Do we really want the American era to end? Consider the alternatives ...

IF you are looking for advice on how to vote on Friday, I must disappoint you. I’m a “don’t know”. It’s an unnecessary treaty for which no very credible positive arguments have been advanced, but what price will there be to pay if the Irish people stick to their guns? You must decide.

Rather than revisiting Lisbon, let me take you on a journey to Athlone. Not Athlone, I hear you sigh. But here’s a little secret — Athlone is home to a rather impressive annual literary festival which was celebrating its 20th birthday last weekend.

On the Friday night, participants were asked to dwell on “the big question”. For economics journalist Brendan Keenan, it was the state of the public finances, naturally. For Mary Davis, the driving force behind the Special Olympics, it was how we can use all the talents of the nation more effectively. Colm O’Gorman’s reflections on republicanism and the Constitution were especially thought-provoking.

For your columnist, a more global theme seemed appropriate. Twenty years ago, you couldn’t have a panel discussion about “big questions” without the North cropping up — but the outstanding questions there are, thankfully, just small and medium-sized ones. Rather, not least because our eyes were on the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week, I thought I’d look beyond our shores and across the Atlantic specifically.

America divides opinion, but we all have an opinion. For most of the world it is, in some sense, their second home even if they have never been there, so great is its impact on our lives. But is America in decline, finished even? Many respected intellectuals and most of the media elite seem to think so. Almost daily, the great and the good proclaim, as in the title of one book, The End of the American Era. America is a superpower but an “enfeebled” one, according to the influential Fareed Zakaria in his book, The Post-American World.

There is something neurotic in Ireland’s and Europe’s view of the US, something perpetually out of kilter.

Think of the crush on Bill Clinton, the demonising of Bush and now Obamamania. We seem unable to get a cool, factual grip on the country, one that is free of fashion or historical sentiment or resentment.

Neurotic too is our view of American culture and society. Are they Puritans or sexually depraved? Isn’t America a country of individualist greed and self-seeking, and at the same time a place where egotism has reached the point where philanthropists publicly vie with one another to throw billions at museums, the arts, medical research and good works in general? Its popular culture is crass and degenerate — except when it is black or somehow involves Noam Chomsky? How do they manage to be obese gluttons and simultaneously gym-addicted? Such a seething mass of contradictions mesmerises all of us and appalls many of us. But, in truth, this is not new. Nineteenth century royalists disparaged the new nation. In the last century, communists and fascists alike dismissed it as degenerate.

By the 1980s, declinism had become all the rage with predictions that the American “empire” would fall like the Spanish and British empires before it. But then the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union came crashing down and Japan went into its own spiral.

But still the critics persist. Obama or no Obama, there is a feeling that American power in the post-Cold War world has grown too big and needs to be diminished.

Anti-Americanism made more sense before 1989. So-called progressives wanted a weaker US, because they believed the Soviet way of life had much to offer and would one day triumph. But the anti-Americanism we see today, in which no serious alternative system of production, social organisation or international order is advanced, makes no sense at all.

Consider the alternatives. Can the European Union really hope to counterbalance America? Its cumbersome institutions and hamstrung attempts at political integration ensure it punches well below its weight.

Further east, Russia remains overwhelmingly dependent on high energy and commodity prices — and correspondingly vulnerable in the event of their decline, as we are seeing. Its population is plagued with alcoholism, chronic violence, a decrepit healthcare system, and a male life expectancy lower than that of Bangladesh.

As to Japan, it only recently recovered from the effects of its economic collapse in the early 1990s and has moved into an ever-closer embrace with the United States as a response to China’s rise. India, too, has adopted a far more positive and intimate relationship with Washington than at any time since its independence in 1947.

Finally, there is China — America’s most serious, and only true, competitor. It projects greater influence in Asia by the day, and enjoys creating turmoil by bolstering the regimes in places like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and Iran. It can do so because of its newfound economic muscle and massive foreign exchange reserves.

But, again, as China has become the dominant power in the eastern hemisphere, it only manages to push not only Japan but also Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and others away. Over the very long-term China may indeed emerge as a great power rival to the United States. But this seems very unlikely in the near or medium term.

The question must be asked then: do America’s critics actively want to see Russia and China pulling more strings in the world, and America fewer? In the Middle East, it may be right to talk more to Iran, but how safe would you feel in a multipolar world underpinned in the Middle East by a country avid for nukes whose president has religious visions while addressing the United Nations?

On the economic front, without minimising the impact of today’s challenges, the overall size and dynamism of the American economy remains unmatched, and she continues to lead the rest of the world in measures of competitiveness, technology, and innovation. America’s major research universities occupy 17 of the top 20 slots in the rankings.

Then there is the world economy. Currently, America works like a global central bank through the IMF, does most to ensure and protect oil supplies for other countries, and most to finance the UN. Do we need less of America and more of less reliable nations in these roles too?

Is it any wonder then that few global problems can be solved, let alone managed, without a significant American commitment? The United States remains the world’s principal provider of leadership, political, financial or diplomatic assistance, or the use of military force for tasks ranging from disaster relief to combat support.

In many instances, and particularly in urgent and dire cases such as the Balkans, the choice boils down to this: either the United States will act or no one will.

But the day could come when America wearies of the lash. If the world decided it would be better off under the thumb of some sort of untried and undemocratic oligarchy, the sense in the US might develop that if countries think they have a better hole to go to, then go there. Is that what we want?

We had a vigorous debate in Athlone but quite a few people weren’t convinced that would be at all in Ireland’s interest.