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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Jun '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
The fall will occur so fast that our heads will spin. Not years, not months, not days, but mere hours. You need to consider how world markets are linked by computer. When the debt bomb explodes, trillions will evaporate in the blink of an eye. Speed is the curse of modernity.
Mar '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Somebody should write a book about this -- oh, wait, Mr Steyn already did.
We are witnessing that rapid decline now in the US - Mr Obama should succeed by the end of his second term, if he has one.
Mar '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Too dour, Peter.
If I recall correctly, the British economy, the state of British industry, and British debt were all in a different situation than we now find ourselves after the war. Britain's debts were owed more abroad, ours are largely owed to ourselves. British industry had largely been nationalized in order to stay afloat during the war, ours remains largely free. NHS was implemented swiftly and had immediate effects, Obamacare not so much. Britain had actual overseas colonies which it had to sustain, that is not true of the US. Britain fell after a half-century of slow imperial decline--focusing on 1945-1956 is too narrow. Collapse was quick in coming when it finally came, but it took the Great Depression and Two World Wars to affect it.
There is nobody who is prepared to step into the hegemonic role on the world stage if it is forfeited by America--it is a mistake to see China as the obvious next choice. China has so many internal problems that I doubt it is prepared to step into that role. We are more likely to see a world without any hegemon which is also not analogous to 1945.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Good grief - can we please get over ourselves long enough to stop the navel gazing and to cancel the changing-of-the-guard ceremonies (for which no new guard is set to appear)? Lookit - decline is a self-fulfilling prophecy; it's never inevitable. It happens only because of poor choices, or perhaps because we are so obsessed with the notion of decline that we waste time that could be used to avoid it in the first place. The guard isn't changing on my watch - are you willing to let it change on yours? No? Then drop the "woe is us" act and get to work.
Oct '10
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?
I thought the standard counter-narrative here is that China only hurts itself if it collapses all those $-denominated bonds it holds. Unlike the US in 1956, PRC doesn't control the world's reserve currency. Also, with a collapsed $ we can't buy all those cheap goods they produce in factories which are keeping all those emancipated peasants employed ... and therefore not engaged in food riots. Is economic warfare really a viable option for the Communist Mandarins?
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Scott Reusser
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. · Jan 6 at 8:41pm
What can't go on forever won't.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
China is more vulnerable holding our debt and relying on exports than we are trying to float debt.
You think Mark Steyn's demographic time bomb looks bad here? Try China's.
May '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
One more time- Britain is a lousy analogy. It is like Japan- you can't sustain a world-wide empire long term from a tiny, resource-constrained island, no matter how clever you are.
Sep '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
I'm with you, TR. My fear is that we'll continue to pursue Old World political thought, which could result in rapid decline. We need forward-thinking change, a very hard sell.
tabula rasa
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. ... 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. · Jan 6 at 8:32pm
Jul '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
The British empire's collapse didn't begin with WWII. It was the appalling slaughter of WWI that bled the country white and weakened its hold on the colonies, including India, the jewel in the crown. The impoverishment was responsible for England's post war disarming and the head-in-the-sand diplomacy that led to Munich and the ruling class's miscalculations about Hitler, not to mention the fatal weakening of that class. The first battle at Ypres alone claimed six peers, sixteen baronets, six knights, ninety-five sons of peers, eighty-two sons of baronets, and eighty-four sons of knights. The male line ended in families that had led the realm for five hundred years. So figure thirty years rather than a decade: still a blink of time.
Aug '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Let's have Seborga take over for awhile, then wait for the world to beat a path to our door.
Of course, the rates will have increased.
Aug '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
I find it telling that the Obama Administration finds it necessary to delegitimatize our status as the single most important force for defense of liberty in the world. It is right out of "Rules for Radicals," a precursor for defunding. It takes a profound naivete and a complete failure to comprehend even recent history to assume that, left with no overarching American military threat, the world will not unravel in horror. Even with our influence, it unravels. History is littered with shy leaders whose ignorance of and inability to confront the threats around them led to disaster. Peace does not result from tolerance; it is achieved when those who wish to disturb it fear the intolerance of those with the courage and conviction to defend it.
I fear that Obama does not understand this.
Edited on Jan 7 at 10:05amOct '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
Douglas Kimball: I find it telling that the Obama Administration finds it necessary to delegitimatize our status as the single most important force for defense of liberty in the world. It is right out of "Rules for Radicals," a precursor for defunding. It takes a profound naivete and a complete failure to comprehend even recent history to assume that, left with no overarching American military threat, the world will not unravel in horror. Even with our influence, it unravels. History is littered with shy leaders whose ignorance of and inability to confront the threats around them led to disaster. Peace does not result from tolerance; it is achieved when those who wish to disturb it fear the intolerance of those with the courage and conviction to defend it.
I fear that Obama does not understand this.
Well said! No, Obama does not understand this. His entire adult life has been lived inside an Alinsky bubble, where the worldview revolves around economic class and political power relationships. He thinks he's profoundly helping humanity by knocking the US down a few pegs. He's well-educated, just not very smart and certainly not wise ... exactly the wrong person for the job.
Mar '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
The United States wasn't founded as the world's policeman or guaranteer of liberty. A shining example? Sure. But nowhere in either our founding documents nor in the famous debates... the Federalist or Anti-Federalist Papers... do we find any design to make us some benevolent judge and jury and cop for the world. Quite the opposite, the prevailing attitude of the Founders was "stay out of it and mind our own business". Sometimes trouble comes to you, but best to not seek it out. George Washington would be horrified at hearing things like "but we HAVE to protect *insert country here*, we're who insures freedom across the world". And to respond with "Yes, but George couldn't predict *insert any modern argument here*", is a defacto agreement with Liberals that our Founding and its principles are quaint anachronisms, and that modern realities make it obsolete. You're agreeing with Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and the whole progressive movement then.
Dec '10
Re: Things Fall Apart
From a country with abundant energy—fossil fuel and human—rich in resources for producing all varieties of food and extracting fundamental forms of materials—from renewable forests to easily accessible ferrous ore—that has a growing population living in freedom from the confiscatory impulses and corrupting influence of distant government bureaucracies employing paper pushers more interested in reading in the media stories about themselves than about the rising wealth of a nation outside of their control, one should expect prosperity, if not a global power, but not an inward looking Leviathan.
Nothing has changed but the seismic disruption of regulations issued out Washington dictating how we must produce our resources at a higher cost and less efficiently .
“Whom do we have to take ours?” There’s nowhere to go but to circulate within our local, state and federal borders and sustain the fight for our freedom to remake our way of life—filled with smokestacks, factories, and prosperity.
Throw the bums out of office, let every regulation sunset into oblivion, and restart in our own county the exploitation of energy and every other resource as we once did—to the benefit of jobs, wealth, and higher living standards.
Dec '11
Re: Things Fall Apart
Most people would say China because it is becoming an economic dynamo, has always been a military power by sheer numbers, and its leaders at least recently seem act at least politically in an almost flawless manner. Truly their potential is almost frightening.
However, every nation or entity has at least a few little hairline cracks in its foundation, which when rung in the right manner can cause even the most indomitable fortress to shatter. So I guess that is my way of saying that no one is invincible(not even us which is pretty much the reason for this article).
Also there are so many factors that it is hard to determine who will come out on top. Before WWI no one would have thought of the US as a super power. In fact many times in our history it looked like we would have been beaten but we weren't and it took everyone(maybe even us) by surprise. So almost any industrialized nation today with at least an average economy and military could take the reigns(I think I used the wrong word).