Gwynne Dyer: The United States empire takes a hit in the "Noughties"
Decades don’t usually have the courtesy to begin and end on the right year.
The social and cultural revolution that Western countries think of when they talk of the “Sixties” only got underway in 1962-63, and didn’t end until the Middle East war and oil embargo of 1973-74.
But this one has been quite neat: the "Noughties” began with the Islamist terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, and they ended with a global financial meltdown in the past year.
The Noughties is a recent journalistic invention to make it easier to write end-of-the-decade articles like this. The term was launched several times in the last 10 years, but it never took off.
Just as well, really, because it sounds a bit frivolous–whereas this was actually a decade when the tectonic plates moved into a new pattern.
Never mind the terrorism. About half a billion people died during the past decade, and fewer than 50,000 of them were victims of terrorism–say, one in every 10,000 deaths. At least 40,000 of those 50,000 victims of terrorism lived in India, Pakistan or Iraq, and fewer than 4,000 lived in the West.
You can hardly make that a defining quality of the decade. The terrorist threat to the West was minor, but the West’s hugely disproportionate and ill-considered response was a key factor in the great shift that defines the decade.
The “War on Terror,” the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and all the rest, did not deter a Muslim Nigerian student from trying to blow up an airliner over Detroit on December 25. It motivated him to do so. But it also accelerated the rise of Asia and the relative decline of the West.
That shift was happening anyway. When China and India, with 40 percent of the world’s population between them, are growing economically three to four times as fast as the major Western countries, it’s only a matter of time until they catch up with the older industrial economies.
Back in 2003, however, the researchers at Goldman Sachs predicted that the Chinese economy would surpass that of the United States by the mid-2040s. By the middle of this year, they were predicting that it would happen in the mid-2020s.
And this year, for the first time, China built more cars than the United States.
That acceleration is in large part a consequence of the huge diversion of Western attention and resources that was caused by the “War on Terror.”
Prestige is a quality that cannot be measured or quantified, but a reputation for competence in the use of power is a great asset in international affairs.
After the centuries-old European empires wasted their wealth and the lives of tens of millions of their citizens in two “world wars” in only 30 years, their empires just melted away. Nobody was in awe of them any more, and they lacked the resources to hold onto their overseas possessions by force.
Something similar has happened over the past decade to the United States. Unwinnable wars fought for the wrong reasons always hurt a great power’s reputation, and wars fought amid needless tax cuts, burgeoning deficits, and financial anarchy are even more damaging if the country’s power depends heavily on a global financial empire.
The United States spent the past decade cutting its own throat financially, ending with the near-death experience of the 2008-2009 financial meltdown.
The Europeans made all the same mistakes, only more timidly, and the Japanese sat the decade out on the sidelines, mired in a seemingly endless recession.
The old order is passing, the US.. dollar is on its way out as the only global currency, and the real power is shifting to mainland Asia.
Or is it? There are two trends that could slow or even stop this shift. They seemed quite distant at the start of the decade, but now they look very big and frightening. One is peak oil; the other is global warming.
In Europe, North America and Japan, energy consumption is growing slowly or not at all, and it is relatively cheap and easy to reduce dependence on imported oil. Just the fuel-efficiency standards already mandated by the Obama administration could reduce American oil imports by half by 2020.
Whereas Chinese and Indian dependence on imported oil is soaring. So is their use of coal. That’s unfortunate, because for purely geographical reasons, these countries are far more vulnerable to high temperatures than the older industrial nations.
At an even 2-degree C (3.6 degrees F) higher average global temperature, China and India face floods, droughts, and storms on a massive scale, probably accompanied by a steep fall in food production.
That sort of thing could abort even their economic miracles.
So we’re back in the old world where the future is uncertain. Of course. What else did you expect? We can only observe the trends, and try to remember that they are always contingent. But at the moment, it looks like the decade when the West finally lost its domination over the world’s economy.
Gwynne Dyer’s latest book, Climate Wars, is published in Canada by Random House and Vintage.
Comments
11 Comments
Mapmaker
Dec 27, 2009 at 4:03pm
"it is relatively cheap and easy to reduce dependence on imported oil." What are you smoking? North America is practically built on oil, and there's no easy way for it to get off. We've had the worst recession since the 30's, if not ever, and American oil consumption has dropped a whole 1m barrels? Yes, that is a lot - but just five years ago, a price of $70-$80 was unthinkable, and even $40 was eyebrow-raising. If it were easy for North America to reduce dependence on foreign oil, they'd have done it long before now.
Aside from that, keep in mind that 'Climate Change' is a load of hogwash. But even if it weren't just a half-baked stoner philosophy, do you honestly think China and India will pay it any more than lip service when their populations have had a small taste of the 'Western' way of life?
