Dilip Hiro: A Guide to Globalization

Travis BeecroftHIST 640

D’AgostinoFall 2013

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Globalization is a development seen in multiple instances throughout the annals

of history. As societies, technology, and intellect progress, so too will their means of

disbursement, and the benefits far outweigh the consequences. Although there are a

number of historical events allowing for globalization, including, expansion of the

Roman Empire, the advent of the Silk Road, the revealing of the Americas, and the

reawakening that was the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the period of globalization

most pertinent for our discussion began in the 1990s and continues into the 21st century.

Discussion on the development of globalization during these forty years is a feature of

many historian’s portfolios, and their theories provide answers to questions such as how

and why the globalization process occurred. One of the leaders in scholarship on this

topic, Dilip Hiro, a Pakistani author and journalist, uses historical events to speculate the

extent to which globalization will effect the world powers in the 20th and 21st centuries.

His central belief is that “the explosive growth in telecommunications along with a steep

fall in the rates has provided unprecedented opportunities to non-Western powers to

challenge the dominance that America enjoyed in soft-power projection” in the last half

of the 20th century.1 This will be the basis for our discussion, which will show that Hiro’s

firm belief that globalization has resulted in the emergence of a multi-polar world where

countries such as China, Russia, Venezuela, and India, among others, act as a

counterbalance to American global supremacy. Moreover, these nations challenge

American authority, and a series of miscalculations in wars against Iraq and Afghanistan

will highlight American weakness, together diminishing the role of the United States as

the global hegemon, thereby allowing other countries to catch up, and in some cases

surpass, American superiority.

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The impact of China on international politics is profound. Not only did they

become the second leading oil importer in the world in 2011, they survived the 2008

financial crisis which crippled the many parts of the world.2 Over the years, China’s

strategy has been to “sustain its impressive economic growth; to insulate its economy

against sharp swings in the prices of commodities [and] to increase its diplomatic

strength by integrating the economies of the supplier countries with its own.”3 Using this

policy, in 1993 China became a net oil importer and made energy security an essential

piece of their foreign policy.4 This prompted their “participat[ion] in oil and gas

prospecting and production projects” in regions such as Africa and Latin America

thereafter.5 In Africa, China secured trade agreements with Angola, Sudan, and the

Congo that granted China access to resources in exchange for low-priced goods and

assistance in improving local infrastructure.6 By 2011, these countries accounted for

19% of China’s total oil import, with Angola representing its second largest supplier at

623,000 bpd.7 In 2012, China received 80% of Sudan’s entire oil exports after

accounting for half in 2005,8 and by 2006 the Sino-African oil trade accounted for $48

billion.9 In Latin American, China brokered a deal to “build a dozen oil drilling

platforms and supply 18 oil tankers” to work with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company

(PdVSA) “to explore new oilfields in Venezuela,” 10 and by 2009 Venezuela’s oil export

to China was 500,000 bpd.11 Additionally, China gave loans to Venezuela and Brazil

totaling $16 billion in 2009 in return for an increase in Venezuela’s oil shipments and the

securement of 160,000 bpd from Brazil for the coming years.12 In a ten-year period

beginning in 1997, China invested $15 billion in foreign oil markets in 44 countries,

quickly making it one of the major investors in foreign oil.13 By diversifying its list of oil

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trade partners, China has been able to expand its reach where leaders “resent [the]

lectures on democracy and unfettered market economy” that the United States is known

for.14 This allows those leaders to have a major ally in their disputes against the West.

China’s overwhelming success in the international oil market is due to their

unparalleled currency reserves. By 2009, China had $2 trillion in foreign currency

reserves, making it “a leader global supplier of credit,” but how did it survive the 2008

global recession?15 Hiro’s answer is simple: rather than letting globalization “establish

and consolidate a capitalist market economy worldwide,” which is what Westerners

thought China would do, it instead used globalization to “further its version of state

capitalism.16 While wealthy American banks and executives were being bailed out,

China encouraged managers of their top companies to reduce their personal salaries by

15-40% before any layoffs were considered, and they adjusted the interest rates and

money supply, producing quicker results than other countries.17 In order to cope with the

reduction in their foreign imports as a result on the financial crisis, China used its state-

run banks to heavily invest in its own infrastructure, its “neglected” social safety net and

healthcare systems, and its “overlooked rural development projects,” which, they hoped,

would reduce the gap between the stark contrast in rural and urban living standards.”18

China used this economic chaos to accelerate its acquisition of foreign energy and raw

materials, to launch a program to spread soft power, and to restructure it media, culture,

and entertainment industries to compete with the American powerhouses Turner, Disney,

Viacom, and News Corp.19 Now, China stands poised to take global supremacy away

from the United States, and as Hiro wrote in 2009, “a new world order [was] emerging—

with its center gravitating towards China,” and the United States is not prepared.20

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While China has emerged as a threat United States hegemony, Russia is equally

as powerful in international markets and carries a big stick when it comes to politics.

