US Out of North America?
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Nov 6, 2009 in Commentary • 6 commentsOn December 17th, 1989, Romanian troops fired on anti-government protesters in Timisoara; on Christmas day, dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife Elena were executed. More than 40 years of Communist rule and nearly 25 years of personal rule by Ceaucescu came crashing down in a week and a day.
When US President Ronald Reagan urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this [Berlin] wall” in 1987, few expected that wall to actually come down only 2 1/2 years later. Heck, few expected it to come down any time soon on the day that it did come down, 20 years ago next week.
For that matter, it was only six months from the election of Abraham Lincoln to the opening shots of the “Civil” War. Six months for one nation to become two, and for the two to go to war against each other!
When things political fall apart, they have a way of doing so incredibly fast.
Unlike many, I’m not inclined to just dismiss the predictions of Russian academic and former KGB agent Igor Panarin who thinks that the United States is on the verge of disintegration as a coherent nation-state.
Although some of the logic underlying Panarin’s forecast is … well, not exactly logical (California becoming province of China because most laptops are of Chinese manufacture, for example) … there may be some “there” there in the general outlines.
The wishful “one nation, indivisible” thinking of those with a nationalist mindset aside, the United States is a hodgepodge country: 300 million people scattered over 3.8 million square miles of non-contiguous territory.
For awhile after World War II (the most important domestic effect of which may have been putting English over the top as a “common language”), cultural homogenization — a McDonald’s on every corner and the latest sitcom one-liner told around water coolers from coast to coast — seemed unstoppable.
But it wasn’t. Anyone who lives in or visits a reasonably densely populated metropolitan area can attest to the fact that discrete cultural communities tend to separate themselves out from the larger whole, asserting their own identities and holding to their own customs and languages. It’s not so much that “national identity” is inimical to that process as that it’s irrelevant to that process. Within minutes of my own home in suburban St. Louis, I can find communities where Spanish is the predominant language; communities of Indian expatriates; communities of Bosnian Muslim refugees. They’re in America; they may even be “American” in one sense of the word or another. But they’ve also got their own things going.
And, of course, there’s the “Internet effect.” These days, it’s as easy for the average person to watch Al Jazeera as to watch Al Bundy, or to indulge any number of other interests that even two decades ago would have required extensive travel and a large bankroll. As our ability to establish meaningful relationships without reference to geography expands, our reasons for clinging to relationships based solely on geography diminish.
This whole trend of history is at odds with the notion of “national rule” by 537 politicians in one city on the Potomac … and the ties that bind us so are visibly fraying.
The media scream “polarization!” as the Washington establishment attempts to drag the entire country one way or another on this or that issue, and the cry is believable: A considerable portion of the populace is always dragged kicking and screaming regardless of which way that might be.
State legislatures are beginning to formally assert “10th Amendment” claims against federal power, and they may even make those claims stick. They’ve scared the federal politicians into writing “opt out” provisions into ObamaCare, at any rate.
Is it really such a giant leap from what’s already happening to the idea of the whole thing tumbling down, with its constituent parts reassembling themselves — or not — in various ways?
I don’t think it is. It’s happened before, here and elsewhere, more or less convulsively, and I see no reason to believe that the United State as currently configured is immune.
I don’t know if 2010 is the year, as Panarin predicts, but I think it’s coming. And when it does, I’m cautiously optimistic that people in at least a few odd corners (New Hampshire? The Colorado and Wyoming Rockies, perhaps?) will resist any meaningful reassembly of the machinery of state.
I would say that the United States were one federal union in November 1860, and were two countries in December 1860. It took about one month and ten or twelve days – South Carolina seceded on 20 Dec 1860. The other states were individual countries, and four more seceded in short order, as was their power under the tenth amendment.
What is actually surprising, and silly, is that they left one failed union only to join together in another. Sam Houston wrote acidly about this nonsense. A total of fourteen states seceded, several of the Indian nations became allies, and Gen. Sibley briefly established an Arizona republic in 1862. Of course, it all fell apart due to lack of good encryption, Masonic agendas, and brutal, vicious warfare.
It seems to me that what seems to happen fast is that reality returns with its basic truth and ugly responses by people. Most of political life is about lies, about deception, about an illusion of security, based on an illusion of prosperity (don’t rock the boat and you’ll do better financially). When it becomes obvious that these lies are not working, everyone, including establishment interests and the general population, is very motivated to actually change things. Sometimes for the better, but often for the worse.
Your optimism about New Hampshire and Wyoming is not well placed. The free state groups in both place are not tolerant of dissent, do not seek outside opinions on how to apply the experience of others, and are engaged either in massive group think exercises or submission to the dominance of one or a few minds. These are very unlikely to provide robust solutions.
I think it is just as likely that people in Kansas or Missouri would find their way to a culture of freedom. Though, I don’t think big cities work well for this sort of thing.
