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本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2012-2-3 15:30 编辑
The End of the Win-Win World
Why China’s rise really is bad for America -- and other dark forces at work.
BY GIDEON RACHMAN | JANUARY 24, 2012http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/24/the_end_of_the_win_win_world
I have spent my working life writing aboutinternational politics from the vantage points of the Economist and now the FinancialTimes. Surrounded by people who tracked markets and business, it has alwaysfelt natural for me to see international economics and international politicsas deeply intertwined.
In my book Zero-SumFuture, written in 2009, I attempted to predict how the global economiccrisis would change international politics. As the rather bleak title implied,I argued that relations between the major powers were likely to become increasinglytense and conflict-ridden. In a worsening economic climate, it would be harderfor the big economies to see their relationships as mutually beneficial -- as awin-win. Instead, they would increasingly judge their relationships in zero-sumterms. What was good for China would be seen as bad for America. What was goodfor Germany would be bad for Italy, Spain, and Greece.
Now, as the paperback edition of my book comes out,the prediction is being borne out -- which is gratifying as an author, althoughslightly worrying as a member of the human race. The rise of zero-sum logic isthe common thread, tying together seemingly disparate strands in internationalpolitics: the crisis inside the European Union, deteriorating U.S.-Chineserelations, and the deadlock in global governance.
Thisnew, more troubled mood is reflected at this year's World Economic Forum. Inthe 20 years before the financial crisis, Davos was almost a festival ofglobalization -- as political leaders from all over the world bought into thesame ideas about the mutual benefits of trade and investment and wooed the sameinvestment bankers and multinational executives. At Davos, this year, the moodis more questioning -- with numerous sessions on rethinking capitalism and onthe crisis in the eurozone. The European Union is an organization built around a win-win economiclogic. Europe's founding fathers believed that the nations of Europe could putcenturies of conflict behind them by concentrating on mutually beneficialeconomic cooperation. By building a common market and tearing down barriers totrade and investment, they would all become richer -- and, eventually, would getused to working together. Good economics would make good politics. The nationsof Europe would grow together.
For decades, this logic worked beautifully. But, facedwith a grave economic crisis, this positive win-win logic has gone intoreverse. Rather than building each other up, European nations fear that theyare dragging each other down. The countries of southern Europe -- Greece,Portugal, Italy, and Spain -- increasingly feel that they are locked into acurrency union with Germany that has made their economies disastrouslyuncompetitive. For them, European unity is no longer associated with risingprosperity. Instead, it has become a route to crippling debt and massunemployment. As for the countries of northern Europe -- Germany, Finland, andthe Netherlands -- they are increasingly resentful of having to lend billionsof euros to bail out their struggling southern neighbors. They fear that theywill never get the money back, and their own prosperous economies will bedragged down. Now that France has lost its AAA credit-rating, Germany is leftas the only large AAA-rated country in the eurozone. Many Germans feel thatthey have worked hard and played by the rules -- and are now being asked tosave countries where people routinely cheat on their taxes and retire in theirfifties.
From the beginning of the crisis, Europe's politicianshave argued that the solution to a severe crisis within the EU was "moreEurope" -- deeper integration. Unfortunately, their interpretation of what thismeans is rather different and dictated by the singular nature of their nationaldebates. For the southern Europeans, "more Europe" means Eurobonds -- commondebt issuance by the whole European Union that would lower their interestrates and make it easier to fund their governments.. But the Germans regard this as a dangerous pledge simply to underwritetheir neighbors' debts, long into the future. For them, "more Europe" meansstricter enforcement of budgetary austerity from the center -- German rules foreverybody.
Over the next year, this inherent contradiction islikely to cause increasing discord and rivalry within the EU as thepolitical argument plays out against a deteriorating economic climate.Britain's refusal to go along with a new European treaty at the December 2011Brussels summit led to screaming headlines about a continental divorce. But it is likely to be just a foretaste of things tocome. The development to watch for in European politics will be the rise ofpolitical parties that are more nationalist in tone and that take a much more skepticalattitude to the European Union -- not to mention the single currency. Marine LePen and the National Front will do well in the upcoming French presidentialelection. Other rising Euroskeptic parties include the Freedom Parties in theNetherlands and Austria, the Northern League in Italy, the True Finns inFinland, and a motley collection of far-right and far-left parties in Greece.
Ironically, this intensifying crisis in Europe comesjust at the time that the United States has decided to readjust its foreignpolicy to concentrate much more on Asia and Pacific. Although the "pivot toAsia" is being presented as a far-sighted reaction to long-term economic trends, it also represents an adjustment to a shift in the global balance-of-powerin the aftermath of the global economic crisis.
