Pax Americana

Advance warning - This promises to be a ramble, because it is an attempt to consolidate and streamline a lot of thoughts and threads of thoughts in my head into some kind of sense. I've been thinking a lot about politics lately. Not politics in the sense of elections and other immediate events, but in the sense of how the events show us, in relief or contrast, the bigger picture of global political and ideological ascendancy, and of the workings of hegemonistic/ imperial systems.

Living in America has been a truly illuminating experience. I don't think there is anywhere else in the world where one has an in-your-face view of a capitalist democracy. The very nature of this country, given the bipartite system, the rampant capitalism, the extreme uniformity in the nature and quality of goods and services available across the country, is hegemonistic. Regional differences, regional issues, and diversity (that much-hyped love child of innate racial prejudice and political correctness) are reduced to a mild buzz in the ear, occasionally becoming a cacophony in the public ear on Oprah or because of Don Imus.

Indeed, looking at America is like looking at the edge of a circle from the center - barring superficial glamours, the view is the same anywhere you look...

One comes to appreciate diversity when comparing this with India. Speaking in generalisms, a day in the life of a Bengali is very different from that in the life of a Keralite or a Maharashtrian. Regional politics is actually more important in India than national politics, and while it does make the Legislature look like a collection of corrupt, bickering idiots, to me it is the epitome of true democracy. After all, can one expect a billion people to ever really speak of the same things in the same voice?

If I tried to make a list of the 'hot item' issues discussed by politicians in India, I'd probably fail. There are simply too many politicians, parties, and issues (local and national) to list in one place. It is astounding how a single nation can have in it multiple warzones, insurgencies, burgeoning economies, devastated rural areas, farmer suicides, socialist welfare systems, and above all a well-marketed sense of growth and promise! (India Shining anyone?)

Making such a list for America is bloody easy. One simply has to listen to one of the Presidential Primary debates (pick one - Democrats or Republicans, they talk about the same issues, only with mildly divergent views). Here's a list I came up with:

Religion - Abortion (Roe v Wade), Israel and the End Times
Economy - Budget balancing/ deficits, Taxation (specifically, tax cuts), Social Security, Decline of Industry
World economy - Free Trade (WTO/ IMF), Outsourcing, Immigration
Oil - Reliance on the middle east
Environment - Global Warming, Alternative Energy, Alaska's oil fields, Kyoto
Crime and Punishment - Gun Control, Mandatory Minimums, Death Penalty
Geopolitics - Iraq/ Afghanistan/ Middle East/ Iran/ Sudan (Darfur)

A seemingly comprehensive list, yes? Sure... but here's the problem - they've been talking about this for at least the past 15 years. These are the keywords that have hijacked the public consciousness... politicians need speak of nothing else, are in fact asked about nothing else, when they're trying to get into the national legislature or executive. They have been talked about so much, for so long, by so many, that the issues themselves seem to have been reduced to keywords and phrases to drop indiscriminately so as to indicate erudition and awareness. Unlike the average Indian, nobody in America demands of their politician a long term vision for the future, or an ideology!

In America there is really no thinking outside the box that the above listed issues form. America believes - fervently - that their hegemony is best-in-class in the world (and maybe it is) and that their sole remaining subconscious mission is to propagate it to all corners of the world. To transform - by any means necessary - the entire world into its own image. In their comfort and their belief in ascendancy, America are a complacent bunch. They believe in a vague sort of vision of the Pax Americana, and it is but a static vision of the world's future looking like their own present. When I think about it, there have been no radical philosophical upheavals or about turns in the US since the beginning of the Cold War via the Truman Doctrine. This is very unlike, say India, and its major decision to open up its economy in 1991.

Perhaps this lack of dynamism points to the one difference between America and China/ India/ Brazil (or the rest of the developing world). No sad pun intended, but we are simply hungrier, with more to prove and more to improve. These nations have aspirations to greatness. A sort of unspoken, ill-defined consensus among all the people that make them up that Tomorrow belongs to them. What they make of that tomorrow is of course, yet to be seen.

At this point in most conversations I've had with concerned Indians, the popular thing to say (and my Dad would be the first to assert it) is that in our hunger, we are blindly becoming America (or want to), and that is certainly a bad thing. After all, if India were a young woman raring to achieve glory, America would surely be the jaded, cliched (and ever so misogynistic) Bollywood vamp that looks upon such innocence with superficial condescension and deeply held insecurity. Why then should India aspire to be more like America?

