies, particularly the Euro and the Japanese yen, that are vying to become the next global currency. The financial crisis fundamentally shook faith in the dollar, and some even suggest that it has already collapsed as the world currency. On the other hand, the U.S. maintains unchallenged military power and spends a disproportionate amount on keeping up its military dominance. Washington spends on its military as much as the rest of the world combined. And yet, U.S. military power, however technically sophisticated it may be, has proven to be rather ineffective, even useless, in theaters like Iraq and Afghanistan. All in all, the two main pillars of U.S. hegemony have been shaken to the core. How do these changes affect the geopolitical cleavages?
Regional Alternaives
Wallerstein: Ah, well, yes. That’s a reasonable question. As I see it now, there are maybe eight or ten foci of geopolitical power in the world. And that’s too many. All of them will start trying to make deals with each other and see what kind of arrangements are optimal because with 10, none of them have enough power. So, we’re in for a juggling period. People will try out possibilities and see what they can do. For example, I see the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as one possible combination, but Russia is not sure how it feels about it, India is not sure how it feels about it, and maybe even China is not sure how it feels about it. OK, maybe Russia and China both are playing footsie with Brazil and Latin America to see if they can arrange things. The United States can play that game too. We are in a period of, how shall I say, without clarity. I have long argued that the likely combination, I argued this as early as the article I wrote in 1980, is an East Asian combo with the United States, Europe with Russia, with India not sure where it wants to go.
Suh: One of the cleavages you talked about in your writing is the divide between the Davos Forum and the World Social Forum. Of course, these are not cleavages in geographical terms.
Wallerstein: That’s right. It’s a political cleavage.
Suh: Political cleavages and cleavages in terms of differing political visions.