It is often observed that each generation rewrites history to suit itself. The same might be said about books on US decline. Balance: The Economics Of Great Powers From Ancient Rome to Modern America offers an ambitious fusion: the book argues that the US will decline unless it changes course; and it draws liberally on world history to explain which pitfalls should be avoided.
The authors, Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, are enthusiastic amateur historians. Praetorians, Janissaries and eunuchs stalk their pages, more than half of which are devoted to the decline of other great powers. They are also accomplished economists. Hubbard was chairman of George W Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and is now dean of Columbia Business School. Kane is chief economist at the Hudson Institute. The result is a readable, data-rich history of the fall of great powers through the eyes of two fiscally troubled US conservatives in 2013. To say that Balance could not have been written in 2003, nor by a Keynesian, is not a criticism. But it is worth keeping in mind.
The nub of their argument is that politics is to blame for all declines – great powers lose the ability, or the will, to take the tough decisions needed to maintain their economic vitality. The US today faces the challenge of a growing “entitlement bubble”, they argue, which remains unchecked because of Washington gridlock. Polarisation is America’s chief enemy. “Runaway budget deficits are not a math problem,” the authors write. “They are a process problem, a political problem.”
Contrary to popular imagination, great powers are not brought down by barbarians at the gate – they rot from within, say the authors. Rome’s descent can be tracked by the debasement of the silver denarius, which was whittled down in parallel to the rise of “bread and circuses” mobocracy. The Roman empire had atrophied long before it was sacked by the Visigoths. Likewise, America’s potential fall can be measured by its failure to bring down the national debt. The authors never seriously entertain the rise of China as a threat to US predominance. The “primary threat to America”, they write, “is America itself”.
