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From Berlin to Baghdad: Empire and the competition for discursive legitimacy

The present 'transitional moment', often mistakenly labelled the 'unipolar moment', is most striking for its ambiguity, for what we see is not one but several realities.

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in an attempt to make sense of the emerging security landscape I drew attention to four possible security models, each with its own structural dynamic: unipolarity, balance of power (or competitive multipolarity), concert of powers (or co-operative multipolarity), universal system of security. However, each of these four models offered only one slice of a complex and still unfolding reality. The contemporary security system, I argued, could be more accurately represented as a rich mosaic all four models, with unipolarity, its most conspicuous element, likely  to see its salience diminish over time at the expense of multipolarity (both of the competitive and co-operative variety). This interpretation dovetailed with a political economy perspective which pointed to three distinct yet closely interacting tendencies: hegemony, imperial rivalry, and imperial collusion. The ensuing geoeconomic reality was described as 'residual hegemony' operating in the context of 'competitive interdependence'.

Important echoes of this analysis could be found in the Chinese literature, much of it ignored in the West. As early as the mid-1980s, Chinese analysts pointed to a new era of transition (likely to last several decades), whose distinguishing features were great power rivalries, local wars, and the redivision of spheres of influence. Over time two schools of thought emerged: an orthodox school associated with Huang Zhengji and a dissenting school with Yang Dazhou as one of its most prominent figures. Both described the transition as a trend towards multipolarity, with the former emphasising the growing constraints imposed by global turbulence on the exercise of US power and the latter pointing to the emergence of a pluralistic world structure comprising five poles. A hybrid version envisaged a transition in three stages (1989-91: break-up of the Soviet empire; 1989-2000: a system comprised of one superpower, two military powers and three economic powers; early 21^st century: formation of 5 political powers and institutionalisation of multipolarity.

These analyses, notwithstanding their limitations, captured two distinct but closely related features of this historical moment: geoeconomic and geopolitical fluidity, and the limits to US power. This was a useful antidote to notion of US 'hyperpower', with its emphasis on the abrupt disintegration of Soviet power, the survival of US alliances, the revival of the US economy during the1990s, the technological supremacy of the US military machine, Europe's inability to develop an effective conflict management role in its own backyard, and China's preoccupation with economic modernisation. The ostentatious flexing of muscle was confused with the capacity to produce intended consequences and prevent unintended ones. The ambiguities of power were overlooked - abstracted or virtual power did not easily translate into the coherent exercise of power in the concrete.

Two recent developments have helped to expose the fragility of the US imperial edifice: the unilateralist inclinations of the current Bush administration and the devastating blow (psychological more than physical) inflicted by September 11. Terrorism has accentuated the anxiety producing impact of other trends, notably growing opposition to US interests in many parts of Latin America, a rising China, a Russian power structure gradually regaining its composure, a staggering US trade deficit, a Europe more resistant to US leadership than at any time since World War II, and unprecedented militancy in much of the Islamic world.

The US declared 'war on terror' has further weakened America's claim to hegemonic leadership. Three year into the war, US policy-makers are still unable to offer intellectually or politically convincing answers to three critical questions: Who is to wage this war? Against whom? With what purpose in mind? The 'coalition of the willing' is proving to be smaller, less cohesive and supportive than had been expected - among both electorates and governments.

Imperial power has awesome means at its disposal, but so are the obstacles in its path: reluctant or half-hearted allies, duplicitous friends, and rogue states; an assortment of national and transnational movements, organisations and networks that refuse to be intimidated; and the frightening possibility (real or imaginary) of terrorist groups combining with rogue states - suicide bombers acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Ambiguity and uncertainty, now integral to the use force in international relations, are translating into imperial vulnerability

September 11 is perhaps most significant for the mirror it offers us of the turbulent seas in which US power has to navigate - what Bertrand Badie has called the 'changing grammar of conflict', in which the rules governing the relationship between ends and means are undergoing rapid and at time baffling change. In Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, not to mention September 11, Bali and Madrid, we have seen the violence of the weak exposing the weakness of the violence of the strong. The cumulative effect of these trends, long in the making, has been to transform the United States 'from would-be regulator to unconcealed gladiator'.

The grammar of conflict has come to reflect the complex reconfiguration of space and time. The imperial state (like all other states) is struggling to comprehend, let alone control, vastly altered spatial and temporal conditions. The virtual monopoly which states once exercised over space is dissipating. Al Qaeda's use of the airwaves is one striking indication of this. The traditional organisation of territory has been steadily eroded not only by flows that are increasingly transnational in scope and inspiration but by the subnational reinvention of tradition, variously centred on the return to 'nature', community, the sacred, or simply ethnie.

What is true of space is also true of time. Accelerating speed should clearly favour the high-tech hyperpower. Paul Virilio has made much of America's capacity to wage 'virtual' or 'mediatised' war. US control of information, in the public sphere as on the battlefield, aided by a mix of cyberoptic vision and global telesurveillance, may help to explain America's capacity and inclination to evade the UN and possibly NATO itself. But Virilio has had to reassess the long-term implications of these putative capabilities. What is the meaning of pre-emptive war, he asks: a carefully calculated strategy to 'shock and awe' or an 'act of panic'?  His conclusion: 'Metrostrategy has replaced geostrategy . . . the metropolitics of terror has displaced the geopolitics of great power relations.' With different conceptual lenses and vocabulary, Baudrillard reaches similar conclusions: terrorism (the violence of the weak)  has taken advantage of the hitherto disguised weaknesses of imperial power and transformed 'objective hyperpower' into 'subjective victimhood'.

What, then, of the discursive journey travelled since the crumbling of the Berlin Wall? The 'new world order' heralded by Bush Snr and the 'end of history', Fukuyama's rendition of the same theme, have not come to pass. The globalisation of political and economic liberalism is proving elusive, if not illusory: too much resistance; too many conflicts; and no one able to deliver the grand vision. The 'clash of civilisations' soon emerged in academic and official discourse. September 11 accentuated the strategic demonisation of the other and the effort to bifurcate the world and so preserve and legitimise imperial authority, but with relatively little success. Other voices, notably Václav Havel, Tu Weiming, Mohammed Kahatami, have pointed to the 'dialogue of civilisations' as both practice and normative principle. Embraced by the UN, the dialogical moment has yet to arrive. Proposed by some as 'profoundly transformative encounter between East and West', several questions remain unanswered: Where does agency reside? What of the modalities and institutions of dialogue?

Ours, then, is a still unfolding transitional moment - a journey nevertheless (from Berlin to Baghdad to Beijing?) that opens up the possibility of a world that is simultaneously singular and plural.

Joseph A. Camilleri
Professor of International Relations
La Trobe University

20 October 2004