Gulliver Unbound Can America Rule the World? Gulliver Unbound Can America Rule the World?

Gulliver Unbound Can America Rule the World? Gulliver Unbound Can America Rule the World? Josef Joffe The Twentieth Annual John Bonython Lecture Sheraton on the Park, Sydney 5 August 2003 CIS Occasional Paper 85 2003 Published September 2003 by The Centre for Independent Studies Limited PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, 1590 Email: [email protected] Website: www.cis.org.au Views expressed in the publications of The Centre for Independent Studies are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre’s staff, Advisers, Directors or officers. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: Joffe, Josef. Gulliver unbound : can America rule the world? ISBN 1 86432 078 8. 1. World politics - 1989- . 2. Balance of power - Forecasting. 3. United States - Politics and government - 1993- . 4. United States - Foreign relations. I. Centre for Independent Studies (Australia). II. Title. (Series : CIS occasional papers ; no.85). 327.1 ©2003 The Centre for Independent Studies Cover and book design by Heng-Chai Lim Edited and typeset by Carolynn Chen Typeset in AGaramond 11pt The John Bonython Lecture was supported by Opening Remarks adies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure and honour on behalf of CIS to introduce tonight’s speaker, Dr Josef L Joffe, otherwise known as my friend Joe. Josef Joffe is here on his first visit to Australia from Germany, where he is Publisher and Editor of the prestigious Die Zeit newspaper. Distinguished and prestigious as Die Zeit is, I wouldn’t rate that position as the most distinctive thing about Joe Joffe. He is much more than that. He is an outstanding analyst and commentator on international politics, widely regarded as a leading figure in the field, both in Europe and the United States. In a sense, Joe has had an unfair advantage over most of us in that he is thoroughly at home on both sides of the Atlantic. He grew up and received his initial education in Germany and then continued his education at the best American universities, culminating in a PhD from Harvard. Subsequently, he has gone back to even more of those universities to teach and lecture. And I notice he only goes to the best institutions—Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Johns Hopkins—and now he has chosen to come to the best think tank in Australia. As well as his lecturing and teaching, he is a frequent contributor to the most important magazines, particularly in 5 America, where most of them are. He contributes to Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic and Commentary. He is a very familiar and very admired figure in these circles. He is better equipped than anyone else in the world to interpret America to Europe, and Europe to America. And he does both superbly. If there ever was a time when that job was needed, it is when there is a serious possibility of divergence between the two sides of the Atlantic, and when the relationship between the major countries on both sides is under greater strain than it has been for a very long time. Now, let me tell you about my own opinion of him. I used to edit The National Interest in Washington for 16 years. We had a very distinguished advisory panel; Kissinger was on it, Brzezinski’s on it, Jean Kirkpatrick’s on it, Sam Huntington’s on it, and there was only one European we invited on it: Joffe. We were always very happy to seek his advice on matters across the board. Apart from having him on the advisory panel, he was an absolute delight as foreign editor. You always knew he would deliver, you always knew that you would get first-rate stuff and you always knew it would be very well-written. One of the bad things about the way international relations is taught and studied is that it tends to ruin people’s prose styles. You get abstruse jargon, arcane stuff in which people are just talking to each other in a very small circle. Joe is not like that. He writes very clear English and his form of realism is the best sort, because it is grounded essentially in history. I think this is the only proper way to teach, to learn or talk about international affairs. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my very great pleasure to call on Josef Joffe. Owen Harries Senior Fellow The Centre for Independent Studies 6 Gulliver Unbound Can America Rule the World? Josef Joffe I. Hegemony in the 21st century y title is ‘Gulliver Unbound’, and to make the point in all its baldness: There has never been a Gulliver M as Gulliveresque as 21st century America. It dwarfs anybody in the present as well as in the past. Of all the former greats, only Rome fits the description although, for precision’s sake, it should be classified as an empire. For at the height of its power, after it had subjugated the lands between the British Isles, Carthage and the Levant, Rome was virtually identical with the then-international system itself. Its successors—the Papacy or the Empire, Habsburg-Spain or the France of Louis XIV, 19th century Britain or 20th century Germany—were only would-be hegemons. True, the sun never set on Charles V’s empire, Britain ruled the waves in the 19th century, and Nazi Germany went all the way to the gates of Moscow and Cairo. But they were vulnerable to combinations of other powers which prevailed over them in the end. Nor was Britain a real exception. To uphold its exalted position, it depended on allies—all the way to World War II when it was almost done in by a single foe, Nazi Germany. 7 Josef Joffe America is unique in time and space. Others might be able to defy the US, but they can neither compel nor vanquish it— except in the meaningless sense of nuclear devastation that would be mutual. The sweep of its interests, the weight of its resources and the margin of its usable power are unprecedented. None other than Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, has made the point in all its glory—though grudgingly, one must assume. ‘The United States of America’, he proclaimed, ‘today predominates on the economic, monetary [and] technological level, and in the cultural area . In terms of power and influence, it is not comparable to anything known in modern history.’ In short, the US is a hyper-puissance, a ‘hyper-power’. Indeed, just to mention two numbers. When in the spring of 2002, George W. Bush asked the Congress for a supplemental defence appropriation, the sum requested—$48 billion— represented twice the annual defence outlays of Germany or Italy. If US defence spending proceeds as planned, this ‘hyper- power’ by 2007 will invest more in defence than all other countries combined. This giant, a kind of Über-Gulliver, is also different from its predecessors in a number of other ways. First, unlike Rome et al., this Gulliver can intervene— without the help of allies—anywhere in the world, and almost in real-time, as those B-52 bombers demonstrated that rose in Missouri, dropped their bomb load over Afghanistan and then returned home, all in one fell swoop. Bases, as during the Second Iraq War, are useful and important, but not vital, as the closure of Turkey to the passage of American troops demonstrated earlier this year. No other power could ever project so much might so far, so fast and so devastatingly. Second, the US economy is the world’s largest, but in a fundamentally different way than, say, Habsburg’s. The Habsburg Empire was like Saudi Arabia—essentially an extraction economy, a one-horse hegemon. When the silver from Latin America dried up, so did Habsburg’s power. For all of its failings—from the 8 Gulliver Unbound: Can America Rule the World? Enron scandal to the rising current account deficit—the American economy seems better positioned to conquer the future than any of its current rivals, for at least two reasons. One, it is more flexibly organised, hence better prepared to respond to ever more rapid shifts in demand and technology. Two, it enjoys an enormous competitive advantage in the acquisition of today’s most important factor of production— which is knowledge. It is not just the global predominance of Harvard and Stanford or Caltech and MIT, but something more profound and less obvious. This is a culture that keeps drawing the best and the brightest to its shores—which, by the way, is true for the English-speaking nations in general. No longer is it Metternich, Hitler or Stalin who are driving talent across the Atlantic. It comes entirely unpropelled, attracted by the wealth of opportunity and the speed of advancement. (How this most precious resource will be able to clear the barriers of the Patriot Act is an issue America has not yet begun to tackle.) A third mainstay of American preponderance is cultural. This is another significant contrast with past hegemons. Whereas the cultural sway of Rome, Britain and Soviet Russia ended at their military borders, American culture needs no gun to travel. If there is a global civilisation, it is American. Nor is it just McDonalds and Hollywood, it is also Microsoft and Harvard. It covers the whole range from low low brow to high high brow. In the old days, after the Romans conquered Greece, the wealthy Romans used to send their children to Greek universities; today’s Greeks, that is, the Europeans, send their kids to Roman, that is, American universities.

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