China rising in the world. What to do?
Subbing in at Andrew Sullivan's blog, David Frum gets some push-back on the notion that American world leadership be a defining characteristic of conservative politics. Frum responds:
Plaintively in some cases, ferociously in others, people asked: why should American world leadership be a goal of any kind of conservative politics?My answer: consider the alternatives. For 60 years, the democratic countries have known ever-rising levels of affluence and security. This benign system of collective security and free trade has extended outward to encompass more and more countries: beyond western Europe to include central and eastern Europe, beyond Japan to reach the small countries of the Pacific Rim. We have not done so well in Latin America and the Middle East, but Chile at least has joined the system and Brazil likely soon will.
This construct is the work of no one country, but it ultimately rests upon the reassuring fact of American power. As Murray Kempton said of Dwight Eisenhower, it is the great tortoise on whose broad shell the world sat in sublime disregard of the source of its peace and security.
Just as even the most self-equilibriating markets need a lender of last resort, so even the most stable international system needs a security guarantor of last resort. Some describe the post-1945 system as a "democratic peace." But democracy alone did not suffice to keep the peace after 1918. It's an American-sustained peace, and should the day come when America loses the power or will to sustain it, the international system that will follow will be not only more dangerous but also less hospitable to liberal values in the broadest sense of the word liberal.
The question I'd pose is not about America's "will" but America's power. America is losing power, in part because of policies that Frum himself championed (see: Iraq, invasion of) and as a result of the economic development of China, which the U.S. has encouraged and profited from.
What does American "leadership" consist of in a world where China continues to close the power gap? A politics, conservative or otherwise, that can cogently address that question without resorting to banalities about American exceptionalism or reassuring myths about how globalization will make everyone play nice, is sorely needed.
(AP Photo)
