International Reports 9/2009
From the American to the Asian-Pacific Century? | The Geopolitical Shift of Power from the Transatlantic Region to Asia | Will America and China Shape a ’Pacific Century’? | Africa and the ’Post-American Century’ | The Lost of Centres and Peripheries. How ’the Others’ see ’the West’
From the American to the Asian-Pacific Century?
About one hundred years ago, Theodor Roosevelt thought that the Atlantic era had reached the zenith of its development, that its resources were exhausted, and that it would be replaced by a greater, a Pacific era. Today, it is forecast that this era will not be Pacific, as the late US president believed, but Chinese. Manfred Mols more...
The Geopolitical Shift of Power from the Transatlantic Region to Asia
Asia’s recent economic and political rise challenges the West. The geopolitical shift of power from the Euro-Atlantic to the Asian and Asia-Pacific region is going on while the USA and Europe are labouring to cope with the worst recession since the thirties. Because of their potential, the Americans are better equipped than the Europeans to confront the new task successfully. What, then, will be the latters’ place in the future array of powers? The USA already is an Asia-Pacific power, a status which Europe would have to acquire. Heinrich Kreft more...
Will America and China Shape a ’Pacific Century’?
Which are the states that determine the global order? International politics has been focusing on this question at least since the beginning of the 19th century. Answering it today is hard, for we appear to be living through a phase of transition, as indicated by two developments: one is China’s rise to world power, the other the alleged slow decline of the USA. But – is China really able and willing to assume a leading role? And is it true that the hegemonial power of the USA is waning? Patrick Keller more...
Africa and the ’Post-American Century’
Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall there can be no doubt that the global financial and economic crisis, the most sustained ever since the ’great depression’, represents a historical hiatus. In the first half of the 19th century, John Maynard Keynes had argued in favour of interventionism in economic policy, but when Richard Nixon governed the USA, the maxim ’We are all Keynesians’ was abandoned. More recently, Paul Krugmann postulated that ’financial globalization’ was more dangerous ’than we assumed’. Greg Mills more...
The Lost of Centres and Peripheries. How ’the Others’ see ’the West’
During the many long years of the East-West conflict, the order of our world was based on the universally known principle of bipolarity. By contrast, the concept of a unipolar world in which the USA appeared to play the leading role did not remain intact for very long: there were new global powers on the rise, although they did not at first succeed in undermining the people’s confidence in the stability of the new world order. Helmut Reifeld more...
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