MAKE US GREAT AGAIN THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF DECLINISM IN GREAT POWERS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY ROBERT RALSTON RONALD R. KREBS ADVISOR AUGUST 2020 i © ROBERT RALSTON, 2020 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee. The members of my committee were always available for feedback and encouragement. I could not have completed this project without them. Mark Bell was always supportive of the project, provided feedback throughout the years, and was always willing to give professional advice and career guidance. Nisha Fazal provided insightful and incisive feedback throughout, and I was so lucky to have Nisha join our department during the early stages of developing this project. Paul graciously agreed to serve on my committee as an “outsider,” and my work is indebted not only to his feedback but also his own work. Ron’s commitment to the project and, more broadly, to my graduate education and training, was amazing. I am so thankful to have had such an engaged and committed mentor over the course of the past six years. My dissertation group deserves special mention for the countless drafts that they have read over the years. I thank Pedro Accorsi, Tracey Blasenheim, Lukas Herr, Elif Kalaycioglu, Florencia Montal, Bryan Nakayama, and Jen Spindel for their support and feedback in dissertation group. And for the snacks! My cohort made my graduate school experience unforgettable. They were supportive when times were tough and when things were going well. I thank Oanh Nguyen, Carly Potz-Nielsen, Marissa Theys, Malina Toza, and Thomas Vargas for their support. I also include in my cohort an honorary member/friend, Matt Motta. I learned so much from all of them and no doubt will continue to in the years ahead. i I thank Jessie Eastman, Alexis Cuttance, Kyle Edwards, Tia Phan, and Sara Flannery for their administrative support throughout my time in graduate school. The department could not function without their expertise and willingness to always lend a helping hand. I thank Sean Burns, who provided technical support that proved instrumental to my text analyses. I thank the intellectual community at Texas A&M’s Albritton Center for Grand Strategy for advancing the dissertation and my professional development during the final year of my graduate education. I thank John Schussler, Jasen Castillo, Kim Field, Fritz Bartel, and Kelley Robbins. Special thanks to Jeongseok (Jay) Lee, who was my office mate and friend during the stresses and strains of the job market and dissertation-writing. I have been fortunate throughout my time as a university student – some 12 years now – to have excellent mentors and professors who shaped my intellectual development over the years at Winthrop University and at Virginia Tech. At Virginia Tech, Dr. Edward Weisband and Dr. Priya Dixit were thoughtful and encouraging mentors as I completed my master’s degree and sought to go on to do a Ph.D. My friend Andrew Davis experienced these legs of my journey with me as a student at both Winthrop and Virginia Tech, and I was lucky to have his support and friendship throughout the last twelve or so years. This dissertation, and my intellectual development more broadly, is a result of these individuals investing time and energy in me. I thank them. The dissertation was graciously funded and supported by the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at Texas A&M University, the Charles Koch Foundation, the CATO Junior Scholars Program, and the Tobin Project. I would especially like to thank ii Christopher Preble, whose discussions during the CATO Junior Scholars Program—and work—were invaluable in developing my understanding of the Kennedy case, from Sputnik through the missile gap and Kennedy’s victory in 1960. I thank archivists and support staff at the Conservative Party Archives (Oxford, UK), the Labour Party Archives (Manchester, UK), the National Archives (Kew, UK), the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (Boston, MA), the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (Simi Valley, CA), and the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (Atlanta, GA). I am indebted to the archivists at each archive for all of their assistance navigating the material and putting up with countless box requests and naïve questions. I thank the archivists at the Nixon Library (Yorba Linda, CA) for scanning requested materials. Several coffee shops deserve a special mention for providing excellent coffee, Wi-Fi, and atmosphere during different stages in the dissertation-writing process: Dunn Brothers in Hopkins, MN; Coffee Shop Northeast in Minneapolis, MN; Analace Coffee in Northeast Minneapolis, MN; and Humble Cup, Minneapolis, MN. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family: my mum, dad, brother, and my family across the pond. Beau Ralston deserves all of the cookies that come his way for being such a good boy and dissertation distraction dog. I especially thank my wife Katie Ralston. I would not have completed this project without Katie’s support and love. Katie sacrificed a lot for me to complete this project and finish my Ph.D. She has put up with my stress and complaints. She provided words of wisdom and lots of love when the going was tough. During the final stretches of the dissertation writing process, which coincided iii with the Covid-19 pandemic, we survived staying in social isolation in a small one- bedroom apartment. This dissertation is dedicated to her. iv Abstract Dominant narratives of international decline emerge in great powers frequently, often independent of ‘objective’ measures of international decline. Such narratives frequently sustain policies of global expansion to save face, regain lost glory, and reverse decline. Yet we have little understanding of when and why narratives of international decline become dominant, why they resonate, or their policy consequences. When, and why, does declinism emerge and become salient in great powers? As narratives of decline become or are dominant, what policies are advanced in the name of reversing the country’s international decline? Using computerized text analyses of UK parliamentary speech and newspapers and US congressional and presidential speech and newspapers, I track declinism in political discourse in both countries between 1945 and the 2000s. I then explain when declinism becomes a live issue in great powers. I show how different narratives of decline prescribe different polices or behaviors for overcoming decline. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………...i Abstract…………………………………………………………………………...…….…v List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………….vii List of Figures………………………………………………………………………...…viii Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 2: Measuring Declinism in the United Kingdom and United States……………10 Chapter 3: Make Us Great Again: The Politics of Decline…………………………………………………………………………………...64 Chapter 4: Less like the Germans and More like the Italians: Thatcher, the New Right, and Declinism in 1970s Britain…………………………………………………………109 Chapter 5: “The America We Must Not Be:” Missiles, Prestige, and Kennedy’s New Frontier………………………………………………………………………………….177 Chapter 6: From Malaise to Morning in America: The Declinism of Ronald Reagan…234 Chapter 7: Brokers of Declinism: Declinism in France and Japan……………………..283 Chapter 8: Make Us Great Again……………………………………………………….318 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...332 Appendix 1: Additional Figures, Tables, and Links from Chapter 2…………………...344 Appendix 2: Description of Archival Research………………………………………...355 vi List of Tables Table 1: (UK) Dictionary Terms-Terms That Appear on Either Side of “declin*”……..18 Table 2: Comparative Average Growth Rates…………………………………………...28 Table 3: (US) Dictionary Terms -Terms That Appear on Either Side of “declin*”……..46 Table 4: Mechanisms Through Which Declinism Might Impact Policy………………...82 Table 5: Policy Prescriptions for Different Narratives of Decline………………………91 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Mentions, Speeches, and Refined Dictionary Counts of ‘declin*’ in Parliament…22 Figure 2: Mentions of ‘Declin*’ and ‘International Declin*’ in The Times of London………24 Figure 3: The Mismatch between Decline and Declinism …………………………………..27 Figure 4: UK Composite Index of National Capability Scores Relative to Peers…………...31 Figure 5: Number of Speeches Mentioning Decline…………………………………………39 Figure 6: Percent of Speeches Mentioning Decline………………………………………….40 Figure 7: Number of Speeches Mentioning Decline by Type………………………………..44 Figure 8: Mentions of Declin* in the Congressional Record………………………………...48 Figure 9: Refined Dictionary of Declinism in the Congressional Record…………………...48 Figure 10: Mentions of “decline” in the New York Times, by Year………………………...51 Figure 11: Great Power Share of GDP (1945-2005) ………………………………………...57 Figure 12: The Mismatch between Decline (as GDP share) and Declinism…………………59 Figure 13: The Mismatch between Decline (as CINC) and Declinism……………………...59 Figure 14: The Mismatch Between Decline and Declinism JFK and RR’s Campaigns……..60 Figure 15: US Composite Index of National Capability Scores Relative to Peers…………..62 Figure 16: Diagram 1 in Stepping Stones.…………………………………………………..139 Figure 17: Diagram 2 in Stepping Stones.…………………………………………………..140 Figure 18: ‘The World had a bit of a Cold, but Britain has Double Pneumonia!’………….154 Figure 19: Gallup Polling on Missiles-August 1958 to February 1963…………………….185 Figure 20: