Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her

by Dinesh D'Souza

  We are so used to the world being Western, even American, that we have little idea what it would be like if it was not.1

  MARTIN JACQUES, WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD

  The post-American era, when it comes, will come as a surprise. The surprise is not in its coming; the surprise is in what it will look like. I once heard Irving Kristol say, “Western civilization is in decline, but the decline will happen slowly, and we can live well in the meantime.” He was right, I suppose, in his day, but Kristol is now dead. Decline does not always happen slowly. Sometimes it happens very quickly: then it is called collapse. The Roaring Twenties ended with the Crash of 1929. The booming prosperity symbolized by investors getting profitable stock tips from newspaper boys ended with tales of men who had lost everything in the stock market crash jumping out of windows to their deaths. We expect our own decline, like that of our country, to happen gradually, so that we can adjust to it; but life isn’t always like that.

  The former Soviet Union was declining for decades, yet the collapse came very suddenly—within just a few years. The Berlin Wall was toppled in 1989, a wave of rebellions across Eastern Europe penetrated the Soviet Union, and in 1992 the Communist Party abolished itself and the regime was gone. America’s decline may be gradual—over a period, say, of fifty years—or it may be rapid. I am hoping for the former, but expecting the latter. The prospect doesn’t just horrify me; it also fills me with a sense of responsibility. I don’t want ours to be the generation that witnessed—and allowed—the end of the American era.

  The end of the American era corresponds with the rise of the East—the rise of Asia. This rise is, historically speaking, a return. For most of history, Asia dominated the world. From the collapse of the Roman empire around the fifth century, until around 1750, China and India were the two largest, wealthiest, and most powerful civilizations. From around the eighth century, they were joined by the civilization of Islam, which although Abrahamic in its religion is also an Eastern civilization; that’s why we call it the Middle East. Together these Asian powers dominated the world, accounting for three-fourths of the global domestic product, while Europe was a relative backwater, accounting for around 10 percent of global GDP.2 Now for the past few centuries the West has dominated. We can date this period as the Western epoch, with the last half-century being the American era.

  Talk to educated people outside the West and they sound as if the West is already finished; one of their stock phrases is, “After America… .” The debate abroad is not over whether America will be done, but what will replace America. The main candidates are Russia, Brazil, India, and China but the smart money is on China. According to Kang Xiaoguong, a professor at Renmin University, “People are now looking down on the West, from leadership circles, to academia, to everyday folks.”3 When I hear these people—their casual confidence, even arrogance—I am amazed. I grew up in an era when Western superiority—what in American schools is called Eurocentrism—was firmly established. For me, a schoolboy on the streets of Mumbai, it seemed no less secure than the law of gravity. And to a certain extent it made Western people seem superior and us feel inferior. Our inferiority was not due to racism—in post-independence India, there were no white people around to be racist. Western dominance injured our pride because we had to acknowledge that they had something we didn’t. Their countries called the shots and ours didn’t. Their lives and decisions had consequences in the world in a way that ours didn’t. Even if they originally became dominant through conquest, they had obviously developed from their own resources the power to conquer everyone else. In other words, they must have been stronger before the conquest in order to be able to do the conquest.

  Upon examination, we recognized that the real source of Western power, and of America’s current hegemony, was economic strength. America’s real power wasn’t that it could pulverize everyone else, or even that everyone else admired American style and culture. Rather, America’s military, political, and cultural power all derived from its affluence. America’s wealth enabled the country to afford a more sophisticated military than anyone else. Similarly, wealth made Americans self-confident and creative, and this is why American culture exuded an irresistible allure—the allure of individuality and success. I now realize that, when America declines, not only will Americans have a lower standard of living, relative to others, but America’s decisions will also matter less in the world, and American mores and American culture will become increasingly marginal and irrelevant. Think of the way Americans view Mexico, with a mixture of condescension and contempt. That’s the way that we are going to be viewed. Correction: among many educated people outside the West, that’s the way we are viewed now. This transfer of confidence from the West to the East, within my lifetime—this is what I find astonishing.

  The rise of the East is, in a way, an American success story. It was the intention of the American Founders to create a new formula not just for Americans but for the world. This was the 1776 formula for the well-being of the common man. It was a formula invented here, but it was never a formula for the benefit of Americans alone. American exceptionalism was always linked with American universalism. That’s why the Declaration of Independence doesn’t say “all Americans,” it says “all men.” America wants to see other countries come up in the world, but it wants to see them succeed not through conquest but through wealth creation. China and India are rising because of wealth creation. They have learned well from their American tutors.

  Now, as in the case of America, China’s economic strength is going to translate into military strength and ultimately cultural power. It may seem hard to believe, but Chinese cars, Chinese fashion, Chinese music, and Chinese food are going to become cool. These changes will not be the result of Chinese conquest but of Chinese wealth creation. In this sense, China is enjoying earned success, and so to a lesser degree is India. In general, I’m delighted to see this success. The Chinese and the Indians have adopted for themselves some of the spirit of 1776.

