US must learn to share global stage with China and adapt to the reality of a diverse, multipolar world
- America needs to move past its monolithic vision of a world order centred on liberal democracy and recognise the legitimacy of other governance models
- The inconvenient truth is that it is not the only ‘shining city upon a hill’
But to blame China for the ills afflicting liberal democracy is likely to see America become mired in yet another intractable conflict. Instead, the US must accept the reality of a multipolar world order and learn to coexist peaceably with China.
Despite the bungled exit, there is near consensus that the US had to leave Afghanistan. Twenty years and trillions of dollars later, Americans are done with any illusion of nation-building in faraway lands.
Still, this setback does not spell the end of the American commitment to liberal democracy. The White House has vowed to continue standing up for the rights and freedoms of the oppressed.
The current great power conflict is actually a clash of two civilisations with distinct belief systems. A monotheistic religion, Christianity believes in the existence of the one true God and a singular pathway to heaven. The American faith in liberal democracy as the apex of human political progress is a secular adaptation of this theological world view.
The religion behind a divided America and its conflict with China
By contrast, the ancient Chinese were polytheistic, worshipping a multitude of gods and pursuing a variety of versions of the ultimate good. Modern China inherited this polytheistic view of the universe, convinced there are many ways to govern the human family.
On the other hand, the US has to realise that, while there are universal values binding us all, the inherently multicultural, multireligious human family also has diverse ways of conceptualising the good.
With the exception of extremists and fundamentalist sects, most monotheistic traditions today have sidestepped their exclusive world view to embrace an inclusive coexistence with other religious faiths.
The US should likewise move past its monolithic vision of a world order centred on liberal democracy in the interest of recognising the legitimacy of other models of governance.
The Afghanistan debacle has once more laid bare the limits of military power in effecting nation-building. To transform the world, it is crucial that America restore its once-formidable soft power.
But even as Washington stays committed to defending democratic values across the globe, America must also come to a reckoning with an inconvenient truth: the US is not the only “shining city upon a hill”. America must lose its sense of manifest destiny and learn to share the global stage with a rising China in an invariably multipolar world.
Peter T.C. Chang is deputy director of the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia