Factbook.
Fifth, unlike some major powers, America has the advantage of a uniquely secure, natural resource–rich, strategically favorable, and very large geographic base for a population that is nationally cohesive and not beset by any significant ethnic separatism. America also is not threatened by the territorial ambitions of any neighbor. Its northern neighbor is a friend, and—truth be said—socially a more successful version of a shared way of life. Canada in its great geographic depth also enhances America’s security. America’s landmass is rich in natural resources, ranging from minerals to agriculture and increasingly also to energy, still much of which—especially in Alaska—is untapped. America’s location on the edge of the world’s two most important oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific— offers a security barrier while America’s shores provide a springboard for maritime commerce and, if necessary, for transoceanic power projection. In brief, no other major country enjoys all of these advantages as a permanent condition as well as a beneficial opportunity.
America’s sixth asset is its association with a set of values—human rights, individual liberty, political democracy, economic opportunity—that are generally endorsed by its population and that over the years have enhanced the country’s global standing. America has long benefited from this ideological advantage, exploiting it in recent years to prevail successfully in the Cold War. Subsequently, however, some of that appeal has waned, largely because of widespread international disapproval of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its associated excesses. The latter notwithstanding, the broad view of America as fundamentally a democracy still retains its residual appeal. For example, according to the 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, in 2007 US favorability ratings were at a ten-year low, as nations like Indonesia held only a 29% favorable view of the United States and even allies like Germany held only a 30% favorable view. However, those numbers rebounded in 2010 with, for example, Indonesia holding a 59% favorable view and Germany holding a 63% favorable view.
Hence the invigoration of America’s positive international identification with its democratic traditions is both possible and desirable. Such values have been, and again could be, an asset to America, especially in comparison with the authoritarian regimes in China and Russia. The fact that these two countries are unable to boast of a universally appealing political ideology, though the former Soviet Union made a futile effort to do so during its systemic rivalry with the United States, is to America’s long-term advantage. While much of the world may resent the United States for its unilateral foreign policy actions, there is also a concerned awareness among many that a rapid US decline and isolationist retreat would set back prospects for stable international spread both of global economic development and of democracy.
The above six basic assets thus provide a powerful springboard for the historic renewal that America so badly needs. But the more difficult part of that renewal of relevance remains the urgent need to redress its already noted and potentially very serious systemic vulnerabilities. Remedies for coping with each major risk or deficiency do exist, and they are already the subject of lively national debates. It is not some mysterious historical determinants, but rather the continuing dearth of political will and national consensus to tackle the challenges that threaten America’s long-term prospects.
Americans now widely recognize the importance of critical domestic reforms, such as broad financial overhaul and long-term fiscal balancing, to America’s future domestic prosperity and constructive international role. Effectively addressing the deficiencies of America’s secondary educational system would also go a long way toward shoring up America’s long-term economic outlook because its qualitative improvement would redress many of the shortcomings mentioned earlier (notably inequality, social immobility, and public ignorance). Balancing the budget, financial reform, and addressing iniquitous income inequality all will require uncomfortable social tradeoffs in incentives, taxes, and regulations. Only a sense of shared social sacrifice in the pursuit of national renewal will generate the necessary solidarity at all societal levels.
Ultimately, America’s long-term success in self-renewal may require a fundamental change of focus in America’s social culture: how Americans define their personal aspirations and the ethical content of their national “dream.” Is the acquisition of material possessions way beyond the requirements of convenience, comfort, and self-gratification the ultimate definition of the good life? Could patiently and persistently pursued domestic reforms turn America into an example of an intelligent society in which a productive, energetic, and innovative economy serves as the basis for shaping a society that is culturally, intellectually, and spiritually more gratifying? Unfortunately, such a far-reaching reevaluation of the meaning of a good life might occur only after the American public has been shocked into a painful understanding that America itself will be in jeopardy if it continues on a course that leads from the pursuit of domestic cornucopia to a plunge into international bankruptcy.
The next several years should provide a partial insight into the future. If political gridlock and partisanship continue to paralyze public policy, if they preclude a socially fair sharing of the costs of national renewal, if they disregard the dangerous social tendency that magnify income disparities, if they ignore the fact that America’s standing in the global pecking order may be in jeopardy, the anxious prognosis of America’s decline could become its historical diagnosis. But that is not inevitable. It does not need to be the case, given the residual strengths of contemporary America and its demonstrated capacity for a nationally focused response to a challenge. That was the case after the Great Depression and during World War II, in the 1960s during the Cold War, and it can be so again.
4: AMERICA’S LONG IMPERIAL WAR
If the crash of 2007 provided an imperative lesson regarding the need to undertake a major reassessment of some of America’s basic systemic features, domestic values, and social policies, the date 9/11 similarly should encourage America to rethink seriously whether it has intelligently exploited the extraordinary opportunity of the peaceful yet geopolitically successful end of the Cold War.
It is now easy to forget how threatening the Cold War really was during its long four and a half decades. A hot war could have broken out suddenly at any moment with a decapitating strike that in minutes could have eliminated the US leadership, and in hours incinerated much of the United States and Soviet Union. The “Cold” War was stable only in the sense that its fragile mutual restraint depended on the rationality of a few fallible human beings.
Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States reigned supreme. Its political values and its socioeconomic system basked in global admiration and were the object of eager imitation. Its international position faced no challenges. The transatlantic relationship with Europe was no longer primarily based on a shared fear but instead on a common faith in a larger Atlantic community in which Europe was expected to move expeditiously toward its own more genuine political unity. In the Far East, Japan—America’s closest Asian ally—gradually ascended to international eminence. Fears that the Japanese “superstate” would take over America’s assets quietly waned. Relations with China had continued to improve following diplomatic recognition back in 1978 and China even became America’s partner in opposing the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1980. America’s attitude toward China thus had become more positive and, if anything, America was unreasonably complacent in its self-deceiving view that China’s domestic backwardness would for long prevent it from becoming America’s viable competitor.
America was thus widely seen as the world’s economic engine, political example, social beacon, and unchallengeable paramount power. Exploiting that advantage, it led, almost simultaneously, a successful global coalition evicting Iraq from its recently seized Kuwait—and did so with Russian support, Chinese compliance, and Syrian participation, not to mention the cooperation of America’s traditional allies. But America failed in the years that followed to seize the moment and address the conundrum of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the war in 1967, the Middle Eastern problem had come to be—so to speak—owned by the United States as a result of its preeminent position in the region. However, except for President Carter’s significantly successful promotion of an Israeli-Egyptian peace accord, the United States played a largely passive role, even during its globally dominant status throughout the 1990s. After the assassination in 1995 of Israel’s realistic Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli opponent of the peace process, a belated but futile effort by the United States to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was attempted—but rather passively—only in the last six months of the eight-year Clinton
