The rise and fall of leading nation-states is determined by the interplay of economics, technology, and military prowess. Expanding nations more easily support ever-rising costs of warfare; declining countries have to make fateful strategic choices. In the author’s multipolar framework, changes in trade patterns presage the outcomes of strategic conflicts, and so foreshadow the next political order. Individual leadership is less important because imperatives and choices are made in the context of Bismarck’s ‘stream of time’: strengths are relative. The outcome of warfare over 1450-1950 confirmed long-term economic shifts, often borne of new technology. Revised territorial order reflected redistribution, but peace did not freeze socioeconomic conditions.
Global powers tend to overspend on defense and underinvest in growth. Japan became a financial power (i.e., leading creditor nation) following its industrial rise: evidence – or the author – suggests the Asian country is most likely to supplant the ‘overstretched’ USA. The challenge to American longevity lies in defense commitments to overseas position obtained when it had a higher share of global GDP, a better balance of payments, and less debt. The most serious threat hegemons face is failure to adjust to change.
In the 15th century, European states trailed the Asian dynasties. War shaped its rising powers; distributed economic growth made it impossible to suppress all of them; the key economic development was the long-range ship. Within Europe itself, states were always spending to overpower another. Spain lacked manpower, grew slowly (aside from New World bullion), and suffered precarious finances. It was overstretched. French aspirations were checked by the balance of power, most importantly by result of the War of Spanish Succession, and backward finance. Following the Diplomatic Revolution of 1753, which crystallized England’s balance of power strategy, British mercantile prowess and ability to borrow fueled its win in the Seven Years War (one of seven with France over 1689-1815), and thus hegemony to 1945.
In the Victorian era, Britain’s industrial might was less oriented to the military than any era since the Stuarts. Further, it had no appetite for Continental interventions. Its power owed to its navy and colonies – productive investments – as well as the City of London. Despite the rise of late 19th-century US and Germany industry as well as Prussian military reform, the UK’s position circa 1914 was not so weak as often portrayed. Alliance diplomacy encouraged the drift to World War I, and prevented a quick resolution. The series of UK diplomatic concessions to the US (e.g., fisheries, the Panama Canal, Alaska) overturned conventional expectations of ‘natural’ Anglo-American hostility, and so won the UK a vital ally.
Kennedy observes the Versailles and peacetime politics were reshaped by ideology (Wilson and Lenin), one of the few nods to political ideas. The League didn’t deter aggressors but confused the democracies. Now comprising 27 countries, European consensus on colonies collapsed. Russia is seen as reactive instead of acquisitive in search of a ‘near abroad’ buffer. In the postwar era, the US rise was fueled by commanding share of world GDP, substantial tech innovation, a military proven in Europe and Asia, plus the atomic bomb. But Russia quickly erased the nuclear gap and America’s relative lead shrank after the 1960s: Vietnam, Iran, etc. indicate overstretch. The author applauds Kissinger for recognizing limits of American foreign policy; Nixon’s China overture changed the correlation of forces. Deng wisely recognized peace is necessary for the ‘four modernizations’: agriculture, industry, science, military. Kennedy sees less hope for Soviet Russia but suggests it will be hard to displace its Communist political system. Japanese central planning plus its lack of military commitments makes it the natural successor to the USA.
More like deterministic political science than long-view history, Kennedy’s work overlooks that power is a wasting asset, itself to be used as if an investment; that ideas have consequences, as fuel for socioeconomic events; and relative status is not a straight line – opportunities can be missed. Of course, he failed to anticipate two decades of Japanese stagnation due to real estate collapse, the fall of Soviet
United States
Contemporary American oligarchy
Oligarchy is the replacement of representative government by the melding of public and private power with the administrative state. Throughout history, most oligarchies have united around the stakeholders’ primary common interest in orderly rent-seeking. Typically, oligarchies have nothing to do with ideas of right and wrong, never mind with ideology. And if they form out of a political party, that party is all about oligarchy itself.
But ours is not a typical oligarchy. The sense of superiority to the rest of America had been the animating force behind the Progressive movement around the turn of the twentieth century. From their embryo, the disparate parts of the American administrative state/oligarchy shared this sense. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the will to hurt and to demean the rest of the population grew among these stakeholders, to the point that today, this vengeful approach overshadows and endangers their very power.
