Shift of international power

Yuba Nath Lamsal
The rise and fall of powers is a natural phenomenon like civilization and decadence. New civilization rises from the ashes of the old civilization. In other words, one civilization has to come to extinction to give rise to the new one. In this process, several great civilizations in the world came into existence and in the course of time they saw their natural and sometime unnatural demise.  Similar is the case of the evolution of geopolitics. Powers rise, fall and shift. Every new generation sees a demise of an old power and emergence and re-emergence of the new power. This is what the world has seen. Even our own generation has seen decline of several great powers and emergence of the new ones.
The 19^th century did belong to Europe in general and Britain in particular. The European powers mainly Britain, France, Portugal and Spain were in race to expand and spread their power and influence in the world. The race was for colonizing the world. Much of Asia and African continents came under the control of various European powers. In this race, Britain was in the fore front and it controlled the largest part of the world. Thus, it used to be said that the sun does not set in the British Empire. That means Britain had colonies in all continents.
The general phenomenon during colonial period was to exploit the resources of the colonies. The colonial powers used to take away raw materials from the colonies and resell the finished goods in the territories under their control. This is how the colonial countries had prospered while pauperizing the people in the colonies. Even our two great neighbors were under foreign occupation. China was once occupied by Japanese whereas the entire South Asia except Nepal had fallen under the control of British colonial power. Even the present United States of America was once the colony of Great Britain. In this way, Europe prospered and the 19th century became European century.
With the end of the World War II, Europe was exhausted and virtually shattered by devastating wars. Although the Allies proclaimed themselves as the winners in the war, they, too, were losers in real sense. British was the leader of Allies during the war, but it lost its power and resource bases—the colonies— after the war as national independence movements broke out in the colonized nations in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, which brought an end to British colonial empire in the world limiting London’s power and prowess within the narrow confine of Western Europe’s Atlantic coast. The global leadership of Britain finally came to an end.
During the colonial era, wars broke out among great powers for control over the colonized territory. The World War I and World War II were the result of the rivalry among big powers to get hold of the territories and control resources of the world mainly in Asia and Africa. With the growing political consciousness, national independence movements took place in various countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which forced the colonial powers to withdraw from their colonies and the former colonies attained independence. In a few years after the World War II, almost all European countries had to wash off their hands from their colonies. The end of the World War also marked the end of the European power in general and British Empire in particular. After the World War II, the United States replaced the British role in global power politics. The United States became the world leader. It so happened because the World War II came to end with America’s involvement in the war. Had the United States not taken part in the war against Germany and Japan, the war would not have ended so quickly. In response to attack in Pearl Harbor by Japan, Washington dropped two atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Japan which killed hundreds of thousand people and destroyed property worth billions of dollars. This nuclear attack in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States forced Tokyo to surrender and it also ended the war in Europe as well.
After the war, only two countries appeared winners. They were the United States and the Soviet Union or Russia. These two countries slowly consolidated their powers to become the super powers which dominated the world until 1990. The period after the World War II and until 1990 was known as the bipolar world which implied that the two superpowers dictated and controlled the world. This period was also known as the era of the Cold War. But the bi-polar state of the world also did not last long, which came to an end in 1990 when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the entire Soviet bloc collapsed one after another like a house of cards. This again gave rise to domination and hegemony of the United States of America, which continues even today. Thus, the 20^th century belonged to the United States or, in other words, 20^th century was American century.
On December 25, 1991, an epoch ended. On that day the Soviet Union collapsed. This event marked a new phenomenon in the world’s history. For the first time in 500 years, no European power was a global power. The emergence of Europe as a global power began in 1492 with Europe smashing its way into the world and creating a global imperial system. The end of European power began after the end of the World War II and completed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For the past five centuries, one European power or another had dominated the world— whether it was Portugal, Spain, France, England or the Soviet Union.
After 1991 the only global power left was the United States. The United States has been the unchallenged global power. But the unipolar world created imbalance in the global power politics and security. Although the Cold War had given rise to heightened tension and threat of conventional and nuclear wars with the outbreak of several inter and intra states wars in various parts of the world, it had at least maintained power balance, which was, to a certain extent, was in the interest of the countries of the Third World. The uni-polar world has become more dangerous as more wars have broken and more people have been killed and property destroyed by wars of various nature and manifestations than during the two world wars. Imbalance, discrepancy and divide remain the defining characteristic of the global system today.
While the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the European epoch, it also marked the end of the era that began in 1945. It is not only related to the military and political power but the world has seen a phenomenal shift in the economic power, too. The post World War II had seen a Japanese economic miracle followed by Germany. The Japanese and German economic were super power and their era also has now come to an end with China already emerging as an economic giant. China is currently world’s second largest economy and is also poised to become world’s largest economy in near future. With the financial collapse and panic that the world has seen and felt for the last few years in general and after 2008 in more particular has amplified the logic and argument that capitalist system has failed to address the global problem reinforcing the demand for an alternative development and economic model. For our generation, Chinese growth has been the engine of the global economic system, just as Japan was in the previous generation. Many a pundits have now started arguing that the Chinese model is going to prevail in the 21^st century, which many developing countries are and will be following.
These events have marked the constant shift of power in the international arena. Now it is becoming clear that the 21^st century would definitely be the Asian century with China leading and other countries like India, Japan, South Korea and the rest following. This also marks the multi-polarity in the international power politics which is in the interest of the developing world. Perhaps, the 22nd century would belong to Africa or South America. This is the dynamic of the global power politics.