Joseph Nye on American Power in the 21st Century

Harvard Professor Joseph Nye's work, especially his book Soft Power has much influenced my own thinking, and figures prominently in The End of the American Century. His ideas have directly or indirectly influenced the Obama administration, as reflected in Secretary Clinton's use of the term ''smart power.'' Both the rhetoric and actions of the Obama administration add substance to the concept.

Professor Nye's essay, "American Power in the 21st Century," is featured on the website of the China-U.S. Friendship Exchange, as a "comment" on my own "dialogue" there about The End of the American Century. This response to Nye's essay appears on that same site this month.

Professor Nye has long argued that power is multidimensional, that military power is increasingly irrelevant or dysfunctional, and that achieving foreign policy goals now rests on persuasion and cooperation as much as anything. I agree with him on all of this, and his marvelous formulation in this essay that ''on many transnational issues, empowering others can help to accomplish one's own goals.''

But I disagree with him that ''American power in the twenty-first century is not one of decline'' and the difference lies mostly in how we view America's domestic record. In Soft Power, Nye identifies many elements of American soft power, including its economy, culture, values, and global image. But as I show in my book, the U.S. has lost ground in virtually every domain of such soft power, while also losing strength and credibility with its military power and its global reputation. Meanwhile, other regions or powers, like China, the EU, India and others have gained global soft power influence, often at the expense of the U.S.

The U.S. economy and standard of living, since World War II a source of envy and admiration worldwide, is no longer much of a model or aspiration for others. Its astounding growth over the last two decades, it turns out, was a hollow shell, built on ballooning levels of household and government debt. The current economic downturn-still not finished by a long shot-is bringing the United States back to a more ''natural'' economic position, much lower than before. Even before the current crash, by many measures more meaningful than GDP/capita-like quality of life indices-the U.S. was nowhere near the top of the global list.

While growing the economy, based mostly on increased consumption, the U.S. neglected health care, education, investments, R&D, and infrastructure, and allowed increased levels of poverty and inequality. On all of those measures, the U.S. fares poorly in comparison to other developed countries.

Global opinion surveys conducted by Pew, BBC and others show little enthusiasm in other countries for ''American-style democracy,'' for American ways of doing business, or for the spread of U.S. ideas and customs. Though global opinion about the U.S. has improved somewhat with the election of President Obama, far more people worldwide continue to see U.S. influence on the world as ''mostly negative'' rather than ''mostly positive.'' On this scale, among 15 countries, the U.S. ranks 10th, below Germany, Britain, Japan and China, according to a recent BBC poll.

While American culture remains popular in many places (though not, by all means, all), it is difficult to see how global infatuation with ''Desperate Housewives'' can help solve problems like terrorism or global warming. As Professor Nye notes in his first paragraph, even some of our closest allies now believe the era of U.S. global leadership is over. Even more emphatic assertions of that belief have come from leaders in China, Brazil, Peru, Iran and elsewhere.

American decline is not necessarily a bad thing, though, given the increasing interconnectedness of countries and global issues. It will be easier for the United States to interact cooperatively with other countries-and for them to deal with Washington-if the U.S. is not so dominant and domineering. President Obama has adopted a much more conciliatory and modest approach to other countries-viz. his speeches in Ankara and Cairo-and this befits a country that has less reason to crow about its superiority and exceptionalism. As Professor Nye points out, most of the big issues facing the U.S., and the rest of the world, are not susceptible to the application of power by a single country. More things are ''outside the control of even the most powerful state.''

The United States is certainly in decline, both in absolute terms, and relative to other countries. But it will remain an important and influential power, especially if it continues to adopt a less arrogant, more cooperative approach to the rest of the world.

Dick Armey: Fostering Hate with Deliberate Lies

I was absolutely stunned to read this quotation from Dick Armey, the former House Republican leader, in a speech he gave recently in North Carolina:

"Nearly every important office in Washington, D.C., today is occupied by someone with an aggressive dislike for our heritage, our freedom, our history and our Constitution."

