Experts: US hegemony is a thing of the past
Experts: US hegemony is a thing of the past
Experts look at potential influence of emerging powers on region
By Nicholas Kimbrell
Source: Daily Star, 25-10-2008
BEIRUT: A collection of international scholars, diplomats and political analysts gathered in Beirut Friday for a two-day conference exploring the emergence and resurgence of nations, specifically China, Russia and India, and their potential influence on the Middle East. Hosted by the Carnegie Middle East Center and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, the conference, entitled "Emerging Powers and the Middle East," had been planned for May but was rescheduled to October due to the street violence that swept through Beirut and other cities this spring.
The postponement, as several participants pointed out, proved fortuitous in a certain regard, allowing presenters to weigh in on the affects of the devastating global credit crisis, which could, according to some of the presenters, accelerate the rise of the leading, so-called "developing nations."
Author and political analyst Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation set the tone of Friday's meetings during the opening seminar, "After the Uni-Polar Moment," suggesting that "the return to uni-polarity, American hegemony, is literally impossible."
Advocating a more rigorous and collective analysis of multi-polarity, particularly in relation to Russia and India, Khanna cited the US, China and the EU as the incumbent and future "centers of gravity."
Most of the speakers seemed to challenge the notion of US hegemony without questioning the still-dominant role Washington holds in much of the world. Indeed, featured speakers from rising powers sought to define their policies as distinct from the proactive US unilateralism, particularly in the Middle East.
Chu Shulong, deputy director of the Institute of International Strategic and Development Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, emphasized China's desire to end its historic isolation and win regional and global "friends" based on economic and diplomatic terms.
"China doesn't have military commitments to any country in this region," he said, adding that "China does not and will not have an interest in every corner of the world like the US does today."
He highlighted the potential for economic collaboration and development between China and the Middle East (a geographic classification that was regularly challenged as inadequate during the conference), but noted that current Chinese trade with the region is on par with Chinese trade with Africa and Latin America - far less than with its East Asian neighbors.
Although the seminar's moderator, Heiko Wimmen, called Chu's remarks an "understatement," they reflected an impulse, given voice at the conference, to re-invent geopolitics and revise neoliberal financial policies under a more multilateral and region-conscious rubric.
Hermann Schwengel, head of the Institute for Sociology at Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, said that the second world - the developing world - was filling the growing gap between the first and third worlds.
Schwengel cited three "great shifts," long in motion but precipitated by the current financial crisis: a movement from geo-finance to geo-economics, marked by smaller, more regulated markets; a movement from empire to geo-regional power; and a categorical movement from emerging powers to emerging societies.
While each of the speakers touched on the increased influence rising powers could wield in the Middle East, former Egyptian MP and magazine editor Osama al-Ghazali Harb and longtime Indian diplomat and former Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar grounded their analysis in the realities of the region.
The significance of global shifts in power on the Middle East is not defined by emerging powers but by the situation in the region itself, Harb said.
He noted an "immunity to a democratic shift," socioeconomic inequalities, illiteracy, misinterpretations of Islam and an absence of leadership as impediments to advancement.
Harb suggested that India's influence in the region was primarily political and driven by human capital in the Gulf, that China's interests were predominantly economic and that Russia's influence still remained defined by residual Cold War alliances with countries like Syria and Libya.
These countries' tendencies to treat regional problems, like terrorism, as uniquely American problems, he warned, were counterproductive.
Bhadrakumar, while noting India's close relationships with the US and "Israel", lauded India's "inclusive" diplomacy and advocated a revival of an Indo-Iranian partnership. He advocated a geo-political pragmatism driven by "strong, secular domestic policies."
Speaking with The Daily Star, Bhadrakumar said that a nation could forge multiple partnerships in the region without being prescriptive. He cited recent agreements with "Israel" as part of a "pragmatic relationship" and added that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Delhi last week to open a Palestinian Embassy.
