Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [157]
In a world in which China is a superpower, could America remain a hyperpower? In principle, it's possible. If America continued to be the destination for the world's best and brightest— including even China's best and brightest—the United States could conceivably retain its technological, military, and economic edge over all rivals. More likely, however, a Chinese superpower would dictate a return to at least a bipolar world order. If China becomes the economic colossus many predict, its sheer wealth will command enormous power in the modern world, with many countries (including possibly the United States) dependent on its trade and investment capital. At the same time, China's defense spending has been mounting rapidly over the last decade, and it is by no means impossible that by the middle of the twenty-first century China's military could rival (if not surpass) that of the United States.
THE EUROPEAN UNION: A
“POST-IMPERIAL SUPERPOWER”
As the clock struck midnight and the champagne glasses clinked on May 1, 2004, the European Union officially welcomed ten new member states, increasing its membership from fifteen to twenty-five. “Fireworks exploded and church bells rang out” across a Europe with borders now stretching across three time zones, from Poland to Ireland, from Finland to Malta. A Europe divided by decades of Cold War and centuries of internecine conflict came together—warmly, and for the first time in history, peacefully.
The occasion was particularly poignant for the people of the eight nations who had spent fifty years behind the iron curtain. The Polish Solidarity leader, Lech Walesa, called the moment the fulfillment of his “dreams and lifetime's work,” while the Hungarian prime minister Peter Medgyessy “set a giant hourglass in motion to symbolise the beginning of a new era.” Meanwhile, in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, the government urged its citizens to light lamps and candles to make their country “the brightest spot in Europe.” Founded largely as a bulwark against the westward expansion of Communism, the community that is now the EU not only outlasted its rivals but lived to take them in.22
The moment's triumph was not limited to formerly Eastern Bloc EU members. The inclusion of ten new countries also marked a stunning victory over a much deeper history of division, rivalry, and bloodshed. For centuries, leading European philosophers and statesmen—among them Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Winston Churchill—had recognized that unity held the best hope for European peace, prosperity, and power. In the mid-fifteenth century, Bohemia's King George proposed a federation arrangement strikingly similar to the EU's current structure, albeit to guard against the external threat of Turkish invasion, not to address internal division. But these nascent visions of a pan-European union could not overcome the fierce nationalism, enmity, and religious division that had grown increasingly entrenched in the bloody millennium following the fall of Rome. Over and over, culminating in World War II, ferocious nationalist ambition had torn Europe apart, killing and maiming millions.23
Yet, astonishingly, what began as a modest economic agreement over coal and steel production between postwar France and Germany has, in just two generations, forged a European unity unprecedented since the height of the Roman Empire. Today the EU numbers twenty-seven nations—Bulgaria and Romania joined in January 2007—sharing a common body of law covering nearly half a billion people. The EU has been called “the largest single market in the developed world,” and its gross domestic product of roughly $13 trillion is comparable to that of the United States.24 In population the EU has an edge—by 150 million. With two