After a disastrous decade in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, the Russian economy was

running amok. Not knowing better, Yeltsin signed a number of decrees that caused

2,520% inflation, wiped out Russian savings, and caused their GDP production to reduce

every year from 1992 until 1996.21 Vladimir Putin pulled Russia out of this rut in 2000

by renationalizing Russia’s energy industry “through state-controlled corporations” and

using leading petroleum companies to promote foreign policy.22 His goal was to “us[e]

its hydrocarbon revenue to revive Russia’s industry.”23 To do this, Russia accelerated its

tech innovations and consolidated its aerospace companies and state agencies dealing

with nuclear power “to create a complete-cycle corporation from uranium mining to

generating electricity and building new power plants.”24 This worked, and Russia’s

foreign reserves increased from $12 billion to $315 billion between 1999 and 2006,

becoming the globe’s largest natural gas producer by 2009.25 By 2012, Russia sent 76%

of its gas exports to countries in Western Europe, a number that Hiro expects to rise in

the following decades “with the exhaustion of the North Sea gas deposits.”26 Along with

natural gas, Russia became a player in the international oil market, and by 2003 Russia

passed the United States to become the world’s second largest oil producer behind Saudi

Arabia.27 By 2007, Russia’s oil income was valued at $679 million a day, and European

countries including Germany, Britain, Poland, and Hungary depend on their oil exports.28

Moreover, between 1998 and 2007, petroleum prices increased fivefold, prompting the

Russian treasury to flood with extra money, which allowed it to pay off its foreign loans,

greatly allowing the Kremlin to flex its international might.29

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The wealth Russia acquired since Putin’s policies were implemented was also

used to “upgrade its depleted military machine and project a sharper military profile

abroad,” a profile that will continuously clash with the United States.30 These funds

allowed Russia to resume “long-range air patrols, involving nuclear bombs” which had

been halted after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 2007 Putin announced that

fourteen strategic missile-carrying aircraft had taken off from seven different airfields

across Russia and that type of demonstration “will be held on a regular basis.”31 Using

these funds produced enormous results, and by 2008 Russia possessed over half of the

world’s nuclear weapon stockpile.32 That same year, Russia exhibited its largest military

exercise since 1992, consisting of activities in all 11 time zones in the territory, and

featuring “tens of thousands of soldiers, thousands of vehicles, and squadrons of

warplanes” while displaying the reinvigorated might of the Russian military.33 With

Russia now representing a major threat to global American authority, tensions between

the two countries have continued to escalate. In 2007, for instance, Putin “threatened to

point his military’s nuclear missiles at European cities” if President Bush moved the

California-Alaska missile defense line into Poland and the Czech Republic.34 This was

not the first time the two powers had squared off on the international stage since the end

of the Cold War, and it certainly will not be the last.

As the United States, China, and Russia continue to find themselves locked in war

of soft-power supremacy, the partnership between China and Russia will act as a

counterbalance to American political rhetoric. To create a counter to NATO, in 1996

Presidents Jiang Zeeman and Boris Yeltsin established the Shanghai Cooperation

Organization (SCO), which was “chiefly to settle border problems between China and its

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post-Soviet neighbors—Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.”35 In joining together in this

relationship, Russia and China agreed on similar objectives: “curbing Islamist extremism,

maintaining and improving their commercial interests, and frustrating Washington’s

agenda to dominate the region.”36 This organization was “a bond that would grow

stronger by the year,” and its leaders realized the effect it could have in Washington.37

After demanding a withdrawal date for American troops from two bases in Uzbekistan

and Kyrgyzstan in 2005, SCO denied the United States access to the organization as an

observer state, resulting in what Hiro states is proof that “the U.S. was not prepared to

share its belief in a multi-polar world order.”38 This belief was reiterated as well between

Zemin and Yeltsin in 1999 when they “expressed their belief in a multi-polar world—a

concept at variance with the ‘sole superpower’ status of the United States,” a key piece of

Hiro’s view of globalization.39 For Russia, “soaring foreign exchange reserves, new

ballistic missiles, and closer links with prospering China” have allowed Putin to

challenge the United States repeatedly in the political arena.40 Not only has Putin used

the weight of Russia’s re-juiced economy and revamped military technology to build its

own international clout, but the relationship developing with China “is destined to play a

vital role in ensuring international security,” and, as Hiro writes, “despite America’s

strong disapproval, a multi—polar global order is emerging—slowly but surely.”41

As China and Russia champion the Eurasian subcontinent, quietly in Latin

America Venezuela has forged an oil producing empire that provides formidable

resistance to American soft power in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1998, not only has

