• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Nevertheless, talk of India's becoming a superpower, let alone a hyperpower, is probably premature. Indeed, India itself does not seem interested in displacing or disrupting U.S. global dominance. On the contrary, as one of the countries in the world most favorably inclined toward the United States—a 2005 poll showed that 71 percent of Indians had a positive view of America48—India seems far more interested in becoming partners with the United States in the global economic system.

No hyperpower lasts forever. U.S. world dominance too will come to an end; the only question is how long it will last—if it hasn't passed its zenith already. Even if none of them ever replaces America as a hyperpower, sooner or later China, the European Union, India, or perhaps Russia, Japan, or some other unforeseen rival will, individually or through an alliance, become strong enough to re-create a bipolar or multipolar world order.

Yet asking how long America can remain a hyperpower assumes that world dominance is something the United States ought to try to maintain. The next and final chapter will address this question. Should America seek to preserve its hegemony? Would an American empire be in the best interest of the world—or of the United States itself?

* The relevant statute, the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China (1980), provides that foreign nationals may acquire Chinese nationality “upon approval of their application” but provides no right or entitlement to that status (Article 8).

* For the single English word “Chinese” there are many Chinese terms (Zbongguo ren, Zhonghua minzu, banren, buayi, tangren, buaren, huaqiao, etc.), each with a slightly different, often fluid connotation, such as “the Chinese people,” “Chinese nationals,” “the Chinese race,” “the Han people,” “descendants of Chinese,” “the Tang people,” etc.

* By “overseas Chinese” I am loosely referring to citizens of the People's Republic living abroad; the Chinese in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan; and foreign citizens of Chinese descent.

TWELVE

Lessons of History

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

— T. S. ELIOT, Little Gidding

In the suddenly unipolar world that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century, the only remaining superpower seemed without serious rival or foe. For many, the hard geopolitical choices had melted away. Free markets and democracy, working hand in hand, would transform the world into a community of modernized, productive, peace-loving nations. In the process, ethnic hatred, religious zealotry, and other noxious aspects of underdevelopment would be swept away. It was the “end of history,” Golden Arches instead of war.1 When it came to U.S. military might, the most controversial issues were whether the United States should intervene abroad for purely humanitarian reasons (as in Kosovo or Rwanda) and what America should do with its “peace dividend,” the billions of dollars the United States would no longer be spending on its military.

In a way, this optimism was a testament to the great goodwill the United States had built up in the world over the twentieth century, notwithstanding Vietnam or its chronic Latin American misadventures. Here was a society with unthinkable destructive capacity, facing no countervailing power. Yet it seemed to go without saying that the United States would not use its unrivaled force for territorial expansion or other aggressive imperialist ends.

Today, not even twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this bubble of optimism has burst. Although America remains the world's hyperpower, its goodwill abroad has been all but squandered. Inside the United States, confidence is down and a sense of precariousness pervades, whether the fear is of terrorists, immigrants, or economic downturn. The attacks of 9/11 and the rise of an intensely interventionist U.S. policy changed the whole landscape.

AN AMERICAN EMPIRE?

A year after the 9/11 attacks, in