How would you – personally – undermine a tyrannical regime?

Back in the 1970s some of us at Caltech -- and then UC -- had an interesting topic of discussion. “Say you are invited to a science conference in the USSR. What items can you bring with you that would (1) not get confiscated/destroyed by the KGB upon arrival, and (2) nevertheless, help to undermine the system and sway locals toward a freer, more open way of life?”

Jeans and rock albums?  The first things border agents would seize.  Sci fi books?  Sure, bring a few.  But any large number will be taken and pulped.

“Toothpaste,” said a visiting Russian scholar, with utter conviction borne out of experience. “One fellow from JPL gave us all small tubes of American toothpaste when he visited Moscow. As soon as they ran out and we had to go back to our regular products, we all were guaranteed to hate the system, three times a day.”

Ooh, clever.  Even tasty.

But my own option was simple.  Frisbees. No simple, lightweight, inexpensive object is more inherently about freedom, looseness, ad-hoc mixing of cooperation and competition… and making up rules as you go along.  You can even play with one, all by yourself, or with your dog, or… as in this article about frisbee empowerment… just learning to feel free. 

Watch this insidious invention do its geopolitical work, here. 

== International Insight ==

The World Post is taking shape into an excellent contribution to your news-and-perspective feed. Editor Nathn Gardels has roped in some top contributors. (I’ve even added a few thoughts, from time to time.)  See, for example, this excellent piece decrypting the mess of conflicting wants and alliances in Yemen.

Another essay dares to challenge the assumption that Saudi Arabia is the west’s natural ally in the Middle East, especially after 60 years exporting the most radical - Wahabbist - version of west-hating Islam and relentlessly vetoing almost every attempt at peace between Palestine and Israel. “They are well aware that, given Iran's young, educated and dynamic population of nearly 80 million, its strategic position as a bridge between Asia and Europe and in control of the entire northern shores of the Persian Gulf, its rich natural resources in addition to vast reserves of oil and natural gas, and deep and old culture and influence throughout the Middle East, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Saudi Arabia cannot simply compete with Iran, if Iran's relations with the West are improved, and the crippling economic sanctions imposed on Iran are lifted. So, they are doing what they can to poison the negotiations' atmosphere…”

The notion that Iran might be a natural ally of the west does not surprise those of us who recall the world, before 1978… or who note that Iran’s vast, highly educated urban populations would leap for a rapprochement, if the mullahs’ grip loosened an iota.  Moreover, such a twist would, at a shot, reduce all threats to Israel and radicalization of Syria or Iraq.  A pipe dream?  Not to forty million Iranians.

The question is: do the younger Saudi princes realize all this?  And that their best option would be to de-radicalize first? Perhaps even — weird thought — stop blocking peace with Israel, and instead enlisting it in coalition against Iran?

Good chess players would show flexibility, right now.

== A lesson from kindergarten -- Remember your friends ==

"Chinese strategist Yan Xuetong’s book Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power argues that all countries must recognize and accept China's centrality to the world as the Middle Kingdom," writes Yuriko Koike in The World Post.  

In fact, that way of thinking has been China’s curse, ever since Emperor Chi’in made the transcendent mistake of uniting the Four Nations. Until that moment, those four kingdoms had been profoundly innovative and progressive… the way a divided Europe rocketed ahead in the 15^th through 19^th centuries. The sense of centrality -- Chung Kuo or "central kingdom" led to one calamitous error, after another. Above all, a preening attitude that drove away every potential friend.

Don't believe it? Here is the ultimate question to ask our friends -- and I do mean to call them by that word – in the Central Kingdom, in order to help talk them down from a rising nationalist boil. This is another of my... name one example challenges.

Across the subsequent four millennia, name for us one example of a great and loyal foreign friend that China ever had?

There was one. Only one, across 6000 years of civilization. Just one powerful friend who ever came - voluntarily and repeatedly (though not always vigorously or intelligently or with complete purity of motives) - to China’s aid, in times of need.  Not as a subject or satrapy, but just as a friend, seeking nothing in return.

I’ll bet you’ll never guess who it was.

Oh, the record is far from perfect.  But it is pretty good, by the standards of human history, for that one friend.  And it truly was, across all those countless centuries, China’s only friend.

And funny thing… now that I think on it… the same exact thing can be said of Japan.

Just.. one… true (though not always consistent)… friend.

== And re: China’s new (huge geographically) satellite to the north ==

‘Barack Obama has used the close of the G7 summit in Germany to deliver his strongest criticism yet of Vladimir Putin, lambasting the Russian president’s isolationist approach as the seven leaders signaled their readiness to tighten sanctions against Russia if the conflict in Ukraine escalates. “Does he continue to wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire? Or does he recognise that Russia’s greatness does not depend on violating the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other countries?”’ 

I have long pondered whether to offer up my own views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Certainly the fawning admiration – Reagan level deification – that he gets from Fox and the American right is a phenomenon that reflects far more on the current sickness of U.S. conservatism, than shedding light on the enigma that is Putin, himself.  I guess I will put off my in-depth analysis of this fascinating, clever and strange man for some other time.

Except to say that I have one of my own unconventional, “low-probability but high plausibility” theory about what Putin might be up to. And if this theory turned out to be true – (I give 1:4 odds) -- it would make him one of the most unique and devious figures of the last one hundred years.  I will give you one hint. He might – across all his lifespan – be both consistent and sincere.  I mean utterly consistent and utterly sincere.

 If so… then wow. But even more amazing is the fact that not one analyst in the West will even contemplate it, as a distant possibility. Talk about tunnel vision.

Letting that suffice, for now, I will only conclude with this: that the “superb chess moves” of clawing back the Crimea and Donbass regions – mostly Russian speaking zones that were never much Ukrainian in the first place – should be seen in context of the earlier and vastly larger setback, the worst for any Russian leader in 400 years… the loss from Russia’s sphere of influence of the Ukraine, itself. 

“Analysts” who emphasize the former, without setting those moves in context of the latter, are nothing more than yellow so-called “journalists,” and shame on any of you who fall for it.

== Inventing Nations Must Stand Up ==

No “foreign aid” - or any other activity - has so driven world development as the U.S. trade deficit with countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and then China and India, which financed their rapid GDP growth, uplifting up to two billion people out of poverty.

Americans - in turn - have been able to afford this uplifting deficit by inventing (or improving) things like jets, rockets, satellites, pharma, telecom and the Internet.  This has been the world's most virtuous cycle -- designed deliberately (as I have described elsewhere) by geniuses like George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Harry Truman. And make no mistake -- this process was invented by Pax Americana, deliberately, not created by the mercantilist states.

Alas, a great design can only be kept humming along when the beneficiaries understand it well enough to maintain it. And that understanding seems to be lacking where it's needed most. It’s one thing to develop your country along mercantilist lines, as did Japan, Korea, China and so on, by selling richer nations things their citizens want.  It is quite another to steal from the inventor nations the very things they are good at, the invention-rewards that they need in order to keep this virtuous cycle going.  In order to keep buying.

Kill the goose that lays your golden eggs? That is just short-sighted foolishness. State-sponsored theft of crown jewel IP is a threat not only to inventing individuals and companies and countries but to the entire global economy. It is not-only regrettable ingratitude to the only friends you ever had. It is also deeply foolish.

A number of bright seers — such as Strategic News Service director Mark Anderson — have been working hard to bring this issue forward in both international recognition, and to generate national responses. 

And now, for the first time, action seems to be afoot.  President Obama has announced measures that have a chance to materially change the balance of power between IP grabbers and their victims. This was done through an Executive Order titled "Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities," and it appears to achieve in one action what years of talk have failed to achieve. Unlike the FBI indictments of five Chinese hackers and the related criticisms at the time ("They will never have to face justice while they stay in China"), this order makes sure there is enough deterrent to go around for everyone involved.

The presidential order is viewable here: Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities. For more, see the web site of INVNT/IP Global Consortium.

Again, in fact I am quite friendly to a rising China!  Indeed, in EARTH I depicted it sooner than probably any other author! 

