The Conceited Empire -- from The Dominion (Canada)

[IrateCitizen]

I don't know how many of you out there are familiar with the subject of this interview, Emmanuel Todd, but he is quite compelling. He's a French historian and demographer who predicted the imminent demise of the USSR in his 1976 book La chute final at a time in which many establishment thinkers were discussing the rising "Red menace". He has published a similar book on America, Apres l'Empire (After the Empire) which was a huge hit in France and Germany before being translated and released in the US just recently. I happened to pick it up at my local library and have found it EXTREMELY compelling, analyzing things in new and different ways.

Anyway, read the interview with Todd, and more importantly, read his book if you're interested. It gives an excellent analysis from a detached perspective, taking into account many factors that are overlooked by American historians and demographers.

Anyway, here it is....

The Conceited Empire
A historian credited with predicting the downfall of the Soviet Union in the 1970s now says that the US has been on its way out for the last decade

by Martin A. Senn and Felix Lautenschlager
translated by Andreas Artz

The power and influence of the United States is being overestimated, claims French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd. "There will be no American Empire." "The world is too large and dynamic to be controlled by one power." According to Todd, whose 1976 book predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, there is no question: the decline of America the Superpower has already begun.

Emmanuel Todd compares the US to 16th century Spain, arguing that US economic power is being undermined by the decline of its industrial base and its increased dependence on other countries to feed its consumption.The power and influence of the United States is being overestimated, claims French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd. "There will be no American Empire." "The world is too large and dynamic to be controlled by one power." According to Todd, whose 1976 book predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, there is no question: the decline of America the Superpower has already begun.

This article was originally published in Neue Zuricher Zeitung (The New Zuricher, Sunday morning).

http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/the_conceited_empire.html

[PATRICK]

1. Not too prophetic

In particular about the military expansion of the Empire I9ahem) noted the simple fact that all such gambits have failed with increasing rapidity as history moves on, the latest daring military gamble being the Reich of a Thousand Years. PNAC wanted to settle for a century but instead will get barely a year for a total fizzle. In power or out they deserve a loud raspberry of utter derision.The reasons have been worked out in retrospect by Brzezinski(hope he's on spellcheck) and these people.

It's only a dreary, miserable matter of time and how much damage can be done. That the US will fold up its unnatural bipolar role as liberator and empire and turn into a shrunken Britain is going a bit farther. In the Johnson years it seemed growth was falsely puffed up as a huge increase in the service and military industrial complex sectors- which were not producing anything in the classic fashion. Same with the next savior- the digital information age. Sort of a glorified clerical age like the Victorian paper pushers. Food, energy and manufacturing? Just be thankful if real globalization covers the decline and national dominance becomes moot and unseemly.

It is not our power but the interdependence of the world on major players that keeps people from ignoring or beating us. Bush is only succeeding in defining the embarrassing limits of that power, crippling them, ruining any desire of the world to rely on our idealism, exposing secret advantages so that people can oppose them, and proving that the only chance for temporary success is in destroying the very idea of America anyway.

(It turns out "spellcheck" is not in spellcheck.)

[IrateCitizen]

2. I don't know about your take on "interdependence"

Todd proposes that, if anything, the rest of the world is becoming LESS dependent on the United States, at the very time that the US is discovering that it is immensely dependent on the rest of the world. For example, you correctly identify that the US is not really producing anything anymore, at least not when compared with the other industrialized powers of the world (hence our huge trade deficits). The only thing that is really keeping us going is our massive consumption, which is financed by our hoarding of most investment capital (largely generated by Europe and Japan) under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank.

This puts the United States in a very precarious position, economically-speaking. Of course, this position has been made even more untenable by the actions of the Bush administration, because it requires the tacit cooperation of our European and Japanese creditors to continue. Where Clinton at least tried to cultivate and maintain good relations, Bush has given them a proverbial stick-in-the-eye.

Now, if the US economy were to collapse, it would certainly send shock waves throughout the world. The world's biggest consumer would be taken out of the equation. However, a large sum of investment capital that had previously been hogged by America to fund our wasteful consumption would then be freed up to devote to the "developing" world. Despite the short-term pain involved, this could possibly end up in a significant net positive once the dust settles.

Todd also presents Russia as the wild card in all of this. Brzezinski advocated the isolation and dismantling of Russia. However, US officials went about that effort quite lazily, adopting the "path of least resistance" model that has come to be a recent hallmark of US foreign policy. While Russia's future is still uncertain, there are signs that it is starting to come out of its painful transition following the fall of communism. It is essentially a self-supporting nation, resource wise. It is free to ignore the dictates of the IMF and World Bank, as it maintains a net trade surplus. It is also much closer to Europe in location, culture, and universalist attitude -- as opposed to the increasingly exclusionist United States.

In his book, Todd cites a quote from Russian President Vladmir Putin that is rather telling in revealing not only Russia's designs, but its international savvy:
"No one doubts the great value of European relations with the United States. But I think that Europe would consolidate its reputation as a truly independent global force... if it associated its capacities with those of Russia -- with its human, territorial, and natural resources and the economic, cultural and defense potential of Russia."

Todd further theorizes that Russia's current position of relative economic and military weakness might actually be its greatest strength. Because it is weak, it is not susceptible to designs of global domination, and proposes Europe with a much greater spirit of partnership than is offered by the United States. Of course, Todd offers all this forth with the caveat that Russia's future is quite uncertain, and it could most definitely take a turn for the worse. However, the way in which it allowed the former republics like Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian states, etc. to drift away peacefully makes it more likely for them to eventually drift back into the Russian fold. Equally important is the way that its political system is becoming more independant, and is demonstrating signs of liberalization while retaining a distinctively Russian communitarian quality that long predates the rise of Bolshevism.

Another area in which Todd's detachment from the United States, I believe, benefits him, is the way in which he parallels the rise of militaristic glory within the United States as it weakens to a similar phenomenon in the Soviet Union during the 1970's. Essentially, as American economic and political institutions weaken, officials turn toward military glory as a rallying force to blind the populace and themselves to the crumbling facade of all other elements of American society and culture. This actually serves, I believe, to help unify many of the observations of Kevin Phillips and Chalmers Johnson which, while quite astute, were lacking in a unifying theme between a declining economy and creep of militarism.