Hugo Chavez greatly improved the standard of living in Venezuela, the country

“diversif[ied] it’s nationalized oil industry in a direction that runs contrary to the interests

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of Washington.”42 After his election, he and his oil minister Rafael Ramirez convinced

OPEC members and four non-OPEC members to cut their respective oil outputs, thereby

allowing the price of Venezuelan oil exports to rise and improve their GDP.43 Since

becoming president in 1998, Chavez’s government has initiated land reform, provided

free education up to university level, and introduced a publicly funded health care

system, prompting his re-election in 2000.44 Hiro explains that in 2005 “Chavez set out

to use oil as a diplomatic weapon to garner support in the region for…his policies that

clashed with those of the Bush administration.”45 Furthermore, in 2007 Hiro writes that

Chavez “provides a striking example of how petroleum has emboldened leaders of oil-

rich states to thumb their noses at the giant neighbor in the north—the U.S.”46 To further

enrage the United States, Chavez loaned oil to twelve Caribbean and Central American

countries at $20 per barrel, allowing them fifteen years to pay it off with 2% interest.47 In

doing so, he gained “diplomatic backing of [those] countries to the detriment of

Washington” and damaged American reputation in the Western Hemisphere.48 Chavez,

Hiro proclaims, sent a “message of anti-imperialism and resistance to the Washington

Census [that] reverberated through more and more countries in Latin America and the

Caribbean,” further weakening the prestige of the United States.49

While Venezuela is bolstering its oil reserves it is also doing the same for its

military strength. By 2006, Venezuela has become one of Russia’s chief military arms

exporting partners behind India, China, and Algeria, and accounted for 8% of Russia’s

total arms export between 2006-2010.50 Against the wishes of the United States, a year

later in 2007 Venezuela agreed to purchase five Russian diesel submarines for $1 billion

to protect their valuable undersea shelf “and thwart any possible future economic

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embargo imposed by Washington.”51 Purchase of Russian weaponry continued that year

as Venezuela bought $1 billion worth of military technology, including 24 Sukhi-30

fighter jets, 15 armed helicopters, and 100,000 Kalashnikov AR rifles.52 While the

United States was upset with such activity, Chavez explained that “we are strengthening

Venezuela’s military power precisely to avoid imperial aggression and assure peace, not

to attack anybody.”53 No matter what Chavez did to upset the United States, they could

knock him publicly because he developed a popular reputation. During the most recent

Bush administration Chavez had offered to provide “12 million gallons of heating oil to

low-income families in Massachusetts [and it] applied to twenty-three states and covered

200,000 households” and he offered to do it at a 40% rate. Moreover, during his seven-

year presidency Venezuela “exceeded the nearly $2 billion the United States allocated for

its development programs and drug war in Latin America,” further emphasizing the

notion that the United States was being shown-up in its own backyard.54 Along with

China and Russia, Venezuela has now emerged as a political thorn to the United States.

As Chairman of OPEC, one of the leaders he formed a relationship with was Iranian

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, much to the chagrin of the U.S. with whom they have

struggled in international relations.

Iran has always been a country of difficulty for the United States. The second

largest supplier of oil and natural gas in the world by 2010, Iran has worked closely with

Russia to develop its nuclear program and subsequently enable its proliferation.55 In

2007 amidst the UN investigations into Iran’s nuclear program, Putin stated that “Russia

is the only country that is helping Iran to realize its nuclear program in a peaceful way,”

and he was adamant that Iran was not striving to create nuclear weapons.56 After refusing

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to abort its uranium enrichment process, Iran faced economic sanctions on behalf of the

UN and in 2008, Russia and China refused to allow any further. Subsequently, Iran

improved its military and commercial ties with Russia and China, and strengthened its

relationship with both countries. Russia sold Iran weaponry including “S-300 surface-to-

air, anti-aircraft missiles,” and they worked together “to forge an international

organization of natural gas producers” that would influence “global prices for gas and

coordinat[e] investment plans to dissuade members from flooding the market.”57 In

essence, this would become a gas cartel similar to OPEC becoming an oil cartel. China

has also valued its relationship with Iran, which had become Iran’s second greatest

weapons importer, “including speed boats, gunboats, anti-ship missiles and cruise

missiles.”58 Iran and China’s relationship involved oil as well, and by 1996, three years

after China became a net importer for the first time, Iran supplied China with 100,000

bpd. By 2004, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Xhaoxing agreed to sign a gas and oil deal

with Iran, and in that same week The Indian Oil Corporation decided to invest $3 billion

in Iranian gas fields.59 Now, Iran’s natural gas reserves are extremely abundant, and “at

the production rate of 4.4 million bpd in 2007, its petroleum reserves will last until

