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Is American Global Leadership Over?
A grim view from abroad on America’s economic predicament from John Gray in The Guardian today:
Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over. … In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.
Gray says that at the same time America has been lecturing countries around the globe on the necessity of sound finance, we have been borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund our over-stretched military commitments.
The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America’s financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. … The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America’s over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned. Meltdowns on the scale we are seeing are not slow-motion events. They are swift and chaotic, with rapidly spreading side-effects.
Gray says those countries that spurned the American model of capitalism — “China in particular” — will shape our economic future.
Having created the conditions that produced history’s biggest bubble, America’s political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.
10 Responses to “Is American Global Leadership Over?”
Do you really think that the Chicago mafia that will moving into the executive branch in the near future will care about America's leadership position in the world. When have any of them ever cared what the rest of the U.S. thought about Chicago?
Yes, it is over. With the bailout being voted into law tomorrow, Americans are seeing the just the beginning of its citizens' being forced to pay its national debt. U.S. companies are a real bargain for foreign investors:
Weak Dollar Fuels China's Buying Spree Of U.S. Firms
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar…
If Obama makes it into office, he'll be sure to add our sovereignty to the package.
Excellent. I was going to say that Gray was over-reaching, but the comments so far are over-reaching even further. Mafia moving into the White House? Giving up sovereignty?
Anyway, back to Gray, I agree that we have not yet seen the end of the financial crisis, but it's hardly the collapse of capitalism, which he seems to imply. Our debt levels are indeed too high, and so it's possible we will have to retrench for some time to bring them back to sustainable levels. Some other countries will continue growing in power, though only China is large enough to actually overtake the U.S. in financial strength and that's a couple decades off. Even that point, however counts against Gray's larger assertion, because it is capitalism which has allowed China to finally employ its resources sufficiently.
pacatrue, by Chicago Mafia, I mean the interlocking Chicago politicians, fixers, and businessmen who have organized Chicago government so that they are enriched. I was not writing about organized crime.
However, the energy crisis alone is enough to give the left in the U.S. a reason to put an end to capitalism in the U.S. If every business has to ask the government permission to use energy, the government will be deciding what businesses exist and what they can and cannot do.
Also, it should be easy for China to overtake the U.S. when the Obama administration starts a full blown policy of open borders and unlimited immigraiton. AS the Obama Administraiton millions more poor third worlders who will demand more government services and create millions of new government jobs, the federal and local government will cross over the 50% of GDP consumed threshold and then why would anyone want to start a private business in the U.S.
The real question is can the U.S. survive as a country of government employees and those companies who make things for the government?
SD, I believe your comment would be covered by this part of Gray's article :
“Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away.”
What Gray is describing is just the sort of BS that has long gotten in the way of real progress. There is much work to be done, but greedy, short-sighted pretenders and their foolish supporters have done such an effective job of getting in the way of that work, it will be very difficult to begin the process of digging out again.
[...] Is American global leadership over? [...]
Capitalism, Republican Style is probably over, it has taken the US from being the world's largest creditor nation to being the worlds largest debtor nation, and that in a mere thirty years.
When I was kid, and I am only in my mid forties, America was where the future was being created, it had the hottest coolest most cutting edge technology, today other than weapons technology, it has none. It has farmed it's manufacturing to the rest of the world and it the process lost control of it's technological future. Today if you want cutting edge Nuclear technology, you go to France, you want the best and fastest trains you go to France, Japan or Germany, you want the best electronics you go to Japan or Taiwan, you want the best airplanes you go to France, the best machine tools Germany or Japan.
And all of that was lost so that a few Americans would go from being rich to being filthy rich.
I think the linked article is pretty bad.
“facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.”
Huh? What other kind of future is there? And who says you have to be a (or the) Global Leader to be able to shape the/your future?
And, what's this guy so mad about? I feel like I should apologize to him for something, but I'm not sure what it might be.
The kind of future over which you have no control because you are up to your eyeballs in debt. The kind of future in which other countries can force you to do things that are against your best interest, the kind of future in which the IMF decides what your domestic policies should be, the kind of future we gave Latin America in the 80's and 90's.
I don't think Gray is angry about anything; if anything, he may be delighted at the US's current predicament and constraints. (It's not the same as decline, and no, capitalism is not the evil culprit too many rush too quickly to blame for everything bad that happens.)