By The Rand study, which has the anodyne title “The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism,” will be published Tuesday. It's part of a series of reports commissioned by the Pentagon office to assess the United States’ competitive position as it faces a rising China. I was given an early copy because I've written previously about the project and its lead author at Rand, Michael J. Mazarr.
Though the report is mostly written in the dry language of sociology, this is explosive stuff. And its blunt evaluation is in the tradition of the Office of Net Assessment, which was created in 1973 during the bleak days of the Cold War to “think about the unthinkable.”The office's founding director was Andrew Marshall, a famously eccentric contrarian thinker; it is now headed by James H. Baker, a widely respected retired Air Force officer who served as strategist for two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
What has led to “the relative decline in U.S. standing,” as the report asks? The opening chapter explains America's problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”
This decline is “accelerating,” warns the study. "The essential problem is seen in starkly different terms by different segments of society and groups of political leaders.” There's a right-wing narrative of decline and a left-wing one. Though they agree that something is broken in America, the two sides disagree, often in the extreme, on what to do about it.
Unless Americans can unite to identify and fix these problems, we risk falling into a downward spiral.“Recovery from significant long-term national decline is rare and difficult to detect in the historical record,”the authors note. Think of Rome, or Habsburg Spain, or the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, or the Soviet Union. "When great powers have slid from a position of preeminence or leadership because of domestic factors, they seldom reversed this trend.”
What causes national decline? The Rand authors cite triggers that are all too familiar in 2024. "Addiction to luxury and decadence,”"failure to keep pace with … technological demands,”“ossified” bureaucracy, "loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,”“self-interested and warring elites,”“unsustainable environmental practices.”Does that sound like any country you know?
The challenge is “anticipatory national renewal,” argue the authors — in other words, tackling the problems before they tackle us. Their survey of historical and sociological literature identifies essential tools for renewal, such as recognizing the problem; adopting a problem-solving attitude rather than an ideological one; having good governance structures; and, perhaps most elusive, maintaining “elite commitment to the common good.”
Unfortunately, on this “fix it”checklist, the Rand authors rate U.S. performance in 2024 as“weak,”“threatened”or, at best,"mixed.”If we look honestly in the national mirror, we're all likely to share that assessment.
So what's the way out? Rand provides two case studies in which urgent reforms broke through the corruption and disarray that might otherwise have proved catastrophic.
The first example is Britain in the mid-1800s. It had built a fantastically successful global empire. But by the middle of the 19th century, it was rotting on the inside from “the human and environmental toll of industrialization, perceived corruption and ineffectiveness of political institutions, control of politics by a small group of landowning elites, rising economic inequality, and more.” But Britain rallied with a wave of reform that swept British life and transformed politics. Intellectual leaders shared this passion for reform, from Thomas Carlyle to Charles Dickens.
A second case study can be found in the United States itself, after the binge of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. That industrial boom transformed America, but it created poisonous inequalities, social and environmental damage, and gross corruption. Republican Theodore Roosevelt led a "Progressive" movement that reformed politics, business, labor rights, the environment and the political swamp of corruption.
“Progressives had a 'yearning for rebirth' and sought to inject 'some visceral vitality into a modern culture that had seemed brittle and about to collapse,'” note the Rand authors, quoting historian Jackson Lears.
The message of this study is screamingly obvious. America is on a downward slope that could be fatal. What will save us is a broad commitment, starting with elites, to work for the common good and national revival. We have the tools, but we aren't using them. If we can't find new leaders and agree on solutions that work for everyone, we're sunk.
The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism
by Michael J. Mazarr, Tim Sweijs, Daniel Tapia Apr 30, 2024
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Research Questions
- What does the historical record reveal about national recovery from long-term national decline?
- What factors distinguish cases of successful anticipatory renewal from those that fail?
- Is the United States entering a period of decline, and does it meet the preconditions for anticipatory renewal?
History is full of great powers that hit a peak of competitive power and then stagnate and eventually decline. There are fewer cases of great powers that have confronted such headwinds and managed to generate a repeated upward trajectory—to renew their power and standing in both absolute and relative terms. Arguably, that is precisely the challenge that faces the United States. Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations). Left unchecked, these trends will threaten domestic and international sources of competitive standing, thus accelerating the relative decline in U.S. standing.
In this report, the authors shed light on this challenge by examining the problem of national decline and renewal. It is part of a larger study on the societal determinants of a nation's competitive position, which has nominated several key qualities that determine a society's competitive success and failure. The findings of the first phase of the study suggest that it is very difficult for countries to achieve multiple periods of efflorescence or national peak dynamism. This report is one of several independent second-phase analyses on distinct topics that examine the prospects for the United States to do so, combining historical case analysis with contemporary assessments.
Key Findings
- "Recovery from significant long-term national decline is rare and difficult to detect in the historical record." When great powers have slid from a position of preeminence because of domestic factors, they have seldom reversed this trend.
- "The United States may be entering a period requiring the kind of anticipatory national renewal found in several historical cases." In a few cases, societies identified challenges to their competitive position and undertook broad-based social, political, and economic reforms to sustain their power. However, they had not yet declined significantly (if at all) when these processes began.
- "Several common factors appear to distinguish cases of successful anticipatory renewal from failures." There are seven major societal characteristics associated with competitive success.
- "The United States is not yet demonstrating widespread shared recognition of societal challenges or determination to reform in key issue areas." There is no emerging consensus on the barriers to renewal that demand urgent action, and the essential problem is seen in starkly different terms by different segments of society and groups of political leaders, which creates a distinct challenge for the multiple efforts.
- "The United States has all the preconditions for a potential agenda of anticipatory renewal." It has tremendous residual strengths and a proven capacity for resilience and renewal. It has the scale and industrial and scientific foundations and a rich reservoir of social actors to remain one of the great powers at the apex of world politics.
Research conducted by
This research was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Program of the RAND National Security Research Division.
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