The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [18]
In many countries outside the Western world, there is pent-up frustration with having had to accept an entirely Western or American narrative of world history—one in which they either are miscast or remain bit players. Russians have long chafed at the standard narrative about World War II, in which Britain and the United States heroically defeat the forces of fascist Germany and Japan. Given mainstream U.S. historical accounts, from Stephen Ambrose to Ken Burns, Americans could be forgiven for believing that Russia played a minor part in the decisive battles against Hitler and Tojo. In fact, the eastern front was the central arena of World War II. It involved more land combat than all other theaters of the war put together and resulted in thirty million deaths. It was where three-quarters of all German forces fought and where Germany incurred 70 percent of its casualties. The European front was in many ways a sideshow, but in the West it is treated as the main event. As the writer Benjamin Schwarz has pointed out, Stephen Ambrose “lavishes [attention] on the U.S.-British invasion of Sicily, which drove 60,000 Germans from the island, but completely ignores Kursk—the largest battle in history, in which at least 1.5 million Soviets and Germans fought, and which occurred at exactly the same time. . . . [M]uch as it may make us squirm, we must admit that the struggle against Nazi Germany . . . was primarily, as the great military historian John Erickson called it, ‘Stalin’s war.’”8
Or consider the perspective on the same war from another spot on the map. An Indian friend explained to me, “For Britain and America, World War II is a heroic struggle in which freedom triumphs over evil. For us, it was a battle to which Britain committed India and its armed forces without bothering to consult us. London told us to die for an idea of freedom that it was at that very moment brutally denying to us.”
Such divergent national perspectives have always existed, but today, thanks to greater education, information, and confidence, they are widely disseminated on new news networks, cable channels, and Internet sites of the emerging world. Many of the “rest” are dissecting the narratives, arguments, and assumptions of the West and countering them with a different view of the world. “When you tell us that we support a dictatorship in Sudan to have access to its oil,” a young Chinese official told me in 2006, “what I want to say is, ‘And how is that different from your support for a medieval monarchy in Saudi Arabia?’ We see the hypocrisy, we just don’t say anything, yet.”
After the Cold War ended, there was a general hope and expectation that China and Russia would move inexorably into the post–World War II Western political and economic system. When George H. W. Bush spoke of “a new world order,” he meant simply that the old Western one would be extended worldwide. Perhaps this view stemmed from the postwar experience with Japan and Germany, both of which rose to the heights of economic power and yet were accommodating, cooperative, and largely silent members of the existing order. But perhaps those were special circumstances. The two countries had unique histories, having waged aggressive wars and become pariahs as a consequence, and they faced a new threat from Soviet communism and relied on American military power for their protection. The next round of rising powers might not be so eager to “fit in.”
We still think of a world in which a rising power must choose between two stark options: integrate into the Western order,