THE NEXT PRESIDENT AND A NEW COLD WAR?

• First, a thought about the Beijing Olympics.  In a recent essay, columnist David Brooks made this acute observation:  “The world can be divided in many ways—rich and poor, democracy and authoritarian—but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualistic mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.”  One could easily construct a global continuum with the most individualistic societies (e.g., the United States and Great Britain) on the one end and the most collectivist societies (e.g., China and Japan) on the other.  Individualistic nations tend to put rights and privacy first.  This necessarily leads to people in such societies overvaluing and overestimating their own value and importance.  Collectivist nations tend to value harmony and duty.  People in these societies tend to underestimate and undervalue their own contributions to group efforts.  Why is there such a difference—individual versus the group?  This has been debated for centuries, and Brooks cites some of the proposed answers.  However, I believe, rather strongly, that one of the reasons for the difference is worldview.  Those nations that value the individual (e.g., the US and Britain) have a worldview deeply rooted in biblical Christianity, which sees each individual of infinite value and worth because each is an image-bearer of God.  The worldviews of both China and Japan, for example (Confucianism and Shintoism), are profoundly communal and eschew the individual.  Furthermore, this year’s Olympics opening ceremony pressed an important point that could spell difficulty for the US and Britain in the 21st century.  The ceremony in Beijing sent the message that economic development does not only come from the individualistic West, but from the collectivistic East.  Listen to Brooks:  “The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one—drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding.  We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present—a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.  If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.”  The point?  The fantastic rise of China is not merely about economics.  It is about culture and about worldview.  China is modeling before the world a collectivist culture that can produce unbelievable success and growth.  For budding autocrats throughout the world (e.g., Putin in Russia and Chavez in Venezuela), China’s collectivism is an attractive and powerful alternative to the individualistic American Dream!  See David Brooks in the New York Times (12 August 2008).

• Second, consider the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was formed by six nations in 2001.  The SCO was begun by Russia and China in 1996 as a new security organization, which now includes six nations, with India and three other nations as observers.  SCO is aimed at dealing with three large dangers—terrorism, separatism and extremism, all enemies of the authoritarian and collectivist state.  The SCO’s chief role is to swap information and coordinate anti-terrorism work.  SCO is becoming an attractive alternative for those more autocratic nations who resist and in some cases resent American dominance of the world.  Another way of viewing this is that SCO is emerging as a viable alternative for collectivist societies that resist the individualistic proclivities of pro-western nations.  SCO is an attractive alternative to NATO or to the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) that have dominated the West since the days of the Cold War.  China and Russia are now offering an entirely new security organization to deal with the problems and challenges of collectivist societies.  Is it effective?  The Economist reports that “last year [SCO] member states played war games in Central Asia—the biggest Russian-Chinese shindig of that kind since the Sino-Soviet split half a century ago.”  Russia is using SCO as a tactic to lure nations of Central Asia on its borders away from NATO membership, for example.  But we must be very careful to not overreact to the threat of SCO.  One must remember that China and Russia have been historic rivals.  Russia for example is not interested in making China a member of the G-8.  But the main point is this:  China and Russia are in a cooperative mode through SCO to limit and contain any influence from the West on human rights or freedom issues.  What is currently holding the SCO nations together, especially China and Russia, is a common dislike of western values that focus on freedom and human rights.  That kind of emphasis is counterproductive to the collectivist mentality of Putin’s Russia or Hu’s China.  Both are autocratic nations that will continue economic development without giving into demands for full freedom and rights of its citizens.  China especially is appealing to the collectivist heritage of the Chinese psyche to foster its economic growth.  For now, this seems to be working and there is no greater example of this success than this year’s summer Beijing Olympics.  See The Economist (9 August 2008), pp. 55-56. 

• Finally, it seems to me that the United States is missing the importance of what is going on in the world as this new century begins.  Understandably, the US has been preoccupied with small messy wars, fought with messy alliances, with messy outcomes—Iraq, Afghanistan and al Qaeda come to mind.  We cannot and we must not ignore the importance of these messy conflicts.  But we will ignore to our peril as a nation these much larger developments that I mentioned in the first two parts of this Perspective.  The world the next president faces is far more complex and difficult than most imagine.  The US will still face the powerful forces of terrorism that know no boundaries and are not affiliated with any nation state.  It will also face the dangerous and rogue states of Iran and North Korea, for example.  But the US must also wake up to the new reality that China is becoming not only an economic power, but a gigantic military colossus that will challenge America throughout Asia, and also in Africa and Latin America.  Add to this the growing economic and military power of Russia and one sees we no longer have a unipolar world, but a multipolar world that is far more dangerous and difficult that normally imagined.  There is no question that the United States retains the world’s preeminent military force, spending almost as much on defense as all other nations combined.  Precisely because the US is so powerful, nations like China and Russia are challenging US power in many different ways.  The recent conflict in Georgia is a perfect example.  The US had neither the ability nor the desire to challenge Russia in Georgia—and hence Russia has flexed successfully its muscle.  The new order of this world has at least four power centers—the United States, the European Union, Russia and China.  Our world is very multipolar.  The next president has his work cut out for him.  We must pray for wisdom and discernment, for he will need it.

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