The conference with continue Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Hotel Rotana Gefinor in Hamra.
Experts look at potential influence of emerging powers on region
By Nicholas Kimbrell
Source: Daily Star, 25-10-2008
BEIRUT: A collection of international scholars, diplomats and political analysts gathered in Beirut Friday for a two-day conference exploring the emergence and resurgence of nations, specifically China, Russia and India, and their potential influence on the Middle East. Hosted by the Carnegie Middle East Center and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, the conference, entitled "Emerging Powers and the Middle East," had been planned for May but was rescheduled to October due to the street violence that swept through Beirut and other cities this spring.
The postponement, as several participants pointed out, proved fortuitous in a certain regard, allowing presenters to weigh in on the affects of the devastating global credit crisis, which could, according to some of the presenters, accelerate the rise of the leading, so-called "developing nations."
Author and political analyst Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation set the tone of Friday's meetings during the opening seminar, "After the Uni-Polar Moment," suggesting that "the return to uni-polarity, American hegemony, is literally impossible."
Advocating a more rigorous and collective analysis of multi-polarity, particularly in relation to Russia and India, Khanna cited the US, China and the EU as the incumbent and future "centers of gravity."
Most of the speakers seemed to challenge the notion of US hegemony without questioning the still-dominant role Washington holds in much of the world. Indeed, featured speakers from rising powers sought to define their policies as distinct from the proactive US unilateralism, particularly in the Middle East.
Chu Shulong, deputy director of the Institute of International Strategic and Development Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, emphasized China's desire to end its historic isolation and win regional and global "friends" based on economic and diplomatic terms.
"China doesn't have military commitments to any country in this region," he said, adding that "China does not and will not have an interest in every corner of the world like the US does today."
He highlighted the potential for economic collaboration and development between China and the Middle East (a geographic classification that was regularly challenged as inadequate during the conference), but noted that current Chinese trade with the region is on par with Chinese trade with Africa and Latin America - far less than with its East Asian neighbors.
Although the seminar's moderator, Heiko Wimmen, called Chu's remarks an "understatement," they reflected an impulse, given voice at the conference, to re-invent geopolitics and revise neoliberal financial policies under a more multilateral and region-conscious rubric.
Hermann Schwengel, head of the Institute for Sociology at Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany, said that the second world - the developing world - was filling the growing gap between the first and third worlds.
Schwengel cited three "great shifts," long in motion but precipitated by the current financial crisis: a movement from geo-finance to geo-economics, marked by smaller, more regulated markets; a movement from empire to geo-regional power; and a categorical movement from emerging powers to emerging societies.
While each of the speakers touched on the increased influence rising powers could wield in the Middle East, former Egyptian MP and magazine editor Osama al-Ghazali Harb and longtime Indian diplomat and former Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar grounded their analysis in the realities of the region.
The significance of global shifts in power on the Middle East is not defined by emerging powers but by the situation in the region itself, Harb said.
He noted an "immunity to a democratic shift," socioeconomic inequalities, illiteracy, misinterpretations of Islam and an absence of leadership as impediments to advancement.
Harb suggested that India's influence in the region was primarily political and driven by human capital in the Gulf, that China's interests were predominantly economic and that Russia's influence still remained defined by residual Cold War alliances with countries like Syria and Libya.
These countries' tendencies to treat regional problems, like terrorism, as uniquely American problems, he warned, were counterproductive.
Bhadrakumar, while noting India's close relationships with the US and "Israel", lauded India's "inclusive" diplomacy and advocated a revival of an Indo-Iranian partnership. He advocated a geo-political pragmatism driven by "strong, secular domestic policies."
Speaking with The Daily Star, Bhadrakumar said that a nation could forge multiple partnerships in the region without being prescriptive. He cited recent agreements with "Israel" as part of a "pragmatic relationship" and added that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Delhi last week to open a Palestinian Embassy.
The conference with continue Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Hotel Rotana Gefinor in Hamra.
