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The Indian author Pankaj Mishra countered that far from being “economic basket cases”, China and India were growing. Mishra doubted if the West’s free market ideology had ever influenced political and economic thought in the developing world. China and India had produced a resilient “alternative state directed capitalism” to the American “illusion” that “lay ruined”. An intriguing cultural perspective underpinned Mishra’s argument: American domination might not exist as a construct beyond Europe. However, as Oliver Kamm noted, Mishra undid the good work by quoting the ruminations of Chairman Mao on “the decadent forces of the American paper tiger”.
Professor Sir Lawrence Freedmen observed that the panel contained no Americans. He doubted if the bright future of the European Union was being debated in Boston. Therein lay the extent of American hegemony. US domination was contained, either by communism, Islam, international law or geography; but it was real in that America was “top dog” and would continue to be so because there was no alternative ideology. “State run capitalism is neither fascism nor communism; it is economic regulation associated with limitations upon personal freedom”. China is not a threat because no nation desires such strictures.
For the philosopher John Gray, American decline was globalisation’s inevitable consequence, just as the USSR’s collapse was an adjunct of Star Wars. Liberal intellectuals in the 70s were wrong to assume that the Soviet Union was a permanent fixture – Gray singled out the late Harold Pinter, whose evangelical anti-Americanism was taking a battering this evening. Contemporary thinkers who denied that globalisation ensured that other interests must win through at the expense of America were wrong too. “We are witnessing a transitional moment”.
Gray was engaging but could not compete with the opposition’s party piece: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Half-Spanish half-English, Felipe is an American academic with a voice redolent of Loyd Grossman’s, only louder. “This debate is about values more fundamental than the banalities and trivialities of economics”. Echoing Blair, Felipe argued that pre-eminence required first rate education. This was America’s forte. US undergraduates receive two and half times more funding than their European counterparts; investment producing “civic mindedness and solidarity, characteristics that founded and will perpetuate American greatness”. Those values, Felipe argued, making the most politically incorrect conceit imaginable, “will inspire visiting students to rebuild the blank slate of their countries in the image of America”, as if it were God. The panel gawped in horror; the audience roared. Despite the absence of fact and the preposterous accent, Fernandez-Armesto’s charisma and optimism proved decisive.
Pre-debate, 223 were for, 334 against and 162 undecided; after, 103 were for, 526 against and 37 remained undecided. It was the largest turnaround in IQ2’s history.
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