  I am also pleased to report that the rise of the East will also bring with it the end of progressivism. Part of this is natural: once a nation declines, many of its priorities and ideologies decline with it. In the past the Chinese, the Indians, and the Brazilians would attend international conferences and nod obligingly when Western progressives bloviated about their political preferences. But now the reigning mantra in Asia, Africa, and South America is “modernization without Westernization.” The term “Westernization” here means progressivism. The East has no intention of rejecting Western technology or Western economic structures. Rather, it is increasingly rejecting Western values. For the most part, these are not the values of 1776; they are the values of 1968. The East doesn’t want to see the moral erosion, the family breakdown, and the vulgarity of popular culture that it associates with America and the West. These are not “American” traits; they are progressive traits. The Asians agree with American conservatives: they reject progressivism and want as much as possible to keep it out of their societies. “We have healthy homes and healthy communities,” one Indian told me. “Why would we want to import all this filth?” At one time, the East wanted to be modern and Western. Then it wanted to be modern and didn’t mind being Western. Now it wants to be modern without being Western.

  The real shock of Asian dominance for people in the West is to see how differently the world is going to be run when America is no longer running it. Our history, our maps, our sense of place and time, will have to change. Right now our history books talk about World War I and World War II. But those really weren’t world wars; they were European civil wars. I suspect that’s how they will be remembered a century from now, with Japan’s part in the war treated separately and given more importance. We are used to maps that place Europe at the center of the world, China at the periphery. The Chinese like to have maps that place China at the center. When the Jesuits landed in China in the sixteenth century, they were amused to see the Chinese maps. That was the beginni
ng of the age of European expansion. But in an age of Chinese dominance, it will make sense to everyone—not just the Chinese—to place China at the center and Europe and America at the margins. The maps will reflect reality. In a Sinocentric world, our whole conceptual apparatus is going to have to change.

  Many Americans, who know a China-dominated world is coming, console themselves by thinking that the Chinese are people who look Oriental but think like Americans. This is both ethnocentric and myopic. If we want to see what a world dominated by Islam would look like, it helps to see how the Muslims ruled when they did dominate the world. Similarly we can get clues about a Sinocentric world by looking at the world when China was its leading superpower. This is a project impressively undertaken in Martin Jacques’s recent book When China Rules the World. Written by an informed scholar who has lived most of his adult life in the East, Jacques’s book plumbs deep into Chinese history and the Chinese psyche to show that these are a distinctive people who intend to conduct global affairs in their own way. One thing is for sure, they are not Americans and their way is not the American way. Even so, there are aspects of China today that remind me of the way America used to be.

  Jacques quotes Gao Rui-quan, a professor of philosophy at East China National University in Shanghai. “China is like the adolescent who is very keen to become an adult. He can see the goal and wants to reach it as soon as possible. He is always behaving as if he is rather older than he actually is and is constantly forgetting the reality of his situation.”4 Rui-quan means this as a criticism or rather, self-criticism. But in its mixture of excitement, anticipation, and confidence, I see in this attitude the spirit of 1776—the same spirit Tocqueville recorded in America a half-century later. The big question is, where is that spirit now? It can be found in China, India, and elsewhere, but where can it be found in America?

  I will return to that question. For now, I want to stay with Jacques’s portrayal of how Chinese hegemony will look different from American hegemony. Jacques points out that the Chinese “have a deeply hierarchical view of the world based on culture and race.”5 They are not democrats and egalitarians. Nor do they believe in “diversity.” The Chinese want, and over time are likely to get, “a profound cultural and racial reordering of the world in the Chinese image.” When the Chinese were down, they accepted and lived with their ethnic and cultural inferiority; when the Chinese come up, they are going to insist upon their ethnic and cultural superiority. The Chinese will demand that their currency, not ours, be the global currency. They will also push to have Mandarin replace English as the universal lingua franca. These, however, are the “small” changes; what Jacques is getting at is something much bigger.

  Historically China did not seek to conquer other countries but to subordinate them into a Chinese order whose superiority they recognized and to which they paid tribute. Jacques expects the Chinese to re-establish that order. Basically the Chinese seek a restoration of colonialism, but this time in the Chinese style. The Chinese want to be the overlords of Asia, Africa, and South America, and ultimately also of Europe and America. Already the Chinese are making huge investments abroad, buying up land and mineral rights, getting their foothold in the same way that the British did a couple of centuries ago. The Chinese are shrewdly exploiting anti-American sentiments to make themselves look like the better alternative. Yet the Chinese want far greater hegemony, and are likely to demand a greater degree of obeisance from others, than Americans ever sought. Ultimately this domination might even extend to us. American presidents of the future may be forced to bow before Chinese officials before they get a hearing.

