
Why America Will Remain the Superpower - robg
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394103108030821.html
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swombat
Good arguments. I think there's a bit of a bandwagon of schadenfreude whenever
things go badly, and people begin to outdo each other in dire and gloomy
predictions of the world's end.

In my very first job, I got used to the idea that somebody, somewhere in the
project, feels that the sky is falling and the project's about to end - on
practically a weekly basis. Yet the project went on. Human activities have a
huge intertia, and the "economy", and the "world order", are merely a
collection of human activities with some system applied on to help keep track
of what's going on (and, ideally, help it go even better).

Things change, but ever so slowly.

~~~
dejb
I think people from the US need to understand that when you argue that it is
right for you to be 'the superpower' you are also arguing that the rest of the
world should be subservient. Can you see how that sounds to the rest of the
the world? If there is any schadenfreude going on that would be the reason.

~~~
anamax
> when you argue that it is right for you to be 'the superpower' you are also
> arguing that the rest of the world should be subservient.

Small problem, we're not arguing that it's right. And we're not arguing that
you should be subservient, but we'll get back to that bit of projection a
little later.

We don't argue that it's right, but let's look at the alternatives. China?
Russia? The EU? No one? Yeah right.

Speaking of the EU, we've seen them in action. It's not clear that they're the
best of that sorry bunch. We all know that if the US announced "hey, you're
right, we're just here for the oil, so we're going to redeploy to cover what
we need and let you take care of the rest", they'd be running troops into Iraq
as fast as they could get transport from the Russians. (They really ought to
have some ability to project force.) Then we'll see how Euros run an
occupation. Most folks think that Germany is the most brutal, but I've got my
money on France.

As a superpower, the US is basically a resource. Whenever something big needs
doing, the question is "how do we get the US to do it?" If you don't like that
deal, find a better one and take it. We won't be offended.

We don't want you to to be subservient. That's how the alternatives work.
(Yes, I'm including EU and subdivisions.) Instead, we think that your
responses when you ask us to do something should show some class. They should
fall into two categories (1) "thank you" with as much "how can we help" as you
can afford and (2) "on second thought, don't bother, we'll do it ourselves".
And, we should hear the second a lot more from the EU. After all, 500M people
and more GDP than the US should allow you to do most things on your own. (All
that wealth and we had to handle your USSR problem....)

Yes, in some ways we do look down on you. It's because you're Monday morning
quarterbacks. You want respect - get on the field. Surely there are some
problems that you can handle. Show us how it's done.

BTW - We know that you're talking smack because you're not afraid of anything
these days. We also know that that will change when you are.

Speaking of "sophistication", it's somewhat ironic that our subprime mortages
had a bigger effect on your banking system. We're stupid, so we're supposed to
get conned. What's your excuse for getting taken by rubes?

~~~
dejb
OK Firstly I'm from Australia not the EU.

> Yes, in some ways we do look down on you.

That was my point. Most Americans know so little about the world but they are
so convinced they are the best. In my experience most first world countries
are better to live in than the states.

> It's because you're Monday morning quarterbacks. You want respect - get on
> the field.

So we have to start a war or something to get respect? Is that what the
invasion of Iraq was all about?

> We don't argue that it's right, but let's look at the alternatives. China?
> Russia? The EU? No one? Yeah right.

Why does any one nation have to be nominate itself as the sheriff? I haven't
seen much clamour for the US to exercise military power recently, more the
opposite.

In truth I don't think the US has anywhere near as much power as it thinks.
Most times it has tried to exert that power it has backfired. When you have
about 20-25% of world GPD and you try to continually exercise more than 50% of
the control something has to give.

~~~
gaius
_So we have to start a war or something to get respect? Is that what the
invasion of Iraq was all about?_

There is absolutely no reason, other than bickering and incompetence, that the
European powers couldn't be operating an airlift capability equivalent to or
better than the US C17 Globemaster fleet. If we were we could have saved
countless lives in the wake of the Asian tsunami. The _only_ people in the
world able to undertake a massive logistical undertaking at short notice is
the USAF.

Militaries do an LOT other than blowing stuff up.

~~~
dejb
I'm not sure of the relative efforts applied to the Asian Tsunami. I didn't
think that the US devoted a great deal of their military capacity to the
problem. Of course the US. unlike Europe, actually shares an Ocean with Asia
so it would make sense for them to offer more help.

You seem to have a very indepth knowledge of the logistics of these
situations. Perhaps you could explain what happened to the rescue effort in
New Orleans when Huricane Katrina hit?

~~~
gaius
What happened there was a failure to learn from history. It's like the Irish
Potato Famine. Conspiracy nuts like to think it was deliberate but the truth
is that it was hugely embarassing for the British Empire to have a disaster
like that in their own back yard. What sort of imperials think they can rule
the world when they can't even deal with a local crisis? The far-flung reaches
of empires are glamorous and exciting, but what matters really is the bread-
and-butter stuff at home.

~~~
dejb
That is an interesting historical perspective, one that I had not considered
before. Still, if anything, it supports the notion that the US is faltering as
the world power.

BTW I'd be interested to see a comparison with deaths in rural Soviet Union
under Stalin with the Irish situation. Seems to me like a similar situation
and yet the deaths are pretty much attributed as murder under Stalin.

