The deaths this week of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and renowned Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich reminded us all of the heady days of the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire. With astonishing abruptness the West had won the Cold War by the end of 1991.But recalling those exhilarating days also raises a more introspective question: is America in turn now experiencing its own systemic crisis, and is it lurching toward an imminent imperial collapse?
Perhaps some insights from Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik, French demographer Emmanuel Todd, and Yale historian Paul Kennedy can guide us to an answer below the break.
(Photos: Brezhnev-Honecker and Bush-Lieberman:
Not Klimt, Not Rodin, but Still a Kiss - Courtesy of Creative Commons)
In 1969 Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik smuggled to the West his prescient essay, "Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?"
Amalrik predicted that a collapse of the Soviet system would result from an explosion of suppressed national sentiment in the republics, a moribund economy, the incompetence of a self-selecting leadership, governance based on obedience and adherence to the Party line by loyal apparatchiks unable to cope with reality or to innovate, and an eventual Sino-Soviet war. Of course, it turned out to be the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, not a Sino-Soviet war, which served as the catalyst to overwhelm the Soviet economy and ultimately the Soviet Empire. Amalrik was off in his prediction by seven years, but his overall analysis was uncannily accurate.
In 1976 Emmanuel Todd, a French historian, anthropologist, and demographer, scrutinized demographic data on the decline of birth rates in the Soviet Union, on a rise in infant mortality, and on a striking decline in life expectancy among Soviet males to write "The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere" (1976, Editions Robert Laffont; 1979, Kary Publishers).
When Gorbachev inherited power from the senile Old Guard (the rigid and doddering Brezhnev, followed by the intelligent but doddering Andropov, followed in turn by the clueless and doddering Chernenko), he submitted to political pressure to feed what Khrushchev had called the Soviet Union's "steel-eaters," i.e., the military-industrial complex, and to try to suppress the Afghan insurgency.
At the same time Gorbachev launched a moral crusade against alcoholism, curtailed the state monopoly's production of vodka, limited vodka sales, greatly reduced liquor tax revenues, and increased the central budget deficit, thereby hastening financial and economic collapse. (Oddly enough, during World War I the Tsarist government had done the same thing with vodka production and the national budget, and had suffered the same economic result: collapse.)
Toward the Soviet Empire's end, whether in the outlying satellites and provinces or in the Russian heartland, even lifelong, loyal Communist Party members had stopped believing the lies, the deceptions, and the obvious delusions of their feckless, incompetent, self-serving, utterly corrupt, out-of-touch leadership. The Old Guard's clumsy anti-Gorbachev coup attempt in 1991 proved to be the blunder too far--the mortal wound to the system. Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank outside Parliament to rally Russian democrats to resist the coup, and Mstislav Rostropovich immediately flew to Moscow to camp out at Parliament and show his solidarity with Yeltsin. The coup collapsed, but by then Gorbachev himself had become discredited and irrelevant, and the Soviet Union rapidly disintegrated into its constituent republics.
Todd later turned his gaze to the U.S. in "After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order" (2002, Editions Gallimard; 2003 Columbia University Press). In this second book Todd's demographic arguments are weak (though recent surges in infant morality in the Deep South give Todd's early demographic data retrospective weight), but his economic and historical analysis seems trenchant, and he predicts that in the relatively near term America's financial indiscipline and runaway consumption habits will result in a crash leading to a necessary 15 to 20 percent reduction in American living standards. Todd reasons that the U.S., despite its military prowess, simply lacks the power to enforce its hegemony everywhere it wishes and that its increasingly fragile, debt-dependent economy cannot sustain for long such an overreaching imperial policy.
Todd describes the U.S. as a "superpower living hand to mouth," led by a ruling class "even more rudderless and clueless than its European counterparts," and incapable of achieving its global aims through repeated applications of "theatrical micromilitarism." Todd argues that the disintegration of American hegemony already is in full swing, and he predicts that the Bush American Administration and its neocon theorists "will go down in history as the gravediggers of the American empire."
