History is replete with examples of great power conflict that develops when the world’s dominant powers are not willing or able to accommodate the interests of rising powers into the international order of the day. The overarching question today is whether the United States, today’s dominant world power, will be able to accommodate the interests and concerns of emerging powers like China, India, and Brazil (as well as the re-emerging power of Russia) or whether the period ahead will be marked by increased great power conflict, even war.

The answer, despite America’s enthusiasm for its now fading “unipolar moment” and its penchant for unilateralism, is a reassuring yes that it will be able to accommodate today’s emerging powers. But there is still cause for some concern—principally about the kind of world order that will result from the current pattern of accommodation. There are three reasons why the United States has thus far accommodated the rise of China and India as well as it has. The first relates, ironically, to 9/11 and to America’s subsequent preoccupation with the war on terror and Islamic extremism. The Bush administration’s ill-fated crusade to remake the Middle East by destroying the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein has absorbed most of America’s foreign policy energies and tied down much of America’s military power. Prior to 9/11, the American right was divided between those who saw Islamic extremism and those who believed China to be the principal threat to American interests. Democrats were likewise divided—between neoliberals who wanted to establish a concert of democracies that would have excluded China and Russia and more traditional internationalists who favored political and economic engagement with China.

Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attack on 9/11 tipped the balance of American foreign policy toward the Middle East. As a result, political and economic engagement with China and other emerging powers became by default the policy of the Bush administration as well as of traditional Democrats. The Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq and Iran not only left China free to pursue its own diplomacy in East Asia but also left the administration no choice but to pursue a more multilateral course in dealing with North Korea and to some degree Iran. Because of China’s influence with North Korea, Washington looked to Beijing to help guide the Six-Power framework talks on North Korea even as it refused to make any American concessions that would have made those talks successful. Its single-minded focus on Iraq also resulted in a less ideological and less activist international economic policy than Washington had pursued in the 1990s under Clinton. This more hands-off international economic policy allowed emerging powers, whether China, India or Brazil, more room to deviate from America’s neo-liberal prescription and thus to avoid conflict with Washington.

The second reason for Washington’s easy accommodation, particularly its accommodation of China, is that the strategy of economic engagement worked but not in the way that the original architects of the strategy had suggested. Greater investment and trade with China did not produce a more democratic China (albeit there is some evidence of modest political liberalization), as the advocates of engagement argued it would. But it did tie American economic interests inextricably with China to such a degree that it has produced significant constraints on American policy. China’s trade surplus with the United States is a reflection not just of Chinese mercantilism but of the decisions of many of America’s most successful corporations to locate production and increasingly research and development in China to take advantage of low wages and a favorable regulatory climate. American corporations and investors now have such a vested stake in the economic success of China and in good U.S.-China relations that they have become a powerful lobby for U.S.-Chinese cooperation. As a result, economic engagement with China has for now tamed many of America’s more aggressive geopolitical impulses when it comes to China. A similar process is at work with India and Brazil, although neither was ever considered a possible peer competitor.

This growing economic relationship has produced a Chinese-American co-dependency that limits the freedom of action of both countries. China has linked much of its economic development strategy, and social stability, to U.S. foreign investment and to access to the U.S. consumer market. The United States in turn has become dependent on China for cheap manufactured goods and on Chinese savings to finance the purchase of those goods. To date, this co-dependency has worked reasonably well for the political and economic elites of both countries although less well for the broader working populations.

The third reason for America’s easy accommodation of the current constellation of emerging powers is that China, India, and Brazil have all pursued policies that for the most part are supportive of the current American-centric international system. China has supported Washington’s position vis a vis North Korea, avoided conflict with Washington over Iran and Iraq, and willingly helped finance America’s international position. And even though China’s influence has risen in East Asia, China has advanced its position through diplomacy and by emphasizing trade and investment not through the projection of military power.

China’s lack of concern of human rights in its dealings with resource-rich countries, its effort to secure long-term energy supplies, and its growing trade surplus with the United States may trouble some American policymakers and opinion leaders. But these policies do not constitute a major revisionist challenge to American leadership. Brazil and India have similarly adopted positions that pose no major threat to Washington. American policymakers may have at one time worried about Lula’s commitment to a Mercosur centered Latin American trading system but his slavish adherence to the Washington consensus and his moderate position as compared to that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has won Brazil even more friends among America’s economic and policy elites than it had under the centrist Fernando Cardoso.

In short, the emerging powers of China, India, and Brazil have allowed American political elites to maintain the quiet fiction of a unipolar world, despite Iraq and even as they have begun to herald a multipolar world. The only immediate danger to this pattern of accommodation would be the electoral success of the John McCain wing of the neoconservatives. This group favors both a redoubling of American military efforts in the Middle East and a tougher stance toward Russia and China, which it sees as undemocratic and too soft on Iran. The question is whether corporate America would be willing to lend its support to such a self-destructive overextension of American foreign policy. Probably not, and despite his militarism, McCain is not inclined to run or govern as an economic populist who would challenge the international investment and trade preferences of American companies. He therefore may be forced to curb some of his hostility toward China but at the expense of relations with Russia, which would face the blunt of more aggressive McCain foreign policy. Similarly, in spite of the growing appeal of populist Democrats who want tougher action on U.S.-China trade issues, the leading Democrat candidates are not likely to buck corporate America’s love affair with China, India, and Brazil. Again, Russia, despite its oil, is another story in part because it has chosen a more nationalist economic development strategy less open to foreign investment. Thus, in both cases, Wall Street’s acronym the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is likely to be shorted to become the BICs (Brazil, India, and China).

The real danger then is not a more hostile turn in American relations with the emerging powers of China, India and Brazil. Rather it is the problems associated with the current pattern of accommodation. These are essentially twofold.

The first relates to the pattern of economic integration of China, India, and Brazil, which to-date has been driven by corporate America’s pursuit of ever lower labor and production costs. The entry of China and India into the global economy has had the effect of more than doubling the world’s potential labor force. This has put downward pressure on wages in both the developed and developing worlds—eroding the middle classes in the advanced industrialized countries and slowing the growth of the middle class in developing countries. Because of their size and of their unique combination of low-wage and both low-skill and high skill labor in both manufacturing and services, the rapid integration of China and India into the world economy has also had the effect of crowding out economic opportunities for other developing countries, as reflected by the fact that China has drawn in the lion’s share of world direct investment. This pattern of economic integration is neither sustainable because it depends too heavily on the American consumer market. Nor is it healthy, because it has produced a pattern of socio-economic development which has resulted in growing disparities of wealth and income in both the United States and the emerging powers. This is a prescription for a populist backlash.

The second problem involves the lack of multilateral and regional institutions to make a multipolar world work both in terms of international security and the world economy. The United States has accepted today’s emerging powers but without embracing the idea of a multipolar world. As a result, it has neither accepted the normative constraints on its own behavior that an orderly multipolar world requires. Nor has it offered the leadership needed to fashion new institutions to give Brazil, China, and India a greater voice in the management of world affairs. The absence of China from the G-8 and the leadership of the IMF, the principal consulting bodies regarding the world economy, and Brazil and India from the U.N. Security Council amply illustrate this gap between world realities and its institutional architecture.

The challenge for world policymakers in the months ahead, then, is threefold: to flesh out the principles by which a stable multipolar world would be governed; close this gap between power and institutional architecture; and reshape the economic terms on which the current integration of the emerging powers is occurring.