~~~
miked
Ummm, that's because it was murder. See the (well written) works of the
historian Robert Conquest. By the way, when the Soviet archives were opened up
during the Yeltsin era, his estimations of the number of Soviet murders turned
out to be almost exactly right (actually, a little on the low side).

I think of this sometimes when I think of my wife. She survived, with years of
hunger, Mao's "Great Leap Forward", when 77,000,000 human beings -- men,
women, children dying as their mothers held them and watched -- were
systematically starved to death.

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." -- Stalin, an
expert on the subject

~~~
dejb
I was, of course, refering to the agricultural deaths. To some extent those
seem similar to the situation in Ireland and possibly China under Mao. To what
extent can attribute a failed policy as murder? Is the US responsable for the
1 million or so deaths in Iraq? Probably not.

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netcan
A lot of the predictions of the US demise as a superpower are not about US
losing more during this crisis then others. They they're about triggering an
inevitable shift.

Depending on your assumptions , the US, China, India & Europe get close to par
with each-other (in terms of GDP) . sometime before current Grad Students
retire. Could be 5 yrs, could be 40. Equally importantly, a lot of mid sized
economies close the gap between them & the whales.

The assumption that economy size translates into military & political power
makes sense. By that measure, the US already feels bigger then it should. The
EU is a terrible mechanism for validating that assumption. China for all it's
faults is not very assertive on the world stage. Neither is India. (Russia is
similar to the US in this sense. Their assertiveness means they feel bigger
then their GDP should allow)

The current non-US big fish (India, China & Europe) are just not converting
GDP to militar/politcal power very well. But the raw ingredient is already
there. China & India as manufacturers may even be able convert money to power
at a better rate then the US

Public opinion in the US & elsewhere is currently that the US backed financial
theories are to blame for the situation. The US's military/political methods
are even more unpopular. Fair or not, Georgia/Russia isn't getting much worse
press the Iraq/US - even in the countries officially aligned with Georgia/US.
& Russia's Putin doesn't have a good name.

This sound familiar: _you can have us or the russians/chinese. The euros are
wimps. You'll take us because the alternatives are worse!_ You hear it &
elsewhere. 30 years ago those held sway. These days less.

~~~
dejb
> The current non-US big fish (India, China & Europe) are just not converting
> GDP to militar/politcal power very well.

You could look at this a different way and say that perhaps the US is
relatively militaristic. Wouldn't it be better for the world if we could
minimise militarism and military spending in general? To me it looks like that
is the direction these non-US big fish are trying to move in.

~~~
netcan
Better for the world? Probably.

I wasn't making a request though.

------
shawndrost
I was interested in this quote: "[T]he ratio of government debt to GDP in the
U.S. runs to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%." Reddit
would have you believe that we're some kind of wacky money-pissing outlier,
but we seem to be doing all right.

Wikipedia's list of countries by public debt is interesting: I see no
correlation between rank and economic strength. Also curious: there are no
countries with negative net debt, so why isn't the circular debt resolved?
Maybe the countries are diversifying their portfolios?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_debt>

~~~
hugh
_Wikipedia's list of countries by public debt is interesting: I see no
correlation between rank and economic strength. Also curious: there are no
countries with negative net debt, so why isn't the circular debt resolved?_

Most (?) government debt isn't held by other governments, it's held by
individuals, in the form of bonds. Hence, all governments can be in debt.

About twelve years ago the Australian government (having just changed hands)
embarked on a campaign to pay back government debt, which back then was quite
high. Now it's almost all paid back (just 15% of GDP left) but as I understand
it they want to maintain some level of debt -- otherwise the whole Australian
bond market would cease to exist.

~~~
shawndrost
Interesting: only 25% of our debt is held by other nations [1]. Still, the
point stands: Japan owns a half-trillion in US bonds, but has a massive
national debt of their own. Essentially, they're buying US bonds by selling
their own bonds.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Forei...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership)

~~~
biohacker42
Yep, they are trying to cheapen the yet and make the US $ more expensive so
that Japan can export more to the US.

China is doing the same thing.

Canada used to keep its interest rate just below the US rate, until US rates
got so low that it became impossible.

------
pg
"Constantinople fell to the Ottomans after two centuries of retreat and
decline."

More to the point, after cannons were invented.

~~~
mattmaroon
Isn't the rise and fall of most of the large empires due to better weapons
technology?

~~~
pg
No; large empires generally collapse from within.

