The world is going through not just an economic turmoil. It is a world order crisis and depending on one's point of view it is the sad end or good riddance of an era. Pax Americana has come crushing down after more than 60 years.
For much longer than that the economic system became one of trust. After it abandoned the gold standard, then the government guarantees (which recently showed how much good they can do – not much) the economy depended on far more nebulous and interconnected mechanisms.
But in all cases, order was supposed to be implied and the lone remaining superpower was to act like the world sheriff and maintain that order. But the shaking of the trust toward the United States unavoidably has shaken the trust on the economy.
Globalization was meant to smooth things among previously warring nations and it created for at least twenty years an incongruous situation because in a number of ways it was tantamount to Americanization. This followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War which was presumed to further the influence of the victor.
But an imbalance emerged that was transparent everywhere, even in countries that officially were at odds or even enemies of the United States. The business community, the upper middle classes and the oligarchies everywhere viewed and loved the United States, blatantly or clandestinely, as the Mecca of modernity, innovation and economic prowess.
Pitted against that view was the bulk of the world population, left out of the benefits of economic growth. A modern proletariat could not possibly celebrate the US' successes and it sought other venues for answers, such as religious fundamentalism or falling for the lure of populist leaders. Populism was supposed to be a relic of the failed past. It is a sign of the troubled times that it has resurfaced.
The world is witnessing nothing short of the fall of an empire and it was the ignominious luck of George W. Bush to be the modern manifestation of Nero. The analogs are striking: a leader not particularly gifted intellectually, cheerleading (playing the lyre) while his domain burns and all the while insisting that all is fine.
The signs of the US' collapse were there for everyone to see.
The largest problem with the war in Iraq was not whether the United States had the right pretext, whether it lied about weapons of mass destruction or whether there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11.
By far, the problem was how the war was fought, allowing it to linger without resolution, timid, afraid of casualties with both a half desire to scare and a half desire to please the world. In the end the United States failed by invoking neither fear nor admiration, a condition not befitting an empire. Love or hate the US' war in Iraq, the weakness it showed is bound to have far wider implications.
Access and use of energy sources proved that in the modern world they were the national trait that separates rich from poor countries. The United States, insecure about its own, unsure of a national direction, became increasingly dependent on countries which, sensing the vulnerability of their prey, embarked on perhaps the most reckless path in memory. There was no rational explanation for $150 per barrel of oil, except for geopolitics and energy militant nations saw to it.
And there should be no question. The rhetoric about anthropogenic global warming was a full frontal attack on the United States and its lifestyle, fomented by the world intelligentsia, reflecting and sensing in the people all around them. It does not really matter whether there is a link between observed global climate change and the production of carbon dioxide. It has been mostly political and the target is impossible to hide.
America's cutting in size was accelerated from inside, again not unlike Rome's. Al Gore, a mediocre politician became an international hero with a Nobel and an Oscar for championing what essentially meant the lessening of the country that at one time he expressed a desire to lead.
The uncertainty in world leadership and the falling of the sheriff to hide behind, brings a crisis with no end in sight. Its resolution can no longer be the revamping of economic trust, a hard thing to do in any case. There is a need for a new world order which will prove to be nothing short of excruciating.
The writer, Michael Economides,?is a professor at the University of Houston and the editor-in-chief of the Energy Tribune
(China Daily October 24, 2008)
