Book Review: "The Future of U.S. Global Power: Delusions of Decline"
Stuart S. Brown purveys a message that is not fashionable in some academic and media circles: that the United States is not in decline, a victim of its own fiscal and strategic excesses. On the contrary, “U.S. hegemony is here to stay.” Brown’s book, The Future of U.S. Global Power: Delusions of Decline, makes the case that America’s economic underpinnings, demographics and entrepreneurialism virtually guarantee its place as the world’s indispensable power, with no real chance of being displaced by a single-party state such as China, or any conglomeration of powers such as the European Union. Some critics may dismiss such assertions as Pollyannaish, but The Future of U.S. Global Power is nothing if not thought-provoking.
There is a stream of indigenous gloom and doom thinking about the U.S.’s standing in the world spanning from Sputnik to the Japanese economic model to Yale historian Paul Kennedy’s “overstretch” theory. Training courses for U.S. diplomats in the late 1980s and early 1990’s devoted considerable debate to Kennedy’s premise that excessive spending on guns over butter leads inexorably to a downward spiral of slow growth and consequent political decline. Kennedy’s message to America’s leaders was to “manage affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States' position takes place slowly and smoothly.” Brown counters that for this to take place, there would have to be degradation in the institutional basis for innovation and investment, a premise he rejects. The U.S. is reducing its military footprint as well as its budget deficit and is rebounding from the Great Recession. A 2-plus percent GDP growth forecast for 2014 contrasts with Europe’s more anemic 1.6 percent forecast. The U.S. economy continues to be resilient as overseas military entanglements are kept finite and fiscal spending is held in check. Meanwhile, exploitation of shale oil will soon make the United States energy independent, and population growth continues apace at 1 percent to 2 percent.
Brown dismisses out of hand the notion of China surpassing, or even matching, the U.S. as a global hegemon. As an albeit fast-growth developing nation, China’s GDP is expected to outpace that of the U.S. during this decade. But in terms of a more accurate gauge of national wealth – per capita income – China is light years behind America, with no realistic option of catching up in the foreseeable future. Add structural deficiencies, corruption and serious environmental damage, and it will be decades before Beijing would be able to claim any kind of economic parity with the United States. On the political-strategic side of the ledger, moreover, “China offers no unifying vision for global civil society, global governance or the global economy.” And with its Asian neighbors increasingly fearful of Beijing’s intentions, especially in face of Chinese saber rattling over maritime and territorial issues, China cannot hope to build regional alliances to counter those of the United States.
So, will we see another American Century? Given the positive evidence laid down by Stuart Brown, can we comfortably assume the world’s only superpower will retain that position for decades to come? While Mr. Brown puts in historical perspective the current political gridlock and inter-party strife in Washington, noting that the country has experienced such difficulties in the past and gotten through them successfully, there is a dangerous trend deserving closer scrutiny. French economist Thomas Piketty has analyzed this in detail in his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, wherein he posits that the increasingly greater returns on capital in comparison to those of economic growth threaten to bring a return to a “patrimonial society” dominated by dynastic wealth and political leadership. Increasing disparity between the super-rich and everyone else, what Piketty calls “a drift toward oligarchy,” poses ominous repercussions for democracy and social stability, potentially weakening the fundamentals of national economic strength and global power. This concept of capital returns vs economic growth warrants further study by scholars such as Stuart Brown.
Stuart Brown currently is a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, having previously worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and in private banking. He combines a practitioner’s cum academic’s perspective in his argumentation. The Future of U.S. Global Power is a meticulously researched, well organized and very readable work which should be required reading for any graduate seminar focusing on U.S. foreign policy or international political economy.