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.