America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
If you have a moment, below is a column that I wrote for Defining Ideas about so-called "American decline":
Is America's role as a global leader over, given inevitable decline at home? Americans are running up a $1.6 trillion budget deficit this year. The use of food stamps and unemployment benefits remains at record levels. In the last two years, unemployment rarely has dipped below 9 percent. The housing market is moribund. Gasoline is at a nationwide average of $4 a gallon. Our aggregate debt exceeds $14 trillion, up $5 trillion alone since 2009. Medicare and Social Security will soon be insolvent at the current rates of disbursement. States like California, Illinois, Michigan, and New York are almost insolvent.
These depressing indicators—coupled with the rise of a confident 1 billion person India and China—have convinced the Obama administration that America is neither ‘exceptional’ nor able to assert its accustomed preeminent leadership. Decline, not American ascendance, is the administration’s buzzword, a pathology shared with the imploding welfare state of the European Union that can no longer afford the redistribution of wealth to its Mediterranean members.
In response to these perceptions, presidential assistants who were quoted in a recent New Yorker essay characterized the new Obama foreign-relations style as "leading from behind." An advisor explained further that American decline and unpopularity necessitate such withdrawal from the world stage: "It’s so at odds with the John Wayne expectation for what America is in the world," the adviser said. "But it’s necessary for shepherding us through this phase." Left unsaid was that "phase" implies the transition from former power and influence to a new sort of global impotence that reflects a nation in senescence.
The president himself is said to agree with observers such as Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman, who have often gleefully outlined the dimensions of what the inevitable post-American world would look like. At times environmentalists, internationalists, and progressives even welcome such an envisioned new role for the United States—its reduced global profile will be a sort of bookend to a lower carbon footprint at home that would come with a reduced American lifestyle, greater government regulations, cap-and-trade legislation, more taxes, and higher energy prices. We would become an equality of results society at home, and not particularly distinguishable from many nations abroad.
But such pessimism raises two unanswered questions: is the United States really doomed to decline—and what would be the consequences abroad of a retrenchment of American leadership? We can answer the second question first…
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May '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
However we manage our resources and talents, there remains the little problem that a significant chunk of our population does not share the values which underlie our founding documents. And we have seen how such people respond to government cuts in Greece. Even beyond those citizens adamantly opposed to the Constitution and its supporting traditions, comprehension of and loyalty to our founding values have been weakened throughout our citizenry.
Policy can be turned on a dime. Culture can't.
Decline is a choice, yes. But there comes a point at which braking or steering cannot counteract momentum. Sometimes, our present choices cannot save us from the consequences of our past choices.
Are we there yet? Perhaps, but we might as well act as if we are not.
May '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
The best article I have read in weeks! Thank you. Paul Ryan echoed your foreign policy thoughts somewhat in a speech given last week. A pundit I usually agree with at Commentary derided him for being hopelessly naive.
Jun '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Aaron Miller:
Policy can be turned on a dime. Culture can't.
Essential point, Aaron. For an excellent example, see the boomer reaction to the possible retraction of certain aspects of Medicare. It's almost universally accepted that Medicare is failing and certainly financially unsustainable. Yet, when any politician becomes serious enough about the subject to write some solutions, he gets vilified by people in his own party and in his Wisconsin district (cough). "Hands off my Medicare."
To paraphrase Mark Steyn: When given the choice between freedom and government comforts, the citizens of the west have chosen these past 50 years to dump freedom every time. So, yes, decline is a choice. Most of the time though, people won't actively "choose" to dump their government comforts... often the system has to crash before anyone will take action.
Jun '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
The problem is, most of our political leaders are dishonest cowards, with Barack Obama at the head of the list. The first step is to tell the truth.
Aug '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Obama, Friedman, Zakaria, all of these people are befogged by relativism. They are mistaken to consider India and China to be ascendant while their culture and government operates as if their people are totally unaware of the strides in woman's rights, agricultural advances, and medical progress. Their economic strength relies so heavy on controlled trade and low wages, they end up being colonial legacies internally. I bet they honestly view our military as equal to China's .
Yes, the military is ascendant in China, but historically how does that play out in China ?
Unless they can sustain the collectivism, won't the power and wealth will splinter the country into warlords once again ? Does Putin not resemble a throwback ? The Muslim world hasn't shared the wealth of it's members, ancient enmity still haunts Persia, Kurdistan, and the Shia/Sunni rift.
Do you think Americans can put down the cup of freestuff and sober up to the job ahead ? Or will we have to hit bottom, get through the denial, suffer some losses, and then realize what we have to regain ?
