The Changing of the Guard. O Render da Guarda
«(…) Far from the United States presiding
over a reshaping of global affairs, however, it rapidly found itself beleaguered
in Iraq and enjoying less global support than at any time since 1945. The
exercise of overwhelming military power proved of little effect in Iraq but
served to squander the reserves of soft power, in Joseph S. Nye’s words, the
attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies, that the
United States had accumulated since 1945. Failing to comprehend the significance
of deeper economic trends, as well as misreading the situation in Iraq, the
Bush administration overestimated American power and thereby overplayed its
hand, with the consequence that its policies had exactly the opposite effect to
that which had been intended: instead of enhancing the US’s position in the
world, Bush’s foreign policy seriously weakened it. The neo-conservative
position represented a catastrophic misreading of history.
Military
and political power rest on economic strength. As Paul Kennedy argued in The
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, the ability of nations to exercise and
sustain global hegemony has ultimately depended on their productive capacity.
America’s present superpower status is a product of its rapid economic growth
between 1870 and 1950 and the fact that during the second half of the twentieth
century it was the world’s largest and often most dynamic economy. This
economic strength underpinned and made possible its astonishing political,
cultural and military power from 1945 onwards. According to the economic
historian Angus Maddison, the US economy accounted for 8.8 per cent of global
GDP in 1870. There then followed a spectacular period of growth during which
the proportion rose to 18.9 per cent in 1913 and 27.3 per cent in 1950. This
was followed by a slow and steady decline to 22.1 per cent in 1973, with the figure
now hovering around 20 per cent. This still represents a formidable proportion,
given that the US accounts for only 4.6 per cent of the world’s population, but
the long-run trend is unmistakable. One could make a similar point in relation
to Victorian Britain’s imperial reach between 1850 and 1914. This was made
possible because Britain accomplished the world’s fi rst industrial revolution
and, as a consequence, came to enjoy a big economic lead over all other
countries. Compared with the United States, however, whose share of global GDP
peaked at 35 per cent in 1944 (albeit in a war-ravaged world), the highest figure
for the UK was a much smaller 9 per cent in 1899. The precipitous decline of
Britain as a global power over the last half century has been the predictable
result of its deteriorating relative economic position, its share of global GDP
having sunk to a mere 3.3 per cent by 1998. If Britain took its place alongside
the United States in Iraq, its military contribution was largely cosmetic. The
precondition for being a hegemonic power, including the ability or otherwise to
preside over a formal or informal empire, is economic strength». In
Martin Jacques, Quando a China Mandar no Mundo, 2009, 2012, Temas e Debates,
Círculo de Leitores, ISBN 978-989-644-196-8, Penguin Books, ISBN
978-0-713-992-540.
JDACT, Martin Jacques, Literatura, Economia, China, Conhecimento,