  Moreover, the Chinese have no interest in shared global leadership. They will share as long as they have to, but their goal is singular hegemony. Here the Chinese motto is Deng Xiaoping’s: hide our strength, bide our time. China is building its military power. It is modernizing its nuclear arsenal. China is building a powerful navy. And not surprisingly, given China’s population, it can field by far the largest number of people on the battlefield. In an age of technology, numbers may not seem very significant, but as technology is equalized numbers become decisive. Consider this: while America has 2 million men and women in arms, China is capable of fielding well upward of 100 million! For the American military, half a million casualties would be horrific; if China faced that level of casualties, the nation would hardly notice. Jacques insists—and I agree—that China has no intention of actually fighting a war with America. Rather, its objective is to show that such a war would be absolutely suicidal for America, so that America will succumb to Chinese power without a fight. What the Soviets failed to achieve, China sees as a coming fait accompli. Just as America won the Cold War “without firing a shot,” China intends to win the next war with America without firing a shot.

  The Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, and the Russians are all getting richer and stronger due to wealth creation. Yet the leaders of these countries, while they appreciate wealth creation as one way to gain power, have never given up on the conquest ethic as another way to gain power. In fact, they see wealth creation as a way to increase their military power; then that power can be deployed to acquire more wealth through conquest. To see what I mean, imagine if we discovered a new planet rich in minerals and energy but inhabited by peaceful aliens. Would America regard it as right to conquer them and take their stuff? No, we no longer have the conquest ethic. But the Chinese do; they have never given it up. This is why the world still needs America. We remain the custodians of the idea that wealth should be obtained through invention and trade, not through forced seizure.

  In terms of maintaining its leadership and strength, no one can deny that America faces a parlous challenge. Given this, the behavior of the Obama administration, and of progressives more generally, can only be considered surreal. I am tempted to say that they are like the violinists who played music while the Titanic sank. In this picture, Obama would be the strange conductor, obsessed with his tunes while missing the larger reality of the situation. This analogy, however, is unfair to the musicians on the Titanic. Their conduct was entirely rational. They knew the ship was going down and there was nothing else they could do. So they bravely resolved to play and give people what little cheer they could. In America’s case, however, there is a great deal we can do. Yet Obama seems unwilling to do any of it. I am not saying he is ignorant of the global reality. In fact, he knows it quite well. His behavior is also rational, from the progressive point of view. If we think of the Titanic as symbolizing the American era, Obama wants that ship to go down.

  Obama is the architect of American decline, and progressivism is the ideology of American suicide. Here’s a way to think about what Obama and the progressives are doing. Imagine if they were in charge of a basketball team with a fifty-year track record of success. We hired them as coaches to keep the team winning. Yet they designed plays to ensure the team would lose. They didn’t do so because they hated the team, but because they thought it was wrong for the team to win so much. The long previous record of victories, they argued, was based on exploitation, and it would be better for everyone if our team wasn’t so dominant. If we had such a coaching staff, there is little doubt that we would get rid of them. We would ask ourselves why we hired them in the first place.

  Even though we currently have such a coach, decline is not an inevitability; decline is a choice. We don’t have to let Obama and the progressives take us down. We certainly don’t have to hire another coach who is like Obama. Do we want to live in a country that no longer matters, where the American dream is a paltry and shrunken thing, where bitter complaint substitutes for real influence in the world, where we can no longer expect our children to live better than we do? The Greeks, the Turks, the French, and the English are all once-great nations that have had to cope with irrelevance, and although they have had time to adjust, the sense of defeat still shows on their faces. It’s not so bad to be irrelevant if you’ve always been irrelevant. But to become irrelevant wh
en you were formerly leading the world; that’s a wound that permanently scars the psyche.

  I pray this does not happen to America, sapping the optimism that built this country, and that I still saw when I came here a generation ago. And it need not happen: the crisis we face is also an opportunity. But we cannot delay—to delay is to convert a crisis into an irreversible situation. Then we will have not only failed ourselves, we will also have failed our children. We will have failed America when we were in a position to save her.

  In fact, America is now in a situation that has arisen only a few times previously in history. This is a rare time when America’s future hangs delicately in the balance, and when Americans can do something about it. This occurred in 1776, when Americans had to figure out whether to create a new country or live under British domination. This was the crisis of the creation of America. It occurred again in 1860, when Americans had to decide whether to preserve the union or let it dissolve. This was the crisis of the preservation of America. And now we have to choose whether to protect the American era and uphold America’s example to the world, or to let the naysayers, at home and abroad, take us down. This is the crisis of the restoration of America.

  Whether we like it or not, this is the American moment in world history. The American era cannot endure indefinitely, but it can last a lot longer. The spirit of 1776 is taking root around the world; this can happen with us in the lead, or without us. In previous crises there were great Americans who showed leadership, and ordinary Americans who showed commitment and heroism; together, they vindicated the American experiment. So what will be our legacy? Will we keep the flag flying, or will we submit to progressive self-destruction and go down with a whimper? I believe we will prove up to the task of restoration. But in any event, this is our turn at the wheel, and history will judge us based on how we handle it. Decline is a choice, but so is liberty. Let us resolve as Americans to make liberty our choice.