America is drifting toward geopolitical disaster

In his 1987 classic, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” English historian Paul Kennedy identified economic instability and long, debilitating wars as the principal causes of the decline and/or collapse of great powers throughout modern history. He described these circumstances as “imperial overstretch,” a condition arising from chronic imbalance between global obligations and the economic resources needed to meet them. 

Soon thereafter, Kennedy’s thesis was validated by the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In his examination of the world’s other superpower, Kennedy posited that while America’s pathologies were far less acute than Russia’s, the United States was not permanently immune from the risks of imperial overstretch.

Now, 35 years later, his prescience is again being demonstrated by alarming evidence of a dangerous and growing imbalance between the United States’s worldwide obligations and the economic resources required to meet them. At present, the U.S. may be facing a “perfect storm” of worsening political polarization at home and increasingly aggressive enemies abroad. …

These daunting challenges would sorely test the United States world position, even if our country enjoyed the conditions of social cohesion and economic dominance to which we heretofore have been accustomed. Tragically, neither of these conditions exists today. America has become not only an economically battered nation but also, in Lincoln’s famous phrase, “A house divided against itself.” The reality of our national polarization finds no better illustration than the fact that, in the past two years, our chief political and military leaders have publicly declared that the greatest threats to our national security are not to be found in Russia or China but, rather, among our own citizens who have been broadly tarred with the brush of racism, white supremacy and domestic terrorism. …

What is bad news for the entire country is that the yawning chasm dividing not just the two political parties but society at large shows no sign of narrowing anytime soon, and as domestic economic and foreign pressure points continue to grow, the likelihood is that our situation will get worse before it gets better. When our people are encouraged to think that our history is worthy of nothing but self-loathing, and when we come to see opponents as not just having different ideas but being defective as persons or by virtue of their race or class, dark days are ahead for a country that once plausibly saw itself as mankind’s last, best hope.