Founders' Porch goes scholarly...
An American "Hyper-power" resists decline at the Olympic Qualifier in Antigua, Guatemala in May 2012. |
Over a decade ago Kenneth
Waltz noted that “American leaders seem to believe that America’s pre-eminent position
will last indefinitely.” President Barack Obama has proved no exception: in his
2012 State of the Union address he argued, “Anyone who tells you that America
is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re
talking about.” Robert Kagan concurs, noting that “great powers rarely decline
suddenly,” that the recent economic meltdown is but a cyclical bust, that the
US military “would defeat any competitor in a head-to-head battle,” and that
competitors like China have far to go to match American military, economic, and
cultural power. In fact, argues Tufts China expert Michael Beckley, far from
decline, American power relative to China is even greater than it was at the
beginning of the auspicious post-Cold War era.
Yet despite their rightful
aversion to American decline, all three overlook an ominous reality upon which most
international relations scholars and economists – from American primacy
sympathizer Richard Haas to realist Richard Betts to globalist Joseph Stiglitz–
find agreement: an America $16 trillion in debt, staggering back from costly
“head-to-head battles” in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and bracing itself
for the rise of nonpolar threats of a globalized world and the IMF-predicted
2016 Chinese economic eclipse, is surely in decline.
Still,
Kagan and others are right to find American primacy – however illusive –
desirable. The shift from British to American preeminence after World War II went
smoothly due to the nations’ shared values. The shift from American preeminence
to a nonpolar world, in contrast, will be tumultuous as power spreads to less
sure bets. America’s enemies, for example, from al Qaeda to Iran, will be freer
to pursue their terrorist agendas. And America’s
less overtly belligerent challengers, such as China, promise no less a
challenge: as Huntington warned of the post bipolar world, “the great divisions
among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural,” and
indeed, China’s culture clashes much more sharply with America than Britain’s
culture did in the 20th century.[1]
Faced with these dire
prospects, how could any Westerner support American decline and the rise of non-liberal
powers? Realists, from Betts to John Mearsheimer, believe that an America in
which imperial overstretch is no longer feasible is a stronger America. Scholars
like Rashid Khalidi and Ian Lustick, in turn, who reject the notion of American
humanitarianism, have no qualms with what they see as the comeuppance of a
self-interested aggressor. And globalists like Stiglitz, who believe the unipolar
America of yore had rigged the deck against developing economies, see in
American decline the chance for greater “global prosperity.”[2]
Yet these arguments crucially
overlook the cultural stakes. American culture is not merely declining, it is
being replaced. Unfortunately for the realists, America’s replacement will not
be a “billiard ball,” but likely an elusive set of illiberal powers. Anti-imperialists,
for their part, will discover that imperialism is not a negative-sum game. And
most importantly, the globalists will find that American culture itself is not
constant: bloated statism has not only brought America into indebted decline,
but also leaves it with a dependent citizenry unable to ever fight its way back
to the top.
The American order.
To brace for American decline
is of course not to say that American principles and ideas never reflected the
global order. Quite to the contrary, what makes the stakes of American decline
so high is that, until recent years, America had been the unipolar power
presiding over what Kagan correctly calls “the world America made.” America had
taken the baton of Western values from Britain after World War II and enjoyed a
greater capability than any other state to project its corollary interests. Its
success in doing so lay in adhering to the very values it espoused: first, as Princeton
theorist John Eikenberry notes, “the rule of law, constitutional principles,
and inclusive institutions of political participation,”[3] and second, as Columbia’s
Charles Calomiris notes, a Hayekian vision of free markets and “competition in
trade.”[4]
At the end of the Cold War,
Francis Fukuyama giddily announced the arrival of “the end of history.” Certainly
the emergence of a unipolar American order boded well for the peaceful spread
of Western values. As Eikenberry argues, America was a benevolent superpower
overseeing an order whose “open and institutionalized character…minimized the
possibilities of hegemonic excess over the long term.”[5] Yet Fukuyama’s analysis –
and later Tom Friedman’s exuberant globalization analysis – failed to give
culture and ideology their due. America’s
unipolar moment did not mean the extinction of other ideologies. In fact, what
made America so exceptional was not simply an adherence to Princeton scholar
Robert Keohane’s procedural “institutional checks against retrogression,”[6] but what Stephen Brooks
and William Wohlforth call an ability to distinguish “substance” of policies,
such as accepting unilateralism when it meant defending Kosovo.[7] Meanwhile, while the US
was not the only country to embrace globalization, globalization synergized
well with American culture. As Calomiris argues, “meaningful and lasting
economic progress must be grounded in the deeply rooted evolution of
institutions and individual attitudes.”[8]
Yet the individual attitudes
that will have the greatest influence in the coming nonpolar world are less
clear, though likely more illiberal. Constructivist
Alexander Wendt famously argued that anarchy is what states make of it, and
indeed, amid the power diffusion of the nonpolar world, global order will
reflect the ideologies and cultures brought to bear on it. Unfortunately, the
very economic and military power that Huntington believes must be maintained in
order to preserve Western values is the very power that the pro-decline
Westerners seek to limit. And whereas Huntington calls on the West “to develop
a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical
assumptions underlying other civilizations,” the multi-cultural West sees no
threat worth investigating.[9]
Rise of non-liberal powers.
