Can the U.S. Thrive as Other Powers Rise?

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted June 18, 2008.

Looking beyond U.S. borders, this is a rare moment. Not one of the world's powers is an enemy. The threats to our security do not come from rival nation states. With some threats like climate change -- as Walt Kelly put it via Pogo -- the enemy is us. Even the greatest external violent threats have roots not in powerful nations, but in instability, in states at risk of failure. Our ability to solve all major global problems is compromised or blocked by tribal conflicts, the failure of national institutions, and the resulting breakdown of authority and accountability.

A new book, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise by Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen, argues that it's good for us that other pivotal nations grow wealthier and stronger. We need them on our side so that together we can solve global problems of peace, climate, health, and justice.

Nina Hachigian is a Senior Vice President at the Center for American Progress and a Visiting Scholar of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. Earlier, she was the Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at RAND. From 1998 to 1999, she was on the staff of the National Security Council.

Terrence McNally: You open the book with the line "Our political coming of age was marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall not by the Vietnam War." Could you talk a little about what the world looked like as you were growing up ... some memories of our role in the world?

Nina Hachigian: Well my parents are both immigrants. My mother is first generation. She was born in Germany, and my father's parents were born in Armenia. We traveled frequently to Europe to see relatives. So from a young age, I had an awareness of a big world out there.

Growing up, I remember The Day After, the TV show, so I had an awareness of nuclear Armageddon.

But by the time I was in my 20s, that was all very suddenly behind us. Then the challenge became: we have a very new landscape, how do we deal with it?

Terrence McNally: How old were you for the fall of the Berlin Wall?

Nina Hachigian: I was 22.

Terrence McNally: The Cold War is basically over as you're graduating from college. I graduated in 1969 in the thick of the Vietnam War ...

You say this is a unique moment in our history, but it seems to me we've been at this moment for a number of years now, haven't we? How would you describe our response so far? And how do you explain it?

Nina Hachigian: When the Soviet Union collapsed, we were left as the only superpower. We have been conditioned -- because of the rise of Germany and then World War II, and the rise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War -- to see the rise of other strong nations as a potential threat.

You saw that playing out in the late 80's and 90's with Japan. Lots of fear about Japan and its economy, even though Japan is a military ally, a small country, and a democracy.

Terrence McNally: If we look back now and run some of the journalism or the TV coverage, "the rising sun" and so on ...

Nina Hachigian: We have a chart in the book that I think is very funny. We compare the titles of publications that came out around that time about Japan to titles that are coming out now about China. The words are almost identical: hegemony, take us over, etc.

But the fact is that today none of these powers are our enemies. And we think it's not even constructive to think of them as rivals.

They are in certain areas. There are still flashpoints -- issues like Taiwan -- where we have serious disagreements.

But if you look at the real issues that Americans care about -- safety at home, their prosperity, even in the promotion of democracy -- these countries are not our enemies. They are in fact our partners. If we want to be able to keep Americans safe at home, we have to work with them.

Terrence McNally: You say that when you set out to write this book you didn't have your conclusion. You had questions. What were those questions, and were you surprised by what you learned?

Nina Hachigian: Yes, we were surprised. We had the idea for the book in 2005, and began writing in 2006. At that time there were a lot of headlines about military advances of China and outsourcing jobs to India. There still is today.

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Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org). Visit terrencemcnally.net for podcasts of all interviews and more.