It is inconceivable that Armey, who worked so long in Washington, actually believes this. Could he actually come up with some names of people that fit in that category? Probably not. So one can only conclude that Armey deliberately lied when he said this to a crowd of supporters in Hickory, N.C.

Since retiring from the House in 2003 has worked as a lobbyist for a big law firm, while also serving as chairman of a conservative nonprofit called FreedomWorks, which is opposed to "big government." A story on him, and how he "has taken his politics and ideas to the right-wing protest movement," appeared in the November 8 issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Later, in discussing the health care reform with a reporter, he admitted that he did not believe some of the extreme charges--for example, about "death panels"--but said that "if people want to believe that, it's O.K. with me."

This is demagoguery, fear- and hate-mongering that has no place in the U.S. political arena, though it is increasingly dominating and poisoning the political process, and American democracy. Armey should be ashamed of himself; instead, he seems to revel in the way his provocative lies stirs up the political pot.

President Obama called attention to this phenomenon in his Afghanistan speech on Wednesday night, where he called for a return to the spirit and values that unite us as Americans:

"we, as a country, cannot sustain our leadership, nor navigate the momentous challenges of our time, if we allow ourselves to be split asunder by the same rancor and cynicism and partisanship that has in recent times poisoned our national discourse."

"I refuse to accept," the President continued, "the notion that we cannot summon that unity again. I believe with every fiber of my being that we -- as Americans -- can still come together behind a common purpose. For our values are not simply words written into parchment -- they are a creed that calls us together, and that has carried us through the darkest of storms as one nation, as one people."

We can disagree about policies, and the role of government, and the rights of the individual vs. the needs of the community. That is all part of the political process. But we need to speak out against, and call to account, people like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck who deliberately lie and deliberately foster hate and division.

Global Debt Comparison

Britain's Economist magazine online has a very interesting and useful interactive map on global debt, showing the public debt levels of most countries in the world. One can slide the tabs to look at past years, or projections for future years. Pop up graphics also show public debt per capita and as a percentage of GDP.

A striking feature of the global map is that it is mostly the wealthy countries (North America, Europe and Japan) that have the highest debt levels worldwide. Some of the online commentary on this phenomenon point out that many of these countries are actually in worse shape than the U.S., in terms of government debt levels.

My friend and colleague Jeff Payne (who this semester is teaching a course using The End of the American Century as one of the texts), called my attention to this Economist site, and made the following observation:

It seems the US is indeed taking out extreme debt over the recession, but not in the same level of GDP as many other developed countries. So, among the most developed nations, we are not the worst - do not know if that is anything to celebrate. Yet, in relation to your research program I wonder what this means...is the American experiment exhausted, or is the entire Western world in that same situation?

My response would be that yes, most of the Western world has government debt problems. I see the U.S. situation as far more dire, though, for the following reason. Most of those other countries accumulated their debts while financing government programs that supported health care, social welfare, education, infrastructure and the environment. Most other wealthy countries are far ahead of the U.S. in all those dimensions, as I point out in my book. The U.S., in contrast, accumulated our huge debts largely by financing consumption and military spending. All the while, U.S. health care and education languished, poverty and inequality increased, the environment and infrastructure deteriorated. So at the starting gate of the new global order, the U.S. is way behind the rest of the developed world, and too broke to catch up.

Reality and Hope in the Obama Era

What follows is the first page from the new epilogue of the paperback edition of The End of the American Century, entitled "Reality and Hope in the Obama Era."

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world." --President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

Much has changed, for better and for worse, since the hardbound edition of this book first went to press in early 2008. Indeed, the publication of the book in October of that year coincided with both the exhilarating finale of the 2008 presidential elections, and the meltdown of the U.S. economy. The election of Barack Obama fulfilled the first criterion of the “best-case scenario” that I posed in Chapter 10: new political leadership. Both for who he is and what he says, Obama provides the best possible hope of restoring some of America’s domestic health and international reputation, after the catastrophic lost decade of the George W. Bush administration. President Obama wants to fix the many American problems enumerated in this book—health care, education, infrastructure, the environment among them—and in the first months of his administration had already initiated policies and legislation to do so. He also pledged from the outset to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, to abide by international law, and to be more cooperative and multilateral in dealing with other countries.

