World Politics since 1989. Jonathan Holslag
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victorious period. There were concerns about the state of Western society, its economy, and its democracy. The West was seen as being on a slippery slope, a slippery slope down. A first critique that resonated through the Western world at the beginning of the 1990s was that the capitalist system had flaws. Inequality could become as problematic a misallocation of production factors as the forced misallocation that brought communism to a collapse. The consequent question that many asked was whether the West still had the moral leadership to solve that problem or whether it had already grown too complacent. Either way, it could not afford paralysis. The Soviet Union might have disappeared; the unipolar moment of almost uncontested power could be very brief in a world where new competitors continuously tried to improve their position. Barely had the cheers about the collapse of the Soviet Union subsided, or opinion makers predicted that Western power was set to decline, than preponderance would soon make way for a new stage of competition. Complacency, consumerism, and persistent provincialism would make matters worse.
Challenges on the horizon?
Concerns about the internal problems thus led to concerns about the position of the West in the world. The United States had the power resources to lead. Trade and investment made countries more dependent on one another. But interdependence required Americans to have an open attitude toward the world, to invest in international institutions.47 It was questioned whether the United States was able to act like a leader, not so much because of its natural penchant for isolationism, but because internal uncertainty aggravated a tendency to introversion.48 Books whose covers promised American leadership carried sobering analyses inside, monodies about America’s economic fragility and how it all crippled its capability to compete with new economic challengers.49
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, echoed this concern. “It is alarming,” it remarked, “at least for anyone living in Western Europe or North America, in that the focus of world economic power will shift inexorably . . . towards the Far East.”50 It was no moment for self-satisfaction when Western households were falling for Asian ingenuity: Nintendo’s Gameboy, Sony’s Walkman, and Toyota SUVs. In spite of Japan having entered a decade of slow growth, manufacturers remained strong. On the one hand, it sourced from cheap countries like China. On the other hand, Japan demonstrated that, confronted with competition and a mature home market, rich countries could upgrade instead of relocating, by investing in technology, quality, and automation.51 Instead of running trade deficits, Japan preserved modest surpluses. And in Japan’s wake followed other markets: South Korea, Taiwan – and China.
The fall of the Iron Curtain reinforced the idea that communication would bring commerce and cooperation. Soft power, or the ability of a state to attract, would grow more important. Virtual power, the ability to innovate, to establish strong brands, and to profit from the resources and cheap labor elsewhere was presented as an efficient way for the West to continue to lead. Confidence was drawn also from European integration. A dozen countries kept going further in economic integration. They were ready to pass sovereignty on matters like customs to supranational institutions.52 Some saw the European experience leading to a deeper transformation, a transformation of the mind. Instead of being fixated with sovereignty, citizens came to see themselves as Europeans. Identities changed and so did the very nature of power politics. The predators, who bloodily fought each other for centuries, had become herbivores. Anarchy is what states make of it.53 If Europe could do it, why could the rest of the world not follow?
This optimistic notion, however, was criticized. Had the Europeans truly become herbivores? Member states retained sovereignty on matters like security and foreign policy. And while they had become more civilized toward one another, they were still seen as predators elsewhere. In the United States, diplomats cautioned that in spite of the swollen language about values, its moral credibility was limited. While the world looked benign through the lens of economic liberalism and the constructivist idea of world citizenship, the existing order also meant inferiority and exploitation to others. Hence, friction would be inevitable. “The West should not expect the world to become a more peace loving or free place,” wrote an academic. “The future does not promise to be more tranquil. . . . The day of the dictator is not over and many nations are ruled by repressive governments. . . . We still live in an anarchic international order.”54 While the Central Intelligence Agency was criticized for having failed to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, it did provide intelligence assessments about the risk of instability in the Middle East and Africa, and uncertainty about China and Russia’s future.55 The Department of Defense drafted an internal vision document that stated the need for “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”56
Western societies were aware that the unipolar moment was shaky. But was the West ready to act upon it? The most skeptical assessment was that the Western world was set to follow the fate of declining empires in the past. Had the United States not arrived at the point where Venice was around 1500, Holland around 1660, and Britain around 1873? The watershed between rise and fall. Declinists referred to the Soviets challenging American technological leadership with the launch of the Sputnik in 1957, the oil crisis of 1973, President Ronald Reagan’s unwillingness to address fiscal and trade deficits when they were still small in the 1980s.57 The productivity edge relative to that of rival states had begun to fritter away but the costs of preserving global influence did not diminish.58 “Today America is where Britain was around the turn of the century,” one renowned economist asserted. “Rome lasted a thousand years, the British Empire about 200; why are we slipping after about 50 years?”59
Future
The end of the Cold War did not lead to the expectation that the history of war, dictatorship, and exploitation had reached its end. Neither was everyone convinced that the West would lead. Its weaknesses were numerous. Neoliberalism, in theory, held that citizens were encouraged by competition to give society their best. In practice, policies of neoliberalism had coincided with growing external debt, the decay of infrastructure, and diminishing interest in manufacturing. While it surely pressured people to work harder, it was less evident whether it empowered them as citizens. Other competitors loomed on the horizon. Not only pundits vented their concern. Opinion polls showed that only half of Americans were satisfied with the state of the nation. In 1989 and 1990, only about 40 percent of Americans expected the future to become better while 25 percent believed it would be worse. The Soviet Union might have been defeated, but it did not feel like a victory of the West: neither to the public, nor to many of its opinion leaders. It presented an opportunity, as the West had unequaled power. But would it be able to use it in a way that would restore confidence? Would it use its power advantage to redress some of the internal challenges? Would it be able to use its power to try to shape a world that was more hospitable to its ideals?
Notes
1 1. William Safire, 1991. The new, new world order. The New York Times, January 17.
2 2. John Campbell, 2011. The Iron Lady. London: Penguin, p. 48.
3 3. Concerns triadic patents.
4 4. The North Atlantic Treaty, Washington, April 4, 1949.
5 5. See the declaration of US–EC relations, December 1, 1990.
6 6. Kenneth Newton, and Pippa Norris, 1999. Confidence in public institutions: Faith, culture or performance? Paper for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 1–5.
7 7. Ze’ev Chafets, 1990. The tragedy of Detroit. The New York Times, July 29.
8 8. Gordon Brown, 1989. Thatcherism. London Review of Books, 11(3), 3–4.
9 9. OECD: Gross fixed capital formation in constant prices between 1981 and 1990.
10 10. Ronald Shelp, 1987. Giving the services economy a bum rap. The New York Times, May 17.
11 11.