In Understanding America's Contested Primacy, a new report he wrote for CSBA, Edelman argues that for all of the significant challenges the United States faces over the medium term, no other power or alliance of powers is likely to displace the United States from its perch. Nor, according to Edelman, is a multipolar world likely to arrive anytime soon, a world which would find the United States one of several equals competing for political power while defending clashing spheres of influence. After thoroughly analyzing the positions and prospects of the United States and other competing powers, Edelman concludes that for all of America's problems, all of the other pretenders to the throne have it even worse. Thus, although the U.S. will never again have it as easy as it did in the 1990s, neither is the world slipping back to another unstable multipolar pre-1914 era.
Edelman was inspired to write this report as a response to the National Intelligence Council's 2008 Global Trends 2025 project, which forecast a sharp decline in the relative influence of the United States and the arrival of an increasingly chaotic multipolar world. Contributing to this hypothesis was the investment firm Goldman Sachs with its BRIC label of supposedly rising economic and political powers (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Edelman also notes that at the end of every decade since World War II, a new theory has arrived to explain why the United States will soon drop off the top position on the podium.
After reviewing the history of the "declinism" literature, Edelman turns to an analysis of the BRIC countries, Europe, Japan, and the United States itself. Edelman discusses the looming social and economic challenges many of these countries will face, in most cases the result of damaging demographic imbalances (by comparison, a relatively minor problem for the U.S.). Edelman grants that Brazil, India, and China will gain in relative power. But he concludes that they and the others will at best be regional players and will not likely gain the economic, military, diplomatic, or "soft" power to become global poles of influence challenging the global position of the United States.
Edelman's report overstates the linkage of demographics to national power. It is no longer 1815 or 1944; national military power no longer correlates with the number of military aged males. And the size of the working age population is only one factor determining economic output and the size of the tax base. Wide variations in worker productivity will do as much or more to determine economic and social clout, along with a country's generation of globally-influential "soft power."
Also largely missing from Edelman's report is much discussion of non-state actors and what the possible decline in the authority of nation-states relative to self-organized groups may mean. Non-state actors are not likely to be contenders for global primacy any time soon. But their disruptive second- and third-order effects merit discussion.
As a challenge to the declinist conventional wisdom, Edelman's report is a welcome addition to the discussion of grand strategy. I recommend reading it.
Comments
The more I ´m digging in this stuff, the more it seems disappointing to me. The current economic crisis shows clearly, that the prosperity in the US of the last 20 years was based on a non-sustainable economic structure: The core of the "strength" was the ability of US-consumers to pile up debts and spend. The first round was fueled by the IT-bubble and the following by the housing bubble.
The productivity-miracle mentioned by Edelman as a US-strength is largely a statistical phenomenon. In the numbers for the second Quarter GDP given by the BEA (table 3) you can see how this works: The Investment in "information processing equipment and software" based on the current prices are given with 586,2 bn $. After correcting for inflation of this item (the "real" value) is given with 669,1 bn $ or 82,9 bn $ more. The reason: After correcting for inflation the BEA uses a silent but heavily disputed correction for quality improvements. The additional c. 80 bn $ are constituting a bit more than 0,6 percentage points of GDP, which means effectivly: more than one third of 1,7% growth ist generated purely by statistics. This item shows only the most obvious weak point. Working through, the canadian economist (University of British Columbia) and internationlay respected expert for international measurements, Erwin Diewert, came up with the result, that growth numbers from US have to be corrected downward by 1,5 - 2 percentage points. Taking this at face value, the US are still on the brink to or within recession - as is indcated by current unemployment, the ongoing crises in the real estate markets or simply by the sentiment indicators deep in the negative territory.
So Edelman ´s productivity-miracle dissipates: Inflated GDP-numbers vis-avis given inputs yielded inflated productivity numbers. The discussion about "jobless growth" in the US reminds of Breshenev ´s USSR: Discussing problems generated by the selfmade manipulation of statistics. Its a bit funny.
Do you really think, that US-Primacy exists when the US-Government is forced to borrow more than 100 bn dollars per month predominantly from the direct opponent (China) just to avoid immediate default?
Remember: From Ronald Reagan ´s times and the beginning savings-and-loan crisis on every administration repeated the mantra "there ist no federal guarantee für Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" just to the point in the last crisis where China and Japan outed themselves as the majority bond holders of Fannie and Freddie. They demanded the federal guartantee and they got it, enforced by the threat of immediate default of the US Government.
Remeber. This declaration of dependency was signed by G.W. Bush.