AMERICANIZE OR DIE:

No Decline Here: Rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. (Victor Davis Hanson, 5/24/07, National Review)

After the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991, America proclaimed itself at the “end of history” — meaning that the spread of our style of democratic capitalism was now inevitable. Now a mere 16 years later, some are just as sure we approach our own end.

But our rivals are weaker and America is far stronger than many think.

Take oil. With oil prices at nearly $70 a barrel, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez seem invincible as they rally anti-American feeling.

But if we find alternate energy sources, or reduce slightly our oil hunger, we can defang all three rather quickly. None of their countries have a middle class or a culture of entrepreneurship to discover and disseminate new knowledge.

Russia and Europe are shrinking. China is an aging nation of only children. The only thing the hard-working Chinese fear more than their bankrupt Communist dictatorship is getting rid of it.

True, the economies of China and India have made amazing progress. But both have rocky rendezvous ahead with all the social and cultural problems that we long ago addressed in the 20th century.

And European elites can’t blame their problems — a bullying Russia, Islamic terrorists, unassimilated minorities, and high unemployment — all on George Bush’s swagger and accent. The recent elections of Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France suggest that Europe’s cheap anti-Americanism may be ending, and that our practices of more open markets, lower taxes, and less state control are preferable to the European status quo.

In truth, a never-stronger America is being tested as never before. The world is watching whether we win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Middle East is either going to reform or remain an oil-rich tribal mess that endangers the entire world.

A better way to assess our chances at maintaining our preeminence is simply to ask the same questions that are the historical barometers of our nation’s success or failure: Does any nation have a constitution comparable to ours? Does merit — or religion, tribe, or class — mostly gauge success or failure in America? What nation is as free, stable, and transparent as the U.S.?

The broader point is that the question of whether these places Reform is existential to them, but only matters to us because of our Judeo-Christian ethos. We intervene out of neighbor-love, not because of any legitimate national security concerns, which is why our leaders have historically manufactured pretexts for our foreign wars.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 24, 2007 6:37 AM