In "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000" (1987, Random House), Yale historian Paul Kennedy presented a compelling argument that eerily paralleled Todd's. Kennedy detected an oft-repeated standard formula for great power decline and collapse. Great powers (such as the Habsburg, French, Turkish, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, British, Japanese, Soviet, and eventually American Empires) get in the habit of using military force to protect what they view as their broad economic interests, but in doing so, they divert investment from productive social and economic purposes into nonproductive military ends.
Inevitably, more dynamic, productive economies position themselves to replace the aging great power when its military overspending inexorably leads to its relative economic and social decline, whether gradual or sudden.
Apparently, American neocon ideologues at the turn of the twenty-first century, like Soviet ideologues in the 1980's, "don't know much about his-to-ry." Or perhaps they merely misinterpreted Paul Kennedy and took his paradigm as a tragic Greek template that must be blindly followed.
The more the U.S. seeks to assert its will through diktat and unilateral military force, the more it ensures that the other major players will find it increasingly in their best interests to collaborate more closely with one another to deflect and frustrate the American imperium.
Note the increasing collaboration between rising Asian giants China and India as one canary in the mineshaft. In the past week newly published data showed that China has replaced the U.S. as Japan's major trading partner. Note the deepening commercial relationships between China and Europe. Note the rapidly increasing economic and political collaboration between China and Saudi Arabia. Note the accelerating drift away from the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. In the past week the dollar fell to historical lows against the euro. Note the robust military collaboration between China and Russia. Note the recent decision by China and Japan to establish a military "hot line." China will hold military exercises with several ASEAN states in the coming year. Note the increasing disinclination of Europeans, notably the Germans, French, Spanish, and Italians, to support--much less finance--American imperial misadventures, such as the rapidly imploding debacle in Iraq. Note the disinclination of the Europeans to continue to tolerate the tenure of American neocon ideologue Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.
Where and when will the reality-challenged Bush Administration commit its blunder too far? Perhaps that blunder will turn out to be the invasion and failed occupation of Iraq. Or perhaps the ultimate catalytic blunder will occur in Iran, which remains on the neocon wish list as a target for destabilization, intervention, "liberation," and regime change.
The collapse of the American Empire is not over the horizon--an event lurking around a distant corner a few decades down the road. We are already in the very midst of it. It is like a staged train wreck unfolding frame-by-frame as we reflect in head-shaking disbelief on each day's news and on each new blunder by the Bush Administration.
Can the U.S. navigate its way to become a post-imperial, normal country--working responsibly as one great power among several rather than quixotically striving to be the sole global hegemon? Can it do so while avoiding further military disasters and a debilitating financial and economic collapse?
Or will the decline be precipitous and disorderly, accelerated by corrupt, clueless, inept, and rigid leadership, as was the Soviet Empire's collapse?
I expect my children will see a reduced standard of living in this country, though in the U.S. we live so opulently I'm not very worried about that for them. It's those at the margins now that I'm worried about.
One thing we will have to guard against will be the forces who will want to use our military in an irrational way as our world dominance slips. Creating diversions and lashing out is not the way to conduct a foreign and military policy.
Agree. Rationally managing our withdrawal from the role of sole hegemon is the key. What sorts of multilateral and international structures--financial and security--should replace the creaky apparatus left over from the end of WWII and from the peak of the Cold War? BushWorld has no clue, but any of the major Democratic presidential candidates would likely be able to attract the talent and the expertise to work with foreign counterparts to devise pragmatic, innovative solutions.
I wonder what the Chinese will do next. I wouldn't be surprised to see them move more toward a model driven by encouraging domestic demand (as the Indians do) rather than by stressing export surpluses to drive growth. There is tremendous pent-up domestic demand for goods and services in China, and it will surely be in the self-interest of the Party leadership to try to satisfy that demand.
