Imperial
Evanescence:
How Long will the U.S. Empire Stand?
The limited perspective
offered by the relatively short human lifespan has been cause
for much observational error. Even in a postmodern existence where
constant change has become the norm and the term progress
rendered redundant, the common individual still acts as though
- substantively, at least - things have always been and will always
be just as they are now.
But there's no reason to believe that the world we know will endure
any longer than the world our ancestors knew. The Mesopotamian,
Roman, and British empires were all once rulers of the largest
chunk of the known world, a distinction now flaunted by the red,
white, and blue. The question is not if the U.S. Empire
will fall but when, and whether that fall will be an outright
collapse or just a diminishment in population and/or global influence.
The Five-Point Framework
Pulitzer prize-winner Jared Diamond, in his bestseller Collapse:
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, introduces a five-point
framework for evaluating potential causes of societal collapse.
To test the framework, Diamond explores a number of past and present
societies in immense detail, the most striking being the oft-referenced
Easter Island and the mysteriously vanished Maya.
Polynesian settlers arrived at Easter in the latter half of the
first millennium, bringing with them farming techniques and some
forms of animal husbandry. It's a common myth that the Islanders
deforested Easter just to erect giant statues - in reality the
Maoi sculptures were just one factor that contributed to the island's
complete deforestation. Trees were cut for firewood, canoes, mulch,
thatching, and various other purposes. The consumption of the
Island's resources was a gradual process, but the culture's decline
into cannibalism and a drastically reduced population was abrupt.
Diamond uses several other collapsed Oceanic island societies
to illustrate the devastating effect of the loss of a strategic
trading partner, but deforestation remains the theme throughout.
The Maya remain a slightly more perplexing case, at least in regard
to what kept the population from rebounding after what is referred
to as the "Classic Maya Collapse" around 700 A.D. But
the conditions leading to their decline were over-farming, poor
crop rotation, and civil war, resulting from a population density
greater than present-day Western Europe.
Diamond orders his case studies by increasing complexity, first
profiling Easter's simple negligence before working up to the
complex factors that led to the fall of the Anasazi and Greenland
Norse. What kind of picture does Diamond's five-point framework
paint for America?
A Look in the Mirror
His first set of factors is the damage a people inflicts upon
their environment. Although the U.S. now boasts hundreds of thousands
of acres of national parkland and increased social awareness,
the nation remains foremost in the world in solid waste and air
pollution, refuses to join the Kyoto protocol, and still depends
on unsustainable amounts of logging and mining to meet its raw
material needs.
The second set of factors is climate change. The U.S., with its
enormous dependence on imports from around the world, is especially
susceptible to climate change - both natural and manmade - that
could affect its food supply as well as the flow of other vital
materials. If the more dire predictions about global warming come
to fruition, or a natural climate change occurs, the U.S. is not
well-positioned to react.
The third consideration is hostile neighbors. Some would say the
U.S. is overly prepared for this threat with a defense budget
far exceeding reasonable limits. And the application of Diamond's
framework would support that view, as outside threats are probably
the least of America's concerns. Terrorists and rogue states may
always threaten peace of mind, and their actions are certainly
visible, but the fact remains that no rival currently wields the
kind of power needed to overthrow a juggernaut like the U.S.
The next set of factors that could lead to social collapse is
the decreased support of friendly neighbors. This is likely the
most salient short-term concern, as America's energy infrastructure
is not prepared to meet demands should Kuwait or, now, Iraq, turn
off the oil spigot.
The final point of consideration is how a society responds to
its problems. Diamond details a so-called "tragedy of the
commons," where the most potent problems are either too far
off or too unwieldy for a common citizen to confront. Certainly,
the U.S. approach to its problems seems, well, problematic. America
is neither small enough to employ a "bottom-up" approach
nor centralized enough to confront its environmental challenges
with rigid governmental regulation. The empowerment of corporations
and citizens who to seek to fulfill their individual needs nearly
takes precedence over the necessary response.
The Verdict
Few non hunter-gatherer societies have proved to be sustainable
even in the short-term, and the U.S. is at risk with regard to
at least four of Diamond's five sets of factors. Even the author's
self-termed "success stories" tend to either employ
artificial population limits (such as the various methods of suicide,
abortion, and infanticide used the by Tikopian Islanders) or the
outsourcing of environmental degradation (as done by, for example,
the Japanese). The U.S. has shown no inclination toward such self-limitation;
its moral system actually precludes it.
Diamond is careful to not liken past collapses too closely to
modern societies, nor to suggest a deterministic method for predicting
a society's success or failure, pointing out the existence of
many considerations unique to the modern world. One such factor,
and a condition that complicates the analysis greatly, is globalization.
Beyond the reliance on neighbors and trading partners discussed
in Diamond's framework, globalization verges on rendering borders
completely obsolete. In fact, Easter Island as a model is quite
possibly more relevant when applied to Earth as a whole rather
than a single nation, as Easter's isolation in the Pacific creates
a strong parallel to Earth's isolation in space. The interdependence
of a global economy helps safeguard against the collapse of individual
nations, but it also blurs international boundaries so that the
fall of nations could merely be viewed as a stage in a natural
power-cycle.
Super-efficient agriculture and the insurances of globalization
make it likely that the U.S. will maintain a sizeable population.
But the specter of infighting, external threats, and the scarcity
of vital imports could diminish American global influence greatly.
The most apt model may be the contraction of the British Empire;
in such a case American influence and culture would imprint the
globe long after its power had cycled to another giant. But that
reality may provide little solace to generations accustomed to
their country's global reign, one that by Diamond's model - backed
by empirical evidence - warns will not last forever.
Written
By Les Beldo
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