Michael Lind: The British Seeds of American Decline
This article is adapted from Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (HarperCollins) by Michael Lind.
When American and foreign observers speculate about American decline, as they often do, they tend to draw parallels between the United States and the Roman Empire. But parallels between a modern, industrial, urban, nearly-monolingual nation-state and a loose collection of tribes with an agrarian economy are worthless.
A more apt comparison is between the America of the early 2000s and the Britain of the early 1900s. Is the United States repeating the United Kingdom's decline, but on a larger scale?
In one area, the answer is clearly no. A century ago, most of the consumers and resources of the British Empire were located outside of the British Isles. The loss of India and other colonies turned Britain overnight from a power of the first rank into a medium-sized nation-state.
In contrast, the United States is the third-most populous nation in the world. And while it has far-flung military bases, its demographic, industrial and commodity resources are located inside its own borders. Unless the lower 48 states go their separate ways, the United States will never experience anything like the dissolution of the British Empire and other colonial empires, including the Soviet Union.
In four other areas, however, the parallels between yesterday's Britain and today's America are striking and disturbing...