Emmanuel Todd, Apres l'Empire: Essai sur las decomposition du systeme americain.

Emmanuel Todd, Apres l'Empire: Essai sur las decomposition du systeme americain (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2002), 233 pages. 18.50ff.

The book by Emmanuel Todd, the English translation of which will soon be published, cannot be easily dismissed as one more example of the anti-Americanism which is said to be typical for French and/or left-wing intellectuals. The author is a French-Jewish scholar who admits to his family's American connections (p. 141). He stresses his pro-capitalist and liberal democratic allegiance and his recognition of the positive role of the U.S. in the twentieth century because of its struggle against the Soviet Union and economic generosity after World War II. Indeed, in his analysis of the Soviet system, which was published in French in 1976_, Todd was not only extremely critical of the Communist experiment, but also predicted with striking accuracy its forthcoming disintegration. He further perceived capitalism as a real alternative. His earlier book brought him the recognition and acceptance of many prominent scholars, including Raymond Aron and Jean Francois Revel. The book was translated into English in 1979 and very warmly received in North America. His new work is at least equally challenging and revealing, but in all probability it will not be equally acclaimed.

In his analysis of the world situation, Todd repudiates the cliches suggested by the media of global terrorism and the threat to Western civilization from the "developing"--particularly Arab nations. According to his research, the constant spread of literacy and the increasing level of birth control put most of these nations on the way towards socio-economic and cultural transition to individualism and modernity--a transition which the Western nations completed much earlier, and in their cases was no less rocky and full of troubles. The author seems partially to approve of Francis Fukuyama's prediction about the final triumph of democracy and capitalism and M.W. Doyle's theory that democratic states are neither willing nor able to wage war among themselves (the democratic peace theory). However, the conditional acceptance of the two main American ideological premises led him to a somewhat surprising but nevertheless logical conclusion that this new world order in the making is not going to offer any special role or imperial mission for the U.S., which might be forced to cut down its military power and again become just one more democratic nation among the others (p. 72).

Todd admits that such a course of events is by no means certain. As he writes: "We still don't know if the process of world-wide democratization and subsequent peace among the nations are historically inevitable" (ibid). However, according to him, both these developments would represent a threat to the U.S. which, due to its economic dependence, needs to preserve a certain level of international tension in order to justify its political and military presence in Eurasia (ibid).

The scholars who reflected on the development of the American Empire frequently compared it with the Athenian and/or Roman Empires of antiquity. Both of these comparisons are of course imperfect, but still provide much food for thought and relevant analogies. The Athenian Empire, like the U.S., a maritime empire, had also started as an acclaimed leader of the Greek cities coalition in their defensive war against the Persians. However, later on it degenerated and became economically oppressive towards its allies, causing their rebellion and its own collapse. The economic result of the Roman territorial expansion was a kind of Mediterranean globalization which subsequently ruined the Italian economy and transformed its productive population into the "plebs," for which the ruling elite needed to provide bread and cheap, vulgar entertainment.

Todd opposes the neo-liberal orthodoxy and indicates that globalization is certainly not symmetrical, but asymmetrical. Indeed more and more, the world produces in order to satisfy American consumption. There is no balance between American imports and exports. As he writes: "the nation which was autonomous and over-productive after World War II became the heart of the system in which its vocation is consumption rather than production" (p.79). In 2001 the impact of oil, which is the true obsession of the American strategists, explains only $80 billion of its commercial deficit, which in total amounted to almost $500 billion (p. 80). Even in the much touted high technology exports, the role of the U.S. is declining. Between 1990 and 2001, the commercial balance for those products changed from $35 billion in 1990 to $5 billion in 2001 (p. 81). While on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929, 44.5% of the global industrial product was made in the U.S., 70 years later, American industry was little smaller than that of the E.U. and just a little bigger than Japan's, which in 1929 produced just 2.4% of the global industrial product (p. 81). Since 1998 even profits which American MNCs repatriated home, became smaller than the ones which foreign companies extracted from the U.S. itself (ibid). Between 1994 and 2000, financial services, insurance and real estate developed twice as fast as all branches of industry and finally their "values" were assessed as 123% of the U.S. industrial production (p. 83). The author concludes that artificially and sometimes even fraudulently inflated figures of the American GNP, which contradict the reality of its commercial balances, now started to resemble the grossly exaggerated statistics of the former Soviet Union before its collapse, and similarly it is difficult to rely on them (p. 85).