But Constantinople was by no means an empire when the Ottomans took it. By
that point it had shrunk to a mere town.

~~~
mattmaroon
Yeah, I guess I was thinking more "civilizations" than "empires".

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mattmaroon
I don't think the end of America's dominance is coming so much as a result of
mistakes on our part as it is the rest of the world industrializing. We don't
have some sort of monopoly on entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, or basic
freedoms, and as those things pervade other large countries like China,
they'll rise faster than us.

In fact, China has some serious advantages in the early stages. Democracy may
be the only long-term viable form of government, but their current communist
mishmash is much more effective at getting things done, and quickly. It won't
last for ever, but it might get them to escape velocity relatively quickly.

~~~
jerf
Developing countries SHOULD develop more quickly than the first wave of
industrialization. Instead of blundering through a variety of worse-than-
modern technologies they should jump directly to current tech; instead of
discovering how to build a power infrastructure they should learn from the
leaders, etc. The closer they get to "caught up" the more they can contribute
to advancing the wave of human progress, and the more they will also slow
down.

If China's GDP increase was on par with the US's, something would be very
wrong with China. (Developing countries that aren't increasing their GDP or
even see it decrease typically do have something very wrong with them.)

(A lot of people seem to make this basic mistake. A developing economy has a
lot of low-hanging fruit, long-gone in an industrialized country. If we could
suddenly open a portal to 2050, we'd have low-hanging fruit in our economy
too... but we'll have to get to 2050 the long, slow way.)

------
ordinaryman
The article makes a comparative analysis based on weak points from each
economy with respect to that of US, ignoring those countries in other aspects.

For example, India, one of the BRIC countries, does not get a mention though
Brazil, Russia and China are mentioned.

Did some googling for Indian numbers..

> But here it helps that the ratio of government debt to GDP in the U.S. runs
> to about 62%. For the eurozone, it's 75%; for Japan, 180%.

India's debt is at 41.7% of GDP in FY08
[http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Indias-debt-
at-41.7-of-...](http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Indias-debt-at-41.7-of-
GDP-in-FY08/306114/)

(China, Brazil, Russia ignored)

> Last month's $700 billion bailout package seems staggeringly large, but it
> amounts to a little more than 5% of U.S. gross domestic product. Compare
> that to Germany's $400 billion to $536 billion rescue package (between 12%
> and 16% of its GDP), or Britain's $835 billion plan (30%).

India : No bailout.

(Japan, China, Brazil, Russia ignored)

> Before yesterday's surge, the Dow had dropped 25% in three months. But that
> only means it had outperformed nearly every single major foreign stock
> exchange, including Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%) China's Shanghai exchange
> (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%) and
> Russia RTSI (down 61%). These contrasts are a useful demonstration that
> America's financial woes are nobody else's gain.

Indian BSE : 23.92% for the last 3 months.

(India ignored)

No. I am not suggesting that India is going to become a Superpower.

I just feel that that the article takes a weak path for comparison. It is like
- "US is better than CountryA in this aspectA and CountryB in this aspectB and
CountryC in aspectC and since no other country is better than US, US will
remain a super power."

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rms
In the long run, does anyone doubt that China will eventually surpass the US
as a financial power? By that time, I sure hope we aren't trying to project
military power worldwide. The last thing I want is for The Project for the New
American Century to get the last laugh.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Ce...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century)

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netcan
_If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were financial time bombs of one kind, then
surely China's state-owned enterprises are time bombs of another. Can anyone
determine with even approximate confidence the extent of their liabilities?_

I've been thinking that since this started. China doesn't like bad news, they
can hide them. Chinese economic problems could be more far reaching the the US
(at least here in Oz).

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dejb
To me it seems the decentralisation of power in the world world is a good and
natural course of events. I think that communication technology such as the
internet makes this the most likely course of events. The US doesn't have to
be 'the superpower' to flourish economically. In fact trying the be 'the
superpower' militarily could in part be responsible for the current financial
situation.

------
known
A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people. -- G.A.Rao

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cabalamat
In the short term, the financial crisis won't affect America's position at the
top (after all, it currently spends as much on its armed forces as the rest of
the world combined).

In the long term? According to the IMF in 2007 The USA's GDP was 13.84 T$
whereas China's was 3.25 T$. If China's economy grows at 6% faster than the
USA's (i.e. 9% versus 3%) they will surpass the USA in GDP in 2031.

~~~
ars
Extrapolating to the future based on one datapoint will never work.

~~~
cabalamat
China's growth has been about 9% per annum fairly steadily for the last
quarter-century. America's growth has been about 3% over the same period. So
it's not as if I'm using just one year's figures.

------
jfornear
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory>

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mynameishere
China has over a billion people, mostly ethnically unified, intelligent, hard-
working, criminally non-inclined. America has 300 million people who are, in
aggregate, a continental multi-national empire, as was the Austria-Hungarian
Empire or the USSR.

Give it ten years, and we're #2.

~~~
rkowalick
The only difference between the US and these empires of yesteryear is that we
didn't invade new lands to obtain a diverse population. The diverse
populations invaded us.

