Civilizations, like everything under the sun, have a life-cycle. They arise, they persist for a while, and then they inevitable decline and fall. Happened all the time in the past, and there is no reason to believe that it will cease to happen in the future — we are all Bayesians, after all.
Hegemons, like civilizations, also arise, persist, and ultimately decline. The present US hegemony is clearly not an exception to that general observation. The British Empire declined in less then a century. How long the US hegemony will take to decline is open to debate but one can conjecture that under the stewardship of Mr Bush and his cronies, it will be fairly rapid and painful.
Marvin Harris, my favorite anthropologist, has a wonderful book called Our Kind: Who we are, Where we came from, and Where are we going. He discusses the evolution of human life and culture. I would like to quote from page 117 of that book, for the record.
Alfred Kroeber, founder of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, succintly conveyed the irony of Rome’s collapse at the hands of despised barbarian races in these words:
Had Julius Ceasar or one of his contemporaries been asked whether by any sane stretch of fantasy he could imagine the Britons and the Germans as inherently the equals of Romans and Greeks, he would probably have replied that if these northerners possessed the ability of the Mediterraneans they would have long since have given vent to it, instead of continuing to live in disorganization, poverty, ignorance, rudeness, and without great men or products of spirit.
As for China’s racial hubris, nothing tells it better than Emperor Ch’ien-Lung’s 1791 rejection of a “red-faced barbarian” delegation’s request to open up trading relationships. England, the Emperor said, had nothing China wanted. “As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things.” There was a lot of truth in Ch’ien-Lung’s observation. Almost to the end of the eighteenth century, China’s technology was as advanced as England’s. The Chinese excelled at making porcelian (“chinaware”), silk cloth, and bronze castings. They had invented gunpowder, the first computer (the abacus), the canal lock gate, the iron-chain suspension bridge, the first true mechanical crank, the stern-post rudder, the man-lifting kite, and the escapement, a vital forerunner of European clockwork. In transport, agricultural productivity, and population, the tiny nations of Europe scarcely merited comparison. Ch’ien-Lung’s empire stretched from the Arctic Circle to the Indian Ocean and 3,000 miles inland. It had a population of 300 million, all under the control of a single, centralized bureaucracy. It was the biggest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen. Yet in fewer than fifty years after Ch’ien-Lung’s arrogant verdict, Chinese imperial power was destroyed, its armies humiliated by a handful of European troops, its seaports controlled by English, French, German, and American merchants, its peasant masses gripped by famine and pestilence.
Sic transit gloria mundi. Or as old Omar Khayyam said:
They say that the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where Jamshed gloried and drank deep.
And Behram — that great hunter! The wild ass stomps over his head
And he lies fast asleep.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
Throughout history, military power has largely determined hegemony, and the US is no exception. It has managed to extort the rest of the world to put up protection money by way of deficit financing for the last 30+ years, using its position as large debtor actually to its advantage. Control of IMF, World Bank, making tthe dollar the world currency and hence borrowing in its own currency etc come with this package. When American military power becomes less effective, its hegemony will wane. This will take place if one of two things happen,
a) military power in general will have to be less effective as a persuasive tool turning military strength into an unproductive disadvantage
b) competitive power blocs (financial and military) like the EU, China, India(??) have to emerge to challenge US domination
For obvious reasons, the first option is more desirable. It will be a marked turn for the better in human civilization. It is very optimistic but the spontanaeity and volume of protests world wide even before the Iraq invasion says something.
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Kirthi:
I didn’t think about the deficit financing thing, very interesting…
I personally think that your latter option is short term, and the first option will happen long term. Methinks that both will happen, after watching BRIC, ASEAN etc. I think FTA’s (free trade agreements); avoidance of double taxation will drive the global economic integration. When there are several blocs around in a couple of decades or so, someone will lead the march towards the one single bloc. Maybe US, maybe EU, maybe China…
No one country can afford such a big military budget. I think that the US is no different than India in the defense deals, a la Tehelka. If the American defense contractors were more honest, they can easily shave their own military bill at the very least 20%, [maybe as high as 70% if they outsource :-)] I don’t have the patience to do real research to justify the claim, but I am sure it can be done.
I think most of the wars which have been fought by the USA, post WW II are for either of financial/economic/hegemonistic reasons. I have read some accounts of the WW I/II, stating that America entered them for pure financial and economic reasons. The defense lobby though minuscule is very influential, most common Americans don’t care what happens outside, maybe they derive some minor satisfaction, but I think that is the extent of their thinking. It is the same old truth, maybe 1-5 % of the population lust after some ephemeral glory and make the others suffer. Right now these guys are also destroying the environment by their actions, and I shiver to think what will happen if humanity as a whole doesn’t take action by 2050 or so. Will the deserts swamp huge land areas? Will the oceans drown the coastal areas which are home to a major chunk of humanity? Will the climate variations affect rains/drought? Will we be fully able to solve pollution problems?
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Hi Atanu,
I have always wondered, why is prosperity unsustainable, like Ch’ien-Lung’s rule? Even India which was prosperous under Emperor Ashoka’s rule collapsed at some point. Why is it that people are not able to create great leaders to continue on the road to progress. Surely there must be a way to do so.
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