The clearest winners of
American decline are America’s illiberal enemies. While Columbia’s Jack Snyder
argued in 2004 that “no combination of states or other powers can challenge the
United States militarily, and no balancing coalition is imminent,” recent
developments suggest a grimmer reality.[10] Just last September, a
few impoverished, poorly trained Taliban inflicted one of the most damaging air
losses in US military history when they destroyed six harrier jets in
Afghanistan. Only days earlier, terrorists had killed the US ambassador to
Libya, destroying a US diplomatic mission, shortly after mobs in Egypt
attempted to overrun the embassy in Cairo.
Yet more valuable to the rising Islamists than these military defeats
are the cultural defeats: President Obama responded to the Benghazi attack in
his United Nations speech, for example, by denouncing blasphemy. Fukuyama warned of the political relevance of
Islam, but found it “hard to believe that the movement will take on any
universal significance.”[11]Yet the changing
demographics in Europe tell a different story. Unfortunately, the failure to
understand the illiberal ideologies misidentifies the West as their cause. In
reality, Western decline is their unleashing.
Realist perspective.
Realists welcome a measured
American decline as a means to avoiding imperial overstretch. They accept the
French label for America as a “hyperpower.” Such powers, Waltz argues, “facing
few impediments to the exercise of their wills, often act in ways that create
future enemies.”[12]
For Betts, an end to unipolarity brings “humility about one country’s capacity
to remake another in its own image.”[13]. As Waltz puts it, “Both
the predominance of America and, one may hope, the militarization of
international affairs will diminish with time.”[14] Yet for all the realist
emphasis on zero-sum games, they overlook the ideological zero-sum game at play. Shariah law in a post-America Afghanistan,
for example, will have a much different effect than the US Army’s
Counterinsurgency Manual.
Betts mocks Eikenberry’s
defense of America having its cake and eating it by saying “So the strong do
what they want – when they can – after all.”[15] Yet Betts overlooks the
possibility that the powers that replace America will do just that. It takes a
strong faith in American exceptionalism indeed to believe that the US can
shrink from the global stage and not face the strong-handed antics and norms of
the next power. “Idealism,” according to
Snyder, “stresses that a consensus on values must underpin any stable political
order.”[16] Unfortunately, the
realists have yet to posit such values, let alone a strategy for defending
them.
Democratic perspective.
Other Western scholars
embrace American decline as the humbling of an aggressive, anti-democratic
hegemony. For Kishore Mahbubani, American hegemony was at best a
well-intentioned meddler, ignorant of the fact that “no country welcomes
foreign invaders.” Khalidi, who claims that America has never done anything to
promote democracy in the Middle East, argues that in fact, “the entire Arab
regional system was upheld by that hyper-power, whose support was crucial to
the survival of most of the dictatorial regimes now trembling as their peoples
challenge them.”[17]
Lustick goes so far as to claim that a “plausible and historically valid Iraqi
analysis” of the Gulf War was Saddam’s own characterization of the war as “the
U.S. colonial invasion of a part of our homeland.”[18]
Yet these democrats view
American power in a vacuum, ignoring the tyrannies that American decline
promises to embolden. As theorist E.H. Carr notes, “readiness to fight to
prevent change is just as unmoral as readiness to fight to enforce it.”[19] The Syrian
revolutionaries who watched earlier this year as the US told Turkey it could
not establish a humanitarian corridor in Syria must share Carr’s sentiment.
Furthermore, GWU’s Martha Finnemore argues that “the pattern of intervention
cannot be understood apart from the changing normative context in which it
occurs.”[20] The regional hegemons
that fill the American void will likely not share America’s liberal motives for
intervention. Even Sheri Berman, a scholar of the left, admits America’s
positive role in promoting democracy. “The liberal left,” she argues, “has been
wrong to dismiss the neoconservative logic of war and foreign-led
transformation applied to democracy.”[21] As America declines,
authoritarian states can be take solace in knowing they are more secure than
ever.
Globalist perspective.
For the globalists who
believe the US has taken advantage of liberal economic institutions in order to
enrich itself at the expense of the world, American decline offers an
opportunity to reset the economic order. “With globalization,” argues Stiglitz,
“when the United States sneezes, much of the rest of the world risks catching
pneumonia.”[22]
Stiglitz blames America’s “unfettered market ideals,” as well as the US
government’s “failure to design an effective stimulus package,” for the 2008
global economic meltdown. While Stiglitz
believes the $16 trillion US debt is “not a big problem right now,” he admits
that “the question is not whether the world will move away from the dollar
reserve system altogether, but whether it does it thoughtfully and carefully,”
embracing such a system as a means to “curb America’s profligacy.”
