Things Fall Apart
In "Is America in Decline?", a post I put up just yesterday, I quoted Roger Kimball to the effect that we should all just take a deep breath and cheer up. By my reading today--I was making notes on the post-war handoff from the British Empire to the United States as the guarantor of free trade and world world order--depressed me all over again. The collapse of the British Empire, my reading reminded me, happened fast.
In the course of the Second World War, of course, American power very quickly came to overshadow that of the British--within just a year or so of entering the war, we already had more men on the ground in Europe than did the British, and our vast production of materiel, numbering hundreds and hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of aircraft, completely overwhelmed the modest British production of materiel. Yet Churchill continued to conduct himself as if the Empire remained a geopolitical force, seeming to suppose that Britain could recover after the war, once again achieving great power status.
It didn't.
Early in 1947, the Attlee government, faced with the vast costs of enacting socialism, including the National Health Service, engaged in a major retrenchment, handing off responsibility for Greece and Turkey to the United States with just six weeks' notice. By the time of the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, Britain was able to field little more than a token force. (Just compare the casualties: The U.S. suffered 33,000 dead and 106,000 wounded; the Commonwealth--Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand--some 1,300 dead and 4,800 wounded.)
Then came the Suez operation of 1956, in which Britain, behaving like a global power for the final time, joined France and Israel in capturing the Suez Canal from the Egypt of Gamar Abdul Nasser, who had nationalized the canal. When President Eisenhower opposed the operation, it collapsed, forcing the British and French, and, a few months later, the Israelis to withdraw their forces. Not long after British Prime Minister Antony Eden, Churchill's successor in the Conservative Party, resigned in humiliation.
And that was that. Still in possession of an empire as late as 1947; forced off the world stage in humiliation by late 1956. In just a decade--collapse.
Of course, the British had us, a law-abiding democracy, intent on peace and free trade, to take their place.
Whom do we have to take ours?
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Aug '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I hear Russia is a nice friendly democratic state, now that Hillary Clinton has "reset" everything...
More seriously, if no one is ready to play the global hegemon after the USA, then we just revert back to the Age of Exploration paradigm, where there are multiple powers who fight over spheres of influence without any becoming the dominant superpower. The difference this time around is all the powers won't be European. Interesting times ahead.
(The other possibility is another age of alliances, but I think WWI killed the paradigm of tightly knit national alliances, and the Cold War made everyone weary of regional military alliances.)
Dec '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Pat Buchanan is right: we should seek to be a Republic, not an empire.
Jun '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Peter Robinson
[...]
Of course, the British had us, a law-abiding democracy, intent on peace and free trade, to take their place.
Whom do we have to take ours? ·
George Soros?
Aug '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I'm sorry, but all of these America in Decline articles ring of the America in Decline articles I read about in high school discussing the 70s. We were coming out of Vietnam, a war more similar to our current engagements than WWII, and we had a President who had no sense of economics.
We are not England.
Aug '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
At the very least, can we all agree we are no longer an ascendant military power?
We may have the best force projection of the Western democracies, but that's become a rather low bar recently.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
The future is not computable.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
BlueAnt
At the very least, can we all agree we are no longer an ascendant military power?
We may have the best force projection of the Western democracies, but that's become a rather low bar recently. · Jan 6 at 8:10pm
So, if you leave off the Western democracies, who in the rest of the world leaps up to overtake us? The fact that the present leader chooses decline such that we are stretched too thin to fully engage in two simultaneous war fronts does not mean that there is anyone else who can match us on even one.
In 1980, we had just gone through 4 years of a president who cancelled every defense program up for decision. The maintenance and logistics support structures were so lousy that we couldn't fly helos in Iran without multiple breakdowns. Ronald Reagan took office and we had the stockpiles replenished and new programs moving rapidly within five years.
What goes down comes back up as long as you retain the know-how.
Edited on January 7, 2012 at 5:21amMay '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I must say, Peter, for a naturally sanguine person, you have been exhibiting a lot of mercurial serial melancholy lately.
Re: Things Fall Apart
This is indeed the essential question, Peter. That there's no ready answer is so important because it distorts our conception and our perception of decline. Were Europe fit to shoulder even a third of our current burdens, offloading those burdens would not seem or look very much like decline. By contrast, the British Empire offloaded its burdens, beginning spectacularly with the handoff in Greece, because it was crumbling fast. Good thing it managed largely to do so, too.
