THE END OF
DEMOCRACY?
(excerpt)
Win McCormack
If Liberalism does not work out, it’s not the final answer
While the authoritarian powers of China and Russia have been on the rise, the leading democracy in the world, the United States, has seemed suddenly and precipitously headed in the opposite direction. David Boren, a former moderate-conservative Democratic U.S. Senator who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, has written a book called Letter to America, in which he says: “The country we love is in trouble. In truth, we face grave danger as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will become dramatic. The signs are clear for all to see. Only those in deliberate denial could fail to notice.” Topping Boren’s list of signs is “the catastrophic drop in the way the rest of the world views us.” (Boren was chair of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee when he was in office.)
Let me quote from an investment report that recently came across my desk. The report emanates from a group of coldblooded financial analysts whose job it is to figure out how to maximize investment returns for their capitalist clients—not from, say, a liberal think tank. The quoted passage is in a section dealing with the recent run-up in commodity prices, particularly the price of oil:
Unfortunately, one of the main causes of the commodity bubble has been a factor that was also a major driver of many past commodity bubbles: geopolitics . . . The long series of U.S. foreign policy errors of the last several years, and the resulting decline of U.S. power and influence, has played a major role in this trend . . . the ongoing occupation of Iraq is a major factor driving the high level of global tensions and decline of U.S. power and influence that have greatly contributed to the increase in commodity prices . . . .Unfortunately, Iraq’s multi-factional civil war continues to grind on. Improved U.S. military strategy in Iraq (mostly as a result of reduced neoconservative interference with professional military decisions) has somewhat reduced the level of violence in the country, but has also deepened the regional divisions that make it unlikely that Iraq can again stand on its own as a unified nation...Neoconservative foreign policy goals continue to elevate oil prices in other ways as well. Concerns about the risk of a U.S. attack on Iran, which would sharply increase commodity prices, probably account for another $10-20 per barrel . . . Air power is one of the few aspects of U.S. military power that remains relatively strong, but even that may weaken in the coming years. U.S. military strength is a key national asset and source of global stability, but it is being seriously eroded by the effects of the extended occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recently indicated that major weapons systems, including new aircraft, may be vulnerable to spending cuts if they are not deemed relevant to fighting insurgencies. Meanwhile, future rivals to U.S. power such as China and Russia are increasing military spending and improving their military technology . . . The deteriorating U.S. federal budget will create very difficult choices in coming years between restoring U.S. military readiness, maintaining Social Security and Medicare commitments, and avoiding large tax increases . . . The U.S. position in the world is also no longer what it once was; whereas eight years ago the U.S. was envied, loved, and feared around the world, now the opposite is generally the case. |
What effect might this precipitous erosion of U.S. prestige and power be having on the state of democracy in the world? In a recent New York Times column, “The Democratic Recession,” Thomas Friedman reported: “The term ‘democratic recession’ was coined by Larry Diamond, a Stanford University political scientist, in his new book The Spirit of Democracy. And the numbers tell the story. At the end of last year, Freedom House, which tracks democratic trends and elections around the globe, noted that 2007 was by far the worst year for freedom in the world since the end of the cold war. Almost four times as many states—thirty-eight—declined in their freedom scores as improved—ten.” Friedman blames this trend partly on the fact that states whose economies depend largely on oil and gas revenues tend not to be democratic, but adds: “The decline of U.S. influence and moral authority has also taken a toll,” and, quoting Diamond, “There has been an enormous squandering of American soft power, and hard power, in recent years.”
Also prominent on Boren’s list of signs of a U.S. decline is the equally appalling state of the nation’s domestic infrastructure. This dire situation was detailed by Sarah Williams Goldhagen in an April 27, 2007, article in the New Republic titled “American Collapse.” The article was written soon after two notorious recent calamities in urban America—in Minneapolis, the tumbling of a forty-year-old bridge into the Mississippi River that killed at least five people and injured approximately one hundred more, and in mid-town Manhattan, the explosion of an eighty-three-year-old asbestos-wrapped steam pipe that killed one person and injured a dozen more (the pipe’s owner, the Con Edison company, had inspected and certified it as being in good order that morning)
“America’s metropolitan regions,” Goldhagen wrote, “are in serious trouble. Bridges, utilities, and flood-prevention systems, whether publicly or privately owned, are grossly neglected. Suburbs are sprawling like unchecked chickweed. Cars are stuck in ever-mounting hours of traffic. Cities are bleeding people. School buildings are overpopulated and crumbling. Waters are polluted. Shipping ports are decrepit.” Goldhagen contrasts this situation in the United States with the state of things in other parts of the world:
| Visit metropolitan regions in many of the developing countries in Asia, and the gross inferiority of America’s physical infrastructure is immediately apparent . . . At every turn, a citizen moving through the built environment of these countries sees and uses physically embodied signs communicating to them that in their society, public life matters.
But forget, if you wish, the vast infrastructural building taking place across economically exploding Asia and the Middle East. Look no further than Europe or Canada, areas in what used to be called the industrialized world, where metropolitan regions are facing the same problems of demographic shifts, higher labor costs, and aging infrastructure that we face in the United States. Again and again we find examples of metropolitan regions that have successfully risen to these challenges. |
According to Goldhagen, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has estimated that the United States would need to spend $1.6 trillion to bring the country’s infrastructure up to only minimal standards. The ASCEhas apparently given no estimate of what it would take to bring our infrastructure up to the higher standards prevailing in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Canada, and we can probably only begin to imagine.
How did we reach, almost unawares, this crisis of infrastructure in our country? Goldhagen attributed this to two factors. The first is sheer cost. Large infrastructure projects, such as a new mass transit line or waterway system, even a new park or a bridge, cost “an extraordinary amount of money,” something that strikes fear in the hearts of local politicians. “When a proposed tax or budget item can be specifically linked to the officials whom voters elect to their own state or local offices, the political disincentives to address a metropolitan region’s infrastructural needs are enormous.” Since Reagan’s first budget, federal funding of local infrastructure construction has been steadily declining. The federal government, which used to provide the bulk of these monies, has drastically reduced its role, while state and local governments have been unable or unwilling to step up to the plate. (Tom Frank, in this issue, discusses how devolving costly federal programs and responsibilities to the state and local level has been part of “conservative” governing strategy since Reagan.)
Comment on it