2095.”60 In 2007, Iran also had an annual oil income of $65 billion, allowing it to offer

aid to Hamas authorities in Gaza when other countries could not due to American and EU

sanctions.61 With increasing wealth and prestige, “Iran poses [a threat] to Washington’s

plan to export secular liberal democracy to the region” and “shows how nationalism,

Islam, and representative government can work in harmony and remain viable in a world

of competing versions of democracy.” As a result, the United States needs to be careful

in dealing with Iran, because its two biggest supporters are Russia and China.

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India and the EU are also major players in the post-globalization model posed by

Hiro. According to Hiro, India’s rise to global dominance came around the hysteria that

was Y2K here in the United States. During the lead-up to the Y2K bug, India had offered

immunization from the “millennium bug” at a cheaper rate than American companies

were providing.62 This flooded Indian companies with business and when the .com

bubble burst in July, 2000 Indian IT companies were mostly unaffected.63 This allowed

their companies to increase their businesses in the United States, and their employees,

who were often English-speaking college-educated that were willing to work for lower

rates became valuable assets. The invention of the cell phone also brought India to the

world stage as “an extra 10% in cell phone penetration in India lead to an increase

of .44% growth in the GDP,” and by 2005 India had acquired two-thirds of the global

ITES and almost half of the BPO. It is this improvement that has caused English-

speaking newspapers in India to call the country an “information superpower,” and for

the United States to praise as “the world’s largest democracy.”64 Moreover, although

India signed a civil nuclear agreement with the U.S. and has since increased its military

cooperation and communication with America, they still purchased $10 billion worth of

weapons from Russia in 2010, straining the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.65

The European Union, a 27-nation alliance that aims to “promote economic expansion in

Europe, participate actively in global trade, and lobby for European interests in the

international arena,” stands with the U.S. in their defense of the West, yet still acts as a

rival the U.S. superiority.66 In 1999, the EU created its own currency are resulting in 751

billion euro ($953 billion) in circulation and within ten years it “ acquired the distinction

of having the highest combined value of cash in circulation in the world” after surpassing

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the U.S. dollar.67 However, Hiro is critical of the EU because of their inability to work

together at times, “even on such a European issue as recognizing the breakaway region of

Kosovo as an independent state there was no unanimity among EU nations.”68

While China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are providing serious competition to the

United States, Hiro is very critical of the United States in how it turned out after the

process of globalization. Hiro’s central belief is that “instead of a straightforward bipolar

or multipolar relationship, simultaneous cooperation and competition will be the likely

template of relationships among major powers.69 The first step away from American

global hegemony came at a 1998 UN Security Council meeting regarding Clinton’s

“micromanagement of UN inspections of Iraq’s WMD program to further his domestic

agenda.”70 U.S. Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson requested that there be no

alleviation of the sanctions placed on Iraq by the UN, and that if there was, he would veto

any opposing resolution. Russia, along with China and France, pushed back against the

United States, threatening to veto the U.S. resolution. This counter threat was different

than the approach the United States expected from the Russians, and it threw them off so

much that they withdrew its draft resolution.71 Hiro describes this as a monumental

instance, stating that the United States being pressured to back down in international

politics by three world powers “was the first, and welcome, glimmer of the emergence of

a multipolar world.”72 In the years after this event at the UN Security Council, the United

States has taken a beating in the international community, and it only has itself to blame.

In September, 2001, the United States was a victim of a terrorist attack that

caused panic and confusion across the country. Hiro argues that our president

overreacted to this attack “by starting two major wars,” and “reducing taxes at home,”

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effectively doing “more damage to the United States than Osama bin Laden…could have

imagined in his wildest dreams.” As some conspiracy theorists believe, the United States

needed an excuse to invade Iraq for its oil resources, and the Bush Administration may

have used the events on 9/11 to justify their attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. According

to Al Gore in 2002, it seemed as though in response to this attack, President Bush “is

proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to preemptively attack whomsoever he may

deem represents a potential future threat,” something that sounds hypocritical in that the

United States certainly would not approve of countries acting in such a manner.73

In his haste to seek revenge, Bush and his policy makers overlooked these simple

questions prior to starting an invasion campaign:

Are the countries in the Greater Middle East to be considered as one homogenous mass simply because they are Muslim, Arab, or Iranian? Do the reasons for the absent of democracy in the region vary from country to country? Is the Greater Middle East ready for such a radical switch-over to American-style democracy?How do the intellectuals in the region assess the current situation?74