We are obliged to start handing off burdens -- and remember, it is not decline to resume our natural position of not solely shouldering all the West's burdens and more -- before the risk of an actual collapse of our position becomes a reality. Because if a collapse does come, hold on to your seats -- the New World Disorder will be upon us. There is no backstop.
Priority number one of our grand strategy therefore should be to create at maximum speed a framework of major powers capable of assuming the burdens appropriate to major power status -- in maximum accordance, of course, with our interests and values. Is Obama doing this? Haltingly, with India. Otherwise? I can hear a pin drop.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I'm naturally optimistic but, I've been reading too much Mark Steyn lately. When he remarks that ten years after 9/11 there is still a gaping hole where the World Trade Center stood, and it's not about them, it's about us, I worry.
Jun '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
America hasn't in the last century been an "empire" in any traditional sense of the word. We voluntarily ceded control of the Philippines back to the Filipinos. We have not been a threat to Mexico for 150 years or Canada in the last two centuries. Our military power after WWII was to protect our own national interests from the Russians and, to a lesser extent, Chinese. After two decades of drift, the Russians are again feeling expansive and the Chinese are clear that they have major ambitions in Asia and the Pacific.
So where does that leave us? We can remain strong militarily and economically so that we can protect our national geo-political and economic interests or we can hand power to countries that do not care a lick about American interests.
My point. We need to pick our fights carefully but we'd better remain strong enough to engage in a fight if necessary. The Buchanan/Ron Paul school of thinking is historically inaccurate and an invitation for future conflict. Playing dead in our interconnected world won't hack it.
Dec '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
The real question in my mind is can we recover our trajectory? If Obama gets 8 years I fear we will not be able to. If he's out after 4, then I retain a slim hope that we can. Otherwise, I see the Steynian armageddon as a real possibility.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Duane Oyen
What goes down comes back up as long as you retain the know-how.
....and the abilty to fund it, as you know, Duane, and there's the rub. So much rides on serious entitlement and growth-friendly tax reform. We skin those cats and the whole world looks better.
Re: Things Fall Apart
We should bear in mind that Britain's Suez effort unravelled after President Eisenhower ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to prepare to sell off the Sterling bonds held by the United States, part of the enormous debt run up by the British government to finance the Second World War.
Flooding the market with sovereign debt would do a lot to collapse the British economy, creating an acute problem for the former imperial power.
Can anyone think of any recent parallels? Perhaps a rising power flush with cash loading up on government securities sold by an ever more indebted country intent on funding increased social welfare spending, a country also accustomed to projecting military power around the globe.
Anyone?
Oct '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
If we are in decline should we be expecting a tumultuous transition or will it be peaceful? It seems like such changes take place accompanied by a major war.
Apr '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
George Savage: We should bear in mind that Britain's Suez effort unravelled after President Eisenhower ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to prepare to sell off the Sterling bonds held by the United States, part of the enormous debt run up by the British government to finance the Second World War.
Flooding the market with sovereign debt would do a lot to collapse the British economy, creating an acute problem for the former imperial power.
Can anyone think of any recent parallels? Perhaps a rising power flush with cash loading up on government securities sold by an ever more indebted country intent on funding increased social welfare spending, a country also accustomed to projecting military power around the globe.
Anyone? · Jan 6 at 8:51pm
Very nicely done.
Nov '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I am reminded of a Psalm...
Does any world empire last forever?
Dec '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Decline is a choice. People should understand this. Just had a long discussion with family and friends about how our liberal western constitutional democracies are an anomaly, not just in the world today.. but in time. Throughout the course of history and throughout the globe, we are rare... we are an exception. Whether we continue to be, or not is ultimately our choice.
Speaking from the first area in the world that would experience it, I for one do not welcome our future Chinese overlords. In fact I work to resist that every day. But the likelier outcome after the decline of the US will be conflict and war and chaos... not a smooth transition to anything. The Chinese can barely hold their own populace in check, their hegemony wouldn't last too long. Dark would the future be...mmm. dark yes(Spoken in Yoda accent).
Edited on January 7, 2012 at 8:52amOct '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Enormous debt owed to the US under lend-lease, in particular. This bit - the US insistence that it be repaid for its pre-Pearl Harbour assistance [and why not, of course] - is the missing factor in Peter's story. It wasn't just the National Health Service that collapsed British power and influence.
Jun '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Sing it with me! Rule, Brittania! Britannia rules the waves! Britons prob'ly prob'ly prob'ly shan't be slaves!