Just a few points in response to George Erhardt, Ellis Krauss and Paul Midford. To Ellis,simply, try switching from Murdoch's Times to the highly intelligent and sober Financial Times or the slightly less sober but equally intelligent Guardian.
On hegemony and hegemonic transitions, I don't think the early history -- Spain, Portugal,Holland etc. tells us very much. There has only been one real transition in the last 2 seriusly globalising centuries -- from Britain to the US, from sterling as the international currency to the dollar, ascendant military power from one Anglophone country to another. It was smooth because the common language and kindred cultures allowed hunting Tories from the British shires to continue to pretend to patronise "ouir American cousins" and believe that Britain continued to "punch above its weight".
One question is what would happen if the same shift in the global balance of financial and military power were to occur between US and the culturally far more "other" China. Where and how would Americans find the consoling factors that could ensure realistic resignation? (For specialists in Japanese euphemisms, the word is yutai -- courageously withdraw,head held high -- as I leanred recently from the editor of the Tokyo Shinbun writing to tell me that I was being sacked after 22 years as one of their columnists.).
A second question is whether there will actually be such a shift,and Paul Midford is quite right in taking the probability more seriously than Geroge Erhard. May be Obama's "fighting speech" last Tuesday will turn things around and reduce the growth rate gap with China from 6% to 4%, but the odds are not favourable, given that the NYT gave it the put-down headline adjective "pupulist"rather than, say, "egalitarian", or the fact that Obama's 2billion relection campaign war chest comes in large measure from Wall Street.
Third question: is there anybody in Japan seriously thinking of what Japan will do if the day comes when China has more aircraft carrier fleets in the Pacific,than the US (not counting the ones the US has mothballed.).Or,rather, is there any possibility of a change in the culture of the political class and the patterns of recruitment into it,that will give power and prominence to those Japanese who do think seriously about such things.
All those imponderables are the backgrouind to my concern with one immediate danger and one opportunity.
The danger lies in the fact that with a sufficiently significant faction in Washington ready to weigh in if the situation turns disastrous, Israel seems ready to start a war with Iran. The NPT would give a shred of international legitimacy to such action -- as Iraq's MWD did to Bush.
Somebody ought to blow up NPT and propose an alternative control regime which does not prevent any country whose leaders are convinced that national pride or security can only be based on possession of nuclear weapons from having them, but makes it even less possible than now to use them. (What might eventually come to be called the ADProG regime. Assured Destruction by Proxy Guarantees.)
The opporunity. Japan suffers from a serious pride deficiency. Foreign policies should do three things:
assure a country's security, position its citizens advantageously in world markets and give its citizens some reason for feeling that they are lucky to be born Ruritanians, Urbitanians or whatever. |The Japanese foreign office fails miserably on the third count.
As a former diplomat friend said to me the other day, Nihon no sonzaikan ga dan dan usuku natte iku..kanashii koto da.
If only Japan had leaders with the guts and clout to make a spectacular withdrawal from NPT and propose a better alternative control regime they would be making a real contribution to humanity's painful millennial fumbling towards world government. And the 'beyond national self-interest"
aspect of it would solve Japan's pride deficit problem in a way that the whole world could approve. not least.
with a warm glow, the Japanese public..
If only.......

Ronald Dore