The balance of power also undermines conventional thinking in terms of how the Western capitalist model of what is none other than extraction and exclusion renders the West superior over all others. The fact of the matter is that the East can also develop without having to resort to the Western capitalist model of extraction and exclusion. In fact, the trend nowadays is the disavowal of the Western model of extraction and exclusion. To borrow from C. Wright Mills:
“Regardless of the enormity of institutional diversity and psychological types, the trend with the widest scope and the most far-reaching ramifications is the industrialization of the world. The key importance, in fact, of the rise of the Soviet Union to great international stature lies in this simple fact: for the first time in the intricate history of the industrial revolution men can now see that this industrialization does not require capitalism as an institutional framework, that it can be accomplished without depending upon private initiative, and that when it is carried out by state bureaucrats, industrialization can even be a more rapid and orderly process than when carried out by private capitalists running private firms for private profits.”
The balance of power also shows that more often than not, moral, philosophical, and strategic superiority is more important than economic, material, and military superiority. The West has not adjusted to this reality and has yet to accept this truth, namely, that the balance of power shifted as a result of the other side’s moral, philosophical, and strategic superiority. And as a result, the West is ill-prepared to deal with a shift in the balance of power as a result of moral, philosophical, and strategic considerations. Moreover, this shift in the balance of power between East and West is an event that will “transcend” all past experiences for the West, which means that it will be hard for the West to “come to grips” with current international realities and truths. To borrow from Henry Kissinger:
“One of the most difficult challenges a nation confronts is to interpret correctly the lessons of its past. For the lessons of history, as of all experience, are contingent: they teach the consequences of certain actions, but they leave to each generation the task of determining which situations are comparable. So long as development is gradual, no particular problem arises. New problems will be sufficiently similar to past experience so that even inaccurate analogies will have a certain validity. It is different, however, when events occur which transcend all past experience. Then the very success of the past may inhibit an understanding of the present. An era of unparalleled success may make it difficult to come to grips with a period of possible disaster. The fact that every problem has found a final solution in the past may stand in the way of the realization that henceforth only partial remedies are possible.”
Kissinger added: “This has been the problem which has haunted American military thinking since World War II. Its dilemma can be defined as the conflict between the quest for absolute answers and the risks of the nuclear age, between the realization that we have become infinitely vulnerable and our rebellion against it.”
Moral, philosophical, and strategic superiority is manifested in large part by “the ability to break the framework which had come to be taken for granted and to make victory all the more complete by confronting the antagonist with contingencies which he had never even considered.” In a sense, this is what China and Russia are demonstrating to the United States in a nutshell, all of which, one must note, is driven forward by the shift in the balance of power between East and West in favor of the former. Most people are confused and stymied by what is going on, while the beneficiaries of the balance of power are driven forward by a mysterious and unexplainable energy and momentum.
Adam A. Azim 