Don't fear the multipolar world

Avoiding the collapse of the American, part 1

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, the Cold War was always present. Our earthquake drills at school also were extended to nuclear drills. We had music and movies about the Cold War. The Soviet intervention into Afghanistan was such a big deal that Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Bloc boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.

When the people toppled the Berlin Wall, a whole new and exciting world was born. As a student of foreign policy, I presumed we were looking at the end of worldwide US bases, especially because people like Senator Harry Reid talked nonstop about a “peace dividend”.

In 1992, I, a fresh faced college senior, met Senator Reid, and after he talked about the peace dividend to the group I was with, I called on the BS that it was, noting that the entire defense budget was less than the annual increase in the national debt and there would be no real peace dividend unless Washington spent less on everything else.

Senator Reid was quite shocked that someone, let alone some punk college kid, could see through his BS. He looked at me for a minute and offered me a job. Stupid me, I didn't take it.

There were articles at the time talking about the “unipolar moment” in places like Foreign Affairs. Francis Fukuyama wrote his book, “The End of History and the Last Man”. It seemed like the mindset took over the foreign policy establishment and decided to go with “America as the world's only superpower” idea.

The alternative was to accept the idea of a multipolar world, which had been the norm in the Western world for centuries. Occasional bids for primacy like Napoleon were stopped by other major powers working together.

Most of the US foreign policy establishment by this time and spent their lives in a bipolar paradigm. This framework was nearly impossible to set aside for many. Much of them, outside of people like Kissinger, lacked the historical understanding.

The US had largely remained aloof during the 19th century. The American people rejected Wilson's League of Nations. American diplomats had been famous for not being as sophisticated as those of other Great Powers.

And most of the American foreign policy establishment before WW2 had strong ties to Wall Street. American interventions abroad usually were to support bankers and merchants. But they don't get a pass.

So when our last chance at a multipolar world took place 30 years ago, American politicians went the opposite way and further extended American empire. So we spend trillions overseas to support the oligarchy and the country has declined at home.

In 1987, Paul Kennedy wrote his book, “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.” I read it with great interest. The overall thesis is that empires fall ultimately through overreach and economic failure. At the time it came out many still predicted the US would lose the Cold War because of the overreach. When the Soviet Union collapsed instead, it didn't invalidate the idea that American needed to retrench and back down from its empire.

Unfortunately hubris is a key American value, along with ignorance. It is a bad combination.

One of the reasons it didn't fail is because it transformed itself unknowingly into an empire of debt when it went off the gold standard. Economist Michael Hudson wrote his book, “Super Imperialism” about this. He has noted that this book was devoured in Washington and Wall Street in the early 70s and influential figures tried to understand what they had accidentally created. What he found is that we used our debt to enslave the world, something unique in history. Hudson has just published a new edition of the book, which I have not read yet. He had released a PDF version of the earlier edition which is likely available somewhere on the internet.

Empires always eventually fall. Peter Turchin of “Secular Cycles” fame has created models and patterns to predict.

We are at the end of the line, so wise leaders would attempt a gradual retreat which would allow us to maintain the maximum power possible while reducing the costs. We should focus on saving what we have and letting go over time. We don't want the sudden collapse that just ruins everything at once, triggering a worldwide collapse. A multipolar world would be far better.