Thursday, September 17, 2009

Article Skipper: Will the United States stay the world's top superpower?

Yes, argues Josef Joffe in Foreign Affairs. (Free registration is required to view the full article.)

Inspired by Mickey Kaus's old blog-post format, here's my haphazard dissection of the article:

1. Wordiest passage: Joffe takes over 1,000 words (everything under the article's first subheading) to make the following point: People have been predicting America's decline for 50 years, but it hasn't happened, so we should be skeptical of current predictions of decline.

2. Most unsupported yet intriguing assertions:

a) [U]nless China is not of this world, society's chickens will come home to roost, demanding to be fed or freed.

b) [I]t may take a liberal, seafaring empire to turn national interests into international public goods.

c) Who would actually want to live in a world dominated by China, India, Japan, Russia, or even Europe, which for all its enormous appeal cannot take care of its own backyard? Not even those who have been trading in glee and gloom decade after decade would prefer any of them to take over as housekeeper of the world.
Would Europe really be so bad?

3. Most thoroughly supported assertion: China is very unlikely to overtake the United States as the world's superpower. (And since China is widely considered the most plausible contender to bump the US from the #1 spot, it seems likely that we'll stay #1.) For example, this is one of his many convincing arguments:
China will grow old before becoming rich, as Mark Haas, a professor of political science at Duquesne University, has noted. According to Goldman Sachs, by 2050 the Chinese economy will long have overtaken the U.S. economy, with a GDP of $45 trillion, compared with the United States' $35 trillion. But by then, the median age in the United States will be the lowest of any of the world's large powers, except India. The United States' working-age population will have grown by about 30 percent, whereas China's will have dropped by three percent. The economic and strategic consequences will be enormous. China's aging population will require a shifting of resources from investment to welfare, thus reducing China's growth. And as the economic pie shrinks, a growing number of pensioners -- 329 million by 2050 -- will demand a larger slice. This will necessarily cut into the share for the People's Liberation Army.
4. Biggest understatement:
The United States was far from universally loved under President George W. Bush.
5. Biggest self-contradiction: First, Joffe gives statistics to show that Europe is far behind the United States:
In all instances of declinism, economic failure serves as Exhibit A. But current figures show the U.S. economy to be worth $14.3 trillion, three times as much as the world's second-biggest economy, Japan's, and only slightly less than the economies of its four nearest competitors combined -- Japan, China, Germany, and France. ...

Today, there is only one challenge to the dominance of the U.S. economy: the European Union's aggregate GDP of $18 trillion. But the more appropriate comparison may be with the 16-member eurozone, which has a common monetary policy and a rudimentary common fiscal policy -- and a collective GDP of $13.5 trillion, less than that of the United States. But an unwieldy conglomeration of 27, or even 16, states cannot be a strategic player.

The United States also comes out ahead among major powers in terms of per capita income ....

The gaps become exorbitant in the realm of military power, where the United States plays in a league of its own. In 2008, it spent $607 billion on its military, representing almost half of the world's total military spending. The next nine states spent a total of $476 billion, and the presumptive challengers to U.S. military supremacy -- China, India, Japan, and Russia -- together devoted only $219 billion to their militaries. The military budget of China, the country most often touted as the world's next superpower, is less than one-seventh of the U.S. defense budget. Even if one includes among potential U.S. adversaries the 27 states of the EU, which together spend $288 billion on defense, the United States still outweighs them all -- $607 billion compared to $507 billion.

Nor can any other great power boast the United States' naval strength, a measure of a state's ability to project power quickly and over great distances. In 2005, as Robert Work, a defense analyst and now undersecretary of the U.S. Navy, has shown, the U.S. Navy commanded a naval tonnage exceeding the world's next 17 fleets combined. ... China, India, Japan, Russia, and the EU put together could not conduct a major war 8,000 miles from their shores, as the United States has done twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan in recent years.
But then he says:
Europe -- although it bests or equals the United States in terms of population, economic size, and military might -- no longer has the mindset that once made it the master of the world.
Huh? I thought he already spent several paragraphs explaining that Europe pales in comparison with the United States' economic and military power. Admittedly, they seem to be close with respect to GDP. But his statement that Europe "bests or equals the United States in terms of ... military might" makes no sense given his earlier statements.

He goes on to argue that what really puts the US ahead of Europe is our "warrior culture":
The armies of European countries are no longer objects of national pride and no longer serve as ladders for social advancement, nor are they the principal agents for promoting the national interest. ... The EU takes pride in being a civilian power that expands by force of example, rather than by force of arms.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable point, but he should have simply claimed that culture matters as well as -- not instead of -- the raw numbers on the economy and military.

