Why America Will Remain the Superpower
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
In my very first job, I got used to the idea that somebody, somewhere in the project, feels that the sky is falling and the project's about to end - on practically a weekly basis. Yet the project went on. Human activities have a huge intertia, and the "economy", and the "world order", are merely a collection of human activities with some system applied on to help keep track of what's going on (and, ideally, help it go even better).
Things change, but ever so slowly.
Long term I think the US GDP is limited by our lack of investment in basic infrastructure. But when you look at the "real" economy things are still looking good. It's going to be interesting seeing how many baby boomers retire and how many are going to wait until the market recovers. But, I think people pulling money out of the market is going to help keep the market realistic for the next few years. (Good for me but bad for the old people.)
I don't have a lot of cash on hand, so when I talk about buying when the market is down I am fine thinking in terms of the next 5 years. I am cutting costs and increasing my rate of investment not dumping a lot of money into the market at the same time.
PS: If you get a large chunk of money it's best to get into the market over the course of 1-3 years vs going really aggressive the day someone hands you all that cash. You might miss out on a little interest but your odds of buying at a peak are greatly reduced.
I personally feel do not feel owed anything. I just hope if we're on our way down that we don't piss off enough other countries that {we, our children, our grandchildren} have it harder than it has to be when the tables are turned.
Small problem, we're not arguing that it's right. And we're not arguing that you should be subservient, but we'll get back to that bit of projection a little later.
We don't argue that it's right, but let's look at the alternatives. China? Russia? The EU? No one? Yeah right.
Speaking of the EU, we've seen them in action. It's not clear that they're the best of that sorry bunch. We all know that if the US announced "hey, you're right, we're just here for the oil, so we're going to redeploy to cover what we need and let you take care of the rest", they'd be running troops into Iraq as fast as they could get transport from the Russians. (They really ought to have some ability to project force.) Then we'll see how Euros run an occupation. Most folks think that Germany is the most brutal, but I've got my money on France.
As a superpower, the US is basically a resource. Whenever something big needs doing, the question is "how do we get the US to do it?" If you don't like that deal, find a better one and take it. We won't be offended.
We don't want you to to be subservient. That's how the alternatives work. (Yes, I'm including EU and subdivisions.) Instead, we think that your responses when you ask us to do something should show some class. They should fall into two categories (1) "thank you" with as much "how can we help" as you can afford and (2) "on second thought, don't bother, we'll do it ourselves". And, we should hear the second a lot more from the EU. After all, 500M people and more GDP than the US should allow you to do most things on your own. (All that wealth and we had to handle your USSR problem....)
Yes, in some ways we do look down on you. It's because you're Monday morning quarterbacks. You want respect - get on the field. Surely there are some problems that you can handle. Show us how it's done.
BTW - We know that you're talking smack because you're not afraid of anything these days. We also know that that will change when you are.
Speaking of "sophistication", it's somewhat ironic that our subprime mortages had a bigger effect on your banking system. We're stupid, so we're supposed to get conned. What's your excuse for getting taken by rubes?
You're right, except I think the EU would look at the half dozen or so barrels of oil that would be left over once the US had covered what it "needs" and think it wasn't worth it.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Since only a small fraction of the US supply comes from the Middle East (the US gets the vast majority of its oil from North and South America), perhaps you should have.
Maybe the EU can subcontract the occupation to China....
BTW - One of the advantages of having being a superpower is that you have options like "hmm, if the Middle East goes to hell, we'll keep oil from North and South America from being exported outside of North and South America".
If you want to get serious, I'm kind of sick of this "But the US doesn't need the oil in Iraq anyway" argument. I'm sure you know as well as anyone else around these parts that it's not about required resources, it's about control of resources, which in turn provides desired leverage.
It's nationalistic and ridiculous to suggest that the EU should show the US how things should be done instead of criticising? Wowsers.
It's not so much control of the Middle East oil resources as stability of the resources so those who actually depend on them (that is, not the US) don't go belly up.
Like I said, we have options. It would hurt us if the EU went belly up, but not as much as it would hurt the EU.
The fact of the matter now is politics doesn't run on altruism. If you truly believe that there isn't an overwhelmingly large portion of your establishment doing their damn best to make sure the US stays the one and only true super power and that their reasons for doing this are not largely selfish, then you are lost, my friend. Call it "stability" if you like, but it doesn't change what it really is underneath. Need for control, the desired end product being alleviation of fear. I have a problem with anyone telling me they know what's best for me.
Smart people in the rest of the world try hard to make a distinction between the US government and the US people (especially at the moment), maybe you should start doing the same.
