Wednesday, September 02, 2009
American Prominence: Just the Facts pt.3
Ever since America was discovered, it has been an object of the imagination. Long before the 13 colonies jelled into a union, America was a construct more than a country- a canvas onto which the rest of the world would endlessly project its fondest dreams and fiercest nightmares.
The canvas is painted in two colors: glee and gloom. Glee is mainly celebrated abroad. Wanting the United States to falter is the natural reflex of those forced to coexist with a looming Gulliver who terrifies simply by throwing its weight around. So every decade, hope springs anew that this Gulliver will be muscled aside by somebody else. Far from foreshadowing the United States' demise, these fantasies are actually a perverse way of paying homage to the giant's fearsome clout- the troubles of small powers never provoke diagnoses of rampant debility.
The gloom is mainly made in the U.S.A. These nightmare scenarios come from a prophetic tradition in which the Jeremiahs hope to prevent what they predict by convincing the wayward to atone. Latter-day prophets use the language of decay to pursue a domestic agenda, whether it is a libertarian vision of isolationism and low taxes or a liberal one of more welfare and less militarism. These familiar motifs recall the words of the Founding Fathers, who saw aggrandizement abroad as a sure path to ruin at home. Thomas Jefferson warned against "entangling alliances"; John Quincy Adams did not want the United States to turn into "the dictatress of the world." If she did, "she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit." Expansion, accordingly, equals the loss of America's soul.
Declinism has always oscillated between projection and prophecy, between those who cheer and those who fear finis Americae . A May 2009 New Yorker cartoon gently poked fun at recidivist doomsayers. It shows a penitent with a placard:"The End is Still Coming," and has a passerby asking his companion, "Wasn't that Paul Krugman?" But simply pointing out the cycles and agendas found in any talk of decline does not simply dispose of the recurrent question: What is the United States' standing in the world, and what might topple number one from its lofty perch? It is time for a look at the facts and figures.
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. Never before in the modern history have the gaps between great powers been so wide. On the eve of World War I, the key players in the European balance of power were more or less evenly matched. The German economy, with a GDP of $237 billion had just eclipsed the British economy, then $225 billion; France's GDP was $144 billion, and Russia's was roughly $230 billion.
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, with $47,000 per inhabitant. It is followed by France and Germany (both in the $44,000 range), Japan ($38,000), Russia ($11,000), China ($2,900), and India ($1,000). It is not clear how China could soon best the United States in this regard, which has a per capita income that is 7.5 times as large as China's. A country becomes neither rich nor powerful by adding up the 1.3 billion very poor people- unless its riches are falsely measure by current account surpluses.
The gaps become more 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 in one includes among potential U.S. adversaries in the 27 states of the EU, which together spend $288 billion on defense, the United States still outweighs them all- $607 billion 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, Robert Work, a defense analyst and now under-secretary of the U.S. Navy, has shown, the U.S. Navy commanded a naval tonnage exceeding the world's next 17 fleets combined. This is a dramatic shift from 1922, when the Washington Naval Conference tried to set rules for a balance of power at sea. The three top competitors- the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan- were allowed navies in the ratio of 5:5:3. At the time, the United Kingdom, the world's greatest maritime power, had a total naval tonnage of 525,000 tons. Germany, France, and Russia also had navies capable of fighting halfway around the world. Today however, 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.
The canvas is painted in two colors: glee and gloom. Glee is mainly celebrated abroad. Wanting the United States to falter is the natural reflex of those forced to coexist with a looming Gulliver who terrifies simply by throwing its weight around. So every decade, hope springs anew that this Gulliver will be muscled aside by somebody else. Far from foreshadowing the United States' demise, these fantasies are actually a perverse way of paying homage to the giant's fearsome clout- the troubles of small powers never provoke diagnoses of rampant debility.
The gloom is mainly made in the U.S.A. These nightmare scenarios come from a prophetic tradition in which the Jeremiahs hope to prevent what they predict by convincing the wayward to atone. Latter-day prophets use the language of decay to pursue a domestic agenda, whether it is a libertarian vision of isolationism and low taxes or a liberal one of more welfare and less militarism. These familiar motifs recall the words of the Founding Fathers, who saw aggrandizement abroad as a sure path to ruin at home. Thomas Jefferson warned against "entangling alliances"; John Quincy Adams did not want the United States to turn into "the dictatress of the world." If she did, "she would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit." Expansion, accordingly, equals the loss of America's soul.
Declinism has always oscillated between projection and prophecy, between those who cheer and those who fear finis Americae . A May 2009 New Yorker cartoon gently poked fun at recidivist doomsayers. It shows a penitent with a placard:"The End is Still Coming," and has a passerby asking his companion, "Wasn't that Paul Krugman?" But simply pointing out the cycles and agendas found in any talk of decline does not simply dispose of the recurrent question: What is the United States' standing in the world, and what might topple number one from its lofty perch? It is time for a look at the facts and figures.
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. Never before in the modern history have the gaps between great powers been so wide. On the eve of World War I, the key players in the European balance of power were more or less evenly matched. The German economy, with a GDP of $237 billion had just eclipsed the British economy, then $225 billion; France's GDP was $144 billion, and Russia's was roughly $230 billion.
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, with $47,000 per inhabitant. It is followed by France and Germany (both in the $44,000 range), Japan ($38,000), Russia ($11,000), China ($2,900), and India ($1,000). It is not clear how China could soon best the United States in this regard, which has a per capita income that is 7.5 times as large as China's. A country becomes neither rich nor powerful by adding up the 1.3 billion very poor people- unless its riches are falsely measure by current account surpluses.
The gaps become more 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 in one includes among potential U.S. adversaries in the 27 states of the EU, which together spend $288 billion on defense, the United States still outweighs them all- $607 billion 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, Robert Work, a defense analyst and now under-secretary of the U.S. Navy, has shown, the U.S. Navy commanded a naval tonnage exceeding the world's next 17 fleets combined. This is a dramatic shift from 1922, when the Washington Naval Conference tried to set rules for a balance of power at sea. The three top competitors- the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan- were allowed navies in the ratio of 5:5:3. At the time, the United Kingdom, the world's greatest maritime power, had a total naval tonnage of 525,000 tons. Germany, France, and Russia also had navies capable of fighting halfway around the world. Today however, 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.