On the other hand, as I cautioned even for the best case scenario, new leadership will not reverse or solve the problems of American decline. The problems facing this country are so systemic and deep seated—most of them long-preceding the Bush administration—that even radical changes will have only minimal impact on the trajectory of America’s decline. Furthermore, the debt-induced economic crisis that I presaged at the end of Chapter 1 is already well underway. Much of the country’s economic growth of the last twenty years was fueled by government and consumer debt, creating a giant country-sized Ponzi scheme that was bound to implode. President Obama’s well-intentioned and necessary—but enormous-- spending plans to fix things will only hugely inflate the country’s already unprecedented levels of debt. It is difficult to see how the country will extricate itself from this mess. Certainly the time frame is many years, perhaps a decade or more, and not the cheerful predictions of most economists and politicians that we will be out of the woods in a few months or years.

On the international scene, the events of the last year have been a good-news, bad-news story. The election of an African-American as President of the United States gave a huge boost to this country’s international reputation. Obama’s message of hope, reconciliation, humility and multilateralism was welcomed all across the globe, and promised to allay—at least somewhat—the ill will fostered by the Bush administration’s arrogance and belligerence. However, during America’s lost decade, much of the rest of the world had moved on, and beyond, the United States. Almost nowhere is the country still viewed as the “city on the hill” to be followed and emulated. Increasingly, foreign leaders and their populations have dismissed, criticized or mocked the U.S. and its policies. This tendency has accelerated as the rest of the world has had to bear the brunt of America’s economic and financial mismanagement. When the Chinese Prime Minister, for example, complained about “the unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption,” there was no question which country he was referring to.

The End of the American Century Published in Paperbound

The End of the American Century is now available in paperback, with a newly added epilogue on the Obama Presidency, entitled "Reality and Hope in the Obama Era." (See the next post for the first page of the epilogue). The book is available from the publisher at the link at the top of this page, and also from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.



(For readers who purchased the hardbound edition, and would like to see the epilogue, send me an email and I will provide you with that chapter.)

Dialogue and Forum on "The End of the American Century"

An extended "dialogue" on the themes of The End of the American Century has been posted on the website of the China-U.S. Friendship Exchange at this link. The interview with me was conducted by the organization's founder and president, Dr. Sheng-Wei Wang, who is based in Hong Kong. The interview focuses especially on America's changing global role and its relationship with China.

This November issue of the China-U.S. Friendship blog also includes two other essays on themes related to my book: "American Power in the 21st Century" by Harvard's Joseph Nye (author of Soft Power); and "Peace, Not War, the Best Strategy," by Professor of Geopolitics Madhav Das Nalapat at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India. Those two essays are accessible at this link.

My responses to those two essays will appear in the next (December) issue of China-U.S. Friendship.com.

Kolko's "The World in Crisis"

The American revisionist historian Gabriel Kolko has published a new book, The World in Crisis, with a subtitle that is the same as my book, The End of the American Century. The book is a collection of essays, written since 2004, most of which have appeared in print or online though often, according to the author, revised and updated for this publication. The common theme is "the decline of American power, the limits of its military technology, and the end of a century in which the United States had the pretension to lead the world." (p. 3).

These themes are similar to those of my own book, and Kolko concludes, as I do, that America's "century of domination is now ending." But there are substantial differences as well. First of all, while Kolko's first two chapters address America's financial crisis, the clear focus of the book is on America's foreign policy and global role. In The End of the American Century, I see the roots of America's decline as much in the domestic arena as in the global one, though they are closely linked. Secondly, Kolko sees the decline of American power beginning very early--as early as the Korean War in the 1950s, whereas I see the decline beginning in the 1970s, and mostly as a result of domestic factors: especially growing consumerism, individualism, poverty, inequality and debt.

Kolko's book is World in Crisis: The End of the American Century, published by Pluto Press in 2009.