> Yes, in some ways we do look down on you.
That was my point. Most Americans know so little about the world but they are so convinced they are the best. In my experience most first world countries are better to live in than the states.
> It's because you're Monday morning quarterbacks. You want respect - get on the field.
So we have to start a war or something to get respect? Is that what the invasion of Iraq was all about?
> We don't argue that it's right, but let's look at the alternatives. China? Russia? The EU? No one? Yeah right.
Why does any one nation have to be nominate itself as the sheriff? I haven't seen much clamour for the US to exercise military power recently, more the opposite.
In truth I don't think the US has anywhere near as much power as it thinks. Most times it has tried to exert that power it has backfired. When you have about 20-25% of world GPD and you try to continually exercise more than 50% of the control something has to give.
There is absolutely no reason, other than bickering and incompetence, that the European powers couldn't be operating an airlift capability equivalent to or better than the US C17 Globemaster fleet. If we were we could have saved countless lives in the wake of the Asian tsunami. The only people in the world able to undertake a massive logistical undertaking at short notice is the USAF.
Militaries do an LOT other than blowing stuff up.
You seem to have a very indepth knowledge of the logistics of these situations. Perhaps you could explain what happened to the rescue effort in New Orleans when Huricane Katrina hit?
BTW I'd be interested to see a comparison with deaths in rural Soviet Union under Stalin with the Irish situation. Seems to me like a similar situation and yet the deaths are pretty much attributed as murder under Stalin.
I think of this sometimes when I think of my wife. She survived, with years of hunger, Mao's "Great Leap Forward", when 77,000,000 human beings -- men, women, children dying as their mothers held them and watched -- were systematically starved to death.
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." -- Stalin, an expert on the subject
We devoted a carrier group. We have more than one, so it wasn't a huge deal for us. And, since we have several, there is always at least one fairly close to almost anywhere there's an blue-water ocean.
However, a carrier group has a lot of capacity. It's at least one fairly significant medical facility, an airstrip and transport, a lot of housing and trained personnel, a huge amount of desalinization, and so on.
It would be a huge deal for the EU to provide the same capacity.
The British govt is finally realizing that, hence the RN will in a few years have 2 near-US-equivalent carrier groups (the US has 14 IIRC). The rest is a joke. The EU "rapid reaction corps" would take 2-3 months to deploy anywhere...
Not at all.
There are no shortage of problems in the world. Rwanda is basically over, but there's the Sudan and the other hell-holes of sub-saharan Africa. Surely you've got more to contribute than "the Americans dropped the ball again."
Then there's Bosnia. Right in the EU's backyard. Why should the US be there at all?
The world is full of problems. Pick some and solve them. We don't care how you do it, but we do notice that you're not even trying.
Is it really unreasonable to expect the EU to handle fairly big problems?
Apparently so - you can't even manage to provide reasonable capacity in Afghanistan. (Man for man, fantastic, but there aren't many men.)
Am I misunderstanding you or are you really arguing that one should expect the EU to clean up after the US?
Apart from that the EU is actually doing things in Afghanistan as far as I know -- but more like the friendly-negotiative style, not the world's cop style.
PS: Web 2.0 sounds great but look at Iceland to see what happens when you build an economy on Ideas.
Are you sure you don't? Can you explain to me why your new foreign policy states that "The United States must remain the world's only superpower, unchallenged by any other nation."?
( http://web.archive.org/web/20071012015838/http://www.crf-usa... ) ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.... )
BTW, Tell me how it goes with China...
> Whenever something big needs doing, the question is "how do we get the US to do it?"
Please give me examples of "something big that needs doing" that the US did, so that I can refute you. The US mostly only does what is best in its self-interest (actually, nowadays, in the self-interest of a small elite, but let's not have that discussion) - and this is perfectly reasonable. Do we need a group of self-appointed cops of the world?
And if we do, do you think the US would be a good model (start a war - were people die, woman get raped, etc - for nothing - remember - there were no WOMD and Bush knew it)?
> BTW - We know that you're talking smack because you're not afraid of anything these days.
Of course. Because the US is currently driven by fear, right? Fear of terrorists - ok, "let's drop all our freedoms to pretend to be doing something about another attack - the rich and powerful can surely take something of this."
And if you think about, it is scary how many of your freedoms were dropped (if the government want, they can have you arrested right now, with no charge, for as long as they want), how many laws were broken and ignored (immunity for the telcos - hahaha), etc.
Fear the economy will collapse? "ok, let's take 700 billon dollars from the taxpayers and give to irresponsible and stupid (well, maybe they are not so stupid after all...) bankers - this will surely help."
