As there is a trend for a certain brand of shoe or coat, so academia is not immune to such trends either. The current academic fad is of American decline. Indeed such is the prevalence of the concept that if you were to type “American decline” into Google, the search engine would return over 150 million hits. The phrase is being increasingly used in the electoral cycle as short hand for the presidency of Barack Obama, by the GOP. However, it has little merit in reality.
There is an understandable, though sometimes not entirely accurate, comparison between the United States and the British Empire or Ancient Rome. The United States today, like the British Empire and Rome before it, underpins global order and security. Many see the current period in American history as the beginning of the end. Even worse, many more seem to believe as a result of this supposed decline world peace will not be far behind.
These comparisons to the empires of the past can only go so far. The Founding Fathers saw what they had created as a mixture of the New Rome and the New Jerusalem. Thus, to compare the current situation of the United States to the final days of Rome is misleading. A much more accurate historical lesson can be drawn from the Crisis of the Third Century. During this time not only was there plague and economic collapse but also civil strife leading to the break up of the Empire. By the end of the crisis, the Empire had been reunited. The Western half would go on to last another hundred years, to say nothing of the Eastern half which would last until 1453 in the guise of the Byzantine Empire.
Others compare the present circumstances of the United States to the end of the British Empire, which is usually dated to the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, even this analogy has been pushed too far. Joseph Nye in The Future of Power puts it thus, “Nations are not like humans with predicable life spans. For example, after Britain lost its American colonies at the end of the eighteenth century, Horace Walpole lamented Britain’s reduction to ‘as insignificant a country as Denmark or Sardinia’. He failed to foresee that the Industrial Revolution would give Britain a second century of even greater ascendency.”
If the United States is declining who will take its place? China has long been touted as the successor. Yet this overlooks the mountain of problems they face. As has been mentioned here before, the world is witnessing the Chinese moment, nothing more. Its economy is only now diversifying. Further, the housing bubble it created is now bursting. In an article in Foreign Affairs, Patrick Chovanec argues that “According to the property agency Homelink, new home prices in Beijing dropped 35 percent in November alone. And the free fall may continue for some time. Centaline, another leading property agency, estimates that developers have built up 22 months’ worth of unsold inventory in Beijing and 21 months’ worth in Shanghai”. Add to this, the estimate that the “ratio of China government debt to GDP comes out at 107% – five times higher than official published numbers. The hedge fund says this number uses ‘conservative assumptions’ and the real figure could be as high as 200pc”. Additionally, China has been on a demographic wave that will soon end thus making sustainable economic growth far harder. This demographic trend is now producing a huge gender imbalance. Coupled with a leadership in transition and a dangerously nationalistic media controlled by the government the country could become dangerously unstable. In addition to all of this what has China got to offer the world? It is far from the model “international citizen” aiding nasty regimes across the world to stay in power. China’s demographic issues are contrasted sharply with America whose population is predicated to reach 400 million in forty years time. An article in The Economist scuttled any argument of Chinese soft power based on Sun Tzu, or any other of their numerous internationally well known philosophers for that matter.
Other challengers the United States such as Russia and India face problems also. Russia is on a long term decline not least because its birth rate is below replacement levels. Although it is currently causing problems for the America, and the world, by backing Syria it has few places to go in the long term. Further, its economy and the political fortunes of Putin are heavily reliant on a high oil price. Add in the recent demonstrations and the instability they bring to the regime and Russia has little ability to threaten the dominant position of the United States. Similarly, India and Brazil, both touted as world leaders and implicit challengers to America, have been going nowhere fast. The BRIC phrase is ten years old this year and neither country seems to have the ability, or indeed desire, to carve out its own path distinct from America.
America is still the unmatched military and technological power in the world with the best trained, equipped and funded armed forces. No nation comes close to it in this regard. It has the best universities and much innovation continues to come from government spending. Google, Intel and IBM are all American. Not only that, its share of the world’s GDP has remained stable for decades.
None of this is to say that the United States does not have problems. Its infrastructure is crumbling, it is becoming an even more unequal society, its debt is growing ever larger and its schools are failing and in need of massive reform. In an excellent piece, for the New Republic, Bob Kagan says that just because America is not getting its way does not mean that it is in decline. He cites the “loss” of China in 1949 and the British invasion of the Suez Canal as two examples. Kagan dismisses the idea of overstretch, noting that in the summer of 2011 there were about 500,000 US forces, contrasting one million in 1953, deployed across the world.
Decline, what decline?