In the last 60 years, we have been warned in succession that new paradigms in racially pure Germany, the Soviet workers’ paradise, Japan Inc., and now 24/7 China all were about to displace the United States. None did. All have had relative moments of amazing success — but in the end none proved as resilient, flexible, and adaptable as America.
I agree.
I would like to quibble with one point that actually reinforces Hanson's article:
After the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991, America proclaimed itself at the “end of history” — meaning that the spread of our style of democratic capitalism was now inevitable. Now a mere 16 years later, some are just as sure we approach our own end.
This compresses that history a bit too much and loses some needed detail.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and there wasn't any sense of victory in the Cold War. It was as if two exhausted fighters teetered in the ring and the Red boxer fell first. Many in the West felt like a bruised Blue fighter still dazed at winning.
It was the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War that made the Cold War seem like a victory:
With the Soviets in retreat in Eastern Europe, many saw the Cold War as ending because of Gorbachov's decisions or as the end of a long exhausting struggle that the US was winning only by default--the last of two combatants to drop their sword and collapse to the bloody ground.
Could we have pursued our course of action with this view of us--and our power--intact?What changed this developing view of the end of the Cold War was, first of all, our ability to bribe and coerce a large coalition (so how much did we pay for those Egyptian and Syrian divisions that affected the military campaign not a bit?) to go to war on our side. The enemy didn't even matter for this purpose. The point was that instead of a Cold War division of states, choosing sides as they always did between the US and USSR, the world aligned itself with us. Moscow just watched, unable and unwilling to affect the outcome.
Then the war itself, with a stunning display of our military power that crushed the enemy, cemented the view that American power was unstoppable. We beat a mini-USSR with its Soviet equipment and oppressive government. The proxy victory showed Soviet hardware (or Chinese copies) burning and abandoned in the desert, and left us supreme. No longer the exhausted, lucky survivor; we were victorious. And we felt victorious.
And when, by the end of 1991 the Soviet Union, too, went kaput, we became the hyperpower. The progression was clear: Cold War deadlock; Soviet irrelevance; American military victory; collapse of Soviet Union.
So when the Soviet Union itself imploded in August 1991 before the glow of Desert Storm wore off, it infected our view of the Cold War with an aura of real victory. We became the hyper-power and not the lucky victor who barely won on points.
I don't understand how some can think we are finished as the dominant power on the planet. Too many people are over-focused on our current problems in Baghdad and losing sight of the big picture. After we win this war in Iraq, there will be few cries that we are finished. We can dust off that old hyper-power terminology one more time. This will still be our century.
