Saturday, September 05, 2009
American Prominence: pt. 5
Compound interest games are entertaining but not enlightening, since power, the most elusive concept in political science, is not just a matter of growth rates. What, then, makes a country great? A large population, a large economy, and a large military are necessary but not sufficient conditions. What puts the United States in a league of its own? For one, the world's most sophisticated military panopoly, fed by a defense budget that dwarfs all comers and gives the United States the means to intervene anywhere on the planet. But there is even more: an unmatched research and higher-education establishment that continues to drive excellence. All projections that show China surpassing the United States in the first half of this century leave out these two unspectacular- but critical- sources of power. Of the world's top 20 universities, all but three are American; of the top 50, all but 11 are located in the United States. By contrast, India's two best universities are tucked away in the world's 300-400 tier. China does a but better, its top three- Nanjing University, Peking University, and Shanghai University- are in the 200-to-300 group of the world's 500 best. Harvard and Stanford are not quaking, and neither are Cambridge or Oxford. China's public spending on education, meanwhile has been in the range of 2.0-2.5 percent of GDP over the last quarter century- this is for a population four times as large as the United States' and an economy four times as small. In the United States, average spending has been close to six percent, higher than that of India, Japan, Russia, and the EU. The same pattern holds for research and development (R & D) outlays, with the U.S. rate almost twice as high as China's- again as a fraction of a vastly larger GDP.
Education and R & D are critical because they condition future performance. True, an increasing number of U.S. graduates in the hard sciences are foreign born or first-generation immigrants. But far from betraying a failure on the United States' part, this trend actually dramatizes a unique advantage: no other country draws so many of the world's best and brightest to its labs and universities, especially from China and India.
Another aspect of national power is a warrior culture. The United States still has one, as does the United Kingdom. But 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. 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. For all its marvelous riches, Europe is hardly a prime player in the contemporary great-power game: it does not think like a global power, nor can it move with the speed or decisiveness of a real state. The EU takes pride in being a civilian power that expands by force of example, rather than by force of arms. And why not, as long as the United States acts as the security lender of last resort?
What distinguishes the United States from the rest is its choice of role and mission in the world. This self-definition is best illuminated by a comparison with Russia, which wants back what it lost, and China, which wants more than it has. Both countries want more, but for themselves, not for all. Driven by selfish purposes, powers such as Russia and China cannot be what the United States was at its best in the twentieth century: a state that pursued its own interests by also serving those of others and this created global demand for the benefits it provided. It is neither altruism nor egotism but enlightened self-interest that breeds influence.
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 save 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. But all this occurred during times of war, hot or cold, when hard necessity generated the incentive to shoulder the burden and pay the price. What makes the United States indispensable now?
The United States is the default power, the country that occupies the center stage because there is nobody else with the requisite power and purpose. Why not any of the others? on a speculative note, it may take a liberal seafaring empire to turn national interests into international public goods. The United Kingdom built a global empire for itself, but in the process produced a whole slew of precious public goods: free trade, freedom of the seas, and the gold standard.
It is difficult to imagine China, India, Japan, Russia, or the EU as guardians of the larger common interest. The EU comes close, but it has neither the means nor the will to act strategically. Japan, although rich enough to marshal the means, will continue to huddle under the United States' strategic umbrella as long as it is extended. India has the size and the population, but apart from being the poorest of them all, it is trapped in a permanent conflict with Pakistan (and a latent one with China), which monopolizes its resources and attention. China and Russia are revisionist powers in business only for themselves. They also lack the right polity. The United Kingdom and the United States are history's only liberal empires. To labor for liberal order abroad requires such an order at home, and so does the habit, sincere or selfish, of articulating the national interest in a universal language. The British Empire's rule over India was more benign than Belgium's over the Congo under the rapacious reign of King Leopold, and it was also more pleasant than China's in Tibet or Russia's in its former Soviet empire. The United States has routinely intervened in Central America- where it once kept a lot of nasty company- but China's rebellious students put up a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square, and not one of Lenin's mausoleum. China and Russia might shine forth as models of authoritarian modernization, but to capture a wider swath of the political imagination, it takes a country that is not just rich but also democratic and free.
Education and R & D are critical because they condition future performance. True, an increasing number of U.S. graduates in the hard sciences are foreign born or first-generation immigrants. But far from betraying a failure on the United States' part, this trend actually dramatizes a unique advantage: no other country draws so many of the world's best and brightest to its labs and universities, especially from China and India.
Another aspect of national power is a warrior culture. The United States still has one, as does the United Kingdom. But 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. 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. For all its marvelous riches, Europe is hardly a prime player in the contemporary great-power game: it does not think like a global power, nor can it move with the speed or decisiveness of a real state. The EU takes pride in being a civilian power that expands by force of example, rather than by force of arms. And why not, as long as the United States acts as the security lender of last resort?
What distinguishes the United States from the rest is its choice of role and mission in the world. This self-definition is best illuminated by a comparison with Russia, which wants back what it lost, and China, which wants more than it has. Both countries want more, but for themselves, not for all. Driven by selfish purposes, powers such as Russia and China cannot be what the United States was at its best in the twentieth century: a state that pursued its own interests by also serving those of others and this created global demand for the benefits it provided. It is neither altruism nor egotism but enlightened self-interest that breeds influence.
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 save 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. But all this occurred during times of war, hot or cold, when hard necessity generated the incentive to shoulder the burden and pay the price. What makes the United States indispensable now?
The United States is the default power, the country that occupies the center stage because there is nobody else with the requisite power and purpose. Why not any of the others? on a speculative note, it may take a liberal seafaring empire to turn national interests into international public goods. The United Kingdom built a global empire for itself, but in the process produced a whole slew of precious public goods: free trade, freedom of the seas, and the gold standard.
It is difficult to imagine China, India, Japan, Russia, or the EU as guardians of the larger common interest. The EU comes close, but it has neither the means nor the will to act strategically. Japan, although rich enough to marshal the means, will continue to huddle under the United States' strategic umbrella as long as it is extended. India has the size and the population, but apart from being the poorest of them all, it is trapped in a permanent conflict with Pakistan (and a latent one with China), which monopolizes its resources and attention. China and Russia are revisionist powers in business only for themselves. They also lack the right polity. The United Kingdom and the United States are history's only liberal empires. To labor for liberal order abroad requires such an order at home, and so does the habit, sincere or selfish, of articulating the national interest in a universal language. The British Empire's rule over India was more benign than Belgium's over the Congo under the rapacious reign of King Leopold, and it was also more pleasant than China's in Tibet or Russia's in its former Soviet empire. The United States has routinely intervened in Central America- where it once kept a lot of nasty company- but China's rebellious students put up a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square, and not one of Lenin's mausoleum. China and Russia might shine forth as models of authoritarian modernization, but to capture a wider swath of the political imagination, it takes a country that is not just rich but also democratic and free.
