By Daniel Twining
It is a quality of human nature to extrapolate the
present into the future. What else explains the pervasive gloom about America's
future in the international system? Headlines around the turn of the new year
were full of learned and normally astute commentators bemoaning the inexorable diminution
of the West by the ever-growing economies of Asia in the wake of the global
financial crisis and what many perceived to be a lost decade from 2001- 2009. Surveys show that three in five Americans
believe their country is in decline. A little more New Year's cheer is in
order.
The United States today enjoys a share of global GDP
no different than it did in the 1970s. The spread of democratic capitalism to large parts of the world that,
during the Cold War, suffered from closed economies of scarcity is an enormous
victory for American power and principles, and has made this country -- not to
mention billions of people across Asia, Latin America, Central and Eastern
Europe, and at least parts of Africa and the Middle East -- decisively better
off.
This outcome, no less
than the end of the U.S.-Soviet balance of nuclear terror, is the ultimate
victory of the Cold War, and its final chapters have yet to be written -- as
China's leaders, consumed by domestic insecurities even as the world lauds
their unprecedented ascent to world power, seem to understand.
The United States
remains the world's indispensable nation, even if President Obama has cast off
the bracing language of American primacy in favor of a more subtle and
understated poetry about American purpose. Washington's security commitments
continue to order Asia, deter aggression in the Middle East, and make possible
Europe's historic experiment in regionalism. The United States remains the
international system's core convening power -- as seen most recently at
Copenhagen-- and no solution to any pressing international problem is possible
without American leadership.
The same cannot be said
of China, so often conflated to be America's global equal despite possessing an
economy one-quarter of America's size and political, demographic, and economic
challenges that dwarf those of any other great power (with the possible
exception of Russia, whose future appears bleak). China's passive acquiescence
may be necessary on a host of international challenges, from stemming Iranian
proliferation to (not) agreeing to climate change targets. But where is Beijing forging international
solutions on the hard issues of the day? More often it is free-riding on the leadership of others, or belatedly
consenting to decisions after being forced to take a position by the more
active leadership of the West.
Uniquely within the
developed world, America possesses a population that does not face a
demographic crisis over the coming few decades, thanks in part to our
historical tolerance for immigration.
U.S. universities continue to educate the global elite -- and if they go
back to India or China to start software companies rather than staying in the
United States, that is in part an indictment of our tough controls on highly
skilled immigration that deter the world's best talent from staying. At the same time, while it would be better to
import than to export talent, we shouldn't diminish the value of the latter in
extending American influence into these important new centers of power and
seeding economic growth there that benefits us, too.
The United States is
well-placed to compete in a globalized world -- we always have been, which is
why generations of American presidents have pursued free trade and freedom of
the seas as enduring national objectives. Half the S&P 500's earnings come from abroad, which means every
American who owns a retirement fund in stocks, even if not invested
internationally, benefits from the economic "rise of the rest" (as does every
American who doesn't own a retirement fund but shops at Walmart and chooses to
consume cheap imports). And it's worth
pointing out that economic growth in the BRICS relies in part on the soft
infrastructure of trade and finance that is dependent on the security of the
global commons, still policed overwhelmingly by the U.S. military and our allies.
The United States
suffered calamitously from the financial crisis of 2007-2008, which started
here at home from our own Schumpeterian excesses of capitalism. But the United States also appears poised to
lead the developed world out of recession and into sustained, if moderate,
growth. It is true that China, in
contrast to the West, had a good financial crisis. But its extraordinary stimulus spending combined
with its artificially undervalued currency is creating a different set of
financial and economic risks. The country's opaque and underdeveloped banking
system, not to mention its rigid and non-transparent political regime, will be
hard-pressed to manage these with ease.
More broadly, as Thomas
Friedman has said, the 21st century cannot belong to a country that doesn't let
its citizens use Google. Americans (and our friends abroad) should have a
little more confidence in the values and purpose that have inspired us to help
make the new world we live in. We have plenty of problems at home, from
inadequate infrastructure to an underperforming educational system and, perhaps
most disturbingly, a growing burden of national debt that, if not corrected,
will increasingly undermine our welfare at home and our leadership abroad.
That said, I wouldn't
trade America's problems for those of any other country. For his part, President Obama certainly
doesn't want to spend four or eight years presiding over American decline. It
doesn't pay to bet against the United States. We should have faith in our political leadership -- and actively involve
ourselves in the political process -- to shape a coming decade and century that
prove the skeptics wrong.
Happy 2010.
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