Fear your kids will get violent? "ok, let's ban violent video games and stuff. They must be the reason why kids fight so much each other."
Yeah, right. I wonder what comes next.
You do realize you're citing (1) what someone wrote as an interpretation of some cobbled together quotes and (2) a draft document that the cite itself admits was changed in the relevant part.
However, a more interesting question is why you think that US policy matters. The Chinese and Russians don't think that they have to have the US' permission to develop their capability.
Why would the EU need the US permission to build some carrier groups or some airlift capability? (The latter was part of the point of AirBus, right?)
>>> Whenever something big needs doing, the question is "how do we get the US to do it?" > Please give me examples of "something big that needs doing" that the US did, so that I can refute you.
It's not the "did" but the "needs doing" - my point being that unless the US gets involved with something, the rest of the world stays out as well.
I'm amused that you're asking me for world trouble-spots; you keep telling us that Americans are clueless about the rest of the world.
I mentioned Sudan and the other things in sub-saharan africa. Or, is that too small or unworthy of your attention?
Surely you're not going to claim that the world is fine except for Iraq. As a sophisticated "citizen of the world", surely you've got a long list of things that need doing.
Go down that list and ask "why isn't my country (or the EU) handling this?".
> Fear the economy will collapse? "ok, let's take 700 billon dollars from the taxpayers and give to irresponsible and stupid (well, maybe they are not so stupid after all...) bankers - this will surely help."
At last count, the EU had put in over 3x as much.
I didn't say I think this. You are the one that claimed the US doesn't want the rest of the world to be subservient - I am just pointing out you might be wrong. And the fact that they changed the document doesn't mean the person who wrote it changed his intention.
> ...unless the US gets involved with something, the rest of the world stays out as well.
This claim is absurd.
> I'm amused that you're asking me for world trouble-spots
I am not. Read my question again.
> ...you keep telling us that Americans are clueless about the rest of the world.
I never said that or anything similar in my entire life. Not sure who / what are you are referring to as "you". I guess you (specifically you - I don't like to generalize) bought into all that paranoid stuff...
> Go down that list and ask "why isn't my country (or the EU) handling this?".
I live in Brazil. It improved remarkably in the last 10 years or so, but it still a poor country. Still, this doesn't mean Brazil does nothing for the rest of the world: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/03/58274 . There are many more examples, if you care to look for them.
I'm not American. Not one bit.
Except in the sense that we in the western world are all americans to some extent.
Also, although America may not be very good at holding up to its own promise, at least it symbolises freedom, democracy, etc. If America's not the superpower, who do you suggest? China? Russia?
America may have flaws, but, like capitalism and democracy, it's still better than the alternatives.
Why does there have to be a single superpower? It doesn't make sense and it isn't sustainable. With 20-25% of the world GDP the US just can't do it even the world wanted it to (which it generally doesn't).
Just curious, were there other western democracies in 1776 when America was founded? Or are you referring to ancient examples like Athens?
Over time other nations have created arguably better versions (proportional representation for example) and of course the US and Britain have improved their system as well by allowing more people to vote.
Have a look at The Economist 'Democracy Index' you'll see that the US currently ranks 17th of all countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index.
I personally believe the Parliamentary system originated in the UK is more robust than the US's presidential system. In a parlimentary system the prime minister is immediately accountable to the parliment. Their party (or a majority of parliament) can chose to dump them at any time which means that you are less likely to be stuck with some wack job in power for 4 years.
I alse believe the lack of preferential voting makes it virtually impossible for any other party to gain significant traction or become president. The only choice is Rep, Dem or waste your vote. This effectively denies genuine representation to people who's views are different from those a both parties. The preferential voting system is resonable for this but in my view proportional representation is the curent 'state of the art' in democracy.
yes I go through that on a weekly basis. Its mild manic depressive, but you can ignore people like me. Fight on.
Depending on your assumptions , the US, China, India & Europe get close to par with each-other (in terms of GDP) . sometime before current Grad Students retire. Could be 5 yrs, could be 40. Equally importantly, a lot of mid sized economies close the gap between them & the whales.
The assumption that economy size translates into military & political power makes sense. By that measure, the US already feels bigger then it should. The EU is a terrible mechanism for validating that assumption. China for all it's faults is not very assertive on the world stage. Neither is India. (Russia is similar to the US in this sense. Their assertiveness means they feel bigger then their GDP should allow)
The current non-US big fish (India, China & Europe) are just not converting GDP to militar/politcal power very well. But the raw ingredient is already there. China & India as manufacturers may even be able convert money to power at a better rate then the US
Public opinion in the US & elsewhere is currently that the US backed financial theories are to blame for the situation. The US's military/political methods are even more unpopular. Fair or not, Georgia/Russia isn't getting much worse press the Iraq/US - even in the countries officially aligned with Georgia/US. & Russia's Putin doesn't have a good name.
