Thursday, January 03, 2008
Two things to remember about America
Stratfor's end-of-year "net assessment" of the United States reminds us of the two critical things to remember about America:
In looking at the United States, two obvious facts come to light.
First, the United States controls all of the oceans in the world. No nation in human history has controlled the oceans so absolutely. That means the United States has the potential to control, if it wishes, the flow of goods through the world’s oceans — which is the majority of international trade. Since World War II, the United States has used this power selectively. In general, it has used its extraordinary naval superiority to guarantee free navigation, because international trade has been one of the foundations of American prosperity. But it has occasionally used its power as a tool to shape foreign affairs or to punish antagonistic powers. Control of the oceans also means that the United States can invade other countries, and that — unless Canada or Mexico became much more powerful than they are now — other countries cannot invade the United States.
Second, no economy in the world is as large as the American economy. In 2006, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States was about $13.2 trillion. That is 27.5 percent of all goods and services produced in the world for that year, and it is larger than the combined GDPs of the next four countries — Japan, Germany, China and the United Kingdom. In spite of de-industrialization, industrial production in the United States was $2.1 trillion, equal to Japan’s, China’s and Germany’s industrial production combined. You can argue with the numbers, and weight them any number of ways, but the fact is that the United States is economically huge, staggeringly so. Everything from trade deficits to subprime mortgage crises must be weighed against the sheer size of the American economy and the fact that it is and has been expanding.
Good point.
7 Comments:
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Fri Jan 04, 01:02:00 AM:
And the democrats were so hoping they'd get a recession for Christmas this year!
By 
, at
Fri Jan 04, 05:25:00 AM:
The ancient Romans boasted the same things as well. In the end, they lost the will to carry on...to exert their overwhelming power and economic advantages. A decadent life of what was then considered leisure...corrupt elites...a loss of what made them great in the first place...all contributed to their collapse at the hands of peoples that they had been defeating for several centuries. Don't make too much of these "two obvious facts."
By , at
Fri Jan 04, 06:02:00 AM:
With all due respect to Anonymous, the ancient Romans actually lasted well into the Middle Ages, though we changed their name for our convenience. As they lasted almost 2,000 years, perhaps we should take not of those two obvious facts after all.
C. Owen Johnson
By , at
Fri Jan 04, 11:05:00 AM:
for one thing, the romans had almost no manufacturing capacity. not sure what anonymous' point is, or even if there is one.
whenever i hear people bitching about the imminent decline of the u.s. i ask "which country would you want to trade places with ?".
what is really impressive, is that we are accelerating away from other countries, by every measure. in particular, our military weaponry is now 2 or 3 generations ahead of any potential competitor.
Americans aren't like other people; give the rest of the world a problem, and they slink away and make excuses; give America a problem and we find a way to solve it *and* make a profit.
By Andrewdb, at
Fri Jan 04, 11:42:00 AM:
I finished Byran Ward-Perkin's book on The Fall of Rome last night (highly recommended). He makes a pretty good case that the Romans had a fairly sophisticated economy with a strong distribution network within the Empire. Atmospheric lead, for example (based on ice cores from Greenland) fell in about 400, and did not reach the same level for another thousand years.
The frightening thing about such falls is how fast they happen. Rome fell in about 120 years. The British Empire went from peak to trough in less then 50.
By , at
Fri Jan 04, 12:41:00 PM:
The Romans were bordered by on-and-off hostility in the rest of Italy, France, the Balkans and Germany, rising to nearly constant warfare, throughout their Republican and Imperial times. Canada and Mexico are hardly the same, and this is as off-base an analogy as could be imagined.
By Noocyte, at
Fri Jan 04, 02:22:00 PM:
It should also be borne in mind that, for all of the unprecedented enlightenment in governance that Rome brought to the table, it was still very much an occupying power. It captured, held, and administered lands and peoples acquired through conquest. When things are going well, and the occupying power is seen as indomitably strong, there can be substantial stability in that. But where the Imperial power is seen as successfully challenged or fecklessly and irresolutely administered, the centrifugal forces are considerable, and the prospects of collapse build exponentially.
By sharp contrast, the US has not behaved as an imperial power. Contrary to some of the more histrionic claims of the far Left and Right, when the US sets about the task of nation-building, the prime path has always been a provisional governance, followed as expeditiously as possible by the return of sovereignty. We do not conquer and claim. Thus, the entropic tendencies of Imperial powers simply do not apply in any direct sense.
This is not to say that other kinds of entropic factors can't come to bear on the US in its geopolitical endeavors. Essentially, the US administers its "empire" through the capture of markets for free trade, versus the capture of territory for exploitation (which is one of the important ways in which we won the Cold War). The use to which our unique blue-water Navy is put illustrates this point very well. We defend trade because it is the life-blood of our civilization. The fact that it is also beneficial to any other sovereign society which participates in it is an index of why the American "empire" is unprecedented in form and robustness (the merchant empire of Venice is analogous, but still not apples-to-apples).
Still, therein also lies one of the few glaring vulnerabilities of American power: a sustained and effective disruption of international trade (blocking the Straits of Hormuz, incapacitating key American ports, etc., etc.) could severely jam up the free energy which it has been the US' role to keep in circulation. Our foes are clearly aware of this (which is why the WTC was the target of fully half of al Qaeda's 'fleet'). However, their task is, thankfully, a truly monumental one owing to the phenomenal scope and diversification of American economic and military power, and to the daunting resilience of the American people in the face of adversity. Woe betide the enemy who foolishly awakens the full power of the latter two by daring to meddle with the first!
