amoy
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Click for a full read of >> Eve of Disaster - By Charles Emmerson | Foreign Policy
Let's get the caveats out of the way upfront. History does not repeat itself -- at least not exactly. Analogies from one period to another are never perfect. However tempting it may be to view China in 2013 as an exact parallel to Germany in 1913 (the disruptive rising power of its age) or to view the contemporary United States as going through the exact same experience as Britain a century ago (a "weary titan staggering under the too vast orb of its fate," as Joseph Chamberlain put it), things are never quite that straightforward. Whereas Germany in 1913 explicitly sought a foreign empire, China in 2013 publicly eschews the idea that it is an expansionist power (though it is perfectly clear about protecting its interests around the world). Whereas the German empire in 1913 had barely 40 years of history as a unified state behind it and was only slightly more populous that Britain or France, China in 2013 can look back on centuries of continuous history as a player in world affairs, and it now boasts one-fifth of the world's population. Whereas Germany's rise was a genuinely new geopolitical phenomenon in 1913, the rise of China today is more of a return to historical normality. These differences matter.
Similarly, the strengths and weaknesses of the United States in 2013 are not quite the same as those of Britain 100 years ago. Then, Britain benefited politically from being the world's banker and from being the linchpin of the gold standard. Today the United States, though benefiting politically and economically from being the issuer of the world's principal reserve currency, is hardly in the same position: The country is laden with debt. (One can argue about whether it should really be such a big issue that so much of that debt is owned by Chinese state entities -- after all, Beijing can't just dump Treasury bonds if it doesn't get what it wants from Washington. But Chinese ownership of U.S. debt feeds a perception of American decline, and perceptions of the relative powers of states matter a lot to how other countries treat them.) There are other differences between Britain in 1913 and the United States in 2013. Britain was never a military superpower on the order of the United States today. There was never a unipolar British moment. Britain in 1913 had slipped behind Germany industrially decades before, living more and more off the proceeds of the past; the United States in 2013 is still the world's largest economy and in many respects the most dynamic and most innovative.