Nevertheless. It is just vital that we retain a sensible context. We are the “sleeping giants.”  Always have been. Always will be. 

== And finally ==

“There are 7 billion people on earth and about 7000 languages, but more than half of the world's population speaks one of just 23 languages. This infographic, created by Alberto Lucas Lopéz for the South China Morning Post, shows the relative size of speaker population for all the languages that have over 50 million speakers.” 

Informative and good perspective... but this graphic should always be accompanied by a second one showing which languages are actively being studied as a SECOND language or used to communicate across cultural barriers.

In essence, there is only one.

Optimists Rise Up!

Here is yet more news that shatters the cynical incantations and pat nostrums of  both the right and the left.  In April, the Development Committee of the World Bank set the goal of ending extreme poverty worldwide by the year 2030. Does that sound naive and delusionally utopian? Jeffrey Sachs in the New York Times shows a strong case that this goal can (roughly) be met and indeed is being met.

"According to the World Bank’s scorecard, the proportion of households in developing countries below the extreme-poverty line (now measured as $1.25 per person per day at international prices) has declined sharply, from 52 percent in 1980, to 43 percent in 1990, 34 percent in 1999, and 21 percent in 2010. Even sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the most recalcitrant poverty, is finally experiencing a notable decline, from 58 percent in 1999 to 49 percent in 2010."

Sachs shows that "…anti-market sentiment is no friend of poverty reduction. But neither is free-market fundamentalism. Economic growth and poverty reduction can’t be achieved by free markets alone. Disease control, public education, infrastructure creation and protection, anti-monopoly market protection, the promotion of new science and technology, and protection of the natural environment are all public functions that must align with private market forces."

Read this.  It supplements Steven Pinker's work on the incredible decline in worldwide per-capita violence since 1945.  It shows what we might still accomplish, if vigorous, pragmatic and non-dogmatic ambition and goodwill take hold…

... and especially if we thwart the grouches and cynics of both right and left whose dyspeptic and demoralizing grumbles make them by far the worst enemies of humanity and Planet Earth.

As President John F. Kennedy said: “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics, whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask, why not?"

To whom might I -- and Kennedy -- be referring?  Read a fascinating rumination about how "southern white notables"… the local white aristocracy across the U.S. South… is not only still fighting the Civil War, but has had winning strategies for most of the last 150 years -- with a result that their region still lags bitterly in every metric of economic, social and personal health.

While combatting the current madness in that direction, remember. There were (and may again be) other enemies of the future like communists. Staring venomously in just one direction is blinkered and deliberate blindness. Sanity and adulthood -- both wary and hopeful in all directions -- are our hopes.

==The vanishing U.S. trade imbalance: what does it mean? ==

Want more optimism?

My friend the brilliant and popular economics-investment pundit John Mauldin publishes economics insights from what might be called an "Eisenhower Republican" perspective -- rock-ribbed and skeptical of debt, but also well-distanced from the Murdochian Madness that has hijacked today's GOP.  John's latest report appraises how a combination of resurgent oil and gas production in the U.S., Obama Administration policies and a rapid return of high-tech manufacturing to U.S. shores, is already having huge effects upon the American balance of trade, a lingering deficit that has spanned a human lifetime.

A deficit that - by the way - I call deliberate, and one of the most important contributions of Pax Americana to world history. A deficit that propelled export driven growth across the world, uplifting generations first in war-torn Europe and Japan, then Taiwan, Korea, Singapore… and so on until U.S. trade is now the chief force lifting China and India at the same time.

Mauldin shows how the trade imbalance appears to be going away more rapidly than anyone expected: "With the US current account deficit continuing its fall, we need to be alert for the next crisis abroad. It is very difficult to predict exactly when, where, and how markets will panic, but taking US dollars out of the trading system is akin to losing a chair in a game of musical chairs. Someone is going to be left out. It could be Europe or Japan –  but more likely it will be emerging-market countries loaded with a lot of external debt denominated in US dollars who struggle to keep a seat at the table."