The neo-liberal economic theory cannot explain the retroaction of American industry and transformation of this great country into the one specialized in consumption and dependent on the rest of the world for its provisions (p. 84). In Todd's view, an analogy with the Roman Empire can give a better chance to understand that as an economic result of global political and military domination (ibid). Especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the entrance of many post-Communist countries into the asymmetrical global exchange, American over-consumption became a key element of world economic structure. However, under the conditions of the insufficiency of global demand structurally created by the free exchange, for the rest of the world's nations, the U.S. is essentially necessary because of its consumption and not its production. Between 1993 and 2000, the U.S. commercial deficit has increased from $100 billion to $450 billion. From the financial point of view, the continuity of the American system was possible only because of the enormous influx of foreign capital to the U.S., which between 1990 and 2001 increased from $88 billion to $865 billion (p. 111). After the deduction of the American foreign investments, the final positive balance of the capital influx to the U.S. amounted to $485 billion (ibid), which was then more than enough to compensate for the commercial deficit. North America, as a center of the global Empire and widely believed to be a safe haven for money, attracts capital from the privileged classes all over the world, in spite of its relatively low "physical" productivity and low interest rates for investments. However, the outcome of that is both economic and political vulnerability of American power which now depends on the fragile tributes of the others, and the growing world-wide inequality of wealth distribution.

According to the author, in spite of all of its increasing military spending, the U.S. still does not have at its disposal enough military strength to police the world and to maintain the existing situation. American land forces which have never fought enemies comparable in strength in all their previous history, are apparently unable to impose Washington's dictates on the developed and even a number of developing nations. In addition, Russia, although greatly weakened after the Soviet Union's collapse, is still capable of providing a credible nuclear counterbalance to the U.S.'s unlimited military domination.

In order to demonstrate its military might and in an effort to put pressure on the other nations, the U.S. has to demonize and attack some of the weak (often the weakest) Third World countries, which it claims to be dangerous to its own security, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps after them, Syria, Iran and Cuba. The divided Arab World provides the U.S. strategists with an ideal "enemy" to exercise their power and to satisfy their imperial desires. As the American leaders are always looking for the easiest solution, the Arabs are mistreated because they are militarily weak and they have oil. The myth of oil enables the American people to forget about their country's need for all other goods, because there is no efficient Arab lobby in the U.S. and the American establishment has indeed lost its ability to think and feel in a truly universalistic and egalitarian way (p. 167).

For Todd, the most glaring example of the regress of American universalism is Washington's unflinching support for Israel and its scorn of the Palestinians. These American policies seem to him to be not only irrational and denying real American interests, but also they cannot be explained by the political influence, in Todd's view limited, of the American Jewish community (pp. 134-141). According to him the ability to treat the people and nations in an egalitarian manner is a necessary precondition for dynamism and stability of an empire (p. 121); Americans' retreat from universalism makes them even less capable of leading the world.

Although after the Soviet Union's collapse the U.S. seemed to achieve the peak of its power and global hegemony, Todd argues that in real politik terms, two necessary conditions have not been met.

   (1) The U.S. needs to maintain its full grip over Western
   Europe and Japan, which in practice used to be its military
   protectorates.
   (2) Post-Soviet Russia should completely disintegrate and lose
   its nuclear ability to prevent the U.S. from striking any
   country of the world it wishes to, and without any risk
   involved (p. 222).

Up to now, these goals have not been accomplished. The European Union and Japan made themselves the real economic powers which are determined by production and not by consumption. During the last few years Russia's decline has been reversed and its powerful ballistic missiles can easily penetrate any type of anti-ballistic shield which G.W. Bush's administration is busy building up (ibid).

The present American "theatrical micromilitarism" (p. 157) against insignificant adversaries, in addition to demonstration of power, is supposed to instigate the artificial foci of the world's political and military tensions and to prove the U.S. to be a truly "indispensable" nation. However, in the twentieth century no country has achieved its wealth and influence by war and/or military build-up (pp. 232-233). The author suggests that the Europeans avoid the example of American militarism and focus instead on their own social and economic problems. The U.S. war against "terrorism" is indeed a struggle for global hegemony which, for objective reasons, is inevitably declining, and its continuous wish to demonstrate its military power will lead instead to the disclosure of all its real weaknesses (p. 233). The world of the future will not be controlled by any single nation (p. 226). It is in fact too big, too diverse and too dynamic to accept the predominance of just one power center.

Emmanuel Todd's work certainly contains many brilliant insights and revealing comments. However, not all his arguments seem to be equally valid and/or convincing. For instance, he seems to underestimate the importance of the "tertiary" sector in the post-modern economy, and to overestimate the role of the racial factor in American society. He is also probably prone to overestimate the power and influence of the Evangelical Christians in the U.S. and to underestimate the influence of the Jewish community in that country. His book has been prepared in Western Europe and from the American reader's point of view, several objections might be rightly expected. However, the work, which is written both fairly and with passion, should be read carefully. At the present critical juncture of history, Todd provides us with a much-needed intellectual challenge which should contribute to serious debate on our available political choices and possible destinies.

END NOTES

(1.) Emmanuel Todd, La chute finale: Essai sur la decomposition de la sphere sovietique (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976).

(2.) Emmanuel Todd, The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere (New York: Karz Publishers, 1979).

Andrej Kreutz is an independent scholar based in Calgary, Canada.