@ Sully:
It goes without saying that to project on the basis of current trends usefully, one must understand the trend accurately in its relevant dimensions. Your bamboo example would be an example of failing that test.
I'm happy to believe that China will and must disappoint its boosters even worse than Japan has disappointed the "Gung-Ho"-ists of the late '80s early '90s, or as the Soviet Union frustrated the predictions of those who thought it had all of the necessary advantages to win the Cold War. But the same would go for those who project an inevitable happy ending based on longer "trends" regarding American exceptionalism/imperialism.
You also seem to attribute to the author a level of Sinophilia that his piece doesn't really demonstrate. He doesn't seem to believe, for instance, that China is culturally prepared to take on the role of world leader, much less world hegemon. His main scenarios are more "things fall apart," not Yellow Menace.
Paul Kennedy and other pessimists of the '80s-'90s, like earlier Cold War pessimists, especially the ones with books to sell, may have been wrong on the timing. The closer you can date the apocalypse to the present day, the more interesting to readers, for obvious reasons. Just ask your local Jehovah's Witness, as you could have asked one of his precursors at any time going back to the birth of Christianity. Apocalyptic fiction is not a new literary genre. But if Kennedy was as wrong about Japan and the U.S. looking forward from ca. 1990 as the Jesus Christ of the Bible was about the end of the world looking forward from the 1st Century AD, that doesn't mean that either was wrong about the larger issues he had in mind.
The fall of the American pseudo-empire won't be the same as the fall of Rome or the fall of Babylon the Great, but it will happen, or pseudo-happen, and the entropic trends are readily visible. Japan then, the Soviet Union previously, China now, are just external symbols for inexorable internal processes that may happen to take longer than a publisher's time horizon to work themselves out.
Which country has a history of nonconsensual government again, typified by the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, and is likely to exhibit
massive social dislocation because of it, Warlordism with nuclear weapons, is one such situation to look forward to. And McCoy’s
schadenfreude, leaps off the page, along with the old standby, peak oil
From my position it looks more like your cast-iron ideological commitments leap into the page.
China could disappear into the Gobi Desert tomorrow and someone could come up with a way to power cars and industry with blog comment threads, and the trends would still be intact.
This idiot Salon writer is probably one of the Americans who thinks China already has a stronger economy than the U.S.
Considering that the "idiot" - not a regular Salon idiot, however - spent a substantial portion of the article examining the question in detail, and was quite clear about the when's and how's of China's projected gains, that's a very weak criticism.
So who is in charge if push really comes to shove?
Today, us. But what about the next "push," and the one after that? The author projects on current trends and makes basic assumptions about aggregate economic strength sooner or later equating with ability to project and maintain political/military power. He attempts to consider synergistic effects. Other than briefly in the speculative scenario-building, he doesn't attempt to get down to the level of specificity that Krepinevich does in SEVEN DEADLY SCENARIOS.
McCoy doesn't make any claims about the per capita consumption or average living standards of the post-imperial American populace. They might indeed be higher than those of the average Chinese peasant, but they would be experienced by many as a massive loss. "Well, we're mostly doing better than Haiti," is a lot different from "We're the last best hope for mankind re-making the world in our image."
It's impossible to reverse the overall trend he describes, and efforts to do so will likely accelerate and deepen it, and make the effects of it worse. Whether the material consequences will come rushing upon us, accelerated by technology and globalization, or whether other aspects of the situation will retard developments and soften the blows, is harder to see. America may be materially or relatively dominant militarily and economically for generations to come, but whether it will be a nice place to live for most of its citizens, or in other respects the same America we thought it was, is another question.
@ Sully:
It goes without saying that to project on the basis of current trends usefully, one must understand the trend accurately in its relevant dimensions. Your bamboo example would be an example of failing that test.
I'm happy to believe that China will and must disappoint its boosters even worse than Japan has disappointed the "Gung-Ho"-ists of the late '80s early '90s, or as the Soviet Union frustrated the predictions of those who thought it had all of the necessary advantages to win the Cold War. But the same would go for those who project an inevitable happy ending based on longer "trends" regarding American exceptionalism/imperialism.
You also seem to attribute to the author a level of Sinophilia that his piece doesn't really demonstrate. He doesn't seem to believe, for instance, that China is culturally prepared to take on the role of world leader, much less world hegemon. His main scenarios are more "things fall apart," not Yellow Menace.
Paul Kennedy and other pessimists of the '80s-'90s, like earlier Cold War pessimists, especially the ones with books to sell, may have been wrong on the timing. The closer you can date the apocalypse to the present day, the more interesting to readers, for obvious reasons. Just ask your local Jehovah's Witness, as you could have asked one of his precursors at any time going back to the birth of Christianity. Apocalyptic fiction is not a new literary genre. But if Kennedy was as wrong about Japan and the U.S. looking forward from ca. 1990 as the Jesus Christ of the Bible was about the end of the world looking forward from the 1st Century AD, that doesn't mean that either was wrong about the larger issues he had in mind.
The fall of the American pseudo-empire won't be the same as the fall of Rome or the fall of Babylon the Great, but it will happen, or pseudo-happen, and the entropic trends are readily visible. Japan then, the Soviet Union previously, China now, are just external symbols for inexorable internal processes that may happen to take longer than a publisher's time horizon to work themselves out.
narciso wrote:
From my position it looks more like your cast-iron ideological commitments leap into the page.
China could disappear into the Gobi Desert tomorrow and someone could come up with a way to power cars and industry with blog comment threads, and the trends would still be intact.
Sully wrote:
Considering that the "idiot" - not a regular Salon idiot, however - spent a substantial portion of the article examining the question in detail, and was quite clear about the when's and how's of China's projected gains, that's a very weak criticism.
Today, us. But what about the next "push," and the one after that? The author projects on current trends and makes basic assumptions about aggregate economic strength sooner or later equating with ability to project and maintain political/military power. He attempts to consider synergistic effects. Other than briefly in the speculative scenario-building, he doesn't attempt to get down to the level of specificity that Krepinevich does in SEVEN DEADLY SCENARIOS.
McCoy doesn't make any claims about the per capita consumption or average living standards of the post-imperial American populace. They might indeed be higher than those of the average Chinese peasant, but they would be experienced by many as a massive loss. "Well, we're mostly doing better than Haiti," is a lot different from "We're the last best hope for mankind re-making the world in our image."
It's impossible to reverse the overall trend he describes, and efforts to do so will likely accelerate and deepen it, and make the effects of it worse. Whether the material consequences will come rushing upon us, accelerated by technology and globalization, or whether other aspects of the situation will retard developments and soften the blows, is harder to see. America may be materially or relatively dominant militarily and economically for generations to come, but whether it will be a nice place to live for most of its citizens, or in other respects the same America we thought it was, is another question.