World Power Politics

Eminent economic historian Niall Ferguson has written an important analysis of America’s current decline. 

From the onset Ferguson defines power as the ability to make people do something that they would not otherwise do. His conceptual framework puts us in a world where the question is: who is pushing who around. We are not in the realm of the clash of civilizations.

In Ferguson’s words:

A great power can make other states or entities do what is in its national interest; and can shrug off their pressures on it to do what would suit them better.

As we shall see, this is simplistic and in error. 

Much of the information Ferguson provides is accurate. And yet, I take issue with his conceptual framework. This interest in power dynamics, even a passing reference to the will to power, is obviously Nietzschean. 

Fair enough, Nietzsche is everyone’s favorite syphilitic philosopher, but this does not grant him special wisdom. For my part I prefer to see world politics in terms of Samuel Huntington’s clash or even competition between different cultures. 

In effect, the information Ferguson provides sustains Huntington more than it sustains Nietzsche.

If life is about exercising power and pushing people around, making them do things they do not want to do, then we need not negotiate with people. We can forget about free trade and the division of labor. Rather than compete, we can simply punish our adversaries, by sanctioning them, by placing tariffs on their products, by refusing to allow them to trade freely with the rest of the world.

If you want to excel in competition you need to play by the rules.If we see our competitors as enemies we will try to destroy them, not to outcompete them.  

To compete, whether at baseball or in spelling bees, you need to work to achieve. You will build, not tear down what others have built. You assume that your opponents are honorable until proven otherwise. And you do not try to make them into enemies. Making competition into a war will eventually lead to the real thing.

Allow me a different thesis. America is great because it has succeeded. It succeeded in wars. It succeeded in producing prosperity. Therefore it has set an example that other nations have been happy to follow.

Americans might try to push other nations around, but other nations have their pride. Often they refuse to adopt certain cultural habits because they feel that they are being forced to do so. Power notwithstanding, they will push back. 

So, other nations are not obliged to adopt American cultural habits. If we try to force them to do so they will become even more defiant. They might honor the spirit of their ancestors by refusing to abandon certain cultural practices.

In the Middle East today the maniacs of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood refuse to adopt Western capitalistic ways. In that they are joined by certain of Israel’s neighbors. Other nations in that region have been modernizing, perhaps not fast enough, in our view. Hamas wants to destroy Israel because it cannot accept that Western ways actually work more effectively to produce prosperity.

It is less about power and more about being a role model. If America is the great role model other nations will be likely to emulate our example. Unfortunately, the more we are involved in imposing ourselves on others the less they see us as a role model.

Also, if the West seems like it is becoming weak, decadent and degenerate, other nations and cultures will be less likely to emulate its bad example. A culture that is wallowing in absurd notions like equity and that punishes people who do not accept the difference between the sexes is not setting a very good example.

Besides, to our chagrin, over the past several decades China, of all places, has enjoyed extraordinary economic growth, wealth creation and poverty reduction. You may not like it. You might think that they have cheated. You may prefer to defend the Uyghurs. The truth remains, countries around the world are assessing the different competing role models. 

Besides, attacking a nation’s source of pride is a good way to provoke armed conflict.

As of now China seems not to be doing very well, but Western Europe and America seems to be sliding into terminal decadence and weakness. Surely, Ferguson sees this. He argues that we are losing the ability to push people around. I would recommend that we are losing our status as the world’s role model.

We all thrillto the greatness of democracy, but, people around the world, looking at America, see that democracy has handed executive leadership to a man suffering from senile dementia. It sees his backup as a certifiable imbecile. And if it looks to up and coming leaders in one political party it finds a pathetic twerp from Queens, who supposedly serious people supposedly take seriously.

Would you choose that crew to run your country?Is it an argument for democracy?

Ferguson correctly notes the signs of American collapse, from allowing itself to be invaded by low IQ migrants to its failing education system to the politicization of the legal system. 

And then, there is the matter of technological innovation. Here China is, at the very least, catching up, if not getting ahead. Ferguson explains:

But a striking feature of Cold War II is that China is posing serious challenges in a number of key domains: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, as well as information warfare (TikTok springs to mind). And unlike the US, China has the manufacturing capability to mass produce almost any new technology, from drones to hypersonic missiles.

Ferguson compares the economies of America and China. We are certainly doing better, but that depends on how we define prosperity:

Is the US still No. 1 in terms of aggregate economic output? On a current-dollar basis, it is still clearly the world’s largest economy. China’s GDP in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund, was probably around two-thirds of US GDP when measured in dollars. However, when it is calculated on the basis of purchasing power parity — adjusting for the fact that non-traded services and goods are significantly cheaper in, say, Changsha than in Philadelphia — China caught up with the US in 2016, and last year had an economy a fifth larger.

The question is, will countries around the world, faced with the option of emulating America or emulating China choose the first or the last. If you think that world politics is a power struggle and that we should aspire to push people around, we have seriously miscalculated. Or, should I say, misconceptualized. 

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