Walter Russell Mead: The Myth of America's Decline

[ellisonz]

Washington now has added China, India, Brazil and Turkey to its speed-dial, along with Europe and Japan. But it will remain the chairman of a larger board.
Updated April 9, 2012, 2:26 p.m. ET
By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
Mr. Mead is a professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College. His blog, Via Meadia, appears at the American Interest Online.

The world balance of power is changing. Countries like China, India, Turkey and Brazil are heard from more frequently and on a wider range of subjects. The European Union's most ambitious global project—creating a universal treaty to reduce carbon emissions—has collapsed, and EU expansion has slowed to a crawl as Europe turns inward to deal with its debt crisis. Japan has ceded its place as the largest economy in Asia to China and appears increasingly on the defensive in the region as China's hard and soft power grow.

The international chattering class has a label for these changes: American decline. The dots look so connectable: The financial crisis, say the pundits, comprehensively demonstrated the failure of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have sapped American strength and, allegedly, destroyed America's ability to act in the Middle East. China-style "state capitalism" is all the rage. Throw in the assertive new powers and there you have it—the portrait of America in decline.

Actually, what's been happening is just as fateful but much more complex. The United States isn't in decline, but it is in the midst of a major rebalancing. The alliances and coalitions America built in the Cold War no longer suffice for the tasks ahead. As a result, under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, American foreign policy has been moving toward the creation of new, sometimes difficult partnerships as it retools for the tasks ahead.

More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577305531821651026.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[bemildred]

1. I've lived here all my life.

Last edited Sat Apr 21, 2012, 09:57 AM - Edit history (1)

It sure as hell looks like decline to me. He can call it "re-balancing" if he wants to, but I'm not buying. Without real political reform we are going nowhere but down, and that's not what he is talking about at all.

[Odin2005]

2. We are only declining in relative power, not absolute power.

Think of it as a 160bs boxer fighting off a bunch of 100lbs boxers becoming a 200lbs boxer against a bunch of 180lbs boxers.

[bemildred]

3. That's quite true, but relative power is what matters, what was desired, what was striven for.

If you want to be a World hegemon, enforcer of the Washington Consensus, that's what you need. The fact is we have falied to do what we set out to do, and then some, any way you look at it. And yet we still have the same set of clowns running things and shoving their noses deep in the public trough.

[limpyhobbler]

4. I don't think this article is really saying much.

He makes some true points. He says American hegemony can't really be in decline because we already declined in the 70s, and since then we have been in a trilateral power sharing arrangement with Europe and Japan. And now the trilateral era is ending and we've got to learn to live in a multi-polar world. So we need to create institutions to help us share power with other countries. He names China, India, Turkey and Brazil.

OK so that's true as far as it goes. But it doesn't really say much, but I understand he probably had to get it written by a deadline so I'm not criticizing the professor that wrote this but really just the article.

I think he conspicuously left Russia off the list. Weird but not a huge deal.

He tags this weird paragraph on the end, I guess just to try to be optimistic or upbeat?

The American world vision isn't powerful because it is American; it is powerful because it is, for all its limits and faults, the best way forward. This is why the original trilateral partners joined the U.S. in promoting it a generation ago, and why the world's rising powers will rally to the cause today.

First of all, the American world system is powerful because we have got a big military. But that costs of a lot of money and we can't afford it forever, especially if the hegemonic region has to keep expanding. We're going to run up against imperial overreach and weaken from the inside out if something doesn't change. Actually that's already happening. So we have to pull back militarily, or collapse at home, or both. Any way you look at that, it could be called a decline of sorts. That is what most people are talking about, I think, when then they talk about "American decline". Professor Mead does not address that issue at all in the article.

Second, is it really true as Prof. Mead says that the "American vision" is the "best way forward"? No that's not true at all. Time and again the US has shown itself to be an exception among the developed countries on issues of economic justice, basic human rights, and general fairness. There are other models that exist in Europe or Canada that are at least as good if not a better model for international development as the American model, in terms of the basic values that they exemplify. It's not at all clear that there is not something fundamental about the American political system or social structure that is producing these anomalous results compared with other developed countries. Further, it's not at all clear that any existing "vision" is the "best way forward", as Prof. Mead put it. Some new vision may be a better way forward in international relations actually. This could be a vision based on protecting human rights and serving human need, instead of the international "free trade" and commerce regime protected and promoted by American military power, which is the real life implementation of the current American or trilateral "vision" or value system.

Third, Prof. mead suggests that based on the strength of the "American vision" being the "best way forward",

the original trilateral partners joined the U.S. in promoting it a generation ago, and why the world's rising powers will rally to the cause today.

That's a nice fairy tale version of history. I have a lot more shit to say about this but this is taking too much time.

Skipping talking about how Europe and Japan did not simply promote the "American vision"....

China - China poses a different major challenge than either Western Europe or Japan did at the onset of the trilateral era in the 1970s. It's still a totalitarian regime with no respect for many of the values of human freedom that most of us think are important. We can't simply incorporate China into a global power sharing arrangement like we did with Europe and Japan. Partly because China really doesn not share any sense of that "American vision" that Prof Mead was referring to. But more so just because they are not inside our hegemonic zone. Europe and Japan (we should also include South Korea and Taiwan) in the 1970s were clearly protected under the USA's nuclear umbrella. Obviously any way forward with China in a multi-polar power sharing arrangement is going to have to be predicated on some security understandings. Same with Russia.

But still we can probably find a stable security arrangement we China. After all they are super capitalists on steroids. They provide cheap labor and a huge market. American captains of industry love China. And therefore the American political class loves China.

But more to the point lets remember that China is a country that chains little kids to sewing machines so six members of the Walton Family can have more wealth than 30% of Americans. (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/six-waltons-more-wealth-bottom-172819426.html) And they are engaged in a whole list of human rights abuses in regions including Tibet and also against political dissenters, labor unions, and religious people of many stripes.

Let's be careful what we get into before we start accepting the Chinese system as acceptable. Granted, it's a fait accompli in many ways. Except specifically for the way that professor Mead is talking about in this article.

Our way forward with China, and any country for that matter, ought to be based around human rights and human need. Instead of what it is based on currently, which is them making stuff as cheap as possible to line the Walton family's pockets.