As an of the 15 people present at the time will attest, I predicted in an analysts’ meeting in 2001 (prior to September-the-whatever’th) that the US would be three countries before 2025.
I don’t claim to be the first (or the only person since) to have made such a prediction… but it takes perhaps 5 minutes’ thought and some kowledge of just how fast things fall apart once the people realise that the State as currently configured is not capable of fulfilling its promises.
The US is last century’s story. China and India are important, but people ought to think a bit harder about what would happen to Africa if its southern 2/3rds was able to properly organise itself.
If sub-Saharan Africa was able to capital-deepen (and set aside colonial-era rivalries which were deliberately exploited by the occupying powers), it could easily generate massive increases in the standard of living of its inhabitants.
Note that here I am not calling for some African Garibaldi or Bismarck; that’s not necessary. What IS necessary is the impeachment of governments that have sold off national endowments to foreign entities, and the repudiation and renoegotiation of all such agreements (e.g., the French monopoly over Cote d’Ivoirian cacao production… that’s already been repudiated, if memory serves).
At present the man in the street in Africa understands that there is no return on attempts to advance by means other than corruption – so for the most part (corruption being anathema to most men) they simply decide to ’satisfice’. If they got a whiff that they could reap the rewards of their own efforts (rather than those reweards being captured by corrupt government), they would rapidly displace India and China as sources for light manufactures (being somewhat closer geographically to Europe).
Cheerio
GT
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Geoffrey Transom wrote “As an [sic] of the 15 people present at the time will attest, I predicted in an analysts’ meeting in 2001 (prior to September-the-whatever’th) that the US would be three countries before 2025″.
You may want to read George MacDonald Fraser’s remarks on the topic in his late and valedictory non-fiction The Light’s On At Signpost. He too realised the possibility.
“If sub-Saharan Africa was able to capital-deepen (and set aside colonial-era rivalries which were deliberately exploited by the occupying powers), it could easily generate massive increases in the standard of living of its inhabitants… At present the man in the street in Africa understands that there is no return on attempts to advance by means other than corruption – so for the most part (corruption being anathema to most men) they simply decide to ’satisfice’. If they got a whiff that they could reap the rewards of their own efforts (rather than those reweards [sic] being captured by corrupt government), they would rapidly displace India and China as sources for light manufactures (being somewhat closer geographically to Europe).”
To call it corruption is a misunderstanding. In Lagos as a teenager I was puzzled by the differing meanings of “dash” – apparently including both begging and bribery – so, later, I looked into it. It was far more like a benefit supplied by a patron to a client in a Roman patron-client relationship, so it equally showed through as begging when asking an outsider for something or as bribery when sought by a functionary within a system that wasn’t built around such local customs (that system put it on the books as an “advance on commissions”); in each case, there was no gain to the giver from building a support base of clients unless the giver went native, so to speak. It wasn’t so far removed from the fee based system for office holders in Britain before the 19th century introduction of the modern salaried Civil Service, only the fees there were much more formally recognised and unlikely to grow by feeding.
But the big burden in Africa actually isn’t corruption but the extended family mediated social support structures. When one person does well, all his less well off relatives descend on him seeking support as of right, with no sense of seeking charity; we were always having to make sure that wasn’t happening in the servants’ quarters, largely for sanitary reasons as they would have overloaded the facilities (which is the larger lesson writ small). The work-reward nexus only works properly in Africa among the detribalised (e.g., many of the “coloureds” in South Africa) – and the newly detribalised have not yet connected to or built up other institutions that would sustain the new practices. (Another issue, even stronger in India but also present in Africa, is a cultural blindness to physical facts as opposed to making things look good so as to please people; Union Carbide would not have happened if people hadn’t sincerely thought they were just supposed to make the safety inspectors happy. Clive beat the French at Plassey largely by disregarding local sensibilities and making damned sure the powder was dry, where the locals thought that the point was to make the Europeans comfortable about such things.)
Also, maybe Africa would not develop as rapidly as all that even if the institutional obstacles were reduced or eliminated, considering the greater natural obstacles to transport in Africa compared to other areas. I well remember seeing from a light plane the shiploads of concrete and cement queued up at Lagos because they couldn’t be handled; they were there to bring supplies to build up the very same restricted port infrastructure, urgently needed to increase military supplies for the Nigerian Civil War, and were caught in a catch-22. And, of course, along with failed post-colonial attempts at socialist utopias, Hastings Banda tried to continue the prematurely ended capitalist and democratic nation building of colonial tutelage in (land locked) Malawi, only to fail in the end (arguably Mugabe’s first ten years, though only adopted pragmatically, were analogous but also got abandoned – that time by the same ruler who had been carrying them out). Botswana is doing reasonably even now, but on the one hand it isn’t serving as an example and on the other hand it too is land locked and so constrained by its neighbours’ development.
