No, I dont think the US or most of the West have the political will. Politicians are seemingly by nature mostly short-sterm thinkers, rather than long-term strategic thinkers. (Not that strategic view chosen is always right.)

As for “Barnett v. Kaplan”, I think there far more to it: Kaplan preaches about what the world will become, while Barnett preaches about what the world can be (but he tries to do so in the realm of pragmatism).

I hold both Barnett and Kaplan in high esteem and I think they are both right. Left at the current course, Kaplan’s vision is very much possible or we can roll-up our sleeves and take a gamble with Barnett.

But does the political will exist, nationally, to comply with international rule sets? Some rule sets already exist – in the West alone, for example, the United States is averse to global financial discipline (from ‘Three Billion New Capitalists’: “America needs to recognise that many of the assumptions guiding its economic policy are at odds with the realities of today’s global economy.); and members of the EU multinational experiment don’t help much by paying scant attention to the ‘Stability & Growth’ Pact.

Moreover the US is telling the EU to ban arms sales to mainland China, and last week tried to stop Spain selling arms to democratic Venezuela. So the experience with rules in a small part of the world is not encouraging.

Kaplan and Ferguson 1, Barnett and Prestowitz 0.