“I don’t accept second place for the United States of America.” That simple statement, delivered with effect raised by Barack Obama in his first State of the Union, in January 2010, managed to summarize the current U.S. strategic horizon in a single sentence.
For decades, the United States has been in relative decline, facing the prospect of being overtaken by rival power. Its main problem, however, is not the relative decline itself – it is a natural phenomenon that occurs as companies, sectors, regions and countries grow at irregular rates. Instead, its main problem is the lack of recognition of this condition, whether out of pride, electoral calculation or a simple lack of knowledge.
In 1986, in his masterful The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy explained that great powers rise and fall precisely because of their uneven growth: it is therefore the relationship between their varying growth rates that – ‘long-term’ – is decisive.
Slow relative decline
Apart from a few short periods of recession, the United States has never stopped growing. Since 1950, however, it has grown at a slower rate than most of the rest of the world: therefore, it has been in relative decline.
Between 1960 and 2020, its real GDP (i. On the same subject : World Refugee Day 2022 – US State Department.e., in constant dollars) grew by a factor of five and a half times, but, in the same period, the GDP of the rest of the world was multiplied by eight and a half times: so while the American economy continued to grow in absolute terms, those of its rivals grew at a faster pace.
Moreover, if we compare the United States with its main rival, China, the growth gap is abysmal: while the U.S. economy has been growing by five and a half times, the China has been growing by 92 times.
In other words, in 1960, the U.S. economy was equivalent to that of 22 China; however by 2020, it will “weigh” only as much as 1.3 Chinas. In culinary terms, the cake has become much bigger for everyone, but the portion that goes to the United States has become relatively smaller.
This relative reduction in the economic and productive burden ultimately results in a narrowing of the margin for political action, due to the phenomenon of “overstretching”, the phenomenon at the origin of the fall of some great empires (from the Roman Empire to the Russian). Kennedy – in 1986 – explained it this way:
“Decision-makers in Washington must face the awkward and enduring fact that the total sum of U.S. global interests and obligations today is far greater than the country’s power to defend them all simultaneously.”
That is, the global interests and obligations that the United States could afford to defend with a GDP of nearly $ 3.46 trillion in 1960, could not be defended all simultaneously in 1986 with a GDP of $ 8.6 trillion, and even less. today despite GDP approaching. $ 20 trillion. This paradox is only apparent: while US GDP in 1960 was almost half (46.7%) of the rest of the world’s GDP, by 2020 it had become less than a third (30.8%).
Kennedy’s preventive analysis unfortunately suffered from a case of bad weather. Three years after the publication of his book, pro-Russian regimes in Europe fell; four years later, Japan’s first “lost decades” began; five years later, the Gulf War broke out (for which Washington assembled one of the largest military coalitions in history); and, at the end of that same year, 1991, the Russian Empire, in its Soviet version, imploded.
Myth of the American “hyperpower”
With the world’s second largest economic power (Japan) experiencing a sharp decline, and the Soviet Union disappearing, the relative decline in U.S. GDP has enjoyed a reversal of a trend, albeit a small and short one. To see also : NJ is launching a national population health data project. As a result, Kennedy’s book, when not mocked, was often forgotten.
Then began a period of U.S. intoxication by being the “single superpower” in a “unipolar world,” the “hyperpower,” in which Americans thought they could reshape the world in their own image. even though they no longer have the strength to do so and even as new competitors began to flex their muscles.
The relative decline of America depended not only on the rise of Japan, and certainly not on the USSR, but on the inescapable tendency for uneven development; in Aristotle terms, Japan and the USSR were the “accident,” and the relative decline was the “substance.”
Despite this, some American leaders took advantage of the incident to deal with the substance: the Gulf War was one episode; another was intervention in Bosnia; and NATO’s eastward enlargement was yet another, just to recall the key stages (not to mention the progressive reopening to China after the Tiananmen Square massacre, seen as Eldorado of easy and abundant profits).
NATO enlargement of the 1990s has recently been reintroduced at the center of the international debate, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For the Russians and their friends, this growth is the “original sin” from which everything emerged, which puts the responsibility, they say, for Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” entirely on Washington’s shoulders.
The (eternal) US-Russian confrontation
As in all ideologies, there is a pinch of truth (which makes them plausible), which is greatly simplified and de-contextual before being served to the masses as a propaganda soup. See the article : opinion | NATO Summit Apart, Europe Has America’s Problems. The pinch of truth comes precisely from Washington’s unilateral decision to position itself, through NATO, in Central and Eastern European nations that have just been liberated from the Russian yoke.