This happened because the tasks that these public/private institutions were empowered to fulfill always had something hostile, vindictive about them…
America’s oligarchy is made up of diverse elements that have little in common other than an indifference to or loathing of Western civilization in general and of the American republic in particular. Since members of the oligarchy support each other’s claims—over which they have no control—by the iron law of political necessity, there is no logical end to those claims. That is yet another reason why our oligarchy’s modus operandi relies so heavily on cutting off at the source any and all circulation of facts and arguments that would cause any set of stakeholders publicly to argue its case—an argument they might lose and that would surely upset other members of the coalition. This is why Google’s and Facebook’s censorship is essential to the oligarchy’s continued power…
Our ruling oligarchy has made it socially difficult even to think about the difference between what is right and wrong. This itself presents us with an important crossroads. Eliminating the intellectual and moral conversation that made the American republic unique has been the oligarchs’ effect if not also their objective. Their success in this enterprise haunts America’s future. China does not.
Angelo Codevilla, ‘The Specter of Chinese civilization’
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/11/the-specter-of-chinese-civilization
19. Caldwell, Age of Entitlement (1 October 2021)
Contemporary incivility demonstrates a hidden civil war between adherents to the de jure constitution of 1789 and woke proponents of the de facto regime which has grown up since 1964. The latter has captured the establishment and is winning.
Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) undermined the First Amendment’s freedom of association; Griggs vs. Duke Power (1971) next authorized government to address racism where there was no obvious intent; Bakke vs. Univ. of California (1978) sanctioned aspirational ‘remedies’ for hidden racism (i.e., diversity). Extralegally, rioting was part and parcel of the civil rights movement from the late 1960s, while feminism held lieutenancy of the aggrieved cohorts, now led by the homosexual lobby.
Postwar government and society had modeled itself on the military, but the Vietnam War’s unpopularity shifted credibility to the Baby Boomers, also buoyed by demography. Reagan arranged a truce between the new left and Americans unwilling to finance the Great Society via taxation, by converting its basis to debt, thereby handing away the fruits of the 1970s counterinsurgency. But social peace frayed anyway as entitlements grew. Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall, which had acted to preserve capital in local banks, transferred debt financing to the credit markets, ushering government regulation (e.g., Community Reinvestment Act, ESG measures) into the marketplace.
Under the shadow constitution, postmodernism and fellow travelers in the media delegitimize tradition and political institutions; woke institutions champion new orthodoxies on behalf of subversive-cum-favored minorities; and working-class whites see New Deal / union economic benefits reallocated. Once-Republican plutocrats have recast their (inevitably) minority status as one sympathetic to the civil rights protagonists, embracing lobbying via foundations to thwart democratic majorities – a phenomenon which FDR resisted for the very reason. (Caldwell describes he subset of Internet titans as oligarchs of digital natives who cannot opt out.) The Tea Party and Trump reject this arrangement.
Speaking of the Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxembourg observed revolutionary tactics are the way to democratic majorities, not democratic majorities the conduit to revolution. The civil rights partisans supplant popular sovereignty with mandate: ‘biases’ are held to be unconscious, and so government is justified in overriding them. (At the time of Brown, Strauss was among those who observed liberal society ought to condone ‘discrimination’.) Caldwell raises the possibility that the American experiment with democratic self-government has already ended.
Compelling but occasionally careless of fact (e.g., 1986 immigration pact, pace Vin Cannato). A very good first draft of the progressive influence on political thought and government circa 1960-2020.
18. Smith, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (23 September 2021)
Patriotism is an Aristotelian mean between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, a Burkean political loyalty to one’s people, region, and heritage. American patriotism is fealty to the constitutional tradition, crucially including didactic reasoning (i.e., questioning) and thus habit of reference. In the Federalist Papers #1, Hamilton contended a people could establish good government by choice: this is the core of American exceptionalism, of Americans being ‘creedal’. Lincoln, commenting on the Dred Scott decision, saw the Framers as having declared the right of equality just so that imperfect application could progress as quickly as possible to the goal.
Aristotle thought that without understanding the purpose of a regime, there was no basis of criticism. The ancients viewed patriotism as individual submission to the polis; Rousseau favored Sparta as an exemplar of the general will, but Montesquieu rejected this as deficient in humanity while Smith thought political leaders ought to express benevolence for the community. Thence to the Federalists, who viewed the Constitution as reflecting popular pursuit of liberties but enshrined republican government to stage off the excesses of the mob. Smith contends patriotism is best expressed by those capable of sympathizing with one’s fellow citizens. Nationalism is exclusionary, ultimately a struggle of interests; cosmopolitanism is rootless, stateless, relativist – incapable to sympathy or loyalty.
