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December 06, 2007
How the U.K. and U.S. Made the Modern World
By Heather Wilhelm
God & Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World
By Walter Russell Mead
Random House, October 2007
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Ah, the 1990's: those fabled halcyon days of peace, prosperity, and that confident American post-Cold War glow. For those yearning to return to the relative calm of the last decade, last week's events in Slovakia would undoubtedly serve as a bit of a wet blanket. Local authorities nabbed three would-be uranium salesmen, two in Hungary, one in Ukraine. Their mission: to sell highly enriched materials that could function as the starter kit for a dirty bomb. The asking price: $1 million.
It's just another day in the post-September 11 world--a world that has become increasingly messy, especially for foreign policy analysts. Since the attacks of 2001, scholars have feverishly sifted through the rubble of the dominant, feel-good theories of the 90s, attempting to piece back a clear, consistent view of America's place in the world. In "God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World," foreign policy specialist Walter Russell Mead argues that America's place in the world is, in some senses, where it has always been: at the top. It's an Anglo-Saxon world, he writes, with Anglo-Saxon rules. Everyone else is just living in it...and they'd better get used to it.
Sprinkled with economic tidbits and Elizabethan poetry, "God and Gold" traces the history and strategy that have made the English-speaking powers the belles of the global ball--or, more accurately, the "the dread and envy of them all." The United Kingdom and the United States, he argues, quickly mastered a maritime system born in the tiny Netherlands, paired it with a global view, and left the rest of the world in their unruly wake. The systems that they spread around the world, including international commerce, finance, the English language, and democratic political systems, "were also the instruments that would allow them to rule it."
England was blessed with many "just right" qualities (Mead nicknames the chilly isle "Goldilocks" through much of the book), but the most important ingredients of Anglo-American success were flexibility, an open society, and a propitious balance among what Mead describes as the three competing visions of the world: reason (as found in Enlightenment thinking), tradition (cultural or nationalist narratives), and revelation (religious belief). The rise of England and America, he adds, wasn't just a phenomenon of secular capitalism. It was based on a dynamic, quasi-religious drive derived from the ancient narrative of Abraham--a narrative that views life as a project to be planned, sees history as a process, and embraces change. Britain and America, while not immune to good old-fashioned stake-burnings, were nonetheless in better shape than their neighbors to allow "the chaotic and sometimes painful transformations that capitalism creates and demands."
These chaotic and painful elements, exhibited in the squalor of Dickensian London and 19th century New York, were endured by Britain and America over the course of decades and, ultimately, buffered by time. Many in the path of the "historical tsunami" of Anglo capitalism, Mead notes, don't have that luxury. "As the pace of the march increases," he writes, "more and more people find themselves in a colder, more dangerous, and more inhospitable climate than they might prefer." Mead is rather sanguine about the creative destruction liberal capitalism and the American order unleashes on the world. The reactions to it, however, are less so, and they cut to the heart of Mead's thesis.
America, in Mead's view, has real staying power and will continue to dominate world politics in the decades to come. It also, he argues, should continue to dominate. Nations like China offer opportunity rather than threat; to the horror of isolationists, inaction is often far more dangerous than action; and our current misadventures in Iraq are little more than a bump in the road. The real challenge, he argues, lies in something more ethereal: "managing the relationship between the maritime system and the cultures and civilizations affected by it." As the liberal capitalist influence sweeps across the world, culture, ironically, becomes more important--and, as in the case of radical Islam, more troubling.
Mead is clearly bothered by the current state of the Islamic world, but argues that radical Islamic groups are, like Puritans in days of yore, an aberration that will fade with time. "It is hard to argue," he writes, "that there is something peculiarly or uniquely Islamic about opposing the separation of church and state; wanting to base legal codes on divine revelation; or believing that religion mandates different roles and different rights for men and women." Unfortunately for Mead, many Koranic scholars, many Muslims, and, dare I say, Mohammed, would strongly disagree. Mead's impulse to integrate Islam into a liberal world is admirable, and one hopes he's right. But with more public outrage in the Muslim world over teddy bears and cartoons than suicide terrorism, it appears we have a long way to go.
After such an impressive sweep of history, economics, philosophy, and culture, it is a shame to see "God and Gold" deflate at the finish line. The strength of Mead's book lies in his long view of Anglo-American influence, offering much-needed perspective on many issues sensationalized in today's press. But when it comes to the challenging task of maintaining this global Anglo-American system, his prescription becomes a bit dodgy. We should continue to do exactly what we need to do when we think we need to do it, he writes (defending oil interests, say, or Israel) but here's the key: we should be tactful while doing it. Citing Reinhold Niebuhr, and, yes, Jimmy Carter, Mead argues that we must "talk less and listen more," have a capacity of "self-reflection and criticism," and continue to do what we do best: world domination.
To his credit, Mead acknowledges--unlike some acolytes of the power of liberal capitalism--that the future of the Anglo-American system will, like thousands of years of human history before it, hold perpetual turmoil. The classic human mistake throughout the ages, well illustrated in "God and Gold", is an optimistic one: This time it will be different. This time we've figured it out. Global capitalism, while a tremendous blessing for many, also has its dark sides: cultural clashes, technological surprises, stateless actors impossible to deter. Together, America and Britain have unleashed a world-changing force, brewed over the course of 400 years. Hopefully, in the years to come, it will win enough friends and beneficiaries to help smooth the bumpy ride that awaits us.
