As many of the readers of TMV may not know, I’ve been studying for a masters in political communications and recently have been focusing on the perceived inevitability of America’s decline on the international stage and the inevitability of China’s, India’s, Brazil’s and Russia’s rise and I have come to an interesting conclusion – things are not as inevitable as they seem.
So, a little over 30 politicians ran anti-Chinese ads in the last mid-term elections trying to link their opponents to pro-Chinese legislation which ship American jobs to Beijing and has fed into the debate calling China “neither enemy nor friends”. You have Tea-Partiers complaining that America is on a downward slope (since Obama took office, never-mind the 8 years of GOP rule which saddled America with debt) and real patriots need to claim back their country. You have Republicans saying the answer to America’s problems is to slash spending and you have Liberals saying the answer is to tax the rich.
And here lies the problem.
When you think about this narrative of America’s likely decline and China’s economy overtaking America’s by 2030 the more you start to question it. America still has the largest most technologically advanced military is the world and spends more than China, UK, France and Russia combined. It’s unlikely that anyone will challenge, let alone match the US in terms of capability or spending for a long time yet. Also for China to overtake America’s economy in little under twenty years, its well known domestic problems which have been brewing for some time would have to disappear and its economy would have to encounter no obstacles during that time – and that how the world works right? Perfectly.
And then there’s America’s real issue and the debate which has gripped political discourse over the past couple weeks and will do for the next couple of months, its debt.
Not just any ordinary run of the mill debt, but 14 trillion dollars worth of debt. I truly don’t know how many zeros are involved in 14 trillion. Even in this regard, in his 2010 paper, The Future of American Power, Joseph Nye argues that America has the capabilities and tools to deal with all of its problems, from foreign policy challenges such as an ascendant China to climate change and domestic ones like a quickly changing demographic and its crippling debt problem. His only caveat and the point to this very interesting piece is America’s political environment, which at the moment, at this very crucial time in American history, is living by the China-based America journalist James Fallows’ description of a joke.
You had a mainstream political party take a budget negotiation hostage over social issues and is looking to play the same game over the raising of America’s debt ceiling. We have another political party cry and moan because their president chose not to play politics with other people’s lives and cut a budget deal which was hard for him to take so that the men and women who are fighting America’s wars would get paid.
You actually have Democrats trying to make an argument that it would be good for the Democratic Party if Obama got a primary challenge in 2012? “You can have a real Democrat standing real progressive Democratic issues”! “Who says a primary challenger can’t win the general election?” Its too much to take sometimes.
What Liberals are really advocating is exactly the same strategy which Republicans have been pursuing since they lost power in 2008, the purification of their party (granted it won them back the house) – but Democrats are aiming to do so from a winning position. They want a President who is willing to fight in their corner as stubbornly as the Republicans do and America will face the consequences of such wishes – even more deadlock. This means America will be even more unable to deal with the grave problems and tough decisions that need to be made in the near future. Rising entitlements, poor-education, energy demands and the retooling of its economy.
America is a great country, it has the best universities in the world, the best tech companies in the world, it has Hollywood, Disney, Nike, Oprah, Letterman, the Superbowl and Wrestlemania – it is truly the Rome (empire) of our time.
But, as people keep reminding me, Rome fell and it didn’t crumble from outside forces.
Rome crumbled from within.
