Will the next President of the United States be as audacious as to start a couple of seemingly endless wars? To alienate his or her allies in western Europe, and to divide his/her country?
We can at least hope not. Though Clinton's and Obama's willingness to spurn trading partners in the Americas, and McCain's apparent willingness to continue confronting “rogue” states with armed might, make me suspect that we aren't out of the woods yet.
A topic I've scarcely addressed here is the fuss over the rights of Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. As of this morning, it seems clear the Chinese government has solidly rallied its own people (no great feat, admittedly) against western “rudeness and insults”, the nefarious Dalai Lama and his “clique,” and outside powers determined to humiliate China as it was humiliated during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The scuffling demonstrators are losing the moral high ground they had a few days ago, and grumpy comment-posters on many news sites are demanding their right to watch the Olympics with their consciences undisturbed. I don't know if the protesters have a plan B, or can create one before the Games open, but with the Dalai Lama himself (and he is ever a realist) insisting he supports the Games, they will likely be isolated. People protesting on matters of conscience are being successfully marginalised as self-indulgent malcontents.
Increasingly, the undeniable perception is that western liberal democracy has taken three or four steps back since President Bush came to power. And the west can't undo that easily. China, with its emphasis on national pride and solidarity over individual rights, constitutes the undeniable reality for the next couple of decades, and maybe longer. Where the democracies formerly believed they held the moral high ground, China is in the process of redefining what that high ground is. Somewhere between weapons of mass destruction and water-boarding, between the Axis of Evil and abrogation of parts of the Geneva Conventions, the west some of its claim to that place, which is what it always sustained its quarrels with the greater world for the past hundred years. True, that moral superiority was often honoured in the breach, but the prosperity and openness of the nations of western Europe and North America were convincingly presented as mutually validating our particular applied philosophy.
Many of the U.S.' Asian allies, or potential allies, tend to prefer a Republican perspective. The emphasis on pride of nation and moral rigour, on conservative realpolitik over ideals of free speech, plays well in Asia. Given the shift in economic might westwards over the Pacific (or eastwards past the Middle East, if you prefer), the views held in the Asian capitals increasingly counterbalance those of the capital cities of Europe.
I don't think an either/or, East vs. West, situation will emerge, exactly, but there will be an increasingly complex equation to manage. George W. Bush took five or six years to grasp this. McCain, Clinton and Obama all seem smarter in this way, but whether any of them has the right prescription to address it remains a moot point. Because there is ever an ambiguity in the U.S. about its influence in the greater world, something that didn't conflict or confuse the great European empires with their blatant expansionism, appropriate world-helping or world-healing policies may still be in short supply after next January. It may take a further four or eight years in the U.S. for the implications of the changed and changing world to sink in.
And, as has been the case since Richard Nixon agreed in the early 1970s to stop supporting their insurrection in exchange for better relations with China, the Tibetans will get little or nothing but more abuse from their masters in Beijing. Unless, of course, the President who is elected in November sees the primary task as one of reclaiming moral high ground over that of soothing national feelings. At least then, there would be some substance again to the concept of “the West.” In that case, the aging monk who leads his angry, disillusioned people, might have a bone or two to toss to them.