Jan '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
If no one has a coherent, identifiable plan, or won't communicate it, then no one else has anything upon which to base their strategy. It's not a question of imposing arrogance on others. It's simply an appreciation that in a strategic world, strategy has to start somewhere.
Jun '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Thanks, VDH! I actually feel a bit of optimism after reading this!
Jul '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Is there historical precedent for the turn around of an empire such as ours?
Mar '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
For myself I think of the question in this manner, "Are we at a point worse than the Great Depression?". If we can recover from that, we can recover from our current madness.
Apr '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
I have often thought of the current state of the US as more analogous to the late Roman Republic rather than the end of the empires Dr. Hanson describes. Can there be another alternative we don't normally consider - the fall of our Republic replaced by a more powerful "emperor" (I use this for lack of a better word).?
Having secured the entire Italian peninsula, then Sicily, then Carthage after 2 Punic wars, Rome finally become the Mediteranean hegemon after defeating Greece (Macedonia) around 150 BCE. After conquering the "known world" the Romans became wealthy and turned to inner political and class struggles that paved the way 1st for Marius, then Sulla and finally Julias Caeser.
Are we heading to a point where our Republic will also fall? As Dr. Hanson points out, we have the technology and infrastructure that won't disappear overnight. We are located in a perfect geographic location from a geopolotical point of view. All that is needed is a spark. Leftists hope a collapse will usher in an age of socialism. Can't the same collapse usher in an age of true US empire? Desperate times call for desperate measures after all!
Edited on Jun 16, 2011 at 1:55pmDec '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Marco Rubio's Senate speech:
...
If we give America a government that could live within its means, the American economy will give us a government of considerable means. A government that can afford to pay for the things government should be doing, because it does not waste money on the things government should not be doing. If we can deliver on a few simple but important things, we have the chance to do something that’s difficult to imagine is even possible: an America whose future will be greater than her past.
...
We should never forget who we Americans are. Every single one of us is the descendant of a go-getter. Of dreamers and of believers. Of men and women who took risks and made sacrifices because they wanted their children to live better off than themselves. And so whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. We are still the great American people. And the only thing standing in the way of solving our problems is our willingness to do so.
Aug '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Stuart Creque: Marco Rubio's Senate speech:
...
things government should not be doing. If we can deliver on a few simple but important things, America whose future will be greater than her past.
...
We should never forget who we Americans are. Every single one of us is the descendant of a go-getter.
Perfect, what a speech. I just saved the bits that really spoke to me. Hope springs eternal in the northern part of the Western Hemisphere, the part they had to look for !
Jul '10
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Obama is overseeing "Manifest Failure."
Edited on Jun 16, 2011 at 4:00pmFeb '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
From a 2004 post by a now-defunct Italian blogger who called herself Joy of Knitting:
Cupio dissolvi...These words have been going through my mind for quite a long time now. It's Latin. They mean "I (deeply) wish to be annihilated/to annihilate myself", the passive form signifying that the action can be carried out both by an external agent or by the subject himself...Cupio dissolvi... Through all the screaming and the shouting and the wailing and the waving of the rainbow cloth by those who invoke peace but want appeasement, I hear these terrible words ringing in my ears. These people have had this precious gift, this civilization, and they have got bored with it. They take all the advantages it offers them for granted, and despise the ideals that have powered it. They wish for annihilation, the next new thing, as if it was a wonderful party. Won't it be great, dancing on the ruins?
Feb '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
One of the most insightful works on the West's loss of civilizational self-confidence is a neglected 1950 novel by Arthur Koestler titled The Age of Longing...Dr Hanson, I think you'd find it interesting. My review is here: sleeping with the enemy.
Apr '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
Mr Hanson, thank you. Every word is true, every success is reachable, but we need leadership that believes in this country, and right now we don't have it. Obama reminds me more and more of Jimmy Carter. Who of all the candidates most closely gives us the possiblity of meeting the leadership you have discribed?
Feb '11
Re: America in Decline? That Is a Choice, Not a Destiny.
ctruppi: I have often thought of the current state of the US as more analogous to the late Roman Republic rather than the end of the empires Dr. Hanson describes. Can there be another alternative we don't normally consider - the fall of our Republic replaced by a more powerful "emperor" (I use this for lack of a better word).?· Jun 16 at 1:54pm
Edited on Jun 16 at 01:55 pm
I also have the same feeling and I can't shake the thought as I look at the state of this country. Will America need the coldblooded ruthless efficiency of an Octavius to survive? Under such a regime it will not be the country of old but nonetheless it will still survive and dare I say it may thrive. Mr. Hanson what do you think?
Edited on Jun 16, 2011 at 10:29pm