That’s what a recent New Yorkeressay, based on interviews with presidential advisers, claimed. It characterized the new Obama foreign-relations style as “leading from behind” — given America’s supposedly inevitable decline and growing unpopularity. The president is said to agree with pundits such as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman, who have often outlined the parameters of what the post-American world would look like.
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But if America abrogates the preeminent leadership position it has held for the last 65 years, wouldn’t the world look a lot like it did in the pre-American days of the 1930s? Then, a Depression-era United States was just one of many powers, and was reluctant to assert leadership abroad.
Eighty years ago, a newly Westernized and anti-democratic Japanese powerhouse, in the fashion of today’s rising China, was carving out uncontested Asian spheres of influence. An oil-, rubber-, and iron-hungry imperial Japan claimed it needed more natural resources to fuel its industrial revolution, and so spread an authoritarian Asian co-prosperity sphere of influence as an alternative to alliance with an economically depressed and psychologically withdrawn America.
Most Americans then were tired anyway of overseas commitments. Our ancestors felt that their considerable sacrifices in World War I either had gone unappreciated or had solved little — not unlike the way we are becoming exhausted by Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya.
A newly confident, united, and ascendant Germany was growing angry at other European countries. It nursed a long list of financial grievances over feeling used and abused. Sound familiar? A weak Britain and France had almost no confidence in their own declining militaries — sort of like the sad spectacle of their impotence in Libya that we have witnessed over the last two months.
Much-vaunted international institutions, like the bankrupt League of Nations, were about as effective in the role of world watchdogs as the corrupt United Nations is today. Europe and America were emerging from the nightmare of financial insolvency.
The so-called international community cared as much in the 1930s about rising, aggressive totalitarian states in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia as it does today about ascendant China or Iran. Millions of Jews, then as now, heard crazy threats of their annihilation, and desperately — and in vain — looked to the protection of the United States.
In other words, the post-American world could look a lot like the rather terrifying pre-American version of seven decades past. Why in the world would we wish to return to it?
The declinists insist we have no choice. Globalization has spread power. America has depleted its resources, both natural and financial. And our prior leadership abroad is something worthy of apology rather than pride anyway. Think of receding postcolonial Britain around 1946 as our model, not the confident, rising postwar United States of Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But decline is always a choice, not an inevitable fate. America’s known fossil-fuel reserves — natural gas, oil, coal, shale, tar sands — are larger than ever. The problem is not finding more energy but marshaling the will to use the vast new sources of energy we have recently discovered.
Our military is not just larger than the alternatives, but vastly larger and ever more lethal. Given the enormous size and productivity of the U.S. economy, we have the means — but not yet the will — to rapidly pay down our huge debt. In a world short on food, America is the world’s greatest agricultural producer.
Other industrialized populations age and decline; ours is still growing. America is widely criticized abroad even as it remains by far the favored destination of global immigrants. Diverse religious practice is still vibrant in the United States. Elsewhere, it is fossilized in Europe, nonexistent in China, and intolerant in the Middle East.
While riots, strikes, or revolutions sweep southern Europe and the Middle East, the United States remains stable and quiet — despite far greater racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. Globalization is still mostly a phenomenon of American innovation and originality being licensed and outsourced abroad.
There have been plenty of thugs who threatened their neighbors over the last 30 years. Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega, and the Taliban were all deposed from rule only by American power. The “lost” war in Iraq resulted in a democratic and, for now, still viable government in place of genocide. Afghanistan is depressing, but the medieval Taliban still have remained out of power for nearly a decade.
In short, the old pre-American world was as unstable and dangerous as would be a new post-American update. But both retrenchments were choices that an unsure and depressed United States made — not symptoms, then or now, of inherent weakness or inevitable decline.
The much-ballyhooed American "decline" is a deliberate choice of withdrawal, instituted by a POTUS who hates American capitalism and exceptionalism. This "decline" can be reversed in a single election. One waits with bated breath to see if this will happen.
I'm not an Obama apologist, but the article attempts to deceive in its premise (upon which everything else is built).
What the article says about Obama WRT to Zakaria/Frieman: "He read popular books on foreign affairs by Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman."