This sound familiar: you can have us or the russians/chinese. The euros are wimps. You'll take us because the alternatives are worse! You hear it & elsewhere. 30 years ago those held sway. These days less.
Hey - feel free. Don't let us stop you. Don't forget to write. Wear a sweater.
Since you're planning to reap the benefits from that shift, I trust that you're willing to accept the costs. After all, it's going to work out great, so that's no big deal.
You could look at this a different way and say that perhaps the US is relatively militaristic. Wouldn't it be better for the world if we could minimise militarism and military spending in general? To me it looks like that is the direction these non-US big fish are trying to move in.
I wasn't making a request though.
Wikipedia's list of countries by public debt is interesting: I see no correlation between rank and economic strength. Also curious: there are no countries with negative net debt, so why isn't the circular debt resolved? Maybe the countries are diversifying their portfolios? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_debt
Most (?) government debt isn't held by other governments, it's held by individuals, in the form of bonds. Hence, all governments can be in debt.
About twelve years ago the Australian government (having just changed hands) embarked on a campaign to pay back government debt, which back then was quite high. Now it's almost all paid back (just 15% of GDP left) but as I understand it they want to maintain some level of debt -- otherwise the whole Australian bond market would cease to exist.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Forei...
China is doing the same thing.
Canada used to keep its interest rate just below the US rate, until US rates got so low that it became impossible.
It's become the cesspit of the internet.
There are sites that have more nonsense (4chan for example), but they know it's all jokes. Reddit actually takes itself seriously, and has no idea just how full of nonsense it actually is.
More to the point, after cannons were invented.
But Constantinople was by no means an empire when the Ottomans took it. By that point it had shrunk to a mere town.
The British, Spanish, French, Mongol, Ottoman and Roman empires all suffered from this, to some extent.
In fact, China has some serious advantages in the early stages. Democracy may be the only long-term viable form of government, but their current communist mishmash is much more effective at getting things done, and quickly. It won't last for ever, but it might get them to escape velocity relatively quickly.
If China's GDP increase was on par with the US's, something would be very wrong with China. (Developing countries that aren't increasing their GDP or even see it decrease typically do have something very wrong with them.)
(A lot of people seem to make this basic mistake. A developing economy has a lot of low-hanging fruit, long-gone in an industrialized country. If we could suddenly open a portal to 2050, we'd have low-hanging fruit in our economy too... but we'll have to get to 2050 the long, slow way.)
For example, India, one of the BRIC countries, does not get a mention though Brazil, Russia and China are mentioned.
Did some googling for Indian numbers..
> But here it helps that the ratio of government debt to GDP in the U.S. runs to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%.
India's debt is at 41.7% of GDP in FY08 http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Indias-debt-at-41.7-of-...
(China, Brazil, Russia ignored)
> Last month's $700 billion bailout package seems staggeringly large, but it amounts to a little more than 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Compare that to Germany's $400 billion to $536 billion rescue package (between 12% and 16% of its GDP), or Britain's $835 billion plan (30%).
India : No bailout.
(Japan, China, Brazil, Russia ignored)
> Before yesterday's surge, the Dow had dropped 25% in three months. But that only means it had outperformed nearly every single major foreign stock exchange, including Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%) China's Shanghai exchange (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%) and Russia RTSI (down 61%). These contrasts are a useful demonstration that America's financial woes are nobody else's gain.
Indian BSE : 23.92% for the last 3 months.
(India ignored)
No. I am not suggesting that India is going to become a Superpower.
I just feel that that the article takes a weak path for comparison. It is like - "US is better than CountryA in this aspectA and CountryB in this aspectB and CountryC in aspectC and since no other country is better than US, US will remain a super power."
I've been thinking that since this started. China doesn't like bad news, they can hide them. Chinese economic problems could be more far reaching the the US (at least here in Oz).
In the long term? According to the IMF in 2007 The USA's GDP was 13.84 T$ whereas China's was 3.25 T$. If China's economy grows at 6% faster than the USA's (i.e. 9% versus 3%) they will surpass the USA in GDP in 2031.
Give it ten years, and we're #2.
The US is really getting old already, and for sure they will be the last ones to recognize it... (as it always happens with declining things).