A New World Order is closer to reality than most Americans realize, and the United States is not necessarily its leader.
Instead of a bipolar world organized around two superpowers and based on military might, this new order is a tripolar world, organized around three power centers and based on economic rivalry.
Behind the Cold War headlines, this three-legged world has been taking shape for years. The big news now is that parts of it are nearly complete.
The three centers are the U.S., the European Community and Japan. For what it`s worth, the U.S. remains the only military superpower. But Europe already is stronger economically, and Japan and its Asian satellites are growing faster than either of the other two.
Seen in this light, the Persian Gulf war may have been the last gasp of the old order, not the dawn of the new.
Of all the changes wrought by the end of the Cold War, this one may be the hardest for Americans to grasp. Long predicted, the coming of age of the Europeans and Asians, after years of postwar dependency, will require U.S. economic and diplomatic skills far different from those needed in the long showdown with the former Soviet Union.
Unlike the Cold War, the New World Order is not a confrontation between hostile powers. The three power centers see one another as customers, not targets. All three know they belong to a single and increasingly intertwined global economy, and will prosper only if they cooperate. No nation, for instance, can have its own national monetary policy anymore.
Nevertheless, the three will be locked in rivalry over trade, investment, jobs, economic control and standards of living, along a commercial front far more fluid than the Iron Curtain.
The U.S. does not hold all the cards.
The American economy is still by far the biggest of any single nation-nearly twice as big as that of No. 2, Japan.
But the 12 nations of the European Community have more people-338 million, compared to America`s 250 million-and a bigger total output-$6 trillion per year, compared to America`s $5.4 trillion.
What`s more, these 12 nations are becoming one nation, economically speaking. Over the last five years, they have been erasing the barriers that divide them. By the end of this year, they will have not 12 national markets but one huge single market, the world`s biggest, within which goods, money and people will flow as freely as they do between the 50 American states.
That`s just the start. Seven other nations-Austria, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland and Lichtenstein-have agreed to set up a common market with the EC. These seven have a total output as big as all of Latin America south of the Rio Grande. They will expand that vast European market to nearly $7 trillion annually. Most or all of these nations will be full members of the EC by the end of the century.
There`s more. Five Eastern European nations-Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania-say they want to join the EC, and the first three might make it in the next 10 years. Even after communism, they have a total output as big as Canada`s. Given a chance, they should boom.
What this means is a huge, varied, wealthy power, skilled in trade and finance, uniting nations that were trading to live even before America existed. By 1996 at the earliest and 1999 at the latest, they will have a single currency, called the ecu (European currency unit), which will replace the dollar as the world`s strongest currency.
In this tripolar world, the Asian leg is the weakest-so far. But it is powered by Japanese investment, which is inexhaustible, funded by Japanese banks, the world`s biggest, and organized along the Japanese principles of close government-business ties, aggressive trade and internal protection.
This formula has propelled Japan to the top of the international heap. Its pundits predict that the next decade will usher in the Asian century. No other nation-not America, none in Europe-has matched its combination of manufacturing and marketing skills. In the world of trade, it inspires awe and fear.
There is no Asian Common Market to match the EC. But Japan commands a commercial sphere of influence that embraces South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, and is growing rapidly. Travelers from remote areas of Asia report Japanese factories springing up, virtually in the middle of jungles.
All these Asian nations belonged to the Third World the day before yesterday. Now they are called Newly Industrialized Countries-NICs, in economists` jargon-halfway to the status of the big industrial countries.
The U.S. has its own hinterland, but it is both more sluggish and less organized that those of Japan and the EC.
All of Latin America, from Mexico south, has an output barely as big as Italy`s. A Latin American joke says that Brazil, the most powerful of the Latin nations, ”is the country of the future and always will be.” All have economies that swing from crisis to boom and back again.
Canada and the U.S. have a free trade agreement but no real economic integration on the EC model. The expansion of this agreement to Mexico is increasingly contentious. The other nations see themselves more as American colonies than American partners.
The emergence of this tripolar world was obscured for Americans by the rivalry with the Soviet Union.
The collapse of the USSR stripped away this screen, revealing a Europe and a Japan that had been busily building their economies while the U.S. ignored its own.
The division of the world into three blocs has been feared by free market economists, who see trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trade wars replacing the world trading system that has existed since World War II. In fact, the opposite is happening.
In this interdependent world, trade between the three blocs is growing faster than trade within them, according to figures of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the organization that oversees world trade.
During the Cold War, most of the globe, including the Third World nations, chose up sides. But a tripolar world leaves great chunks of the planet-most of Africa, the Middle East, India-with no obvious alliance.
The Soviet Union and the U.S. competed for their allegiance; the new powers will only want their markets.
The former Soviet Union itself virtually has fallen out of any new world order. From one of the two main players, it has become only a problem, albeit a big one, rattling its begging cup at the Big Three. Sealed off by its rulers for 70 years, it now plays no part at all in the world economy-one reason getting Western aid to it is such a problem.
Economics isn`t everything. So long as nations go to war, military power counts. If the Soviet Union and U.S. neglected their economies to build up their militaries, the EC and Japan have emerged as economic giants and military pygmies.
Both are doing something about it. With guaranteed U.S. protection a thing of the past, both are slowly taking charge of their own defense.
The U.S. is tied to Europe through NATO and to Japan through the U.S.-Japanese security treaty. The pullback of U.S. forces from Europe and Asia is forcing changes that have just begun.
Japan already is one of the world`s biggest spenders on defense, and it has the economic base to spend much more. Its high-tech prowess has military potential: Some 40 percent of the components in the U.S. ”smart” weapons that won the gulf war were Japanese-made.
NATO is searching for a new role. Meanwhile, the EC is talking about setting up its own defense. France and Germany want an integrated European defense force and a single EC defense policy. Britain and the Netherlands want a European force that, unlike NATO, would operate outside Europe.
No one knows how these alliances will look five years from now. But the implications of the moves are clear: Military alliances across the oceans will count for much less than they have in the last half-century, while economic rivalry, unrestrained by the old common anti-communism, will grow fiercer.