Considering the ends of politics, Max Weber distinguished between an ethic of responsibility, characterized by prudence, the view that ends do not justify the means, that politicians are responsible for outcomes; and an ethic of absolute ends, evaluated by intentions not results. The cosmopolitan, in its contemporary American guise of the progressive, exemplifies the latter. Cosmopolitanism seeks to evade the past and lacks a view of virtue grounded in experience. In this respect, the postmodern (to use another label) ironically recalls Marx, another mystic cosmopolitan who ironically insisted that history is the final arbiter of intentions.
Smith is harder on Trump and nationalism, or populism. Well argued until the end, the book’s concluding chapter feels trite.
8. Bagehot, English Constitution (2 Jun 2019)
Studies British Parliamentary government, setting aside theory for normative analysis of function and drawing favorable contrasts with the American presidential system. Constitutions have dignified and efficient parts, the latter often more important than formal allocation of power. These gain stature through passage of time, even though yesterday’s conventions are not necessarily best suited for today’s affairs. The efficient secret of the British constitution is close union of the legislature (i.e., Commons) and the executive (the prime minister and responsible cabinet). Relations between the PM and Parliament are incessant, unlike the needlessly divided president and congress, and cabinet ministers further are better supervisors of the bureaucracy because they provide fresh views while being accountable to Commons. That is, English party government exposes the leadership both to functionaries and the requirement of maintaining a working majority. The USA’s splitting of sovereignty, by contrast, is particularly troublesome in times of crisis; Bagehot observes it’s well the Americas are law abiding. There are also valuable takes on political affairs: so long as there’s an uneasy class which lacks just power, the agitators will rashly believe all should have equal power; gross appearances are great realities; bureaucracy conflates substance of government with process, thereby overdoing quantity at expense of quality; in early societies more important for law to be fixed than good. A surprisingly resilient analysis.
13. Wood, American Revolution (13 August 2021)
Surveys American society, economy, and politics during the Revolutionary era, 1760-90. Following victory over the French, settlers hurtled into the eastern Mississippi River valley in search of land. Those remaining on the Eastern seaboard resented with British efforts to make the colonies pay for war costs, continuing defense, and government. In 1764 the Sugar Act attempted to curb smuggling while the Currency Act prohibited paper currencies; the following year the Stamp Act levied s transaction tax, setting in motion protests of ‘no taxation without representation’. By that time, some 4,000 British troops (from Ireland) were billeted among Boston’s 15,000 population. By decade’s end, open sedition commenced in Massachusetts, the Boston Massacre occurring in 1770. (The ‘Intolerable Acts’ and the Quebec Act, which seemed to give control of the western trade to French Catholics, followed in 1774.) Colonists had long identified with English ‘country’ sentiments as well as Whiggish views of the overbearing George III. They set to refashioning state constitutions, elevating the legislatures; but the British could not reconcile any challenge to Westminster’s sovereignty. Following military victory, republicanism intensified the country ideology: equality of citizenry (e.g., all could own property, vote, or serve in the legislature) combined with Humean sensibilities (degrading learning in favor of common opinion) and neoclassical cultural spirit overwhelmed established American elites. The shift destabilized views of family (e.g., inheritance or women’s roles) and slavery. Methodists and Baptists caught up to Anglicans and Presbyterians by 1790; elites being deist, upstart religions filled the void. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was Confederation America’s finest moment, enabling settlers to migrate without losing political rights; the peace treaty a splendid diplomatic accomplishment, persuading both Britain and France to concede more of the West than they might have. The new country took land from Indians by right of conquest. Following independence, internal markets fueled economic gains – Newport, RI, exemplified a port city which fell behind. The new constitution was prompted by economic shortcomings, overbearing state legislatures, and foreign policy problems such as in the Northwest. In contrast with the British view of sovereignty residing in Parliament, the Americans located it in the people, and so hadn’t to recover it from the states. The people could endorse the new charter in super-legislative act which established the two tier (federal and state) system.
4. Wood, 1620 (28 Feb 2021)
An earnest but unsatisfying rebuttal of the New York Times’ tendentious ‘1619 Project’. The newspaper’s polemic, which contends American society and politics are premised on white supremacy dating to a 17th-century slave-trade ship, is founded on disputatious scholarship and pointed at partisan ends (i.e., ‘reparations’) rather than pursuit of knowledge – separating the publication from Walter Duranty’s equally duplicitous reporting on the Communist revolution. The main tenets – a) the Civil War was fought to protect slaveowners against Abolition, b) Lincoln was a white separatist, c) blacks fought slavery alone, d) the slave plantation was the foundation of capitalism, and e) US history is characterized by white supremacy – are readily dismissed; but 1619 is a symptom and 1620 (named for the Mayflower compact, a true founding) leaves treating the cause of others.