Sometimes it takes a crisis to dispense with intellectual fads. The world’s response to Libya has made clear that currently fashionable arguments about the “rise of the Rest” and the world’s new “nonpolarity” are simply untrue. Charles Krauthammer was wrong about one thing in his description of the “unipolar moment” at the end of the Cold War: We are not living in a unipolar moment, we are witnessing a unipolar era. Why? Because the “rest”—China and India—are unable and unwilling to lead.
What the new declinists miss is that while the United States is not as far ahead of India and China in material strength as it used to be, the vision of world order it shares with its NATO allies provides it with a moral strength and legitimacy impossible to measure. The new declinists point to the ways in which the “Rest” can make life marginally more difficult for the West. But while the “Rest” may carp from the sidelines and gum up the works on international trade and financial agreements, when it comes to upholding international order, Delhi and Beijing will take a pass. We may be tiring of it, but the Unipolar Era is alive and well.
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