While Stiglitz is right that
the US sneezed and gave the world pneumonia, he misdiagnoses the sneeze’s
cause. “The presence of implicit protection via government bail-outs,”
Calomiris argues, “especially of insolvent banks, means that taxpayers in
developing countries are perpetually at risk of transferring vast sums of money
to the privileged elites within their countries as the result of emergency
transfers to insolvent banks and borrowers.”[23] Thus, the problem was not
too much unfettered competition, but not enough. Furthermore, Stiglitz’ prescription
of a “global regulatory regime” is not just misguided, but naïve: an America in
decline is appealing to realists precisely because it will have less ability to
engineer the world, yet Stiglitz finds American decline compatible with an
unfettered Mr. Fix-It role.
The late Tony Judt shares
Stiglitz’ contempt for Hayekian liberalism, yet proposes a more targeted
solution: rather than re-engineer the world, Judt argues for re-engineering
America. His vision for America is a European style “social service state.”[24] This raises a key point
of American decline: just as Calomiris reminds us that in addition to the
static efficiency gains of free markets there are also gains in “ideas and
opportunities,” so too does the American retreat to the European welfare state
bring with it hidden costs: Tocqueville warned that America would decline when
it fell victim to “democratic despotism,” in which “an immense, protective
power” would keep Americans “in perpetual childhood.”[25] This declinist state “hinders,
restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each
nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the
government as its shepherd.” Judt idealizes the timid flock, what he calls “a
social democracy of fear.” He rejects the Hayekian notion of “optimistic
progress” and calls for a conservative Keynesian state. Yet by eroding self-reliance, Tocqueville
warned, “such nations are made ready for conquest,” for unfortunately America’s
enemies have maintained their survival instincts.
Conclusion.
The world order that will
succeed the American unipolar moment is difficult to forecast. Illiberal
non-state actors like al Qaeda might grow, or might die out. Rising economic
powers like China might act aggressively as a mostly male generation takes power,
or might opt to implement the Stiglitz model for global regulation. What is
certain, however, is that Americans will have less and less of a say in the
matter. In the cultural battle, American economic and military decline means
American values matter less. Ultimately, American decline is a choice Americans
make for themselves. If America chooses to firmly reject the very Hayekian and
Tocquevillian cultural values that made it successful, the brave new nonpolar
world will have no shortage of over-zealous ideologies eager to forcefully fill
the void.
[1] Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993). p. 2.
[2] Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York: Norton & company 2010) pp.210.
[3] G. John Ikenberry, “Getting Hegemony Right,” The National Interest (Spring 2001) . p. 24.
[4] Charles Calomiris, “A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy: The Tenth Annual. p. 14.
[5] G. John Ikenberry, “Getting Hegemony Right,” The National Interest (Spring 2001) . p. 22.
[6] Robert Keohane, “Twenty Years of Institutional Liberalism,” International Relations Volume 22, Issue 2 (June 2012). P. 136.
[7] Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton University Press 2010) pp. 18.
[8] Charles Calomiris, “A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy: The Tenth Annual. p. 24.
[9] Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993). p. 12.
[10] Jack Snyder, "One World, Rival Theories," Foreign Policy (November/December 2004). P. 56.
[11] Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest Volume 16 (Summer 1989)
[12] Kenneth Waltz, “Globalization and American Power,” The National Interest (Spring 2000) pg. 55.
[13] Richard K. Betts, “Not With My Thucydides, You Don't,” The American Interest Volume II, Issue 4 (March/April 2007). P. 143.
[14] Kenneth Waltz, “Globalization and American Power,” The National Interest (Spring 2000) pg. 56.
[15] Richard Betts, “Institutional Imperialism,” The National Interest (May/June 2011). P. 3.
[16] Jack Snyder, "One World, Rival Theories," Foreign Policy (November/December 2004). P. 55.
[17] Rashid Khalidi, “Preliminary Historical Observations on the Arab Revolutions of 2011,” Jadaliyya (March 21 2011)
[18] Ian Lustick, “The Absence of Middle Eastern Great Powers: Political ‘Backwardness’ in Historical Perspective,” International Organization, Volume 51, Issue 4 (Autumn 1997). P. 673.
[19] Edward Hallett Carr, “Realism and Idealism;” and Robert Gilpin, “Hegemonic War and International Change;” in Richard K. Betts, ed. Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace, Third Edition (New York: Pearson-Longman 2008).
[20] Martha Finnemore, "Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention," in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press 1996) p. 154.
[21] Sheri Berman, “How Democracies Emerge: Lessons from Europe,” Journal of Democracy (January 2007); and “The Debate on Sequencing,” response byThomas Carothers. P. 18.
[22] Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York: Norton & company 2010) pp.210-237
[23] Charles Calomiris, “A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy: The Tenth Annual. p. 24.
[24] Tony Judt, “What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy?” NYU Speech. 17 Dec 2009.
[25] Alexis De Tocqueville. Democracy in America. (1848).
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