What Hanson says in establishing his premise "The president is said to agree with pundits such as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman, who have often outlined the parameters of what the post-American world would look like."
The New Yorker says that Obama has read these authors. Hanson said that Obama agrees with these authors; is that cited? Then Hanson applies a transitive property to establish the premise. Obama "agrees" with these authors, these authors have written about (among other things) post-America, therefore Obama agrees with their thoughts on post-America.
Nice. I have read these authors (agree with The World Is Flat, totally disagree with Friedman's stupid global warming book). Does my having read these authors mean I agree with everything they have written?
A knows B. B is friends with C who is a criminal. A is friends with the criminal.
Self (and USA)-loathing intellectuals and moral equivalizing leftists are the ones promulgating (and willfully aiding) the "inevitable American decline" nonsense. VDH is indeed correct – the USA stands heads and shoulders above the rest.
What I find most depressing is that the speeches of the POTUS talk about how we can do anything, when he wants us to so something in particular, while yet saying we shouldn't do anything because we have already screwed up the whole world, when he doesn't want us to do something.
This can be resolved as "we can do anything but should make sure it isn't something that screws up the world." But we didn't set out to screw up the world. For the most part, we believed we were making it a better place for everyone by spreading our culture abroad. Looking back, we may have been heavy-handed and ruffled feathers or worse, but most people are better off. Not hearing a lot of gratitude out there, but that wasn't the goal anyway. We wanted to help and we did.
America may be destined to decline, but we are generally a competitive people. The Forbes 500 is an ordered list starting at #1. Think of other lists and it's much the same. We don't award the presidency to a person chosen randomly, he has to win more votes. The world isn't awarding participation trophies and we shouldn't accept second-place. China isn't, India isn't, Iran isn't. They keep trying to get ahead.
Yet here at home our government seems to think we should stop being serious about competition on a global scale, or even taking care of our own people. That isn't working, so we are being handicapped like a racehorse, more weight added on in the form of increased regulations, taxes, and mustering of public opinion against people who manage somehow to achieve success (unless perhaps they donate heavily to the Democrats).
I could live with being "first among equals", e.g the Chief Justice among the other SCOTUS justices. I could even be okay with being second, fifth, or 136th among world powers as long as I thought we were free to try to improve our position without the government holding us back. The federal government seems determined to sap our will to win, to succeed, to strive for more. If you don't want more, I'm not saying you should be forced to try for more. But I wish the POTUS and his advisors didn't seem so happy with the prospect of America as a third world nation.
To "the suits": I am never subscribing to DISH network, by the way. I wouldn't have it if you paid me a million dollars a year. I am THAT annoyed with having to sit through their ad to post a comment.
Thanks for the optimistic post, yes times appear bleak but this great nation is uniquely capable of reversing course. Our geography and resources are nice asset but our true blessing is ourselves. We are a nation of honest, hard working, tolerant, kind, and individualistic people. If we can collectively trash the shackles the Liberal Left ubiquitously attempts to foist upon us, the future is bright indeed.
Yes CAPTCHA is painful - my trick is to click it then write my post, usually I can enter the ‘quoted text’ by the time I'm finished writing.
Not interested in policing the world. It's not about choosing "decline". It's simply a choice to let others in the world deal with their own problems. That used to be what Conservatives stood for. My how things have changed. If it involves North America, call me. Otherwise, might I suggest that you and the rest of the geo-political meddlers form some form of private evil-fighting organization and put your own blood and treasure at risk if you feel so strongly about global do-goodism. I'm fresh out of interest.
You need to keep the long view. Our country merely needs to chug along as the bastion and protector of entrepreneurial freedom for maybe another 50 years and libertarian republican civilization is home free. It doesn't much matter what happens to the U.S. after that.
The grand historical purpose of the United States is to act as the incubator of mankind's transition to an extraterrestrial (off planet solar-system based) civilization. No other political entity is as suited for that role as we are. You might say it is our destiny, Luke.
