Pankaj Mishra argues convincingly, I have to say, that the United States and the "West" still have imperial reflexes, which are preventing them from acknowledging the realities of the post 9/11 world, an era where the East and the rest of the world are no longer scared of them and have their own ideas about how things are going to be. Sugary excerpt:
Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. In proposing cash bribes for the "moderate" Taliban, the Obama administration reminds one of FDR's bright idea about the original inhabitants of Palestine: "What about the Arabs?" he once asked the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. "Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?"(...)The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots.
Reading Mishra's article forces me to ask myself whether America's most influential mark on the world was that it made it so cool and often so stylish to be a hegemon that now every country wants to be one and to exercise power in the same way. I'm coming to the realization that the post 9/11 world is one with a bunch of countries who have fallen in love, whether they want to be admit it or not with the American style of power, even as they resents it when it affects them. America is John Wayne and we know that there was a time when every man, no matter where he came from, wanted to be John Wayne even when he hated the fact that he was killing "Indians" and shooting from the hip without much finesse, sophistication or awareness of the sensibilities of others.
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