The current crisis of American power recalls Britain's interwar predicament. This is "The Gathering Storm," Washington edition. My latest for @TheEconomist : economist.com/by-invitation/… 1/10
Since 1914, the nation had endured war, financial crisis and in 1918-19 a terrible pandemic, the Spanish influenza. The economic landscape was overshadowed by a mountain of debt. A highly unequal society was a breeding ground for extreme ideologies. 2/10
Meanwhile the established political class preferred to ignore a deteriorating international situation. The result was a disastrous failure to acknowledge the scale of the totalitarian threat and to amass the means to deter the dictators. 3/10
So many books and articles predicting American decline have been written in recent decades that “declinism” has become a cliché. But Britain’s experience between the 1930s and the 1950s is a reminder that there are worse fates than gentle, gradual decline. 4/10
Britain’s public debt after the first world war rose from 109% of GDP in 1918 to just under 200% in 1934. America’s federal debt is different in important ways, but it is comparable in magnitude. 5/10
Most Americans simply do not want to contemplate the possibility of a major war against one or more authoritarian regimes. That is why the projected decline of American defence spending from 3.4% of GDP in 2020 to 2.5% in 2031, will cause consternation only to Churchillians. 6/10
Like Britons in the 1930s, Americans in the 2020s have fallen out of love with empire—a fact that Chinese observers have noticed and relish. 7/10
The problem, as this month’s debacle in Afghanistan perfectly illustrates, is that the retreat from global dominance is rarely a peaceful process. 8/10
It doesn't need to be this way. There is nothing inexorable about China’s rise, much less Russia’s. And yet it is all too easy to see a sequence of events unfolding that could lead to another "unnecessary war," most probably over Taiwan. 9/10
If American deterrence fails and China gambles on a coup de main, the United States will face the grim choice between fighting a long, hard war—as Britain did in 1914 and 1939—or folding, as happened over Suez in 1956. 10/10
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