Another outcome. When the US is no longer shipping tsunamis of dollars overseas, the countries of Asia will need another currency to trade with each other.  China is already preparing to set up its renmimbi (yuan) as a new reserve currency to stand next to the dollar.  This will be accelerated, so long as China does not collapse because America is buying fewer Chinese goods.  It can get complicated. For example the impact any China slow-down is going to have on commodities like metals, on countries like Canada, on countries like Australia.

It probably is time for the development teat of U.S. trade deficits to start shutting down. It was fun, buying trillions of dollars worth of crap we never needed, so that manufacturing jobs would cycle through the planet leaving new middle classes rising in their wake. (Foreign aid via Walmart.)

But America needs to attend to finishing the latest outbreak of its ongoing (and psychotic) civil war -- a task of self-purging and healing that's going to take a while, before we can go back to helping move the world forward.

== Making optimism general and ongoing ==

How has our rare and unique Enlightenment - with its vibrant, win-win markets and democracy and science - managed to stay in business, given that human nature routinely seeks to destroy it? Across 99% of human history, the classic social pattern was a pyramid of power with a narrow owner-elite controlling teeming masses below them.  The classic Power Pyramid is clearly a stable system since it dominated everywhere that humans developed both farms and metals.  We are descended from the harems of guys who managed to pull off that trick. Human males are good at it and it should come as no surprise that they are always conspiring to bring it back.

Problem is: while the Power Pyramid may be "natural" to humans it also sucks at governance, at statecraft, at delivering peace, wealth, happiness, freedom, science or progress. We have six millennia of violent, horrifically stupid history that testifies to that pure and proved fact.

Our diamond-shaped society, with a dominant and confident Middle Class, is rare and (alas) not inherently stable, which is why earlier experiments failed.  It is, however, fabulously successful at creativity, wealth-generation, and fostering the spectacular positive sum games of democracy, science and competitive-open markets. No combination of human societies ever accomplished a fraction of what we have, with enlightenment methods, in just 200 years.  But in order to keep the experiment going, careful design and management and relentless fine-tuning have been required.

Number one among those methods - as prescribed by Adam Smith and the American Founders - was divided power.  You sic the mighty against each other!  Break up monopolies and insist that companies fight it out in the market place with new goods and services, for example. That's hard! So naturally, their CEOs try to collude and connive while strolling the golf course.  So we sic regulators on them, and lo!  They turn and use a myriad methods to "capture" the regulators… as happened when the railroads turned the old Interstate Commerce Commission into their own private brothel.

(Ironically, it was democrats who disbanded the ICC and the horrid old Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and who did every other major DE-regulation of the last century except in one industry.  Finance.  Republicans led the charge deregulating that area, for the simple reason that regulation of finance is desperately necessary to prevent massive raids on our economy.  And sure enough, major raids on the economy happened right after each of those GOP-led "deregulations."

Which brings us to: "Meet the Flexians: A new professional class of movers and shakers—people who serve overlapping roles in government, business, and media with smiling finesse—is controlling the flow of power and money in America." See the article by Lisa Margonelli in Pacific Standard.

Scary huh?  To which I can only respond with "Um…. duh?"  Predators and parasites and oligarchs will use monumental cleverness to game any system - whether it is feudal or mercantilist or "communist" - and help pound the diamond into a pyramid of power and control.

We should not despair that clever people learn to game whatever system we create.  It is a good thing that our species creates clever individuals who are able to spot opportunities, form teams and compete well!  We must merely stop them from doing the toxic thing that such teams always did across six thousand years of wretched feudalism, conniving to CHEAT and prevent the competition from continuing!

"No, that is not how we will let you succeed," we must tell them. "Go and innovate new goods and services. Compete with each other to manage creative enterprises without unfair advantages. You may not win by conniving our systems."

Let's take our example from professional sports.  Praise this year's champions. Reward them with riches.  And break up concentrations of excess power so that the game continues to be interesting. Vibrant and fun.

How Americans Spent Themselves into Ruin... But Saved the World

In the 1/1/24 edition of the Silicon Valley newspaper and online journal Metroactive, I have an editorial: Power of Consumption describing how the American consumer came to propel the export-driven development of Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China and now India.