6. Least inspiring burst of patriotism:
As the twenty-first century unfolds, the United States will be younger and more dynamic than its competitors. And as a liberal empire, it can work the international system with fewer costs than yesterday's behemoths, which depended on territorial possessions and had to conduct endless wars against natives and rivals. A Tyrannosaurus rex faces costlier resistance than the bumbling bull that is the United States.
7. Most genuinely inspiring bursts of patriotism:
a) The speed with which Barack Obama captured hearts and minds around the world after his election in November 2008 represented a rare moment in the annals of the great powers -- a moment of relief at having a U.S. president who made it possible for the world to love his country again.

b) The United States' choice of its role, in addition to its vast material riches, made it the twentieth century's indispensable nation. While acting on its own interests, it twice saved Europe from itself, and then saved it a third time, during the Cold War, from the Soviet Union. In the interwar period -- again, obeying its own economic interests -- the United States sought to blunt what John Maynard Keynes called "the economic consequences of the peace" by pumping dollars into Europe's economies. Although the Dawes and Young Plans, two U.S.-led economic assistance programs after World War I, were surely designed to make Europe safe and profitable for U.S. investments and exports, they also promoted recovery in Europe, as the Marshall Plan did a generation later. Much has been said about the splendid institutional architecture the United States put in place after World War II, from the United Nations to NATO, and from the International Monetary Fund to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. But the point needs repeating: to find profit for itself, the United States provided for others.

5 comments:

Jason (the commenter) said...

I think this article could have benefited from being printed next to an article with an opposing viewpoint. A "He Said, She Said" type of arrangement.

People have been predicting America's decline for 50 years, but it hasn't happened, so we should be skeptical of current predictions of decline.

Sounds like the people who used to say that housing prices had never gone down and therefore never would.

The armies of European countries are no longer objects of national pride and no longer serve as ladders for social advancement, nor are they the principal agents for promoting the national interest. ... The EU takes pride in being a civilian power that expands by force of example, rather than by force of arms.That seems like a perfectly reasonable point, but he should have simply claimed that culture matters as well as -- not instead of -- the raw numbers on the economy and military.

I think he missed something on the raw numbers. Europe has huge debts and doesn't have the ability to raise taxes much more. I don't think it could afford a war; also, it tends to follow the Byzantine example of paying off its enemies and delaying confrontations. That's not superpower type behavior.

The military budget of China, the country most often touted as the world's next superpower, is less than one-seventh of the U.S. defense budget.

Of course in the U.S. defense budget we spend thousands of dollars per toilet. The Chinese don't need to spend anywhere near what we do if they can spend it more effectively. (Where would the Chinese get cheap manufactured goods for their military? Oh yeah, China!)

But the point needs repeating: to find profit for itself, the United States provided for others.

The Chinese are big investors all over the world right now.

Anonymous said...

Whose hearts and minds are being won? Certainly not an yin Honduras, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe, Israel, China, Pakistan, for for that matter in any of the nations that were hostile to the US prior to election. Bush had actually already won the hearts and minds of Africans. An "Ask Hugo" foreign policy might make our enemies happy but has little to do with with winning their respect.

LemmusLemmus said...

Re: points 6 and 7, patriotism may be the wrong word. Minor point, I know.

John Althouse Cohen said...

LemmusLemmus: Good point. While I hadn't thought of that, and you're right that it makes the wording problematic, I sort of like it and don't plan on changing it. (I still appreciate your pointing it out, of course.) Per your link, Joffe has spent much of his life working in the United States, going back to the early '80s. He's been teaching at Harvard for 10 years.

And I'm not sure his biography is the most important thing. Isn't the actual thought communicated by his writing to the reader what matters? I might also say that Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens have written patriotic statements about America. Yes, they're British, but they've lived in America for a long time, and they're written positive statements about America that sound patriotic and seem meant to instill patriotic feelings -- particularly in an American reader (like me).

Conversely, considering that you and Joffe are both native Germans, I think it's entirely reasonable and understandable that you'd find it strange to call his statements patriotic.

I lived in London for 3 months, which is very short. But let's say I moved back and lived/worked there for many years (which I would gladly do if it were feasible). If I then made a comment about how much I loved Britain, and a native Brit told me he liked my patriotic statement, I might be a little taken aback at the adjective, but I also imagine I'd feel honored.

LemmusLemmus said...

John, that reminds me of something Jonathan Franzen (who lived in Berlin for quite a while and speaks excellent German) said about Germany - that it's the country where Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore are seen as the leading American political pundits. (He also said some nice things.) I would think that someone like Joffe, who likes the USA enough to spend years there and comes back to Germany's left-leaning intellectual circles, where high-brow anti-Americanism has been all the rage for as long as I can remember, feels himself driven to defend the USA maybe more vigorously than would most Americans.

I still wouldn't call it patriotism, but it would be useful to have an expression for that.