By Patricia H. Kushlis
For decades, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was seen as the result of an economic decline that took place over more than a century. More recently, however, historians have taken another look. Some now suggest that the problem was not Ottoman economic decline but rather Western Europe’s rapid advancement fueled by scientific achievement and technological prowess.
In short, Constantinople stagnated while Paris, London and Berlin forged ahead – in the process overtaking the Ottomans and creating a globe in which that Empire no longer existed.
This, at least is a contention in M. Şükrü Hanioğlu’s Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire which was published by Princeton University Press in 2008.
When I lived in Helsinki from 1988-1992 and was trying to make sense of the immense and confusing changes then occurring in the Soviet Union, I searched out parallels in the history of the late Ottoman Empire.
Certainly there were some: both were multinational empires on Europe’s fringes. Both had extensive geographic reach and both were influenced by European political winds: in particular Empire-breaking nationalisms that enveloped the continent at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
But there were a differences too.
As it turned out, history did not repeat itself. And it is unlikely to do so in the future.
The question now is whether we are once again in the midst of another global geopolitical seismic shift – only this time through massive redistribution of economic, and hence political and ultimately military power to China, India, Russia and Brazil at the expense of the US, Japan and Western Europe. And if so, how should the US respond?
I realize that time has sped up and there are some Americans who want “to stop the world” and dash for the nearest exit in search of Rousseau’s green pastures, the Garden of Eden and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon combined or perhaps even just a cup of soothing hot chocolate on a wintry day.
There are others who want to revert to a pre-19th century world in which the US was protected (well sort of) by its impenetrable oceans and - shhh - the British fleet. Or so the thinking went, if Americans had to venture into a threatening abroad they should venture forth only from behind the supposedly protected sites of a gun.
But do these approaches make sense in today’s world where time has sped up and modern technologies have uncorked past genies from vintage bottles?
It’s not just the Internet but also the over-development of fiber-optic cables that make trans-oceanic calls a pittance and a call from London to New Mexico sound like the caller is in the next room. There are also the global fast food chains that provide eat and run service – as well as cholesterol-laden food that all tastes the same – but also the sports equipment and high speed chairlifts that have turned downhill skiing, for example, into an extreme sport.
Mind you, downhill was never for the faint-hearted but the advances in equipment thanks to new technologies have, in my view, simply encouraged greater risk-taking on the part of users. I am not my ski or snowboarder brother’s keeper – but I also would prefer not to be in his or her path as he or she lunges down the hill at top speed out of control.
West versus BRIC
But back to the West versus the BRIC – the latest catch-phrase tripping off the tongues and dripping from the pens of today’s economic gurus, pundits and journalists. Is it really all over for the US?
Does American government debt – thank you George Bush for digging that hole in a scant eight years and also for helping to cause the current steep recession through tax policy frivolity and regulatory laxness – mean that this country should turn belly up and content itself with a long slide into international irrelevance?
BRIC bricks
Wasn’t it only a decade ago that the US was at the top of the game and weren’t Brazil and Russia – two of the four bricks of the BRIC – considered basket cases with bankrupt economies in desperate need of IMF bailouts by some of the same short memoried economic gurus and journalists?
And what about China and India – the other two bricks - as their economies continue to develop and their new found wealth spreads inland from China’s Pacific coast and fans out from India’s high tech centers? Will they forever remain the sources of ultra cheap labor for manufactured goods sold to the West?
As economic consumption and production equations change, won’t they likely influence where multinational corporations choose to manufacture products? Don’t they always seek out the lowest bidder?
Won’t changes in the production and delivery of various forms of energy also result in shifting global, regional and national economic balances in unforeseen and unpredictable ways?
The disappearance of old bogeymen
Twenty years ago we were told that the Japanese had discovered the economic nirvana – and that the US would be overwhelmed by Japanese goods and overtaken by Japanese managerial prowess in a scant few years. And? Then what happened? Hum? Where’s Japan today? Mired in decades old recession.
Before that, Americans were warned of relentless Soviet global expansion – or perhaps even a military attack on the US – but was such an attack ever in the cards or did perhaps investment in American diplomatic and national security expertise and where withall make such a threat nigh impossible for the Soviets to carry out?
What these two external threats – real or not - did do, however, was to challenge Americans to pick up their socks, get off their couches and develop the country’s infrastructure – from the interstate highway system, airports, docks and power grids to professionally trained and highly skilled national security experts and scientists along with better quality public education for its kids.
Yet sadly, since the end of the Cold War and without those outside threats, too many Americans have been seduced into complacency. They have allowed the infrastructure - both in terms of physical and human capital - upon which we depend for our daily existence to erode.
California is, in my view, the single worst example.
Just saying “no” and singing the shopworn “stop the world I want to get off” refrain is no answer. Standing still in a dynamic world didn't help the Ottomans and it won't help the US. Isn’t it high time then to pick up the shards and reinvest in America’s future - even if it takes newly perceived economic threats from abroad to sound the wake up call?