Page 1 of 2 Decline and fall of just about everyone
By Pepe Escobar
More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC
countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy's top 10
- but not until 2040. Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the
number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even
Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look even
better. There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and
Brazil seventh.
No wonder Jim O'Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of
Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been stressing that "the world is no longer
dependent on the leadership of the US and Europe". After all, since 2007,
China's economy
has grown by 45%, the American economy by less than 1% - figures startling
enough to make anyone take back their predictions.
American anxiety and puzzlement reached new heights when the latest
International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections indicated that, at least by
certain measurements, the Chinese economy would overtake the US by 2016. (Until
recently, Goldman Sachs was pointing towards 2050 for that first-place
exchange.)
Within the next 30 years, the top five will, according to Goldman Sachs, likely
be China, the US, India, Brazil and Mexico. Western Europe? Bye-bye!
A system stripped to its essence
Increasing numbers of experts agree that Asia is now leading the way for the
world, even as it lays bare glaring gaps in the West's narrative of
civilization. Yet to talk about "the decline of the West" is a dangerous
proposition. A key historical reference is Oswald Spengler's 1918 essay with
that title. Spengler, a man of his times, thought that humanity functioned
through unique cultural systems, and that Western ideas would not be pertinent
for, or transferable to, other regions of the planet. (Tell that howler to the
young Egyptians in Tahrir Square.)
Spengler captured the Western-dominated zeitgeist of another century. He saw
cultures as living and dying organisms, each with a unique soul. The East or
Orient was "magical", while the West was "Faustian". A reactionary misanthrope,
he was convinced that the West had already reached the supreme status available
to a democratic civilization - and so was destined to experience the "decline"
of his title.
If you're thinking that this sounds like an avant-la-lettre Huntingtonesque
"clash of civilizations", you can be excused, because that's exactly what it
was.
Speaking of civilizational clashes, did anyone notice that "maybe" in a recent
Time cover story picking up on Spenglerian themes and headlined "The Decline
and Fall of Europe (and Maybe the West)"? In our post-Spenglerian moment, the
"West" is surely the United States, and how could that magazine get it so
wrong? Maybe?
After all, a Europe now in deep financial crisis will be "in decline" as long
as it remains inextricably intertwined with and continues to defer to "the
West" - that is, Washington - even as it witnesses the simultaneous economic
ascent of what's sometimes derisively referred to as "the South."
Think of the present global capitalist moment not as a "clash", but a "cash of
civilizations".
If Washington is now stunned and operating on autopilot, that's in part
because, historically speaking, its moment as the globe's "sole superpower" or
even "hyperpower" barely outlasted Andy Warhol's notorious 15 minutes of fame -
from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to 9/11 and
George W Bush's doctrine. The new American century was swiftly throttled in
three hubris-filled stages: 9/11 (blowback); the invasion of Iraq (preemptive
war); and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown (casino capitalism).
Meanwhile, one may argue that Europe still has its non-Western opportunities,
that, in fact, the periphery increasingly dreams with European - not American -
subtitles. The Arab Spring, for instance, was focused on European-style
parliamentary democracies, not an American presidential system. In addition,
however financially anxious it may be, Europe remains the world's largest
market. In an array of technological fields, it now rivals or outpaces the US,
while regressive Persian Gulf monarchies splurge on euros (and prime real
estate in Paris and London) to diversify their portfolios.
Yet, with "leaders" like the neo-Napoleonic President Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime
Minister David (of Arabia) Cameron, Premier Silvio ("bunga bunga") Berlusconi,
and Chancellor Angela ("Dear Prudence") Merkel largely lacking imagination or
striking competence, Europe certainly doesn't need enemies.
Decline or not, it might find a whole new lease on life by sidelining its
Atlanticism and boldly betting on its Euro-Asian destiny. It could open up its
societies, economies, and cultures to China, India, and Russia, while pushing
southern Europe to connect far more deeply with a rising Turkey, the rest of
the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (and not via further North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) "humanitarian" bombings either).