I'm not going to go into arguing about whether we are (or even can) turn into a bad copy of America. I'm not sure if that is the direction we're heading in. But like every other well programmed Indian, whether a resident of my country or not, I sincerely believe in an ascendancy not of the present, but of the unseen future. I believe tomorrow will be better than today, that there is a 'better' to get to. And there's your Great American Problem as I see it - the average American believes his Tomorrow would be great, if only it resembled today.

Perhaps there is some macroscopic factor at play here. A nation, a civilization at its perceived zenith, with little or no opposition and absolutely no role model, will always be more complacent than an incipient one, or one in extreme crisis (Russia, the Middle East perhaps?). Or maybe it is a far simpler reality - the rich will be indolent, the poor will hunger for those riches. Or maybe it is an inevitable tide riding today's population realities - India and China are Tomorrowlands because we are more numerous and younger.

Whatever the reasons, there is a sense (and it is another well marketed one) that America has already, or will soon, hit its high point and then begin the steady decline into relative ignominy. Whether this is true or not is for analytical historians to decide, decades, or perhaps centuries from now. In the meantime, all we can do is compare America to two previous civilizations that rose, and then fell.

I speak of course of the Roman Empire (and the attendant Pax Romana) and the British Empire (and its Pax Britannica).

I found this wonderful book review on Salon.com by Gary Kamiya of the book Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy. A quote from that review:

Murphy illuminates one key facet of the decline of Rome by citing the Oxford historian Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, who explored the evolution of a single Latin term: the word "suffragium," which originally meant "voting tablet." Citizens could cast votes, although in practice great men who ran patronage systems controlled large blocs of votes. Over time, Roman democracy withered, but the patronage system remained, and the word "suffragium" came to mean only the pressure that a powerful man could exert on one's behalf. Eventually, the word came to denote simply the money paid for a favor: a bribe. Ste. Croix's devastating conclusion: "Here, in miniature, is the political history of Rome."

In a telling historical-etymological comparison, Murphy looks at the history of the word "franchise." It too originally "had to do with notions of political freedom and civic responsibility": It denoted the right to vote. "Only much later, in the mid twentieth century, did the idea of being granted certain 'rights' acquire its commercial connotation: the right to market a company's services or products, such as fried chicken or Tupperware ... In the Wiktionary, the commercial meaning of 'franchise' is now the primary definition. The definition involving political freedom and the right to vote comes fifth." Murphy's disturbing conclusion: "Looking back at the history of 'franchise,' then, it's tempting to write this epitaph: Here, in miniature, is the political history of America."

Wonderfully etymological... that hit the intellectual spot with me :)

Another thing to read today would be this part of the scathing review of Niall Ferguson's Colossus - Rise and Fall of the American Empire.

Both these books seem to be a good provocative read... not that I'm going to, because like most enlightened bloggers I choose only to comment idly upon such subjects and then, the intellectual fervor spent, return to my very American life of indolence and hypocrisy.

But before I do that, I feel like this article needs to end on a punchline of some sort. A great conclusive statement that would form the point of why I made you read through all this barely held together crap.

So yeah, I'll give you three such statements (and at least one of them does not directly follow from what you've read so far - sorry!).

1. India (and the developing world) is far more vigorous than America today. America to me, seems to be riding on the inertia of past achievement, toward future ignominy.

2. Democracy, when viewed simplistically, seems to promote hegemony via the rule of the majority. Reality intrudes on said simple generalism and allows for great diversity through its sheer complexity - but apparently this is true only up to a point. The exception seems to be America, which in its overwhelming uniformity is losing that internal diversity and strife that makes democracies alive. This is one of their major underestimated crises. This land of immigrants badly needs new blood, new problems, and new solutions. Indeed, immigration was what kept the Roman empire healthy for as long as it remained that way.

3. What comes of the current state of the world will, I think, surprise everyone. It is easy to look upon past trends and predict the future, but subtleties are hard to predict, and therein lies the rub! Pax Americana will fail one day, maybe soon or late... after all, Americans will certainly not stay idle and watch themselves fall. But if history is any indication one day it will fail, and what replaces it will be something no one saw coming. China, India, Brazil? Sure... but what about that huge unknown in any geopolitical equation - what, I ask, of Africa?

So there you have your platitudes. I might come back to this later, but then again, maybe not. Run along now...

Out.