Requiem for American exceptionalism

The American state can still mobilize and deploy resources vastly greater than those of any other state. American policymakers, however, do not face a different geostrategic map from the policymakers of other and adversary countries, and American society does not belong to a different category than do the societies of other developed societies.

You might think that the last developed country to adopt universal health coverage would closely examine the systems developed elsewhere. You might think the designers of a new healthcare system for America would identify international best practices, while carefully assessing what might be applicable in American conditions and what would not. If so, you’d think wrong. The debate over healthcare reform unfurled with an almost surreal indifference to the rest of the world. Ditto for the debate over financial reform after the crisis of 2008. Ditto the debate over social mobility, over school performance, or over policing of disadvantaged communities.

In geostrategy too, the debate over America’s relative decline seems to pit those who would absolutely deny the reality of decline and those who welcome it. Yet the lesson of the decline of British power between 1870 and 1914 would seem to be that the post-American world will be a much more dangerous and violent place, as ambitious new contenders seek power in ever more aggressive ways. And the lesson of the 1914-1920 experience would seem to be that even a declining hegemony can still check its challengers, if it can find ways to convince new partners of the shared benefits of the old order.