What the next American century will look like is hard to guess. The upcoming November elections – which, frankly, could go either way – point in two very different directions, and given the nature of the American political system and the wide range of views within the American public about how even to define, much less how best to preserve, "American values" and the "American way of life," there is no reason to believe that America will stick very long with whatever course is selected in November.
What is virtually certain, however, is that the next century will, in fact, be an American century.
Or if one wants to be gloomy and to contemplate the unthinkable as well as the thinkable – that is if one is willing to acknowledge unfortunately real possibilities like nuclear winter, catastrophic climate change, or species-ending plagues -- we can say that what is virtually certain is that the next century will be an American century if it doesn't turn out to be absolutely no one's century.
That the United States will dominate the global political and economic system (again, assuming one continues to exist) is a purely factual observation. It is not a claim that this is a good thing – although, personally, given the nature of the current Russian and Chinese political regimes and their attitudes toward their own people and those of other nations, I am strongly inclined to believe that another American century would be more pleasant for most of the world's population than a Russian or Chinese one. At home, another century of global predominance will almost certainly exacerbate many of America's very real domestic problems, creating new obstacles in the way of achieving the kind of society based on maximal individual liberty that America's founders dreamed of. Abroad, America's friends and liberal fellow travelers will nearly certainly find that coping with America's inconsistent policies and peculiar fixations will, even on the best of days, be incredibly frustrating. And, for those parts of the world that do not fall into the categories of "friend" or "liberal fellow traveler," another American century will be an often unpleasant experience.
Frankly, were it a realistic possibility, most of us would probably prefer a Finnish century.
Regardless of how one feels about it, however, continued – indeed, increased – American global economic, political, and cultural dominance is in the cards. Period. This observation is not some sort of American wishful thinking, nor is it rooted in any sort of mystical belief in American "triumphalism" or a Fukuyama-style "end of history" involving an inevitable victory of liberalism over other "isms."
Critical observers of America are absolutely right to note the political divides and tensions in American society, as well as the other challenges associated with the shift from an industrial economy to a post-industrial one. Declines in life expectancy, high levels of drug use, dropping birth rates, and continued structural inequalities in access to resources are simply the visible tip of the iceberg when it comes to America's social problems. Any honest report card on America would include some truly damning grades.
However, correct this critique, though, any analysis that then jumps to the conclusion that America is in decline as a world power misses two critical points.
The first is that, however, screwed up America may be, the rest of the world – with the possible exception of Europe – is screwed up even worse. This is not a cause for any jubilation. Far from it. It is powerful evidence of just how difficult it is to create just, prosperous, healthy societies, and of how far humanity, at least viewed on a global scale, has yet to travel. For all the very real, very significant problems facing American society, American society is vastly better positioned than Russian or Chinese society, or various Islamic societies – and marginally better positioned than European societies – to grow in size, wealth, and power.
Perhaps the simplest moment-in-time, "snapshot" measure of the relative health of a society is whether people wish to be members of it. Are the lines at the borders composed of people trying to get in, or of people trying to get out? In terms of forward-looking measures, one can ask where young people wish to go for education, and which cultures they turn to for attractive ideas and role models. Do the "best and brightest" of the next generation, or those with the fullest range of options, want to study here or elsewhere, and when they think about the life they wish to have, do they model it on the life they see here or the life they see somewhere else? The people of the world seem to think these are easy questions: America and Europe are preferred, even at heavy personal costs.
Of course, if one is skeptical about the wisdom of ordinary people, one can ask more rigorously academic questions. Do populations continue to grow at a sustainable pace? Does the demographic pyramid have an appropriate shape (that is, that it looks roughly like a pyramid and not like a child's drawing of a lollipop-shaped deciduous tree, and that it is not contorted by societal interventions like a badly tortured bonsai, missing girls and young women in the younger years due to selective birth control and, skewing back the other direction, missing middle-aged and older men who have died "deaths of despair")? Yes, the picture in America and Europe is less than ideal, but at least in America’s case, the problem can easily be fixed through immigration. Or if technology and knowledge, rather than demography, is taken to be the critical measure of societal health, one can ask about the rate at which new ideas – practical ones, like new technologies and breakthroughs in scientific knowledge, or less practical but equally meaningful ones, like new developments in philosophy, literature, and the arts – are emerging.
Here the productivity data tracks with the criminal data: China and Russia are stealing American and European patents and plagiarizing American and European copyrighted material; cases of the West stealing new Chinese or Russian discoveries are remarkably (or perhaps more accurately, unremarkably) rare. For a broader ecological measure of societal well-being, one can ask whether the physical environment is sustainable (or even on an improving path!) or, conversely, whether critical resources such as potable water, breathable air, unflooded land, and livable temperatures are in increasingly short supply. Washington and Helsinki may fall short of heavenly perfection, but has anyone heard of anyone moving to Beijing or Moscow – or, say, Tehran, Riyadh, Delhi, or Jakarta -- for their health?