No government direction, money, or programs needed, thanks. These would be hindrances. It only requires that the U.S. protects entrepreneurial freedom long enough for this mission to succeed. Here's how it will work:
1) Reduce payload costs to orbit. Lowest cost launcher is the (privately developed) <$1000/lb SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle (Shuttle costs are >$7000/lb). These are expendable rockets built new each launch. Two-stage to orbit fully reusable vehicles under development (SpaceX, Blue Origin, others) will reduce payload costs by a further factor of 10 to <$100/lb. These are self-financed by entrepreneurial internet billionaires (e.g., Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos). Building them is tricky but not impossible. Even garage shops that resemble low-rider auto fabricators (Masten Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace) are marketing vertical take-off and landing reusable suborbital rockets. At $100/lb passenger cost to orbit is the same as 1st class American Airlines to Japan.
2) Rocket costs to go anywhere in near solar space, once you are in orbit, is the same as getting to orbit. If orbital payload costs are $100/lb, additional transport to the moon, Mars or asteroids adds another $100 - $200/lb.
3)Energy and resources are abundant. Solar energy (it actually works up THERE)is available everywhere at ~1 HP/m^2). A single small (1 mile) metallic asteroid is worth about $10T.
4)A place to live. Take your pick, surface of moon or Mars, but a better choice is fabricated spinning habitats. O'Neill (Princeton Physicist)calculated the largest habitat buildable using ordinary 1970's engineering technology would be about 10 x 2 miles. That's a land surface of 60 mi^2. Big enough inside for lakes, beaches and skyscrapers.
5)Growth. If space habitats can be built, unsubsidized (i.e., it is profitable to build them), and people are willing to reproduce in them, then its exponential growth for the next 2 thousand years. Until the solar system fills up. Doesn't matter if you think it's a stupid idea, or can't imagine anyone wanting to go or live there.
6)Only slightly tongue in cheek, success would represent the true incarnation of the rapture we recently missed.
Only two real things would prevent this interesting future, with the first off planet multi-trillionaire entrepreneurs founding their own small libertarian monarchies in 60 years. That would be the U.S. failed to nurture this entrepreneurial future by failing to protect it from either international lunatic despots, or from the impoverishment of the economy by turning the government into an indebted, tax-greedy, bloated insurance company with a small army attached, i.e., if the Democrats achieve their goals.
The decline of the USA has started. Witness the election of Obama, the neglect of the southern border by both GOP and Dems, the stunning level of US Federal Government expenditure and the supine passivity of Obama's opponents. He should be opposed aggressively, not mildly.
It will be hard to hold back the decline because demographics are going to make it hard to balance the Federal Government budget. The USA is going to be skating on thin ice for a decade or two. Let us pray for luck and the wisdom of the people.
Yes, not policing the world used to be a conservative cornerstone. Right up until 1941.
It is also easier to ignore the goings on in the world when you are a net exporter of oil, as we were 60 years ago, as opposed to a dependent importer as we are now.
Now, it behooves us to take an active interest in world events, as energy prices, food costs, and even job rates are directly affected by external stimuli.
And the reason we have become so dependent upon the rest of the world for energy and economic stability is completely self-inflicted. It's a choice we made, and one we can reverse if we choose to do so. Withdrawing our military commitments from the Middle East and Central Asia would be a good start in that reversal process. Would you rather pay more for North American energy (that doesn't just pop out of the ground like it does on the Arabian Peninsula) or would you rather have a gigantic National Security State pledged to the free flow of oil and other goods? I'll take the former, thanks. True independence has a price. A true Conservative understands that and is willing to pay the price.
Citizen C: I'm not questioning what you're pointing out. I'm saying that today's interconnected global economic reality was a choice that we made. We could have chosen a different paradigm. We can still choose a different paradigm. Our reliance on OPEC is a result of political choices, and it can be reversed if we have the political will.
Global interconnectedness, either in strategically important resources or in manufacturing, is not inherently virtuous.
There is alot of truth in the idea that it could be turned around, at least in theory, but it would require a replacement of not only the current administration in gov't with a gov't that has the clear-headedness and spine to get the job done, but also taking away the reins from the prevalent liberal ideologues in the media and schools to maintain the reversal and future growth. Easier said than done.
That being said, its still pretty clear that while the US is far from perfect, its still better than the alternatives, and apparently many of the financial wizards around the world agree, as the US stock market and dollar have done better after the 2008 crash than alot of the other currencies and markets. Despite going downhill, its still a more stable play than most of the other guys.
