OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA has always tried to portray superpower conflict as an obvious and inevitable consequence of the irreconcilable differences between the two sides. One’s own side was represented as the manifestation of all that is good and just in the world and the other as all that is evil and repressive. There was usually a catchy label to go with the description that tested well with the target audience, such as the “Imperialist Aggressor” or the “Evil Empire.” When you switched sides, the orientation of the propaganda you had just heard flipped automatically: it was like stepping through a mirror.
It is axiomatic that in order for a contest to make an engaging spectacle, the contestants have to be evenly matched. A mock pugilistic contest between a schoolgirl and her pet kangaroo may provide amusement, but it cannot be regarded as proper sport. What we generally look for is a fair fight, or at least the semblance of one, and this requires that the two fighters weigh about the same, have similar training and be able to go on expertly punching and blocking for several rounds. They would probably turn out to have other things in common as well: a diet rich in red meat or a tendency to try solving many different kinds of problems by throwing punches. A given audience may decide to cheer one and boo the other, making the contest more interesting to watch, but that is irrelevant to the outcome.
If a contest goes on for an extended period of time — in the case of the superpower contest, over three decades — it would appear safe to conclude that the contestants had been evenly matched. But we will probably never know for certain why the Soviet fighter chose to take a dive in the fourth round, because that certainly did not look like a proper knockout. It is also hard to understand why the American fighter concluded his little victory jig by kneeing himself in the teeth, or why he is now draped unconscious over the ropes and getting pummeled by some junior featherweights from the stands. And why is the Soviet fighter now seated back in his corner, laughing? It is never easy to give up the title of World Superpower Champion, especially when it is not being challenged, but this is ridiculous! What sort of sporting event is this anyway? Bring back the schoolgirl and the kangaroo!
Turning slightly more serious, some would find a direct comparison between the United States and the Soviet Union incongruous, if not downright insulting. After all, what grounds are there to compare a failed Communist empire to the undisputed world leader? Others might find it preposterous that the loser might have advice for the winner in what they might see as an ideological conflict. Since the differences between the two appear glaring to most, let me just indicate some similarities, which I hope you will find are no less obvious.
The Soviet Union and the United States are each either the winner or the runner-up in the following categories: the space race, the arms race, the jails race, the hated evil empire race, the squandering of natural resources race and the bankruptcy race. In some of these categories, the United States is, shall we say, a late bloomer, setting new records after its rival was forced to forfeit. Both believed, with giddy zeal, in science, technology and progress, right up until the Chernobyl disaster occurred. After that, there was only one true believer left.
They are the two post-World War II industrial empires that attempted to impose their ideologies on the rest of the world: democracy and capitalism versus socialism and central planning. Both had some successes: while the United States reveled in growth and prosperity, the Soviet Union achieved universal literacy, universal health care, far less social inequality and a guaranteed — albeit lower — standard of living for all citizens. The state-controlled media took pains to make sure that most people didn’t realize just how much lower it was: “Those happy Russians don’t know how badly they live,” Simone Signoret said after a visit.
Both empires made a big mess of quite a few other countries, each one financing, funneling arms and directly taking part in bloody conflicts around the world in order to impose its ideology and thwart the other. Both made quite a big mess of their own country, setting world records for the percentage of population held in jails (South Africa was a contender at one point). In this last category, the US is now a runaway success, supporting a burgeoning, partially privatized prison-industrial complex.
While the United States used to have far more goodwill around the world than the Soviet Union, the “evil empire” gap has narrowed since the Soviet Union disappeared from the scene. Now, in many countries around the world, including Western countries like Sweden, the United States ranks as a bigger threat to peace than Iran or North Korea. In the hated-empire race, the United States is now beginning to look like the champion. These almost universal negative feelings are likely to prove more durable than the superpower’s good fortune: nobody likes a loser, especially if the loser is a failed superpower. Nobody had any pity for the poor defunct Soviet Union, and nobody will have any pity for poor defunct America either.
The bankruptcy race is particularly interesting. Prior to its collapse, the Soviet Union was taking on foreign debt at a rate that could not be sustained. The combination of low world oil prices and a peak in Soviet oil production sealed its fate. Later, the Russian Federation, which inherited the Soviet foreign debt, was forced to default on its obligations, precipitating an international financial crisis. Russia’s finances later improved, primarily due to rising oil prices along with rising oil exports, and it is now well on its way to becoming an energy superpower.
The United States is now facing a current account deficit that cannot be sustained, a falling currency and an energy crisis, all at once. It is now the world’s largest debtor nation, and most people do not see how it can avoid defaulting on its debt. According to a lot of analysts, it is technically bankrupt and is being propped up by foreign reserve banks, which hold a lot of dollar-denominated assets and, for the time being, want to protect the value of their reserves. This game can only go on for so long. Thus, while the Soviet Union deserves honorable mention for going bankrupt first, the gold in this category (pun intended) will undoubtedly go to the United States, for the largest default ever.
There are many other similarities. For instance, both countries have been experiencing chronic depopulation of farming districts. In Russia, family farms were decimated during collectivization, along with agricultural output; in the US, a variety of other forces produced a similar result with regard to rural population, but without any loss of production. Both countries replaced family farms with unsustainable, ecologically disastrous industrial agribusiness, addicted to fossil fuels. The American ones work better, as long as energy is cheap and, after that, probably won’t work at all.
All the similarities are too numerous to mention. I hope that what I outlined above is enough to signal a key fact: that these are, or were, the antipodes of the same industrial, technological civilization. But what is interesting for our purposes is to identify and describe the key elements that made these superpower contestants so evenly matched that their sparring went on for decades.
None of these key elements can be sustained forever. The hypothesis I wish to test is that the lack of these same key elements, readily identifiable in the Soviet collapse, likewise spells the demise of America, definitely as a superpower, probably as a major part of the world economy, and possibly as a recognizable entity on the political map.
The Myth of Inclusiveness
Like that of our metaphorical heavyweight champion, a superpower’s diet must contain plenty of red meat — in this case, human flesh. A superpower must continually ingest plenty of highly skilled and motivated personnel — managers, scientists, engineers, military
