In 1939, we were the biggest economy but otherwise just one of many great powers given no particular deference given our generally weak military. We had the unusual advantage of being the only power in 1946 that didn't have their economy crippled by the just concluded World War II, and we were the only great power that counted.
By the 1970s, our coasting on that dominance came to an end as the rest of the world recovered from that wound, and we felt doomed. But in the 1980s we restored our confidence and by the end of the decade our main foe the Soviet Union began to unravel. And again, we were the last one standing, making our dominance more exaggerated than it would have been otherwise.
So now as other countries grow faster than our mature economy does, people are looking for us to decline again. But unless you want to argue that we need to disintegrate our rivals as happened in 1944-45 and 1989-1991, why get so worked up about it? We won't decline unless we decide to fulfill that prophecy. And we sure won't decline relative to other powers to our position of 1939. We have many advantages that sustain our power, as this article argues:
America’s moment of unipolarity has been based on a singular fact: the United States is the first leading state in modern international history with decisive preponderance in all the underlying components of power: economy, military, technology, and geopolitics. All of its competitors face internal and external security challenges that are as or more serious than America’s own. Japan faces not only economic and demographic challenges, but also a rising China and a de facto nuclear-armed failing state, North Korea. India has domestic violence, insurgencies in bordering countries, and a persistent security dilemma in the form of China. Demographic challenges will be particularly acute for Europe, Japan, and Russia in the areas of military manpower and economic growth. China, India, Brazil, and Russia all suffer from significant regional disparities that have led, or could lead, to social unrest and political instability. Europe faces the challenge of incorporating the new members of the EU into its institutional structures against a backdrop of a major economic slump.
The United States, by contrast, has several underappreciated sources of national power and continued advantage. As Samuel P. Huntington has noted, U.S. power “flows from its structural position in world politics . . . geographically distant from most major areas of world conflict” as well as from “being involved in a historically uniquely diversified network of alliances.”
Natural resources are another area of advantage for the United States. Agriculture has been “a bastion of American competitiveness,” and America’s farmers and producers have never been more efficient or productive than they are today. The media may have lavished a great deal of attention on U.S. dependence on imported oil—a true strategic liability—but they have neglected its abundant coal and gas resources. In fact, the United States (combined with Canada) trails only the Middle East in the overall wealth of its energy resources.
There are other factors that could help the United States navigate the period ahead. One of them is openness to innovation, which can play an important role in extending the United States’ leading role in the world. Some scholars believe, in fact, that failure to maintain system leadership in sectors that power long waves of economic activity and growth is a key cause of decline. Another factor that may propel the United States to a more rapid recovery is the so-called “American creed,” which includes skepticism about the role of the state in the economy and a veneration of the private sector, which indeed does produce the entrepreneurs and innovators capable of prolonging America’s leading sector primacy in the international economy.
Demographics, too, make continued U.S. economic leadership around the world more likely. American fertility rates are among the highest in the developed world and have virtually reached replacement levels. With a growing population that will be more youthful than those of other developed countries (or China), the United States appears to be in a favorable position for the future.
None of these advantages, however, including the United States’ unchallenged military capacity, mean that America is destined to remain the preponderant power in the world. Without a concerted effort by the United States, the international system could move in the direction of nonpolarity or apolarity, with no nation clearly playing a leading role in trying to organize the international system. The result would be a vacuum of leadership and an inability to manage the plethora of contemporary global problems like terrorism, nuclear proliferation, ethnic and sectarians wars, humanitarian disasters, crime, narcotics trafficking, pandemic disease, global climate change, and so forth.
I quote at length to hit the biggest themes defending our position, but there is much more. So go read it all.
We will continue to be the power with the most available military power for projection around the globe; and even if China surpasses us in GDP at some point in the future, their shortfall in per capita GDP will continue and make that broad measure of power less significant than it would be if they matched us in that latter measure of depth of economic power. As long as we have the will to demonstrate leadership, we can still dominate a world where we remain immune to direct conventional military threat to our homeland and every other major power either needs us or has reason to worry about us if we take sides against them.
Here's my take on the world of 2040. We have to build our future, so some anxiety about competition is healthy; but don't take cries of doom as predictions rather than challenges to use our assets better.
Buck up, Americans. Most countries would trade their problems for ours in a heart beat.
