In 1987, historian Paul Kennedy published his influential bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. The book dealt with the theme of imperial supremacy, and its end is dedicated to the USSR and the United States, the two great powers of the time. Less than five years later, the USSR collapsed, giving the United States the opportunity to be the sole dominant power in the world. After recent events, however, it may be time to dust off Kennedy's book and rethink the lessons it offers.
In July 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I wrote the article "Late Soviet America". We were nearing the end of President Donald Trump's first term, and I feared that the United States was stuck in a rut of hopelessness. Despite the enormous potential of talent and energy in the country, the political system was dysfunctional. The two major parties chose their candidates undemocratically (as primaries largely atrophied) and large stimulus checks became a favorite way to gain political popularity.
In that sense, the replacement of Trump by President Joe Biden has changed little. America was not a one-party Soviet state, but neither did it have a strong cross-party or intra-party democracy. Voters still felt cheated, and heavy spending was still seen as the key to electoral success and social stability. America seemed doomed to remain in the late Soviet stage of development.
The disintegration of the USSR proceeded in two stages: first - a slow gerontocracy gave way to an ill-conceived attempt at radical reforms. When Konstantin Chernyenko became the general secretary of the CPSU in 1984, he was already 72 years old. He replaced the decrepit Leonid Brezhnev and the ill Yuri Andropov, but he himself was so weak that he could barely read the speech at Andropov's funeral. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev, who promised to rejuvenate the USSR by breaking the shackles of the old bureaucracy through the policy of perestroika (economic reforms) and glasnost (openness and transparency). This attempt to break the old way of thinking, however, released centrifugal forces (primarily repressed nationalism) that soon broke the USSR itself.
Today, especially in Russia, many analysts apply this image of Soviet decline to the US. Celebrities compare Trump to Gorbachev, whose reforms destroyed the USSR. Although Trump is much older than Gorbachev was then, he is also an insider posing as an outsider ready to break the system.
During the campaign, Trump masked his revolutionary project, but now his intentions are becoming clear. Like any successful political movement, Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) won by building a coalition. Working-class Americans (including large numbers of Asian, Hispanic, and African-American voters) liked Trump's anti-establishment ideas, and the ultra-powerful and super-rich tech entrepreneurs joined them because they have their own ideas for how to transform the country.
It is not surprising that there are already noticeable signs of tension in this coalition. The most obvious problem is that many of Trump's proposed "remedies" will inevitably lead to inflation - the same problem that sunk President Biden. Imposing new tariffs and raising old ones would immediately raise the cost of living, and any serious attempt to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants would create chaos and new labor shortages in agriculture, construction and key distribution centers.
Similarly, cutting red tape along the lines envisioned by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—through a new “Department for Government Efficiency”—would put huge numbers of Americans out of work. (Those officials are unlikely to move to low-paying agricultural jobs.) So while a bright future remains only a vague promise, the costs and pain ahead are already quite evident.
In addition, Silicon Valley representatives dream of using artificial intelligence in order to increase the productivity and thus the income of less qualified workers. The idea is not unreasonable at first glance. There is empirical evidence that AI accelerated the earlier call center boom. Increasing productivity in other areas, such as healthcare and elderly care, is certainly possible. However, neither this revolutionary philosophy of "acceleration" nor its potential applications have been tested to a significant extent. And the vision of Silicon Valley is based on a globally connected world in which the USA plays a dominant role.
Musk fully supports Trump's project of radical change, but his own vision, paradoxically, combines technology with the "globalist" status quo. He claims that "if everything stays as it is, America will go bankrupt, so we need changes anyway." Musk rightly applauds Argentine President Javier Millay's shock therapy policy (removing import tariffs and opening up the Argentine economy), but we know full well that "tariffs" is Trump's favorite word. It remains to be seen how this apparent contradiction will be resolved.
However, there are also more optimistic tones. US self-isolation alone cannot cause a collapse of world trade on the scale of the Great Depression, since America accounts for only 13,5% of global imports. Yes, of course, other countries could fight back or simply try to emulate Trump. But the more chaotic Trump's actions are, the less likely he is to have imitators. Just look at the deterrent effect Brexit has had on other Eurosceptics, or how enthusiastically most post-Soviet states have embraced a different way of thinking.
So, one part of Trump's coalition wants globalism, the other rejects it. The irony is that it would be the latter who would feel the strongest pain from trying to self-isolate. Trump's political program (if implemented) will inevitably sow the seeds for a new wave of discontent, protests and conspiracy theories.
The same description applies to the post-Soviet experience in the final years of the 20th century. Unexpected, rapid changes led to a sudden disruption of normal life, and those who suffered as a result moved into the cohorts of the alienated. A similar trend, it seems, is gaining strength in the USA. And modern Russia certainly hopes for that.
The author is a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. (translation: NR)
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