Now that China's making a grab on all the oilfields it can lay its hands on, how long before the oil price spikes again, and tanks what's left of the US economy?
Mike999
Dec 27, 2009 at 7:53pm
Glen Beck is commenting on Gwynne Dyer now?
- Anti-Global Warming PROPAGANDA Funded by Exxon, and therefore FRAUD is not going to stop temperature increases, the ice sheets from melting and the US Drought, and the World Drought. Coal has polluted EVERY Lake and Stream in America. You cannot got from a 1 Billion population on the Planet 250 years ago to 7 Billion and not pay a Heavy Price.
Exxon spends NOTHING on Alternate Technology, and their Anti-Global Warming FRAUD is exposing them the a HUGE Class Action Law Suit. So, they will soon get what they deserve, unless Tillerson is Kicked Out.
The Auto Industry in the US could easily reduce fuel consumption by building Diesel-Hybrid Pickup Trucks, and yet No US auto maker offers that solution? Some might see an Oil Industry Kickback Program in Place.
So, will the US retain it's SuperPower status? Can the US save itself from third world status? Not unless it frees itself from the Delusional Management of the Oil and Coal Industry.
greggron
Dec 28, 2009 at 12:27am
...another tedious leftist prediction of the end of American dominance...they are always wrong. The USA is different than any other empire in its amazing ability to reinvent itself.
Comrade Black
Dec 28, 2009 at 1:25am
Peak Oil and/or Global Warming vs the Rise of a Confucian Hyperpower.
I'm not sure which of these three outcomes is the worst. Dark days for civilisation in any case.
Doing it right, from the start
Dec 28, 2009 at 11:55am
The advantage that China has is that it's building key infrastructure in light of the fact that fossil fuels are becoming scarce. North America, on the other hand, was developed and planned during the golden 'log it, burn it, pave it' post-war era. That's going to be a huge anchor when it comes to pulling away from fossil fuels.
The Europeans, who have far better city planning than we do, could become an economic superpower again if they ever learn that their high taxes are a major barrier to growth.
Gregorius
Dec 28, 2009 at 3:10pm
What is the United States anyway, but Europe's overseas dept? Perhaps Russia will eventually join the EU, perhaps the US and Canada will one day join the Schengen Zone. A combined US/EU/Russia is over 1 billion people. And if that isn't enough to match China, they can welcome in Hispanic countries one by one. Best compare China or India with "Caucasia" to get the best analogy.
greggron
Dec 28, 2009 at 9:59pm
In the last decade America has given the world Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, iPhone, Android, Kindle and a thousand other innovations that no other country can begin to touch. Everyone who bets against the USA is an idiot and this constant left-wing anti-bias carried in this crap rag is just selective bigotry. What is wrong with you people? Are you all
born with hate and ignorance in your hearts or is it just jealousy? America is not nearly as bad as you think and Canada is not nearly as wonderful.
Ghenghis Khan and his brother Don
Dec 29, 2009 at 10:38am
Greggron, I don't detect any American-bashing in Dyer's article. And I doubt that Twitter will do much to offset the $948,172,713,295 (source: http://costofwar.com/) the US government (notice I said government, not american people) has squandered on useless chest-beating wars in the last decade. That's a lot of moolah not being spent on keeping up with the Joneses (i.e. China, India, etc)
I find it highly ironic that many Americans are willing to spend kazillions of dollars to bash Iraq into smithereens, a harmless (where are those Weapons of Mass Destruction?), former ally (funded to fight Iran) but are loathe to spend a single red cent to provide some of their fellows citizens with basic health care.....
As an example, India is producing over a million engineers per year...it's just blind bigotry to think that they are less capable and intelligent than Americans/Canadians...it's just a matter of time before *they* will be creating the next Googles, iPhones, etc. for the rest of the world.
sunny singh (kiddaa magazine)
Dec 30, 2009 at 7:23pm
The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have managed to kill or make a million refugees. US and other troops are close to 6000 dead. The fanatics that brought 9-11 are very much alive in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The warmongers who brought these oil wars now want to attack Iran who has never threatened anyone. Gwynne for a white man in his 50s sees the world more clearly than the hawks that tell us these are all just wars. In reality Islamic extremism not all but most is caused by these stupid wars. There was no exremism in Iraq prior to the war, just a secular tyrant with a christian vice president. Lets hope 2010 sees no more US wars. Dyer is dead on.
Cthulhu's Pet Goat
Dec 31, 2009 at 5:58am
Take any American invention, and look at where it is made - and increasingly designed. More and more of the non-grunt work is outsourced to India, and much of the manufacturing is in China. Often its not made or invented in the US, only packed there. Or rather, marketed from there. The packaging is probably done in China.
And when you call for tech support for the "American" invention, you will be talking to someone in India, or Philipines, or maybe Canada or Ireland - but not in the USA.