In 1992, the United States stood astride the globe triumphant as the sole superpower, and Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history. How times have changed. Now, less than three decades later, China is rising, Russia is resurgent, Europe's future is uncertain, and Donald J. Trump is in the White House proclaiming, ‘America First!’
In Empire in Retreat, Victor Bulmer-Thomas chronicles the rise and decline of the US empire, from its early days of territorial expansion (mostly at the expense of Native Americans and Mexico), through the high-water mark of its dominion in the second half of the twentieth century, to its waning hegemony in the new millennium. Bulmer-Thomas’ command of this vast sweep of history is impressive, offering not only a concise account of how the US empire was constructed and sustained, but a detailed explanation for its decline as well.
‘The root causes of US retreat from empire are internal’, he concludes (p. 7), attributing the empire's decline (and its inevitable end) to poor economic performance relative to other countries; a dysfunctional political system; allies no longer willing to defer to the United States at the expense of their own national interest; and a public no longer willing to bear the costs. He builds a strong case for each of these propositions – but perhaps a bit too strong. One could make an equally strong case, I think, that the dynamics of decline are as much external as internal, and that the institutions supporting US empire still exhibit considerable resilience.
At the end of World War II, with Europe and the Soviet Union in ruins, the economic supremacy of the United States was unrivalled, allowing it to dictate the terms of the post-war international economic order. As Bulmer-Thomas notes, this ‘institutional’ control (as opposed to territorial control) gave the US empire a semi-global reach (excluding the Soviet bloc and China). But the gap between US economic performance and performance elsewhere was bound to narrow as other economies recovered from the war and the underdeveloped world began developing. Not surprisingly, as the gap closed, US allies became resistant to Washington's leadership when interests conflicted. In Asia–Pacific, Africa and Latin America, a rising China poses the most serious challenge to US hegemony.
Bulmer-Thomas argues that US indebtedness is a serious weakness, but as the world's largest consumer economy, the United States can hardly avoid running perennial trade deficits. Unlike other countries, the United States gets away with such profligacy precisely because it is an empire and the US dollar remains the world's reserve currency. In the Great Recession, capital flocked to US Treasury Securities as the only safe harbour, notwithstanding the US debt. Nor are there any competitors on the horizon; fissures in the European Union make the Euro unattractive and China has its own internal debt problem, so the Renminbi is no better. True, other countries resent it when Washington uses the dollar's dominance to impose extraterritorial finance sanctions on countries ranging from Cuba to Iran, but they have no recourse, at least for now.
In addition to describing the development of the US empire, Bulmer-Thomas provides a parallel story of those who resisted it, from opponents of territorial expansion at the dawn of empire to the anti-globalisation activists of today. This parallel narrative sets the stage for his argument that a key cause of the empire's decline is the loss of the political consensus that supported it. Yet what strikes the reader most sharply in this story is how the anti-imperialists always lost the debate.
Donald Trump's election after adopting the slogan of 1930s isolationism, ‘America First’, would seem to be strong evidence that the public is fed up with bearing the costs of empire. Certainly, one reason for his success was the alienation felt by people put out of work by deindustrialisation in the US heartland, a process due in part to free trade and open markets.
Trump's disdain for European allies and for the international order that the United States itself built after World War II has done real damage to US global leadership, prompting German Prime Minister Angela Merkel to declare that Europe must ‘take [our] destiny into its own hands’ because the United States is no longer a reliable partner.
But it would a mistake to think that Trump's retreat from global leadership represents either resurgent isolationism among the general public or the disenchantment of the political elite with internationalism. Trump sits in the White House because of the Electoral College, despite having lost the popular vote total by over three million votes. Had just 20,000 voters in three key states voted differently, Hillary Clinton would be president, pursuing a traditional internationalist agenda. The political establishment, Republican and Democratic alike, recoiled at Trump's retreat from empire, and even after he cowed the Republicans on most issues, they still criticised his foreign policy. To be sure, the strength of the US empire is not what it was in its prime, for all the reasons that Bulmer-Thomas elucidates. But I suspect that predictions of its demise are a bit premature.
Bulmer-Thomas closes with some advice to the United States: better not to resist the decline of empire but to ‘embrace what is becoming inevitable. The hardest part will be shedding the imperial mindset, acquired over many generations. Yet, as other countries have shown, it can be done’ (p. 365) – friendly advice from a colleague whose own country not so long ago held and lost an empire of its own.