"Realists," of course, would interrupt at this point to observe that the fact that American society is far healthier, on virtually every measure, than Chinese or Russian society is irrelevant. "Victory" -- defined in this case global political and economic predominance – does not necessarily go to the healthiest or most attractive society, but rather to the militarily most powerful one. This line of thinking notes that whether Visigoth, Hun, and Mongol societies were healthier or more attractive than the societies they conquered is beside the point: given the absence of international institutions to constrain them, Visigoths, Huns and Mongols won out not by being more appealing or better prepared for the future, but by killing or threatening to kill those who opposed them or refused to submit.
One can, of course, cheerfully dive into the theoretical debates that keep today's political scientists happily employed and argue about whether the present and future are somehow different from the past – whether international institutions and domestic and global norms now significantly constrain the use of violence. Is economic and “soft,” cultural power more determinative today than it was in the past? Or is military power still, at the end of the day (even though now it might truly be “the end of the day” as far as humanity is concerned), the only metric of power that really matters?
Either way, however, America still ends up on top.
Whether dominance goes to the most economically and socially vigorous society or goes to the militarily most powerful, America still ranks first – though perhaps if destructive power is what matters, a politically divided Europe may not finish such a close second.
It is difficult to make a plausible case that any potential adversary or combination of adversaries will, in the foreseeable future, have the military potential to conquer the United States or demand significant limitations on American domestic sovereignty. No serious person imagines Russian or Chinese viceroys sitting in Washington, dictating to the American people. Yes, it is certainly true that a no-holds-barred military conflict would lay America to waste. What isn't plausible, however, is that any other society would "win" such a war in a meaningful way. Such a war would not result in Chinese or Russian systemic domination. It would result in a systemic breakdown. (There are other, more graphic ways of describing the consequences of such a war, but "systemic breakdown" will suffice.)
By definition, everyone dies in an omnicidal war. For serious policymakers, evaluations of the future global military balances are not about who would emerge less dead in an all-out war. In serious policy discussions, the military balance question comes down to trying to estimate, on the one hand, how much of their immediate neighborhoods Russia and China will militarily dominate – will Russia be able to continue to dictate to Azerbaijan? will China be able to exert suzerainty over the South China Sea? – and, on the other hand, how constant a global military presence the United States will maintain – will the United States be able to afford to keep a fleet in the Indian Ocean? will there still be U.S. Marines in South Korea two generations from now? Neither China nor Russia will, in the foreseeable future, become a global military power. For the foreseeable future, the United States will remain one, even if does so with less enthusiasm, less eagerness, and with less forward presence than today.
Analysts who conclude from America’s social and political tensions that the United States is in relative decline are not simply overlooking the fact that everyone else has worse problems, however. They also miss a second key point: America has vast untapped or underutilized economic and social resources that could, if it were challenged, be converted into hard or soft political power. There is extraordinary slack in the American system. The United States is generating nowhere near the sort of international power or international leverage that it easily could. And, under present conditions why should it? A serious, intensive effort by the American government to expand American military power or to address the nation’s economic and social challenges would be politically painful at home. Short of some serious threat to American predominance, there is no reason for the American political system to pay the domestic political price that would be associated with increasing taxes, intervening to force the private sector to focus its attention in one direction or another, or insisting that society give up its centuries-old bad habits. But the capacity is there.
Equally to the point, America does not need to rely on its own resources to maintain or broaden its dominance on the world stage.
If it chooses, it can draw on the financial capital, the human capital, and the beyond-the-cutting-edge technological knowledge that exists around the world. Although this point is sometimes forgotten by chest-thumping American hyper-nationalists, American predominance in the 20th century was to no small degree made possible by America’s ability to attract financial capital from Europe and immigrants and their knowledge from around the globe. There is no sign that this ability to tap into other societies' accumulated wealth and creativity has changed.
Yes, America has serious structural imperfections in its social and economic systems. But the internal and external resources available to it, should it feel it is necessary to address these imperfections, are mind-boggling. Hesitations, false steps, and bone-headed policies that would be lethal – and, unfortunately, will be lethal – for many societies around the world can be shrugged off by the United States. Only America – and its friends and fellow liberal travelers – have this cushion.
The next century will not be pretty in many regards. To paraphrase the novelist Charles Dickens, and to shift his observation from the past tense to the future tense, it will be the best of times and it will be the worst of times. Climate change; the unintended consequences of science, technology, and globalization run amuck; gross inequalities and even grosser stupidity; and the more unpleasant aspects of human nature fully revealed will combine to create some truly nightmarish problems. On the other hand, accumulations of human knowledge, social capital, and generational wealth are already combining to make extraordinary life possible.
Is another American century the best of all possible imaginable frameworks for dealing with this best of times and these worst of times? Perhaps not. But – unless we all tumble into a disaster of one sort or another, a disaster of the sort which would defy all imagination – it is what is ahead of us. Serious, realistic leaders – in Washington, Helsinki, Moscow, Beijing, and elsewhere – need to recognize this, and think seriously and realistically about what this means.
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Edward Rhodes is a professor of Government and International Affairs at George Mason University. Rhodes is best known for his research into the philosophical and cultural roots of American foreign and national security policy. Rhodes served for six years on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, the Congressionally mandated, nonpartisan body that reviews and certifies the official, published account of American foreign policy for completeness and accuracy.