By not addressing these issues sufficiently prior to conducting an invasion, the United

States was not able to properly prepare for the amount of work and resources needed to

instill and maintain a new government after the removal of Saddam Hussein. Some

recent evidence assembled by Hiro lends to the theory that the United States was greedy

for Iraqi oil and needed an excuse to go to war. Hiro quotes former Federal Reserve chief

Alan Greenspan who said in 2007 “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to

acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”75 Hiro’s evidence

includes Paul O’Neill’s memoirs in which he states that seven months prior to 9/11 the

first topic on the agenda discussed when Bush took the Oval Office for the first time was

about Iraq, and that “the next National Security Council meeting on February 1 [2001]

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was devoted exclusively to Iraq.” Secondly, it is mentioned that a document prepared by

the Defense Intelligence Agency “had already mapped Iraq’s oil fields and exploration

areas, and listed American corporations likely to be interested in participating in Iraq’s

petroleum industry.” Lastly, a scheme was concocted that would sell “all of the Iraqi oil

fields to private companies with a view to increasing output well above the quota” set by

OPEC “in order to weaken, and then destroy, OPEC.”76 Regardless of whether or not you

are a skeptic, the campaigns by the United States and Iraq have resulted in a weakening

of American superiority around the globe.

Faced with the pressure to withdrawal troops from Iraq in June, 2004, a

“perception has grown in Washington that after that date any blame for failures of

mishaps in Iraq will fall on the Iraqi entity, while America’s own soldiers…remain ready

to assist the Iraqi security forces if and when needed.”77 However, as Hiro states, the

United States has no real intentions of leaving Iraq voluntarily because “not only would

that undo its plan of transforming Iraq in America’s own image, but it would also had a

huge victory to the Arab militants, with incalculable consequences for the Middle East.”78

“In occupied Iraq,” Hiro explains, “Nationalism and Islam have converged, creating an

unmatched combination that is driving not just armed insurgency but also permissible

political activity,” and that Iraqi’s leaders “are dead set against America’s military-

economic domination of their country.”79 Herein lies the debate many American policy

makers have had in regards to Iraq, should we stay or should we leave? Donald

Rumsfeld suggests that we “imagine what the region would look like without Saddam

and with a regime that is aligned with U.S. interests, it would change everything in the

region and beyond. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is about.”80 This is a scary

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question to consider, what could happen without a U.S. presence in Iraq? Would

insurgents and Taliban flood the vacuum left by the United States’ departure? How

would that impact the surrounding region, which is already in an extremely volatile

state?81 Rather than think of answers to these hypothetical questions, the United States

continued to focus on the transformation of Iraq’s economy into a “free-for-all

capitalism,” the shaping of Iraq’s security and intelligence agencies to fit the mold of

America, “and to develop long-term cooperation.”82 The United States has also

continued its “war on terror” in Iraq under two beliefs: “there was an unified

multinational foe out there just as there was during the Cold War,” and that the strategic

response to this enemy had to be using a “deployment of overwhelming force.83 These

answers have not turned out to be true, and Hiro states:

The Bush administration is failing to live up to the expectations of people around the world that America, the sole superpower, would spearhead a multilateral campaign against the scourge of terrorism based on a commonly agreed platform, to stop indulging in unilateralist interpretations and actions to fight terror, which would set it on an inexorable course of war without end.84

This plan has not produced the desired results, and as American soldiers are still

occupying Iraq, the enemy has shown it was more than willing to stand toe-to-toe with

the United States, not afraid to hide their disgust for the United States and democracy.

Even though Operation Iraqi Freedom will go down as a military success, “in retrospect

though, it was turn out to be the point at which the American imperium began sliding

downwards.”85

The occupation in Afghanistan has also made the United States appear weak and

inept in the international sphere. Hiro believes that although “corruption in Afghanistan

today is acute and permeates all sectors of society,” the real blame is the United States.86

Hiro describes the Kabul Bank in Afghanistan being a private company founded in 2004

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and Americans praised it as being “a linchpin in the country’s emerging free market

economic order,” and Afghans flooded the bank to deposit their money.87 What these

people did not know, however, and what Hiro is so convinced of, is that those behind the

scenes began “skimming off depositors’ funds as unsecured loans to themselves through

fake front companies,” therefore enabling “the world’s largest banking scam…with the

U.S. Embassy in Kabul acting as its midwife.”88 By 2010, nearly $1 billon was missing

from Kabul Bank, with the two Penza schemers making away with $900 million.89 This

whole process has placed an even darker cloud over the United States as its troops are

stationed in the Middle East. In this region, tensions between the United States and

Pakistan and between the United States and Iran are continuing to escalate during the

Obama administration, and Hiro provides insights about how to handle each situation.

