Beware Of US Decline Theorists
US decline theorists are having a field day (year?), thanks to America’s worsening economic crisis. Among those predicting that the US will lose its superpower status are Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and German finance minister Peer Steinbrück. Last week, even the US National Intelligence Council seemed to hint at the loss of superpower status, with the publication of its Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. Today, I see that some newspapers have seized upon comments by a Russian academic, Igor Panarin, that the US will eventually fragment into six regional states due to the financial crisis and ethnic divergences.
While I do not in any way doubt the severity of the US’ present economic circumstances, my own belief is that US decline theorists are wrong – as they have been for decades now.
Looking back over the post-WWII period, there have been at least three major periods when US decline theorists reached their apogee. The first period was in the late 1950s, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and later put the first man in space. The second period was in the 1970s, which followed Watergate in 1974, the oil shock of 1973-75, defeat in Vietnam over the same period, strategic reverses in Africa (Angola and Ethiopia), and the humiliation of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-81. Low points included the seizure of a US container ship by Democratic Kampuchea (1975) and a botched hostage rescue attempt resulting in a fatal helicopter crash in the Iranian desert (1980). Ayatollah Khomeini summed up the declinists’ attitude perfectly when he said ‘America can’t do a damn thing!’. This also coincided with severe economic difficulties in the US, and President Jimmy Carter wore a sweater in the Oval Office to demonstrate energy efficiency.
The third major period of US declinism came at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, paradoxically just after the US military victory over Iraq and the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time, Japan and a newly reunified Germany seemed set for global domination, thus reversing the outcome of World War II. The late Michael Crichton’s 1992 novel, Rising Sun, about Japanese corporate power in the US, captured the zeitgeist.
In all three cases, the declinists proved horrendously wrong. The US won the moon race in 1969. Later, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the US went on the strategic offensive, significantly ramping up defence spending (and thus setting the scene for new technology) and rebuilding its international alliances. By the end of the 1980s, it was the Soviet Union, not the USA, which was heading for collapse.
As for the 1990s, Bill Clinton ended up presiding over one of America’s biggest booms in the post-War era, while Japan entered a ‘lost decade’ (which may yet turn out to be a ‘lost eternity’), and Asia’s much touted tiger economies all crumbled. By the end of the 1990s, the general sentiment around the world was that the US was too powerful, rather than too weak.
But now, in 2008, US declinists are saying ‘this time it’s different!’. They point to the fact that US economic problems are the worst in 70 years, and the rise of China in particular, and more broadly, India, Brazil, Russia, and a whole bunch of emerging states.
I do not dispute that the emergence of ‘Chindia’ and company have the power to transform the world, but those countries have tremendous structural problems, even on a good day. China has to navigate a minefield of economic, social and environmental problems, with no guarantee of success. Moreover, US economic weakness is hardly China’s gain, which is why Business Monitor International is now revising down its China economic growth forecast for 2009 to 6-7% from 8.8% previously. In fact, the US recession could end up doing more damage to China than it does to itself. Ditto, India looks set for a sharp slowdown, while Russia’s ‘revival’ is looking shaky.
I wrote in a recent special report for Business Monitor Online that the US can remain the world’s superpower because of its overwhelming lead against all potential peer competitors in six key dimensions: absolute economic power; military force projection capabilities; diplomatic influence; soft power appeal; demographic outlook; and willingness to act globally. While America’s economic power will decline in relative terms, the US’ lead in the other categories is not yet under threat.
As for Professor Panarin’s prediction, I would not totally discount the eventual break-up of the USA (nothing lasts forever), but I cannot see this happening until the late 21st century, if ever. The fate he predicts for the US is far likelier to take hold of Russia, if anywhere.