One of the staples of American popular culture is the
prediction that America is in decline. Apparently this tradition dates all the
way back to the founding of the nation, and has provided innumerable speakers and
writers with a living ever since. And it still seems to be in vogue. Search
Amazon for book titles with “American” and “decline” and the list runs to 20
pages.
Certainly the past couple of decades, when American foreign
policy has been in the hands of the neocon interventionist internationalists,
imbued with the naïve illusion that they could “spread American-style
democracy” throughout the world at the point of a gun, has been grim. We have
spent almost 18 years now in Middle East wars, killed, maimed and displaced tens
of millions of people, thoroughly destroyed the infrastructure of a number of
nations, spent enough (borrowed) money
to have permanently solved two or three major domestic problems, and
accomplished absolutely nothing. In the face of that debacle, on can understand
why the argument that we are in decline has some traction in the public mind.
One of the few good things one can say about Trump is that he seems to be
cleaning that clan out of the administration.
Part of this persistent fear of decline is the fear that
some other power is rising to take our place as the global hegemon. In my youth
it was the Soviet Union who was the threat. After that is was the Japanese,
with their amazing economic growth, who were going to buy out America. Then
some worried that the European Union would become powerful enough to challenge
American dominance. Now we have China as the bogyman, and perhaps occasionally
a resurgent Russia as well.
Of course lots of people have a vested interest in having a
threatening external enemy. Service chiefs need to justify the budgets for
their branches of the armed forces. Politicians find it useful to win votes,
especially if their district houses major defense contractors. Corporations can
use the fear in tactics to try to hobble foreign competitors. Authors and
speakers find it a reliable topic to maintain their incomes. And demagogues
find it useful to recruit and maintain followers and thereby increase their
power.
But I will argue in this series that none of these – not
China, not Russia, not Iran, not the EU - are the threat that popular writers
and ambitious politicians make them out to be, and that the next century or two
at least will be American centuries, not out of any brilliance from our
political leadership or any special feature of the American culture - indeed despite
the thoroughly predictable bumbling and incompetence of American politicians
and the ignorance of most of the American voting public - but due largely to the simple luck of
American geography and demographics.
What will eventually end American dominance (and it will eventually end,
as all empires end) will almost certainly not be any external threat, but
rather the inevitable internal decay and corruption that seems to finally
overcome all great empires.
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