The relationship between Pakistan and the United States began in the 1980s, and

while Pakistan “acted as the crucial conduit for U.S. aid and weapons to jihadists in

Afghanistan” at the time “today it could be an obstacle to the delivery of supplies to

America’s military in Afghanistan.”90 However, Pakistan has a working partnership with

another world power, China, and in the event the relationship between the United States

and Pakistan continues to deteriorate, Pakistan would have “a viable substitute for the

U.S.” which Pakistan can use as leverage in any future negotiations.91 Whether or not the

United States would care to admit it, Pakistan is in control of the supply lines going to

and from Afghanistan, a landlocked country. In order to maintain a reliable route for

military supplies to travel on, there needs to be increased cooperation between the United

States and Pakistan to ensure the stability of the region. The Pakistani government is

aware of this reality, and “the rulers of Pakistan, military and civilian, turned out to be

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masters at squeezing the most out of the United States.”92 Unfortunately for Pakistan,

however, their economy is doing poorly and they are forced to rely on “handouts from the

U.S. and regular rollover loans from the IMF.”93 Since 2012 the relationship between

these two countries has strained. In November of 2011, NATO aircraft and helicopters

based in Afghanistan “carried out a two-hour-long raid on [two Pakistani border posts],

killing 24 soldiers.”94 As one would expect, Pakistan was extremely upset by this, and in

response they “shut the two boarder crossings through which the U.S. and NATO”

transport supplies, prompting Lieutenant General Frank Panter to state “if we can’t

negotiate or successfully renegotiate the reopening of ground lines of communication

with Pakistan, we have to default and rely on India and the Northern Distribution

Network (NDN),” and that “both are expensive propositions and it increases the

deployment or redeployment.”95 This leaves the United States with the answer it does not

want to hear, that “the U.S. thus faces a formidable foe in Pakistan whose cooperation it

badly needs to withdraw from Afghanistan in an orderly and dignified fashion by

2014.”96 Other than this withdrawal from Afghanistan, another pressing issue is what

will happen to Pakistan’s arsenal of 110 nuclear bombs if Pakistan were to disintegrate as

a nation? Hiro asks: “could [they] fall into the hands of Islamist militants?”97 A serious

question Washington needs to address before going further in negotiations with Pakistan.

In Iran, President Obama is faced with another challenge as well. Iran’s threat of

nuclear weapons was a pressing issue during most of his presidency, with the thought of

nuclear proliferation in Iran being worse than then actually possession a WMD.98 Even

though French experts on foreign affairs say they would accept Iran having a nuclear

weapon “under circumstances,” the question is asked, “Can the United States live with a

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nuclear-armed Iran?”99 We may not have a choice. According to National Defense

University Scholars in 2005, “the costs of rolling back Iran’s nuclear program may be

higher than the costs of deterring and containing a nuclear Iran,” and that it might be best

to “decelerate” the nuclear program.100 While people in the United States may be

worrying about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Hiro does not seem to see great ramifications.

Hiro states that if Iran were to use its nukes and target Israel, “it would find itself

annihilated since—equipped with submarine-borne nuclear weapons—Israel possessed

the second strike capability that Tehran does not.”101 However, Iran can still “strike back

by closing the Gulf to oil shipments, let loose terrorist attacks in the Middle East, Europe,

and the US, [and by] possibly providing chemical or biological weapons to terrorist

groups.”102 Hiro also points out:

That military action against Iran would reinforce Iran’s nuclear ambition, destabilize the region, especially Iraq and Afghanistan, give further impetus to ‘war on terror,’ disrupt hydrocarbon supplies and damage world economy, and result in large civilian casualties and the releasing of radioactive materials into the environment.103

With this the case, caution is recommended between these two countries, as anything can

set off this region of the world, and who knows what would happen next.

The role of the United States in this process of globalization is that of a popular

kid finding out he’s really not that popular anymore. After the 2008 financial meltdown,

the United States’ economy was in scrambles, and it allowed other countries to emerge as

threatening powers to their supremacy. In representing itself as the global hegemon since

the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States forced the responsibility of

being the world police on itself. Regardless of whether or not the United States is acting

as the supreme ruler of the world, Hiro believes “the impact of globalization and ongoing

nonviolent competition in the field of soft power does not preclude the world’s hotspots

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bursting into flames.”104 According to Hiro, these “future flashpoints” are divided into

four groups: perceived threat to national security, control of disputed territories,

competition for vial resources, and currency and trade.105 An example of this is the

relationship between China and Taiwan, representing a conflict over control of disputed

territories.106 Is the United States going to continue to police the world, and if so, are they

going to feel obligated to respond to conflict based on those categories? In regards to oil.

