I'm Back

At the turn of the century, the downfall of the West and the rise of Asia and the BRICs became a popular topic of conversation. The main argument was that the 21st century was going to be an Asian century and the West had to accept it humbly. At the end of the day, they said, what was truly anomalous about the last two hundred years was the rise of the West; the 21st century was simply restoring the economic and military power of Asia to what it had been for the majority of the last millennium.

The economic crisis that began in 2008 would later confirm those projections. Retracing the steps of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds,” the U.S. appeared to have been defeated by the virus of the economic and financial liberalism they had been so eager to transmit to the rest of the world. American multimillionaire Warren Buffett would define subprime mortgages and derivatives as the true weapons of mass destruction of our time and he wouldn’t be far off.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the rest of the West didn’t seem to be in much better shape: A financial innovation called the euro, theoretically destined to protect its users against fiscal instability and guarantee them a place in the sun in the 21st century, was becoming a nightmare, casting doubt on their practices of political and economic integration and accelerating their global decline at the same time.

At the turn of the 21st century, the U.S. accounted for 50 percent of worldwide military spending while Europe accounted for 50 percent of social spending. The difference between one’s excesses and those of the other had little effect on the result: While Asia was producing and growing, the U.S. was trapped by senseless military spending and Europe was trapped by a social welfare system that many called unsustainable. Were the consequences going to be severe for those tiny corners of the North Atlantic that aspired to lead the world? Or would they just be ironic when, in the moment of truth, it became clear that Europe and the U.S. had fallen victim to the same sin — financial arrogance — and to the excess spending, be it social or military, that had defined them so well?

Not so fast. Something is missing in this story of the fall of the West. Even if the U.S. did cause the economic crisis, it is rising out of it; and it is doing so thanks to its flexibility and its innovation. While the Europeans, led by Germany, wasted their time reinforcing their system of sanctions and their means of keeping track of disobedience involving the euro, the Americans broke all the rules of liberalism, nationalizing banks, insurance companies and even the auto industry, injecting public funds and cheap loans into the economy left and right.

Unlike Europe, the U.S. has mixed their economic flexibility with an incredible faith in technological innovation. Two events have come together in the last few weeks to show us that the United States is far from being the defeated and retreating power that has been described to us. First, the information revealed by Snowden and several British and American news agencies regarding the reach of American communication interception programs depict a world in which the U.S. has ultimate and unquestionable control of the great innovation called the Internet that is so radically transforming our way of life. Second, the fully automated landing of an XB-47B drone on an airplane carrier last week showed that in the long run the U.S. will still be able to maintain the military dominance upon which it has based its global power.

Along with all of these technological advances, the U.S. is experiencing a grand-scale energy revolution that will guarantee not only a sustained supply of cheap energy to fuel its economic recovery but also ever-greater geopolitical independence and leeway. And to top it off, the U.S. offers something else that Europe lacks: A strong demographic distribution that promises higher productivity and less dependency.

In the end, the one who is really looking bad is the old Europe, spinning its wheels with the euro, victim of unfavorable demographics, unable to turn around its energy reliance and, as we have seen over the last few weeks, technologically kneeling to the U.S. The fact that only in Germany have we seen any kind of wounded pride over this subjugation to the U.S. reveals exactly how things are in Europe: Even though the rest of us had thrown in the towel a long time ago, the euro crisis had given the Germans a false sense of power and importance on the world stage. Welcome to the geopolitical humility club. Should Europe do something about all this or should we just let it play out?