Not with a bang, but a whimper.

A couple of nights ago, my friend Brad and I had a discussion. It got me thinking, as I often do, about mi patria (the United States), its role in the world, and its future on the international stage. This morning, while trying to find a citation for homicide rates as (lousy) indicators of overall crime rates, I ran into a 2005 article titled “The next 50 years: Unfolding trends,” in what appears to be a good peer-reviewed academic journal.

The article has a section titled “America’s Retreat.” He predicts the end of U.S. international dominance by about 2050, with clear signs starting a few decades ago, and becoming more apparent very soon. He cites a lot of economic indicators, such as national debt, increasingly weak currency, and huge (and increasing) trade imbalances. He has graphs (pretty ones) and apparently rigorous data analysis. Some nifty excerpts from the article, after the jump.

There are many more concerns. Foremost… is the country’s declining technical capability, marked by deep losses of manufacturing. Underperforming education leads to well-documented dismal scores in math and science… Despite the decades-long war on drugs, their street prices have remained low and stable (or even falling), their distribution is more widespread (particularly that of highly addictive methamphetamine), and their purity (especially that of heroin) and potency (that of marijuana) are at unprecedented levels (US DEA 2003). Troubled health care and pension systems may be headed toward bankruptcy, yet endless congressional debates cannot offer effective solutions (Kotlikoff and Burns 2004; Béland 2005; Derickson 2005). And a visible deterioration of the country’s physical fitness makes the United States the most obese, and perhaps most physically unfit, nation in Western history.

All of these symptoms have been discussed at length in America’s vibrant electronic and print media: scathing self-examination and self-criticism show no signs of decline.

…

[1890s to 1974: trade surplus, then 1974-1997: fluctuations, then] the 1997 deficit more than doubled in just two years and the record 1999 deficit nearly doubled by 2003 and then grew by another 25 percent in 2004, exceeding the 1996 level by a factor of six.

This transformation has not been merely a matter of high and sustained consumer spending or, as some economists maintain, a benign unfolding of a new global system.

…

Virtually every kind of mundane manufacturing, from apparel to toys, has nearly vanished, accounting for an embedded deficit on the order of $200–250 billion a year. Automobiles, the largest manufacturing sector, have been in an apparently unstoppable slide… this long-term trend [increasing trade deficit] has converted the United States into a country of permanent trade deficits and resulting structural deficiencies and strategic vulnerabilities. While a resolute administration in Washington can drastically cut, even eliminate, its budget deficit, the elimination of US trade deficits has become highly unlikely.

…

There is no way the much-touted trade in services can ever make up for the massive deficits in traded goods… Salvation will not come from movies or computer games: since those products are increasingly pirated (a trick not easily done with a Boeing 747), they will contribute even less revenue in the future.

…

By 2050 [the European Union will have an] assumed net immigration of more than 35 million persons… half of [the EU's population will be] older than 50 years, while the population of its southern hinterland is projected to reach about 1.25 billion. Immigration from this hinterland is already the greatest influx of people the continent has seen in more than a thousand years… as is true for immigrants in general, the migrants from these states are much younger than the recipient populations, a difference that is accentuated by Europe’s rapid aging. The migrants’ birth rate is appreciably higher than the continent’s mean.

…

while Christianity has become irrelevant to most Europeans, Islam is very relevant to millions of these immigrants… [nonassimilation of immigrants will result from] Europe’s traditional ostracism… [and] an increasing share of immigrants whose demands for transferring their norms into host countries range from segregated schooling and veiling of females to the recognition of sharia law.

What would happen if this influx of largely Muslim immigrants were to be increased to a level that would prevent declines in Europe’s workingage population? In many European countries, including Germany and Italy,
these new Muslim immigrants and their descendants would then add up to more than a third of the total population by 2050 (United Nations 2000).

Two dominant scenarios implied by this reality are mutually exclusive: either gradual integration that leads to full participation of Muslims (now more than 15 million but eventually many tens of millions) in European
societies or a continuing incompatibility of the two traditions that, through demographic imperatives, will lead to an eventual triumph of Islam, if not continent-wide then at least in the three largest Mediterranean
states, Spain, Italy, and France. I do not think that a great hybridization… is at all likely. The continent’s Christians are now too nominal and too uninterested in matters of faith (indeed quite appalled by what they see as a primitive US religiosity) to be partners in creating such a spiritual mélange. More importantly, for too many Muslims any dialogue with nonbelievers is heretical.

…

…Summers (2004: 8) asks a penetrating question: “How long should the world’s greatest debtor remain the world’s largest borrower?â€? and suggests the term “balance of financial terrorâ€? to describe “a situation where
we rely on the costs to others of not financing our current account deficit as assurance that financing will continue.� Are these the fiscal foundations of a superpower?

…

The absence of a globally influential power in a world dominated by forces of globalization would be akin to the retreat of Roman power that stood behind the centuries of coherent civilization extending from Mauritania to
Mesopotamia: a chaotic, long-lasting fragmentation that would be inimical to economic progress and greatly exacerbate many of today’s worrisome social and environmental trends.
…

As Niall Ferguson has warned, “Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity—a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces
than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder� (Ferguson 2004: 39).

Many Western strategic planners… wished for the end of the Cold War and yearned for a world without superpower confrontation… now they look wistfully back at the world of an identifiable and rational enemy… Today’s young European leftists may get their wish of a severely hobbled and introverted America even before they need glasses to read their copies of The New Statesman, Il Manifesto, or Junge Welt (and by 2050 the youngest among them may see a complete demise of American
power), but how much will they then enjoy the ambience of Eurabia or the fatwas defining their permissible reading?

Smith, V. (2005). The next 50 years: Unfolding trends. Population & Development Review, 31, 605-643.