Hiro believes that “the world should be divided into OPEC and non-OPEC regions,” and

that non-OPEC countries such as the United States, China, and India will become

increasingly dependent for oil from those OPEC countries.107 This separation, along with

the balance of powers present in this new era after globalization, will be more reflective

of the relationships the countries share with one another. Countries with similar motives

for policy will align with one another to ensure their interests are met. This is not any

different than the state of the world at the beginning of the 20th century, with Britain and

the United States counterbalancing Russia, China, and Japan in the competition for

resources and access to markets.

Dilip Hiro says he “would like to see a slow emergence of a multi-polar world,”

and the pieces are moving into place as the globalization process has taken shape.108

According to Vladimir Putin, “one country, the United States, has overstepped its

national boundaries in every way, this is visible in the economic, political, cultural and

educational policies it imposes on other nations. This is very dangerous.”109 This has

caused a reduction in the amount of clout that the United States carries into international

policy. As countries are catching up to the economic and military power of the United

States, the U.S. is going to have to find its place in the new world order. “In the coming

Beecroft, 19

years, [the United States] will have to face reality and concede, however reluctantly, that

the economic tectonic plates are shifting” and that the power is going towards China.110

While the United States has “poured huge amounts of money, blood, military power, and

diplomatic capital into self-inflicted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” it has “lost ground in

South America and all of Africa, even Egypt.”111 In order to gain that ground back, the

United States is going to have to start leveling with other countries and not give off the

impression that their interests are “skin deep,” like it was said of Bush’s enforcement of

democracy in the Western Hemisphere.112 Moreover, what the United States needs to do

more than anything else, is realize:

There is a distinct, if little discussed, downside to being a superpower and acting as the self-appointed global policemen with a multitude of targets. An arrogance feeding on a feeling of invincibility and an obsession with winning every battle blind you to your own impact and even to what might be to your long-term benefit. In this situation, as your planet-wide activities become ever more diverse, frenzied, and even contradictory, you expose yourself to exploitation by lesser powers otherwise seemingly tied to your apron strings.113

So, America, why don’t we take a break from being the global police, allow ourselves to

get out of this recession, and allow the cyclical nature of history bring us back to the

world’s hegemon.

Beecroft, 20

Figure 1

Figure 2

Beecroft, 21

Figure 3

Figure 4

Beecroft, 22

Figure 5

Figure 6

Beecroft, 23

Figure 7

Beecroft, 24

6 Members China Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Russia Tajikistan Uzbekistan

5 Observers Afghanistan India Iran Mongolia Pakistan

3 Dialogue Partners Belarus Sri Lanka Turkey

3 Guests ASEAN

 CIS 

Turkmenistan

Figure 8

Figure 9

12 states (2011) Algeria Angola Ecuador Iran Iraq Kuwait Libya Nigeria Qatar Saudi Arabia United Arab

Emirates Venezuela

Beecroft, 25

Beecroft, 26

1 Dilip Hiro, After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 5. Although Hiro has composed over thirty books and numerous articles on websites such as The Guardian and YaleGlobal, this book his best work on globalization as a whole. While his previous works have focused on regional conflicts, such as Asia and the Middle East, this work best reflects his thoughts on how each region impacts the world’s major powers. It is for this reason that After Empire will be featured more than other sources, however many of his works will be referenced to supplement the arguments he presents therein. Books will hereafter be cited in italics.2 See Figure 1.3 Dilip Hiro, “China Rising: Have Cash, Buy Oil,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. October 9, 2009. Articles will hereafter we cited in quotes.4 Dilip Hiro, “Defying the Economic Odds,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. May 3 2013.5 Dilip Hiro, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources (New York: Nation Books, 2007), 190.6 Ibid, 174.7 See Figure 2.8 After Empire, 175. See Figure 39 “China Rising: Have Cash, Buy Oil.”10 Ibid.11 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. August 20, 2007.12 “China Rising: Have Cash, Buy Oil.”13 Blood of the Earth, 191.14 “China Rising: Have Cash, Buy Oil.”15 Ibid.16 After Empire, 283.17 Ibid, 149.18 “Defying the Economic Odds.”19 After Empire, 283.20 Ibid. PdVSA—Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.21 Ibid, 89.22 “The Sole Superpower in Decline: The Rise of a Multipolar World,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. August 20, 2007.23 After Empire, 107.24 Ibid.25 “The Sole Superpower in Decline.”26 After Empire, 87. See Figure 4.27 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”28 “The Sole Superpower in Decline.”29 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”30 After Empire, 107.31 “Re-Ordering the World Order,” The Guardian, Guardian News. August 20, 2007.32 See Figure 5 and Figure 6.33 Ibid, 108.34 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”35 “Re-Ordering the World Order.” For a full list of members, see Figure 7. The organization has expanded to include counter drug smuggling and terrorism. For more on the political and cultural background of Central Asia, see Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2009).36 Ibid.37 After Empire, 42.38 “Re-Ordering the World Order.”