That process, spanning more than six decades, is almost always portrayed -- especially in Asia -- as having come about as a result of eastern cleverness, in catering to the insatiable material appetites of decadent westerners.  But there is a far more interesting, complex, and even inspiring explanation for how the greatest wealth transfer of all time -- which has lifted several billion people out of poverty -- actually came about.  I reveal how George Marshall and the United States chose, in 1946, to behave differently from any other "pax" empire, and thereby changed the world.

I'll now repost that essay here, in expanded form.

If your politics operate on reflex - from either left or right - you are likely to find something here that will offend. But please, dear fellow believers in tomorrow, bear in mind that I'm an internationalist who opposed jingo-chauvinists, all his life.

And yet, I feel it is long past time that someone spoke up in defense of Pax Americana.

==The Far-Right's Caricature Version of Pax Americana==

Sure, that phrase Pax Americana (PA) fell into disrepute during the era of the mad neocons, whose misrule left the United States far worse off by every clear metric of national health.  During their time in near-total power, steering the American ship of state, fellows like Richard Cheney, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman and their ilk made a point of proclaiming imperial triumphalism - exoling an America invested with sacred, perfect and permanent rights of planet-wide dominance, based upon inherent qualities that were said to be unaffected by any objective-reality considerations, like budgets or geography; like world opinion or the end of the Cold War; like science or technology; like rationality or morality or the physical well-being of our troops.

Indeed, the only factor that they felt might undermine America’s manifestly-destined and eternal preeminence could be a failure of will, should the wimpy liberals ever have their way.  But if led with a firm-jawed determination to bull past all obstacles, the American pax could linger indefinitely, with all the privileges of governing world affairs and few of the responsibilities or cares.

Sure, it has been proper to oppose the policies of such deeply delusional men -- policies which unambiguously and uniformly brought ruin to the very things they claimed to hold dear. Capitalism, freedom, fiscal and national health, as well as U.S. influence in the world all plummeted under their rule. (These metrics all skyrocketed under Bill Clinton, whose endeavor in the Balkans was inarguably one of Pax Americana's finest hours.)

==But The Left Goes Too Far The Other Way==

And yet, something is very wrong with the unselective manner in which some folks on the other side have allowed those neocon nincompoops to define the argument.  It is an unfortunate habit of the left to assume that any appreciation of the American contribution to human civilization must be inherently fascistic.  This reflexive self-loathing has given (unnecessarily) a huge weapon to the right, in their ongoing treason-campaign called "Culture War," allowing them to retain millions of supporters who might otherwise have abandoned them.

By abrogating the natural human phenomenon of patriotic pride, these fools on the left have allowed guys like Sean Hannity to claim love-of-country as a sole monopoly of the right!  If they get away with pushing simplistic “greatest nation ever” rants and portraying themselves as the implicit opposite of homeland-hating liberals, that gift comes gratis from the left.

Moreover, there is another reason for liberals to re-examine this reflex and to find good -- and even great -- things to proclaim about America.  Because, without any doubt, America deserves it.  Yes, self-criticism is a useful tonic, and there definitely were crimes committed, during our time on top.  Nevertheless, the net effects of Pax Americana have been generally positive, compared against every single previous era in human history.

This can be proved, with just a single example -- one that was as decisive as it is ironic, and that has spanned an entire lifespan.

==The Miracle of 1946==

Mr. Wu Jianmin is a professor at China Foreign Affairs University and Chairman of the Shanghai Centre of International Studies.  A smart fellow whose observations about the world well-merit close attention.  Specifically, in a recent edition of the online journal The Globalist, Wu Jianmin's brief appraisal of  "A Chinese Perspective on a Changing World" was insightful and much appreciated.

However I feel a need to quibble with one of his statements, which reflected a widespread assumption held all over the world:

 "After the Second World War, things started to change. Japan was the first to rise in Asia. We Asians are grateful to Japan for inventing this export-oriented development model, which helped initiate the process of Asia’s rise."