For the context, however, we must look at the expansion in those same territories by the European Union. NATO expansion preceded that of the EU; by five years in the case of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary (in 1999); a few months (in 2004) for Slovenia, Slovakia and the three Baltic states; and three years (still in 2004) for Bulgaria and Romania.
The buffer states between Russia and the heart of Europe, which were at the center of American concern after the two world wars, were again of hot topicality: those states could not be left to exclusive control. of Europe, because otherwise they will stop doing so. be a buffer.
Now, if the United States has an incontrovertible strategic goal, it is precisely to prevent Europe (or, to be realistic, Germany and / or any group centered on Germany) from establishing any kind of cooperation with Russia. .
Controlling the world’s “heartland”
Ever since they replaced the United Kingdom as the world’s hegemonic power, Americans have inherited the “heartland” theory formulated by Sir Halford Mackinder. It essentially argues that if Eastern Europe (read Germany) takes control of the core (read Russia) its dominance over Eurasia, and therefore over the world, will result.
The theory reflects the constant British concern about a possible continental Eurasian union capable of challenging, and ultimately removing, London’s hegemony. That is why the British intervened three times on the continent to prevent its unification: once against France and twice against Germany.
Mackinder’s thesis was raised again during World War II by Nicolas Spykman, a Dutch-born Yale political scientist, who transformed it into the theory of a “rimland”, that is, a “circle” of countries that could surround the heart. In Spykman’s formulation, the control of this circle becomes crucial for world control, a thesis later translated into the policy of containment, i.e. of cordon sanitaire across Russia.
The crackdown was nothing more than the expansion to the Asian front of the first post-war system of buffer states, although it was deliberately misrepresented during the Cold War: its purpose, in fact, it was not to “fear” Russia, which was no serious threat, because of its extreme weakness (George Kennan himself, “father” of containment, wrote in 1947 that “Russia remains economically vulnerable , and in a sense, an impotent nation “), but to keep Germany and Japan – that is, to break the legs of the pro-Russian factions in these two countries, and leave control of the border of the cast iron in the hands of Stalin’s tanks.
Concerns about a possible continental Eurasian union capable of challenging, and ultimately overthrowing, their world hegemony had shifted from the British to the Americans. As Henry Kissinger openly confirmed:
In the first half of the 20th century, the United States fought two wars to prevent the domination of Europe by a potential adversary … In the second half of the 20th century (actually, since 1941), the “The United States has continued to fight three wars to vindicate the same principle in Asia – against Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.”
Farewell to the concepts of “civilizing mission,” “defense of freedom,” “armament of democracy,” or war against militarism, fascism, or communism … Once ideologies evaporate, the reality of the power relations of the great powers remains, in which the strongest dictates the rules, rewrites history and shapes the ideologies that everyone is bound to believe.
In 2011, Vladimir Putin launched his proposal for a Eurasian Union (one of many attempts to rebuild the Russian empire), intended to become “an essential component of a Greater Europe … from Lisbon to Vladivostok,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reacted promptly and frankly:
“There is a move to re-Sovietize the region. It won’t be called that. It will be called a customs union, it will be called a Eurasian Union and all this … But let’s not be wrong about it. We know what the goal is, and we’re trying to figure out effective ways to reduce or avoid it. “
If the risk, feared by Mackinder, Spykman, Kennan, Kissinger, Brzezinski and Clinton, is that of a possible merger of forces between a large industrial power and the Russian core, it is evident that the threat to the United States today it comes more from China than from Europe or Japan.
Driving a wedge between China and Russia
Attempting to create a wedge between China and Russia is undoubtedly one of the U.S.’s strategic priorities, if not the strategic priority. With the war that began on February 24, Russia provided two major services to the United States:
Americans gain the benefit, but a strategy cannot be built on the blunders of an opponent, and here problems arise.
Meanwhile, the fact that there is an objective strategy (avoiding “second place to the United States,” in Obama’s words) does not necessarily mean becoming a subjective strategy, that is, organized, planned, and consciously implemented by a ruling class. . .
“There’s no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where he’s going,” Seneca said wisely; and the United States looks like that sailor: its relative decline has yet to be identified as such, and its political division means that every possible strategic hypothesis risks being modified – or even overturned – every four years.
In addition, much of the country’s political class, drunk with ideologies, still feeds on the story told by George W Bush’s adviser Karl Rove almost 20 years ago: “When we act, we create our own reality ”; and while specialists are struggling to study or decipher that reality, “re-act, create other new realities.”
The many thousands of “Roves” present in the American political class give their country the same service that Putin’s advisers, drunk with ideologies, give them: with their good intentions and ignorance. their hard work and pride in geopolitical constraints, pave the way to hell. .
Manlio Graziano is Assistant Professor, Geopolitics and Geopolitics of Religions, Sciences Po
This article is republished by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
