Jim Manzi thinks we may have been living with it for longer than even noted ferris-wheel alarmist Fareed Zakaria would have us believe.
Somehow, this clip seems appropriate:
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The Ferris Wheel Gap
08 May 2008 01:08 pm
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Zakaria doesn't bemoan the Ferris Wheel gap, he simply points out that many Americans are stuck in a 1990s hegemony mindset in which people assume that we are #1 in everything, when in reality things are getting more competitive. His vehicle for making this point is Friedman-esque lame but that doesn't make it any less true. The exact timing of the "rise of the rest" is irrelevant to the main points of Zakaria's analysis.
Perhaps, but then that 1990s hegemony mindset was far more wrong, as Manzi and others pointed out. The apogee of relative US domination was the 1950s-- quite obviously because the USA escaped the devastation of the rest of the world in WWII. When, thankfully, the rest of the world recovered, the US share of world GDP went down from almost 50% to 20% by the mid to late 70s-- and it's stayed there since.
Now, Zakaria absolutely may be right that there may be impending decrease in the USA's relative economic position, but there has been, contrary to your claim, no such decline yet from the 80s until now. While China and the rest of Asia (non-Japan) have seen their share of world GDP grow steadily, the "losers" in that relative sense have been Western Europe and Japan.
You're right that people should not assume that the US is number 1 in everything-- but that was equally true in the 90s (and 80s) as well, particularly by idiotic metrics of "who can build the largest X."
At the same time, obsession with relative levels of prosperity bothers me. Anyone who prefers the 1950s when the rest of the world had not yet recovered from the war just because the US was relatively ahead is crazy IMO.
Nicestrategy, you should see the graphic from the Economist that Jim Manzi links to here. It's always good not to get overconfident, but any dating of the USA's relative economic decline as from the '90s until now is insane. The decline of the American Century, in terms of relative GDP, occurred before 1980. The massive rise of China and other countries has been a big story in the last twenty years, but it's been accompanied by the relative fall of not the USA, but of the EU and Japan. Absolutely the US could fall behind in the future, and it's extremely right to warn against hubris, but Zakaria's examples undermine that point, no matter how much you maintain that they are irrelevant.
OTOH, it goes without saying that the mere fact of population decline will probably mean that, again, Japan and the EU will far further relative to the rest of the world in the quite arbitrary "total share of world GDP" metric. (Only further pointing out how absurd it is, not just by measuring the total lump, but also by being a relative measure.)
OTOH, it goes without saying that the mere fact of population decline will probably mean that, again, Japan and the EU will far further relative to the rest of the world in the quite arbitrary "total share of world GDP" metric. (Only further pointing out how absurd it is, not just by measuring the total lump, but also by being a relative measure.)
John,
Zakaria isn't claiming that the US has fallen and neither am I. It's a very forward looking analysis, and my critique of it (not offered above) is that it avoids the resource crunch currently underway that really could threaten our absolute, not just relative, prosperity.
The Newsweek piece is a mishmash, and whomever edited those examples to be near the top didn't do Zakaria's thesis any favors. The sense of his book that the Foreign Affairs piece gives is that the naysayers about America are wrong, and the graphic Jim uses is entirely consistent with the thrust of Zakaria's argument.
My point was that Ross didn't respond to the substance of Zakaria's arguments, and nothing in any of these threads has given me a reason to think otherwise. The silly examples are there for a less sophisticated audience to have context for the proposition that America is in decline, after which he argues that we are not in decline and won't be if our political system can regain the dynamism of the economic sphere.
And yes, Zakaria should be embarrassed about the examples chosen if they don't stand up, but that doesn't mean that "the rise of the rest" is a phantom. The Foreign Affairs piece is followed by a piece by Richard Haas about the impending era of nonpolarity.
If you'd like to deny that America faces some new and complex challenges, be my guest, nitpick at the Ferris Wheel margins. After learning the hard way that we overestimated our ability to project force on the ground, we shouldn't make the same mistake in terms of global economic competitiveness. There is something about Ross' knee-jerk aversion to acknowledging the 'rise of the rest' that reminds me of the not so good aspects of celebrating and attempting to maintain unipolarity in the face of reality.
We don't need a unipolar world to be safe, rich, and happy. That's the point. Not Ferris Wheels.
If you'd like to deny that America faces some new and complex challenges
Of course not. But that's always true. If anything, the odd thing about Zakaria's analysis is that either he seems to be saying that people are, in a sense, more accurate now than they were in the 1980s and 1990s (Of course, there were lots of articles in popular press about the rise of Japan and the Asian Tigers back in the 80s and 90s too), or else he's blatantly wrong. And way too much of the introduction of the article seems to be blatantly wrong.