I always thought S.M.Stirling’s Draka alternate history was absurd in positing an isolated industrial base developing in Africa for just these reasons.
Hi there PML (and long time no see/e-see/talk/e-talk and what-not),
If Sub-Saharan Africa’s transport
infrastructure is ‘taken as read’, then I concede your point; with its present lack of capital, SSAfrica is at a distinct disadvantage to India in getting any putative increase in light manufactures to market in Europe. (Furthermore, the lack of machinery itself prevents any increase in manufaturing output itself: tax and aid dollars are spent instead on fighter jets and the surveillance state).
Also, to permit the bribe-ee to reframe corruption as it suits, is to permit the same linguistifc gymnastics that reframe mafia or government extortion as ‘protection money’ or ‘insurance’.
The notion that relatives will try to ‘cash in’ on the surplus of the relative-made-good is not isolated to Africa; that’s not the biggest reducer of expected rates of return on the accumulation of human capital.
I was thinking more of the notion that if you were a Tutsi kiddie in Rwanda you might not bother doing an advanced degree, on the basis that if you remained in your homeland you had two choices: hand over any additional returns to your human capital in ‘insurance’ (of the Tony Soprano variety)… or become compost.
The transport infrastructure in most parts of Africa is delapidated as a result of the failure of government – because the parasites who occupy the various government posts can buy more villas in Provence if they permit American and European companies to rip off both tax- and aid-funded projects, than if they build useful infrastructure. (more accurately, they siphon off the funds from domestic-tax and foreign-tax funded projects: aid is first and foremost someone else’s tax payments).
Cheerio
GT
The point I was getting at about Africa’s natural obstacles to transport was, it has far fewer natural advantages of that sort than other areas, e.g. ports and navigable waterways. That means that the bar is raised for the amount of (artificial) infrastructure needed to get to and maintain the same level.
On the relative weight of the repercussions of corruption/force majeure versus customary social support, the former is much more significant when it happens but, as the latter is much more widespread, it has the greater overall effect. Also, I wasn’t suggesting “permit[ting] the bribe-ee to reframe corruption as it suits” but rather that that is in actual fact the starting point, the background, which would need to be changed. That is, it is not a matter of saying “corruption” and trying to stop instances of it but rather of recognising that that is the status quo ante which defines the norm. Merely attacking corruption in those circumstances is like trying to bail water out of a boat without recognising that there is a major leak needing to be fixed first to make it effective.
By the way, higher education in Africa is largely unhelpful because it rarely leads to those having it applying it constructively, as they generally consider actually getting their hands dirty beneath them (as well as often treating it as a ticket out of their countries or into an exploitative elite there).
What ho, PML,
I agree with much of your argument, but it’s a question of (I choke as I type the word) context.
It is absolutely true that higher ed in much of Africa is either a passport to somewhere whiter and brighter, or an entrée into the elite of the country concerned – but that’s more a result of maximising behaviour on the part of the student: it’s not so much Stott-Despoja style opportunism as it is a genuine ‘rock vs hard place’ choice set.
And if the ‘tribal/local obligations are as much of a drain as corruption’ postulate is accepted, then the conclusion is that baling an uncaulked coracle is unlikely to achieve a great deal – you get fatigue, and sore shoulders… and in the end you still drown.
That said, I don’t see the two things as analogous (if that’s the word I crave): the difference between familial transfers (and extended-familial parasitism) and outright banditry is the voluntariness of participation in the former.
I would never advocate destroying local/tribal/familial nexi (nexuses? gah!) on the basis that they behave like a tax on production, because participation in them is voluntary.
Opting out might mean one is faced with calumny – but that’s not different from being anti- the welfare state in a modern economy… where the parasitism is 50%+ of your income, and the primary beneficiaries are people whose worldview makes right-thinking people vomit (here I think of the Howards, the Rudds, the Fergusons and the Turnbulls of the world: i.e., the slave-masters, not the poor buggers who get income support).
Imagine if someone had advocated participation in Singapore as a financial hub way back in the 1930s – they would have been looked at askance and inquiries would have been made as to whether they had stopped eating fish altogether.
And so it is with Africa now: it looks like madness to think about dedicating capital to the region – but then it must be remembered that the average investor will always be dedicating funds to the dying story well into the first third of the new story (e.g., folks who were Buying Britain in the 1930s when it was clearly dead in the water, or those morons who were talking up the New American Century in the 1990s).
I hold out great hopes for Arfica – at least as great as the hopes I had for India and China (who have done satisfactorily over the last decade, by precisely the labour-repurposing mechanism that helped Japan: agrarian labour migrating to the urbs and becoming significantly more industrialised).
Must dash – I just spilt my drink.
Cheerio
GT