39 Ibid.40 “The Sole Superpower in Decline.”41 “Re-Ordering the World Order.”42 Blood of Earth, 177.43 After Empire, 136. See Figure 8 for OPEC members.44 Ibid.45 Blood of the Earth, 179.46 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”47 After Empire, 136-137.48 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”49 After Empire, 139.50 See Figure 9. The Economist Online, http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/global_arms_exports.51 “The Sole Superpower in Decline.”52 After Empire, 144.53 “The Rising and Falling Power of Hydrocarbon States.”54 Blood of the Earth, 181.55 “The Zero-Sum Fiasco: Bush in a Humiliating Zero-Sum Iranian Game of His Own Making,” Tomgram Dispatch. December 6, 2007.56 After Empire, 128.57 Ibid, 129.58 Dilip Hiro, The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and its Furies (New York: Nation Books, 2005), 203.59 The Iranian Labyrinth, 203.60 After Empire, 129-130.61 Ibid, 130.62 Ibid, 195.63 Ibid.64 Ibid, 197.65 “New World Order Without a Hegemon: Compete and Cooperate,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. February 24, 2010.66 After Empire, 209.67 Ibid, 215.68 Ibid, 217.69 “New World Order Without a Hegemon: Compete and Cooperate.”70 After Empire, 92.71 Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq and Iran after the Gulf Wars (New York: Routledge Press, 2001), 139-140.72 After Empire, 92.73 Dilip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After (New York: Nation Books, 2004), 75-76.74 After Empire, 49.75 “How the Bush Administration’s Iraqi Oil Grab Went Awry: Greenspan’s Oil Claim in Context,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. September 25, 2007.76 Ibid.77 “US Nation-Building Abroad—Part 1,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. May 26, 2004.78 Ibid.79 Ibid.80 Ibid.81 For more on this topic, see Dilip Hiro, “The Middle East at the Crossroads—Part 1,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. June 10, 2010.

82 “US Nation-Building Abroad—Part 1.”83 After Empire, 49-50.84 Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response (New York: Routledge, 2002), 421.85 After Empire, 52.86 Dilip Hiro, “The Great Afghan Corruption Scam: How Operation Enduring Freedom Mutated into Operation Enduring Corruption,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. April 2, 2013.87 “The Great Afghan Corruption Scam.”88 Ibid.89 Ibid.90 Dilip Hiro, “Playing the China Card: Has the Obama Administration Miscalculated in Pakistan,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. May 24, 2011.91 Ibid.92 Dilip Hiro “A World in Which No One Is Listening to the Planet’s Sole Superpower: The Greater Middle East’s Greatest Rebuff to Uncle Sam,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. September 29, 2013.93 Ibid.94 Dilip Hiro, “Taking Uncle Sam for a Ride: How Pakistan Makes Washington Pay for the Afghan War,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute95 “Taking Uncle Sam for a Ride.”96 Dilip Hiro, “The U.S. Confronts Pakistan’s Street Power,” YaleGlobal, MacMillan Center. April 27, 2012.97 Dilip Hiro, “The Alliance From Hell: How the U.S. and Pakistan Became the Dysfunctional Nuclear Family of International Relations,” Tomgram Dispatch, The Nation Institute. October 18, 2012.98 Dilip Hiro, “Deterring Tehran: We May be Unable to Stop Iran Acquiring Nuclear Weapons, But We Can Deter It From Using them,” The Guardian, Guardian News. February 6, 2007.99 “Deterring Tehran.”100 Ibid.101 Ibid.102 Ibid.103 Ibid.104 After Empire, 11.105 Ibid, 251.106 Ibid, 265.107 Blood of the Earth, 60.108 Dilip Hiro, “A Multi-Polar World: American Dominance is Finally Being Challenged by Russia, India, Brazil, What is the one thing you would most like to see happen by this time next year?” The Guardian, Guardian News. March 14, 2007.109 “The Sole Superpower in Decline: The Rise of a Multipolar World.”110 “Defying the Economic Odds: The World Melts Down, China Grows.”111 “America is suffering a Power Outage…and the Rest of the World Knows it.”112 After Empire, 138.113 “Taking Uncle Sam for a Ride.”