In fact, with due respect for their industriousness, ingenuity and determination, the Japanese invented no such thing. The initiators of export-driven world development were two military and diplomatic leaders of Pax American at its very peak:  George Marshall, who was Secretary of State under President Harry Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, during his time as military governor of Japan, in the ravaged aftermath of the Second World War.

While Marshall crafted a historically unprecedented, receptively open trade policy called “counter-mercantilism” (I’ll explain in a minute), MacArthur vigorously pushed the creation of Japanese export-oriented industries, establishing the model of what was to come.  Instead of doing what all other victorious conquerors had done – looting the defeated enemy -- the clearly stated intention was for the United States to lift up their prostrate foe, first with direct aid.  And then, over the longer term, with trade.

(One might well add a third American hero, W. Edwards Deming, whose teachings about industrial process -- especially the importance of high standards of quality control -- were profoundly influential in Japan, helping  transform Japanese products from stereotypes of shoddiness into icons of manufacturing excellence.)

Look, lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not downplaying the importance of Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Chinese and Indian efforts to uplift themselves through the hard work of hundreds of millions who labored in sweatshops making toys and clothes for U.S. consumers.  Without any doubt, those workers... (like the generations who built America, before 1950,  in the sooty factories of Detroit and Pittsburgh)... and their innovative managers, were far more heroic and directly responsible for the last six decades of world development than American consumers, pushing overflowing carts through WalMart.

Nevertheless, those consumers —plus the trade policies that made the WalMart Tsunami possible, plus a fantastically generous and nearly unrestricted flow of intellectual capital from west to east — all played crucial roles in this process that lifted billions of people out of grinding, hopeless poverty.  Moreover, it now seems long past time to realize how unique all of this was, in the sad litany of human civilization.

==The Thing About Empires==

Let's step back a little.  First off, if you scan across recorded history, you'll find that most people who lived in agricultural societies endured either of two kinds of global situations. There were periods of imperium and periods of chaos.  A lot of the empires were brutal, stultifying and awful, but at least cities didn't burn that often, while the empire maintained order.  Families got to raise their kids and work hard and engage in trade.  Even if you belonged to an oppressed subject people, your odds of survival, and bettering yourself, were better under the rule of an imperial "pax."

That doesn't mean the empires were wise!  Often, they behaved in smug, childish, and tyrannical ways that, while conforming to ornery human nature, also laid seeds for their own destruction.  Today, I want to focus on one of these bad habits, in particular.

The annals of five continents show that, whenever a nation became overwhelmingly strong, it tended to forge mercantilist-style trade networks that favored home industries and capital inflows, at the expense of those living in in satrapies and dependent areas.

The Romans did this, insisting that rivers of gold and silver stream into the imperial city.  So did the Hellenists, Persians, Moghuls... and so did every Chinese imperial dynasty. This kind of behavior, by Pax Brittanica, was one of the chief complaints against Britain by both John Hancock and Mohandas Ganhdi.

Adam Smith called mercantilism a foul habit, that was based in human nature.  A natural outcome of empire, it over the long run almost inevitably contributed to self-destruction.  But alas, everybody did it, when they could.  Except just once.

==The Exception to the Rule of Imperial Mercantilism==

In fact, there has been only one top-nation that ever avoided the addiction to imperial mercantilism, and that was the United States of America. Upon finding itself the overwhelmingly dominant power, at the end of World War II, the U.S. had ample opportunity to impose its own vision upon the system of international trade.  And it did. Only, at this crucial moment, something special happened.

At the behest of Marshall and his advisors. America became the first pax-power in history to deliberately establish counter-mercantilist commerce flows.  A trade regime that favored the manufactures of many foreign/poor countries over those in the homeland. Nations crippled by war, or by millennia of mismanagement, were allowed to maintain high tariffs, keeping out American manufactures, while sending shiploads from their own factories to the U.S., almost duty free.

Moreover, despite the ongoing political tussle of two political parties and sometimes noisy aggravation over ever-mounting deficits, each administration since Marshall's time kept fealty with this compact -- to such a degree that the world's peoples by now simply take it for granted.

