The United States

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The United States: The Problems of Number One in Relative Decline
the United States … cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the „number one‟ position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategical realm, it can preserve a reasonable balance between the nation‟s perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain those commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of ever-shifting patterns of global production. Of course, the United States has not been able to adjust to the “evershifting patterns of global production.” This is obvious. As Kennedy points out, the “decision-making structure that permits a proper grand strategy to be carried out” has to be robust. It‟s not, we know this now too. Why? Because, historically, the United States has relied heavily on the mechanisms of “piracy” and protectionism in its development, ensuring the world view of the United States as a predator. It‟s not by chance that the single most problematic piece of military hardware is the predator drone. Kennedy argues that the strength of a Great Power can be properly measured only relative to other powers, and he provides a straightforward and persuasively argued thesis: Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threat facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the raison d'être of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity", and it remains such until the power's decline. He concludes that declining countries can experience greater difficulties in balancing their preferences for guns, butter and invesments.

The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequences of the more or less efficient utilization of the state's productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that state's economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. For that reason, how a Great Power's position steadily alters in peacetime is as important to this study as how it fights in wartime. The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another. Measures of strength in the 20th century use population size, urbanization rates, Barioch's per capita levels of industrialization, iron and steel production, energy consumption (measured in millions of metric tons of coal equivalent), and total industrial output of the powers (measured vs. Britain's 1900 figure of 100), to gauge the strength of the various great powers. Paul also gave emphasis on Productivity Increase based on systematic interventions which lead to Economic Growth & Prosperity to Great Powers in 20th Century. He compares the Great Powers at the close of the 20th century and predicts the decline of the Soviet Union, the rise of China and Japan, the struggles and potential for the European Economic Community (EEC), and the relative decline of the United States. He highlights the precedence of the "four modernizations" in Deng Xiaoping's plans for China—agriculture, industry, science and military—deemphasizing military while the United States and the Soviet Union are emphasizing it. He predicts that continued deficit spending, especially on military buildup, will be the single most important reason for decline of any Great Power. What we are experiencing in this global paradigm shift is a crisis in Education, writ large. That is, we are having problems synthesizing information, siphoning through the wreckage that is mass media induced information, communication, and, most importantly, we are having great difficulty analyzing and putting into practice our historical antecedents.

We forget them, toss these out. We are therefore in a global crisis of knowledge, lead by the United States. From the Civil War to the first half of the 20th century, the United States‟ economy benefited from high agricultural production, plentiful raw materials, technological advancements and financial inflows. During this time the U.S. did not have to contend with foreign dangers.[5] From 1860 to 1914, U.S. exports increase sevenfold and result in huge trading surpluses.[6] By 1945, the U.S.‟ economy enjoyed both high productivity and was the only major industrialized nation intact after World War II. From the 1960‟s onwards, the U.S. saw a relative decline in its share of world production and trade.[7] By the 1980‟s, the U.S. experienced declining exports of agricultural and manufacturing goods. In the space of a few years, the U.S. went from being the largest creditor to the largest debtor nation.[8] At the same time the federal debt was growing at an increasing pace.[9] This situation is typical of declining hegemons.[10] United States has the typical problems of a great power which include balancing guns and butter and investments for economic growth.[11] The U.S.' growing military commitment to every continent (other than the Antarctica) and the growing cost of military hardware severely limits available options.[12] The author compares the U.S.' situation to Great Britain's prior to World War I. He comments that the map of U.S. bases is similar to Great Britain's before World War I.[13] As the military expenses grow this reduces the investments in economic growth, which eventually "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities, and weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense." [14] Mr. Kennedy's advice is as follows. The task facing American statesmen over the next decades, therefore, is to recognize that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to “manage” affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States‟ position takes place slowly and smoothly, and is not accelerated by policies which bring merely short-term advantage but longer-term disadvantage.

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