*"consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories." - No
*"For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged—something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago" - Really? The Pax Britannica was that weak? And again, the last 20 years American power was weaker than in the immediate post WWII period.
*"This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else." - Again, only if "everyone else" doesn't include Western Europe and Japan. The rise of the poor countries, surely, but I think it's equally as important an issue to note that the power of the broadly defined "West" is decreasing.
An article that claims that in the 1980s and 1990s were were dominating in every sphere, rather than acknowledging that such dominance was (thankfully) decreased from the 1950s due to the rebuilding of other countries is not one that avoids the "not so good aspects of celebrating and attempting to maintain unipolarity in the face of reality." Creating a false past, pretending that 10 years ago there was a dominance that didn't exist seems to me to be more likely to make us make the mistake of overestimating our ability to "project force on the ground... in terms of global economic competitiveness."
Really, truly, ditch the Newsweek and pick up the Foreign Affairs. 2 of your 3 * paragraphs are things that Zakaria addresses to some extent or another, the 3rd one he is more or less in agreement on.
As for the the 50s vs. the 90s:
1949 -- USSR gets the bomb + the Chinese Revolution
1950 -- The Korean War
A bipolar world.
1990s -- USSR dissolved; China and many others adopting market reforms; Satellite-guided bombs multiply our conventional air power x5 (at least); Gulf War 1 -- the Saudis owe us; IT fuels across the board economic growth; no threats from nation-states whatsover
A unipolar world.
"Creating a false past, pretending that 10 years ago there was a dominance that didn't exist seems to me to be more likely to make us make the mistake of overestimating our... global economic competitiveness."
Which is why Zakaria came up with some reality-check examples, however poorly sourced. The dominance *did* exist, but it was _never_ going to persist, and we shouldn't be stuck in a mindset of trying to recreate it (as the neocons seem to be, ahem). And yes, that did make us cocky as hell -- a national trait exemplified by our national leader, and one that came back to bite us in the ass.
Zakaria's examples might have stunk, but are you really contesting the point that there are significantly more threats to US geopolitical and economic power now than there were 10-20 years ago? Of course there are.
How did we adapt to the challenge of Japan et. al.? Remember downsizing? TQM? The success of Venture Capital? Addressing the deficit to mitigate the crowding out effect (aka the Rubin prescription?)
Perhaps new changes we haven't foreseen can keep us economically cutting edge, but the difference in geopolitical power post-Iraq is pretty huge, as is the difference in the capability of economic rivals to adapt and compete. Paul Kennedy's thesis looks alarmist in retrospect, but there is a middle ground between that and complacency. Zakaria tries to stake out that ground, and it is no surprise to see conservatives try to deny him that ground on a technicality because admitting that our position has changed might involve a honest look at the damage Bush has wrought, or, at at policy choices that acknowledge interdependence even though interdependence contradicts the jingoistic nationalism of the National Review.
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Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream
Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class
What, 3 threads on this nonsequitor of a critique?
Pardon the repost, if this is to be the operative thread about Zakaria's impending book:
I previously wrote--
"Having read Zakaria's piece in Foreign Affairs but not Newsweek, it sounds like Newsweek dumbed it waaaay down."
Correction: Ross has just been a colossal bonehead. Reading both excerpts, the Newsweek slice tries to survey too much territory without enough of the language that ties things back to the thesis, but no matter. Zakaria doesn't bemoan the Ferris Wheel gap, he simply points out that many Americans are stuck in a 1990s hegemony mindset in which people assume that we are #1 in everything, when in reality things are getting more competitive. His vehicle for making this point is Friedman-esque lame but that doesn't make it any less true. The exact timing of the "rise of the rest" is irrelevant to the main points of Zakaria's analysis.
Zakaria argues that we would be better served to embrace a post-American world of shared prosperity than to resist it, but he also debunks the naysayers who are itching to revive Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, arguing instead that we are very well positioned to expand our economic leadership of the world.
"Globalizing ourselves" means being willing and able to learn from other cultures the way the rest of the world has adapted to the US model. We won the contest of big ideas, but that's not good enough in the long run, once everyone else has caught up.
Basically, its good reading for people who are blind nationalists still too high on the American Century to see that it's ending, and that this is a good thing.
Ross, you get an F. You may raise your grade if you come in at lunch for extra help, but first try reading the whole article with an open mind.
Posted by nicestrategy | May 8, 2008 3:39 PM