Forgetting all of history and ignoring the self-destructive behavior of other empires, we all have tended to assume that counter-mercantilist trade flows are somehow a natural state of affairs!  But they aren't.  They are an invention, as unique and new and as American as the airplane, or the photocopier, or rock n' roll.

==Why Did This Happen?==

Now, of course, more than pure altruism may have been involved in the decision to create counter-mercantilism. The Democratic Party, under Truman, and Republican moderates, such as President Dwight Eisenhower, held fresh and painful memories of the Hawley-Smoot tariffs, instituted under Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress of 1930, which triggered a trade war that deepened the Great Depression.   Both Truman and Ike saw trade as wholesome for world prosperity -- and as a tonic to unite world peoples against Soviet expansionism.

 (Indeed, as another example of his farsighted ability to plan ahead for decades, Marshall also designed the ultimately victorious policy of patient containment of the USSR until, after many decades, that mad fever broke, for which he deserves at least as much credit as Ronald Reagan.) 

Nevertheless, if you still doubt that counter-mercantilism also had an altruistic component, remember this -- that the new, unprecedented trade regime was instituted by the author of the renowned Marshall Plan — both a name and an endeavor that still ring in human memory as synonymous with using power for generosity and good. Is it therefore plausible that Marshall -- along with Dean Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower -- might have known exactly what export-driven development would accomplish for the peoples of Europe, Asia, and so on?

Cynics might doubt that anyone could ever look that far and that sagely ahead.  But I am both an optimist and a science fiction author.  I find it entirely plausible.

==Alas No One Seems to Notice==

Unfortunately, while recipients of the Marshall Plan's direct aid could clearly see beneficial results, right away, other parts of the program -- especially counter-mercantilist trade policy -- were slower in showing their effects, though they were far more vast and important, over the log run.

What they amounted to was nothing less than the greatest unsung aid-and-uplift program in human history.  A prodigious transfer of wealth and development from the United States to one zone after another, where cheap labor transformed, often within a single generation, into skilled and educated worker-citizens of a technologized nation. A program that consisted of Americans buying continental loads of things they did not really need. Things that they could easily done without and stopped buying, any time that they, or their leaders, chose to call a halt.

(Oh, sure, the U.S would sometimes make a stink and nibble away at the edges of these unfair trade flows.  But such efforts were never serious, intense, or undertaken with anything like full power or national will behind them. No plausible theory was ever raised, to explain that tepidness... until now.)

Yes, yes.  There are a few obvious cavils to this blithe picture. One might ask -- does anyone deserve "moral credit" for this huge and staggeringly successful "aid program"?

Well, that is a good question. Perhaps not the American consumers, who made all this happen by embarking on a reckless holiday, acting like wastrels, saving nothing and spending themselves deep into debt.  Certainly, even at best, this wealth transfer seems less ethically pure or pristinely generous than other, more direct forms of aid. (See my posting: Saving the World Through Walmart.)

Moreover, as the author of a book called Earth, I’d be remiss not to mention that all of this consumption-driven growth came about at considerable cost to our planet.  For all our sakes, the process of ending human poverty and creating an all-encompassing global middle class needs to get a lot more efficient, as soon as possible.  Call it another form a debt that had better be repaid, or else.

Nevertheless, if credit is being given to the Japanese, "for inventing this export-oriented development model," then I think it is time for some historical perspective.   Because the impression that one gets from many, especially in the East, is that the West must forever remain counter-mercantilist as if by some law of nature, and that the vigorously  pro-mercantilist policies of the East are some kind of inherently perpetual birthright.   Or else, these trade patterns are purely the result of asiatic cleverness, outwitting those decadent Americans in some kind of great game

This view of the present situation may feel satisfying, but it is wholly inaccurate.  Moreover, it could lead to serious error, in years to come... as it did across centuries past

==What Might The Future Bring?==

Even if America is exhausted, worn out and a shadow of her former self, from having spent her way from world dominance into a chasm of debt, the U.S. does have something to show for it the last six decades.

