An early prophet of American decline

AFTER THE EMPIRE: The Breakdown of American Order by Emmanuel Todd (2002) translated by C. Jon DeLogu, with foreward by Michael Lind (2003)

At the dawn of the 21st century, many people regarded the United States of America as the world’s dominant superpower.  Many Americans, in and out of government, hoped to keep it that way.

Emmanuel Todd, a distinguished French historian and anthropologist, wrote this book to show that this was impossible.  He wrote that U.S. power was, in fact, in irreversible decline.

I think my country is in decline, and not just in power.  One of my reading interests is to try to understand the reasons why and whether it can be reversed. 

For much of the 20th century, as Todd notes, the USA was, in fact, the “indispensable nation,” and in his view this was a good thing.  

The USA was the world’s leading manufacturing nation, the leading producer of food and source of raw materials, the greatest exporter and the dominant financial power.

It was as self-sufficient as it was possible for a nation to be.  Although had little need for what the rest of the world produced, the rest of the world was dependent on American goods and American dollars.

By and large, Todd said, the USA was an “empire for good”—at least for the modern industrial capitalist democracies in Europe, the English-settled countries and later Japan and South Korea.

But by the dawn of the 21st century, all this had gone into reverse.  American manufacturing had been hollowed out.  The USA was in trade deficit with virtually every country in the world.  

The world no longer needed the United States, but the USA was completely dependent on the rest of the world for manufactured goods, for oil and natural gas, and for financing to keep our debt ridden economy afloat.

For a time this had been a good thing for the world at large.  U.S. borrowing financed consumption that provided economic stimulus for developing nations, although at the expense of American working people. 

By 2002, Europe, Japan and other trading nations no longer needed the U.S. consumer market in order to flourish.  In fact, the U.S. connection was proving to be a problem.

But American political leaders thought the USA could continue to be a financial and military superpower.

The western European democracies had looked to the United States as their protector and provider during World War Two and the Cold War.  In return for protection, they gave up a good bit of their sovereignty.  But with the Soviet Union gone, they reasonably could ask: What, if anything, do we need to be defended from?

The response of the U.S. government was to declare a “war on terror” in the Middle East, followed by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  We had a new enemy to unite against.   This had an added benefit of giving the U.S. government an excuse to meddle in the Middle East and try to get control of its oil, which we needed.

None of this was sustainable, Todd wrote.  The USA had the world’s most expensive military, it was much larger than needed to defend the North American homeland, but at the same time, it was not large enough to dominate a global empire or win a war with a strong country such as Russia or Iran.

Emmanuel Todd

He predicted there would be a major recession in the United States and that this would force U.S. leaders to rethink their policies and put the American house in order.

He predicted that France and Germany would keep out of U.S. wars and seek good relations with Russia and the Arab world, and that Russia would settle down and become a force for stability.

He predicted the U.S. government would fail to pull Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics out of the Russian sphere of influence. 

But the astonishing thing is that, 22 years after this book’s first publication, the USA is in the same position as it was then – still with a hollowed-out economy, still with huge debt burdens, but still trying to be the world’s sole military superpower.

The European nations have not gone their own way, not have Japan, South Korea and other U.S. allies.  They are embarrassingly subservient to U.S. leaders, and sacrifice their own interests to U.S. 

There was a major recession in 2008, as Todd had predicted, but the big banks and financial institutions were bailed out and the status quo was restored.

The question that needs to be answered is not whether this can go on indefinitely (it can’t), but how the US establishment has been able to keep it going for so long and how long the day of reckoning can be postponed.

Todd Emmanuel is, like me, a liberal democrat.  He believes in the idea of a political order, based on freedom of speech and religion, equal justice under law and governments accountable to their people. 

He had thought that the USA more-or-less stood for these things, at least where Europe was concerned.  (The Global South was a different matter.)  He thought the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe’s economy after World War Two was one of the most statesmanlike decisions in human history.

But, by 2002, he no longer thought so.  Deregulation and free trade had led to the creation of a permanent economic oligarchy in the USA and the outcome of elections no longer determined policy.

I came to see things the same way, maybe a little later than Todd did.  I had looked to nations such as Germany, Sweden and Canada as role models of successful democracy in action, which my own country might eventually follow.

But things went the opposite way.  All these supposedly enlightened countries have become clones and vassals of the United States.  The European nations, by obeying U.S. demands to cut themselves off from cheap Russian energy, have ruined their economies.  Germany even tolerated the destruction of the vital Nord Stream pipelines.

How was this possible?  I don’t know, but I have ideas.  

The U.S. neoliberal economic model, which gives free rein to finance and corporate monopoly, is bad for the public, but great for the oligarchs, the largest holders of financial assets.  Adoption of neoliberalism by other countries empowers their oligarchs.  They are a powerful global force against change.

As Michael Hudson has pointed out, the dollar is the main medium of world trade, and U.S. Treasury bonds have long been regarded as the safest investment, even though dollars and Treasury bonds aren’t backed by anything except a consensus to keep on using them.  Transitioning to an alternate system will be hard.

Then, too, we the people don’t know the role of blackmail, bribery and threats.

In 2002, Emmanuel Todd was an optimist.  He thought leaders of the different nations, including the USA, would eventually act rationally and for the best.  This hasn’t happened.

Emmanuel Todd’s Theories

Todd also wrote about his ideas about how modernization affects literacy, birth rates and social stability.  These ideas weren’t the basis of his analysis of American decline, but I think they are interesting.

To him, the basic cultural division in the modern world is not the clash of civilizations (Western, Russian, Chinese, Hindu, etc.) nor is it the clash between secular modernity and religious fundamentalism.  It is differences in family structures. 

At one extreme is the communal, or patriarchal type.  In this type of family, the father exercises authority of his sons even when they become adults.  Grown children live at home until they are married.  The eldest son is privileged.  Marriage among cousins is normal.  Family members think of themselves as a members of a continuing dynasty or clan, to which they are loyal and which they want to preserve.

At the other extreme is the liberal type.  In this type of family, children leave home when they come of age.  Brothers and sisters think of each other as equals.  As adults, they relate to each others as more individuals and less as part of a family structure.  They are potentially more open to change, such as acceptance of easy divorce and equality for women.

Americans, British and, to an extend, the French are examples of the liberal type.  Arabs are examples of the patriarchal type and so, to an extent, are the Germans, Russians, Chinese and Japanese.

According to Todd, the key to understanding today’s world is understanding the impact of universal literacy and falling birth rates on family structures.  

Universal literacy generates knowledge of contraception and makes child-bearing a choice, which has everywhere resulted in falling birth rates.  It also generates a demand for greater democracy.  

This is highly disruptive, but more so to authoritarian families than to liberal families.  

Sometimes the disruption has taken the form of political and terrorist violence, as in the Muslim world.  Sometimes it has taken the form of extremely high homicide and suicide rates, as in Russia and countries under Russian influence.

But, according to Todd, the disruption will be temporary and will die down as each society adjusts to modern thinking.

I don’t know what to make of this.  Certainly the type of family you grew up in will affect the way you think, but so do many other things.

LINKS

Revisiting Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire by Nader Elhefnawy.  A critique.

Emmanuel Todd Prophecies the Defeat of the West by Michael Ledger-Thomas for Jacobin magazine.  About Todd’s current thinking.

 

Tags: After the Empire, American Decline, Emmanuel Todd