Put bluntly, the United States is taking the rise ofChina much more seriously. American preeminence, long into the future, can nolonger be taken for granted. Nor can it be assumed that a stronger, richerChina is good news for America -- as successive U.S. presidents argued all theway back to 1978. On the contrary, both as individuals and as a nation, Americansare getting the queasy feeling that a richer, more powerful China might justmean a relatively poorer, relatively weaker America. In other words, the riseof China is not a win-win for both nations. It is a zero-sum game. That beliefis now feeding through into the presidential election -- and is reflected both inthe protectionist rhetoric of Mitt Romney and in the soft containment of China ofthe Obama administration.
Romney has promised to designate China a "currency manipulator"and to slap tariffs on Chinese goods. These kinds of arguments have surfacedbefore, particularly during presidential elections -- but they are not normallymade by pro-business Republicans. However, with America beset by worries abouthigh unemployment and a spiraling national debt, old nostrums about free tradeare easier to jettison. Missed in all the excitement of a presidentialelection is the extent to which protectionism is being intellectuallyrehabilitated in the United States. Respected economists like Paul Krugman andFred Bergsten have argued that imposing tariffs would be a legitimate U.S.response to Chinese currency policies.
A similar shift is underway in America's military andstrategic thinking. The Obama administration's much-ballyhooed Asian turn isessentially a response to the rise of China. According to the Economist, China is likely to be theworld's largest economy (in real terms) by 2018. And Washington sees Beijing asalready flexing its muscles, with increases in military spending and aharder-line in border disputes with a range of neighbors, including India,Japan, and Vietnam. As a result, the United States is seeking to make commoncause with China's nervous neighbors -- bolstering alliances with itstraditional Asian allies, while committing to strengthen its own military presencein the region. This move is all the more significant since it comes in thecontext of a plan to make deep cuts in overall U.S. military spending.
The Chinese are not wrong to see this policy asessentially one of "soft containment." They are unlikely to respond passively. A new Chinese leadership -- underpressure from a nationalist public -- might push back hard.
American-Chinese relations have long containedelements of rivalry and co-operation. But, increasingly, the rival elements arecoming to the fore. This is not yet a new cold war. However, the state ofrelations between the United States and China -- the sole superpower and itsonly plausible rival -- are likely to set the tone for international politicsin the coming decade.
In fact, the increasing rivalry between Washington andBeijing is an important contributor to the third major manifestation of thespread of zero-sum logic through the international system -- the increasingdeadlock in multilateral diplomacy, from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to climate-changenegotiations to the G-20's stalled efforts at global financial regulation.
In the heyday of globalization over the past threedecades, big trade agreements were both a symbol and a driver of thestrengthening of common interests between the world's major powers. Thecreation of a European single market in 1992 and of a North American free-tradearea in 1994, the setting-up of the WTO in 1995, and the admission of China tothe WTO in 2001, were all landmarks in the creation of a truly globalizedeconomy. But the days of heroic new trade accords are over. World leaders havestopped even calling for a completion of the Doha round of trade talks; therepeated empty exhortations have become embarrassing. There have been, however,some small victories: At the end of 2011, Congress finally passed a free-tradedeal between the United States and South Korea, and Russia was admitted to theWTO around the same time. But the WTO is now largely playing defense, trying toprevent a major new outbreak of protectionism. Officials there dread theprospect of being asked to adjudicate a U.S.-Chinese dispute over currency-- fearing that any such case would beso politically charged that it could blow apart the world trading system.
It is a similar picture in other areas where therewere once high hopes for multilateral cooperation. The world climate talks weresaved from complete disaster in Durban, South Africa, at the end of 2011 -- butfew believe that the vague and vestigial agreement reached there will have anyreal impact on the global problem. The G-20's efforts to push forward with newforms of global financial regulation have also disappointed. The crisis withinthe European Union -- which has so long seen itself as the champion of globalgovernance -- has damaged the whole cause of multilateralism.
A few months ago, I found myself sitting next to asenior EU official who turned out to have read my book. "My job is to proveyour zero-sum thesis wrong," he told me. I replied that, as an author I hopedto be proved right -- but as a European and a human being I was hoping to beproved wrong. My lunch companion laughed and said, "That is too dialectical forme."
It is one of the nice things about the best EU officialsthat they are happy to talk to their critics, and comfortable using words like"dialectical." However, I fear that cultured technocrats will not do terriblywell in the new era. A zero-sum world may summon up rather darker forces.
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发表于 2012-2-3 16:32