A world saved.  A majority of human beings lifted out of poverty. That task, far more prodigious than defeating fascism and communism or going to the moon, ought to be viewed with a little respect.  And I suspect it will be, by future generations.

This should be contemplated, soberly, as other nations start to consider their time ahead as one of potential triumph.  As they start to contemplate the possibility of becoming the next great pax or "central kingdom."

 If that happens -- (as I portray in a coming novel) -- will they emulate Marshall and Truman, by starting their bright era of world leadership with acts of thoughtful and truly farsighted wisdom?  Perhaps even a little gratitude? Or at least by evading the mistakes that are written plain, across the pages of history, wherever countries briefly puffed and preened over their own importance, imagining that this must last forever?

==Is Anybody Still Reading==

Probably not.  This unconventional assertion will meet vigorous resistance, no matter how clearly it is supported by the historical record.  The reflex of America-bashing is too heavily ingrained, within the left and across much of the world, for anyone to actually read the ancient annals and realize that the United States is undoubtedly the least hated empire of all time.  If its "pax" is drawing to a close, it will enter retirement with more earned goodwill than any other.  Perhaps even enough to win forgiveness for the inevitable litany of imperial crimes.

But no, even so, the habit is too strong.  My attempt to bring perspective will be dismissed as arrogant, jingoist, hyper-patriotic American triumphalism.  That is, if anybody is still reading, at all.

Meanwhile, on the American right, we do have genuine triumphalists of the most shrill and stubborn type -- mostly moronic neocons -- who share my appreciation for Pax Americana... but for all the wrong reasons, and without even a scintilla of historical wisdom.  Indeed, it is as if we are using the same phrase to stanf for entirely different things.  If they are still reading, I can only point out that their era of misrule deeply harmed the very thing they claim to love.

Alas, my aim does not fit into stereotypical agendas of either left or right.  Instead, I am simply pointing out the necessary sequence of causation events that had to occur, in order for the International Miracle of export-driven development, of the last sixty years, to have taken place at all.  Indeed, it is the fervent, tendentious and determined denial, that American policy played any role at all, that beggars the imagination.

And so, at risk of belaboring the point, let me reiterate. If the U.S. had done the normal thing, the natural human thing, and imposed mercantilist trade patterns after WWII -- as every single previous "chung kuo" empire ever did before it -- then the U.S. would have no debt today.  Our factories would be humming and the country would be swimming in gold...

...but the amount of hope and prosperity in the world would be far less, ruined by the same self-centered, short-sighted greed that eventually brought down empires in Babylon, Persia, Rome, China, Britain and so on.

Also, by this point, every American youth would be serving in armies of occupation, and the entire world would by now be simmering and plotting for the downfall of the Evil Empire.  That is the way the old pattern was written.  But it is not how this "pax" was run. Instead, the greater part of the world was saved from poverty by the same force that rescued it from the fascistic imperialism and communism.

Yes, America's era of uplifting the globe by propelling the world's export-driven growth must be over.  Having performed this immense task, Americans cannot expect (if Wu Jianmin is any example) any credit or thanks.

But that is okay. Nobody needs to be angry and we certainly do not have to be thanked.  It simply is done.  Other dire problems now stand waiting for this much richer world to address them. And meanwhile, the U.S. must rebuild.

In other words, soon it will be time for someone else to start buying, for a change. The products, the services, and especially the ideas -- of which we will always have plenty.

New ideas, for a new century, when efficient production and care for the planet will combine with far-sighted mindfulness of generations to come.  Ideas that – just like George Marshall’s – the world will need and want.

 And just watch. America will be happy to sell.

==========

David Brin is a scientist, technology speaker, and author.  His 1989 ecological thriller, Earth, foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and the world wide web.  A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was based on The Postman.  His fifteen novels, including New York Times Bestsellers and winners of the Hugo and Nebula awards, have been translated into more than twenty languages.  David appears frequently on History Channel shows such as The ARCHITECHS, The Universe and Life After People.  Brin’s non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. http://www.davidbrin.com
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidBrin

For more of David Brin's articles on the economy: See: The Economy: Past, Present, and Future