Deciphering the American Paradox

 

How do we reconcile America’s core values, represented by capitalism, democracy, and liberalism, with its image as an international bully? And what are the challenges confronting the U.S.? 

The rise of China, the war in Ukraine, and the students’ protests on the U.S. university campuses against Netanyahu's Holocaust in Gaza are a few of these challenges. The prevailing world begs two major concerns: 1) The post-war II global order is unraveling. 2) The world is heading toward the revival of fascism – an ideology based on denying human values. Contrary to our perception and desire, the world was never peaceful, orderly, and stable. The concept of entropy – the measure of disorder that affects all aspects of our daily lives, explains it. According to the second law of thermodynamics, “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same).” You can think of it as nature's tax. So, there is no order or morality in nature – only casualty. 

This disorder and instability are amply exemplified and proven by the endless turmoil, wars, genocides, and Byzantine conspiracies that have peppered our past. This is the crux of history – the lengthy narrative of humanity’s march from antiquity to the present. When we talk of instability, our world is a microcosm of multiple universes – the multiverse, where Earth is nothing more than a woefully insignificant dot. In this multiverse, stars are constantly taking birth out of clouds of gas and dust, dying after they exhaust their nuclear fuel, and finally collapsing into black holes. Even as the multiverse remains in flux, so do civilizations. So, if the current world order collapses, another world order will replace it. The world has witnessed the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, British, French, and Soviet empires collapsing and being replaced with successor empires. 

 One cannot disagree that fascism is resurging in the world. However, this extremist philosophy has not risen from the dead. Like vampires, it never died. Fascism is resurging because it has reunited with its long-lost cousins in Hindutva and, ironically, the Israeli Extreme Right. The recent U.S. 2 students’ protests on university campuses are the backlash of American society against fascism’s alliance with the Zionist mindset – Netanyahu justifying Gaza carnage by leaning on the Old Testament. 

 The concerns about America’s challenges are serious. It is partially true that the US economic and military power is receding compared to China. The difference between the volume of their economies is closing fast. We must, however, keep in mind that the US derives its economic and military might from its intellectual power. China, even as Japan (the third largest economy in the world), is a copycat. It pains me, being a Pakistani, to observe that China has mastered the art of reverse engineering, but has very little to show in terms of original creation. China may be doing 30% of the world’s manufacturing, and it may be the largest producer of electric cars, however, the research and thinking that goes into these products is done in the U.S. PAF’s J-10 is a copy of Israel’s Lavi, whose technology Israel stole from U.S. Similarly, the U.S. controls conventional and social media platforms. Chinese and Japanese can improve upon the research already done in the West but lack the originality in creating new concepts and products. 

 Presently, and in the foreseeable future, the U.S. will continue to possess the highest level of political and military clout because it has the world’s best universities and scientific research institutions. And it has a work ethic and intellectual culture not matched elsewhere. Those forecasting that China will overshadow the U.S. should remember that the brain drain is taking place from China and the rest of the world, to the U.S. not vice versa. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping sent 3000 Chinese students to U.S. universities. These students were the vanguard of the Chinese Communist Party responsible for Deng’s Four Modernizations. Even in the 22nd Century China may not emerge as the leader in science and technology but remain as America’s auxiliary seat of learning because of the Chinese Diaspora working in American science and technology institutions. 

What are China’s structural weaknesses in comparison to the U.S.? 

U.S. possesses political stability through well-established and pluralistic state institutions (A “Very Stable” country, according to the Fragile States 3 Index). On the other hand, China‘s political stability is becoming increasingly vulnerable due to 1) centrifugal tendencies, and 2) the opening up of Chinese society due to exposure to the application of information technology. To address this problem, China has fine-tuned an already practiced pattern of governance that suits authoritarian states and provides them with an alternative to democracy. Malaysia, Singapore, the Gulf states, and Iran follow this pattern. It transforms the state into a huge corporate entity where the government is reduced to the status of an oversized board of directors and the population becomes state employees. The system has all the trappings of democracy - legislature, judiciary, and executive. These institutions make all the right noises, but the real power rests with the board of directors (ruling parties in the case of Malaysia and Singapore, the communist party in the case of China, royal families in the Gulf states, and the watchdog institution of clerics, in Iran’s case). Corporate governance differs from Soviet communism and the classical dictatorships in that it is relatively benign and the populace gets a fair share of the national wealth. In this system, human rights are regulated by the state to the extent that they do not clash with the ruling elite. This explains why these authoritarian states, after having throttled the print and traditional electronic media, do not tolerate the so-called social media. Cynics believe that Western democracy is also a sophisticated version of corporate governance. 

Will the Chinese model sustain itself? 

 Whereas the U.S. managed unrest on the campuses during the Vietnam War and is grappling with the same problem in the wake of the Israel-Gaza War, China’s handling of the Tiananmen Square protests still haunts it. The state capitalism practiced by China is a stop-gap- measure. China will fail to confront the situation when its people demand greater freedoms. American society, despite its frailties, has the inner strength to withstand crises like the Watergate scandal where Richard Nixon faced impeachment on the charge that he was aware his subordinates were taping the conversations of the Democratic Party leaders – he never ordered the 4 taping though. Nixon was forced to resign and almost excommunicated by the U.S. citizens. They protested even whenever Nixon tried to rent accommodation in a new neighbourhood. Finally, there is nothing unnatural about the present global turmoil, compared by many to the situation prevailing before WWI and WWII. According to Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist, it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. 

Saleem Akhtar Malik

4 May 2024