Otherwise, the facts on the ground spell out something that goes well beyond
the decline of the West: it's the decline of a system in the West that, in
these last years, is being stripped to its grim essence. Historian Eric
Hobsbawm caught the mood of the moment when he wrote in his book How to Change
the World that "the world transformed by capitalism", which Karl Marx
described in 1848 "in passages of dark, laconic eloquence is recognizably the
world of the early twenty-first century".
In a landscape in which politics is being reduced to a (broken) mirror
reflecting finance, and in which producing and saving have been superseded by
consuming, something systemic comes into view. As in the famous line of poet
William Butler Yeats, "the centre cannot hold" - and it won't either.
If the West ceases to be the center, what exactly went wrong?
Are you with me or against me?
It's worth remembering that capitalism was "civilized" thanks to the
unrelenting pressure of gritty working-class movements and the ever-present
threat of strikes and even revolutions. The existence of the Soviet bloc, an
alternate model of economic development (however warped), also helped.
To counteract the USSR, Washington's and Europe's ruling groups had to buy the
support of their masses in defending what no one blushed about calling "the
Western way of life". A complex social contract was forged, and it involved
capital making concessions.
No more. Not in Washington, that's obvious. And increasingly, not in Europe
either. That system started breaking down as soon as - talk about total
ideological triumph! - neo-liberalism became the only show in town. There was a
single superhighway from there and it swept the most fragile strands of the
middle class directly into a new post-industrial proletariat, or simply into
unemployable status.
If neo-liberalism is the victor for now, it's because no realist, alternative
developmental model exists, and yet what it has won is ever more in question.
Meanwhile, except in the Middle East, progressives the world over are
paralyzed, as if expecting the old order to dissolve by itself. Unfortunately,
history teaches us that, at similar crossroads in the past, you are as likely
to find the grapes of wrath, right-wing populist-style, as anything else - or
worse yet, outright fascism.
"The West against the rest" is a simplistic formula that doesn't begin to
describe such a world. Imagine instead, a planet in which "the rest" are trying
to step beyond the West in a variety of ways, but also have absorbed that West
in ways too deep to describe. Here's the irony, then: yes, the West will
"decline", Washington included, and still it will leave itself behind
everywhere.
Sorry, your model sucks
Suppose you're a developing country, shopping in the developmental supermarket.
You look at China and think you see something new - a consensus model that's
turning on the lights everywhere - or do you? After all, the Chinese version of
an economic boom with no political freedom may not turn out to be much of a
model for other countries to follow.
In many ways, it may be more like an inapplicable lethal artifact, a cluster
bomb made up of shards of the Western concept of modernity married to a
Leninist-based formula where a single party controls personnel, propaganda, and
- crucially - the People's Liberation Army.
At the same time, this is a system evidently trying to prove that, even though
the West unified the world - from neo-colonialism to globalization - that
shouldn't imply it's bound to rule forever in material or intellectual terms.
For its part, Europe is hawking a model of supra-national integration as a
means of solving problems and conflicts from the Middle East to Africa. But any
shopper can now see evidence of a European Union on the verge of cracking amid
non-stop inter-European bickering that includes national revolts against the
euro, discontent over NATO's role as a global Robocop, and a style of ongoing
European cultural arrogance that makes it incapable of recognizing, to take one
example, why the Chinese model is so successful in Africa.
Or let's say our shopper looks to the United States, that country still being,
after all, the world's number one economy, its dollar still the world's reserve
currency, and its military still number one in destructive power and still
garrisoning much of the globe.
That would indeed seem impressive, if it weren't for the fact that Washington
is visibly on the decline, oscillating wildly between a lame populism and a
stale orthodoxy, and shilling for casino capitalism on a side street in its
spare time. It's a giant power enveloped in political and economic paralysis
for all the world to see, and no less visibly incapable of coming up with an
exit strategy.
Really, would you buy a model from any of them? In fact, where in a world in
escalating disarray is anyone supposed to look these days when it comes to
models?
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