Mario Del Pero - 09/ 2011

In some respects the question (and fear) of decline arose from the moment the United States was born. A fragile, weak, internally-divided state, surrounded by hostile countries, humiliated at sea now that British navy protection had been withdrawn. But at once the state set about asserting its own greatness: its imperial destiny. It both feared it would suffer the fate of Poland – dismembered by and carved up among the European powers – and at the same time dreamed of reproducing itself, cell-like, ad infinitum, of being a worldwide model of republican and federal liberty such as was forming in the fledgling United States of America. Some such schizophrenia – oscillating between over-ambition and apocalyptic phobia – dogged most of the history of US foreign policy, at least until Empire dawned in the late nineteenth century and the USA began to consolidate as the main, if not sole, world power. Yet it is precisely that definitive rise to world ascendancy in fulfilment of a long-nurtured dream, that raised the spectre of potential decline: an empire cut down to size, its inner cohesion transformed, its state apparatus increasingly pervasive and powerful: courting the inevitable fate that sooner or later befalls great empires of history. In the 1970s, and still more so in the 1980s, the idea of US decline returned to the political and intellectual limelight: possible? probable? even certain, some thought. Liberal and conservative, right- and left-wing intellectuals and politicians took up the cry. Some warned of “imperial over-stretching” absorbing and gobbling up resources, of the US economy’s dwindling competitiveness bowing beneath the challenge of alternative models, be they Germany, Japan or the emerging Asian tiger. Others read decline not just in the economy – made inefficient by hyper-regulation, drugged by federal subsidies – but in the moral and spiritual ambit as well; values were being undermined, national cohesion was crumbling under the multi-cultural, relativist turn of events. This debate in all its over-simplification has forced its way back in recent years, against a backdrop of resounding failure by Bush’s foreign policy, post-2007 economic crisis and the increasingly volatile state of politics. In addressing the subject of US decline we should ask ourselves two questions: by what criteria can we measure the so-called decline, and does it still make sense to talk of decline in an international situation characterised by its subjects’ growing interdependency and the evident erosion of its hallowed unit of reference, the nation-State? First, the criteria. Out of that undeniable 1970s crisis the Americans emerged by rethinking their leadership and their hegemony. They queried their own domestic market, the bulimic dynamo of worldwide economic growth; they asserted their military ascendancy; they promoted the unashamedly nationalistic claim that the USA was different, special, unique: in a word, exceptional. If we review these causes of US hegemony today, we see that some have exhausted their resources, others reveal a basic contradiction, while others again persist, endowing the United States with a power of which no other country can boast. Her consumer appetite has exhausted the United States. The level of family debt has risen steadily until it verges on a fateful zero versus income. The public debt has in turn soared exponentially, as internal and external deficits have mounted. The only exception to this came in the last three Clinton years which saw three balance of payments surpluses (though the current accounts balance kept firmly in the red). The country has changed from an exporter into an importer of capital, a process which has intensified and chronicized. Public accounts have not just suffered from high consumption, low savings and a negative trade balance. A decisive part has also been played by the abatement of taxation (top income tax has gone from 70 to 35% in the space of thirty years), not to mention exorbitant military outlay, spiralling after 11th September 2001. Such a military budget puts USA power in a category of its own. But the power is hard to spend, at least in any full sense, as we have seen in Afghanistan, in Iraq and Iran. One reason is that this economic fragility, this partial waste of military achievement, has gone hand in hand with a blatantly nationalistic public discourse that tends to put the rest of the world off. In other words, it whittles away the US’s soft power: her ability to extend her influence indirectly by the fascination her political and economic model has always exerted. This is real vulnerability, and it has worsened in recent years. Yet it is only one side of the coin: turn it over and one sees a quite different reality. Though the manufacturing sector may be weakened, the US continues to display great powers of innovation and a high rate of productivity. This is the land of Silicon Valley, and above all the best universities and avant-garde research centres. Only a few days before the much-publicised loss of Moody’s triple A rating, US bonds were placed on the international markets at rock-bottom interest rates, showing once gain that investors rank the USA above most other world economies. Sophisticated US military technology again proved decisive in the Libyan operation where, for the first time in decades, the USA let her European allies make the running. The global spotlight on the 11th September anniversary, reminiscent of the enthusiasm that greeted Obama’s election outside the States, shows that not all the soft power has been squandered. Many still look to America in admiration. But then there is politics, perhaps modern America’s Achilles heel. Dysfunctional and volatile, heavily conditioned by a remorseless electoral cycle and the impatient blare of the media which only reward the demagogue, the irresponsible. There are some signs of a truce at this moment: a faint bipartisan dialogue has opened up over Obama’s latest proposals for the labour market. But it is hard not to notice the low quality of political contention and the way it is reported: this does appear a sign of US weakness, a cheapening, maybe even a decline. In international politics, however, decline can no longer be measured in relative terms, like a zero-sum game: one power grows, another wanes, equilibrium is restored. United States power is not just projection but also relationship. And that relational quality makes the debate about her decline seem incomplete, if not sterile. The relationship with China, the rising power that challenges today’s ruling picture, is paradigmatic here. The two countries are linked by a tight web of exchange and interdependency. Trade relations are becoming ever tighter. China owns a sizable part of the US debt (more or less 8% of the total, roughly one third of all the part in foreign investors’ hands); the American market has powered China’s growth; many US corporations have moved a section of their production cycle to China. This is the tightest of bonds and needs most cautious handling, since neither side can take unilateral decisions without setting off far-reaching repercussions. That is not to say we shall have no tensions or conflict. Both parties will continue to pursue their own interest. And politics is not always rational: there are those bent on raising the threshold of tension, in China as in the United States. Sino-American relations simply prove that it is pointless to reason in the classical terms of decline and rise of powers. We have seen these last three years: if the United States declines, that makes the whole world weaker and less stable, beginning with her alleged Chinese rival.

Mario Del Pero
(University of Bologna)