By the way, it is interesting to draw a crude graph to see at what point China's GDP will surpass the U.S. GDP. It is a simple computation that can be done with a pocket calculator or even a pencil and napkin. Using a conservative 8% rate of growth for China and a reasonable 3% rate for the U.S., the Chinese GDP line crosses the U.S. GDP line in 2011. In reality, the Chinese have been doing better than 8%, and it appears as thought the U.S. economy may be slowing down or even heading for recession, so the crossing point could come as early as the end of 2010. To be sure, the per capita GDP for China will at that point be between 1/4 and 1/3 of the per capita GDP of the U.S.
Still, that moment in 2010 or 2011 will be a psychologically and geopolitcally important one. The U.S. will cease to be the world's biggest economy.
If the Indians can figure out how to move beyond the horrible economic constraints imposed by their caste system and can sustain their current growth rates of around 7%, they would catch up to the U.S. GDP around 2035.
I'm not sure what all of this means for U.S. economic policy, but it is hard for me to conceive of a planet on which everyone seeks to consume as much energy and procure as much "stuff" as Americans do.
As far as a threat from China, I think you, Eric, theGreenMiles and others have so astutely pointed out that our economic model is unsustainable. Our economic model is currently China's path to power. But I think we can agree that it is not feasible for over a billion of their citizens to achieve the same standard of living we now enjoy.
One would hope that China's increasing wealth will be accompanied by increased democratization. "Experts" seems to doubt this, but such experts are commonly wrong. The same article above also discusses problems with rising income inequality.
Unsustainable growth? Who knows. But -- China now graduates more computer engineers than the U.S. does.
And while China's progress is no doubt hampered by a rigid Communist Party, the U.S. is saddled with similar rigid groups -- mostly, I'm afraid to say, within the Republican Party and within the groups of religious ideologues.
Some economists predict China will be the world's economic leader sometime in the 21st century. One hopes the bulk of their population will enjoy these benefits.
I love to hear an explanation on how these mythical religious idealogues are somehow constraining the US economy. Funny how an economic discussion becomes yet another liberal assault on faith.
I agree with you, if we can assume that we can survive 21 more months of having loyal Bushies apply their ideology to problems. But keeping our fingers crossed for 21 more months until the adults return may not suffice.
No one can reliably predict or time market surges or panics, but there are plenty of warning signs in current financial and capital markets. I'm especially concerned that the bursting of the housing and real estate bubble could have cascading effects on the rest of the economy. (Maybe I'll scribble something on that topic this week.)
Even if we assume that Democrats can return to the White House and expand their majorities in Congress in 2008, by that time we may find ourselves buried under the economic rubble left by BushWorld's own Gilded Age.
Really, I'm not trying to disturb anyone. I'm just trying to ponder some data, shuffle it a bit, and then project where the facts might lead us.
I could be dead, flat wrong, but somehow I think it extremely unlikely that the U.S. can expect to act as the sole global hegemon in perpetuity. That illusion seems to be crumbling by the day, neocon braying notwithstanding.
How the U.S. responds to and manages its virtually inevitable relative economic and strategic decline is very much up in the air. Surely the outcome need not be cataclysmic. Britons, Dutch, French, Japanese, and Spaniards eventually adjusted to living perfectly well without the burdens of empire and hegemony. Why can't we expect to do the same?
(Bush with Rep. Richard Pombo)
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There's a paper by Nee and Opper that discusses how much China has changed since Mao. For one thing, the Maoist bureaucracy is gone and the economic bureaucracy in the coastal regions is said to be superior to that of the United States' economic bureaucracy. There's also an interesting section on fiscal federalism in China -- so local governments have jettisoned losing firms.
Thanks for the link.
Besides scrutinizing data on China, I find it interesting to try to get a cultural sense of what is going on as well. Knowing many Chinese diplomats over the years was of some help, but now I'm limited to print and films. Here is one that I found very intriguing: "Happy Times" (2000). I rented it from Netflix and expected to get a taste of sitcom-style Chinese humor. Boy, was I wrong. It is trenchant political satire and allegory. The Party leadership may have the sophistication to permit enough dissent channels (film, music, literature) to keep the overall lid on more active political dissent for a fairly long time. Here is a link to an imdb page on the film if you want to check it out: