In shifting power, the rise of manifold destiny

If a struggle for resources unfolds between East and West, democratic values could be in for a battering

…With the sizzling competition for energy, water and other resources, comes the threat of global warming, something the rich, energy-guzzling countries have done little to curb, while urging restraint on developing nations.

“The fly in the ointment is energy,” says Michael Klare, a professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and author of the forthcoming book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.


“China and India will have explosive growth and demand at a time when supplies are not going to grow fast enough to satisfy both their burgeoning requirements and those of the older powers like Europe and Japan.”

If there is a struggle for resources, liberal democratic values could take a bigger battering worldwide. And if the United States and other Western countries were weakened, the process would accelerate.

“For countries like Russia that have been kicked around and patronized by the U.S., a multi-polar world is something of an article of faith,” says Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. “The same may be true of China.”

Toronto Star