Mohamed Amine Haddaji

History of Ideas Class

Dr Faiza Boukraiaa Draoui

The Ecole Normale Supérieure of Tunis

University of Tunis

December 23rd, 2019

Analysis of Donald W. White’s “Mapping Decline: The History of American Power”

The text is an article written by the American history and international relations

specialist Donald W. White and published in Harvard International Review. He is the author

of The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power

(1996). The book is considered to be controversial and the first in its kind to discuss

America’s evolving status as a world power and question why the US assumed a preeminent

role after WWII and why its role has declined since the Vietnam War. The article was written

in 2005, 9 years after the publication of his book. It can be conceived as a revision to the book

especially after being criticized for concentrating mainly on the US’ high military

expenditures and involvement in Vietnam while overlooking the domestic policies that have

contributed to the country’s decline. White’s article can be divided into three major focuses

which are: the circumstances that led the US to be a global power, the debate concerning the

decline of the US, and his point of view and solutions suggested for the issue. In the light of

this idea, this essay attempts to analyse and examine these three major focuses.

The writer begins his article with enumerating and analysing the historical

circumstances which have led to the rise of the US to be a world power. He defines the word

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“world power” as “a nation strong enough to affect distant regions by its influence or force.”

Then, he explains how after its independence, The US “took possessions of vast territorial

domains rich in natural resources.” Moreover, its victory in the Spanish-American War

(1898) made it become “a far-flung empire” with its acquisition of former Spanish territories

which were Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Consequently, the US emerged as

a world power at the end of the 19th century. Following its intervention in WWI, the US

asserted itself as a great power, a nation that “figures most decisively in international

affairs.” After the end of WWII, the globe was in a state of devastation; yet, for the US, it was

quite the opposite. It “was distinguished by its magnitude and warranted a new ranking for a

new world. Moreover, by virtue of having tremendous natural resources, skilled workers,

unparalleled industrial production, and a self-governing people, victorious in arms, the

United States asserted an international pre-eminence beyond any rival.” Indeed, the US has

become “one of the dominant nations in the world that exercises influence through satellites

and allies.” Despite being “a preeminent power […] that has a paramount rank above all

others in its dignity and authority,” historians and international relations experts have become

sceptic toward the US geopolitical position in the world. Such debate will be the focus of the

second part of the essay.

Starting from the post-1945 period and the beginning of the Cold War, the

geopolitical position of the US in the world has been questioned by intellectuals, political

thinkers and historians. Ever since, a debate about its global might has initiated. There have

been two camps that have approached the dilemma. The first camp is led by the political

scientist Hans Morgenthau, who belongs to the Realist American School of historiography.

Realists do not believe in idealism and moralism when analysing and explaining American

foreign policies carried by decisions makers. The guiding line for them is pragmatism.

Morgenthau proclaimed in 1957 that “the United States is no longer the most powerful nation

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on earth; nor is it even equal in actual and prospective military power to the Soviet Union.”

He further explained that the sole reason behind that is the way foreign policies had been

shaped after WWII. For instance, the US adopted the Containment Policy during the Cold

War and such decision came at a costly price as it squandered its resources on “a mission

impossible,” that of stopping the spread of Communism. Max Frankel, an American

journalist, backs up Morgenthau’s opinion by claiming that “the United States does not

labour alone in the reconstruction of power relationships and may not be dominant in the

process anymore,” which enhances the idea that the American authority and hegemony have

become affected. Ironically, American President Richard Nixon shattered President Harry

Truman’s prediction in 1945 that said: “This country [the US] will continue for another

thousand years as the greatest country in the world,” by “inform[ing]”, as White reports,

“Americans that the era of their pre-eminence had passed because of a series of economic

problems confounding the strength of the nation.” Nixon justified his claim at that time with

an economic argument which stated that national industries lagged in production, the dollar

enfeebled overseas, and there was a serious deficit in the nation’s balance of payments,

“whereas […] the economies of the major industrial nations of Europe and Asia had

regained their vitality. They have become our strong competitors.” By mentioning Asia and

Europe, he referred here to respectively Asian Tigers (Singapore, Taiwan, China, and South

Korea) and Germany. Thus, the recovery of the competitors’ economies and the development

of the economies of south eastern Asian countries coincided with the decline of the USA’s.

Donald White himself belongs to this camp as he acknowledges that America is declining as

he bases his claim through the analysis of aspects of American decline on the foreign and

domestic levels. On the domestic level, added to Nixon’s diagnosis of the state of the

American economy in which he focused on the underdevelopment of industries that White

narrows to machines and metals industries, and the deficit in the balance of payments, White

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identifies other instances of economic decline. In fact, he says: “[American] economy

suffered from inflation and stagnation at the same time, while former enemies like Germany

and Japan were growing rapidly.” He is a proponent of the idea that the United States is a

power in decline. He uses facts (numbers and statistics) no one can dismiss, to confirm his

view. For example, “the United States runs a soaring trade deficit with practically every

region of the globe, heading toward a record US $600 billion.” Furthermore, in the diagram

(done by the US Treasury) placed in the article, the reader may figure out that the US Budget

Deficit for 2005 reached $8 trillion, a number that labels the US as “a debtor nation.” On the

foreign level, the United States becomes, according to White, “a vulnerable military

superpower riding for a fall, burdened by the costs of overreaching with its forces.” In fact, a

former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon confirmed that the imperial

overstretch of the US, its interests and obligations are far larger than the country’s power to

defend them all simultaneously. “The country is … risking its standard of living and the

wherewithal to pay for military force.” Foreign affairs’ expenditure comes at the expense of

the prosperity of the country’s economy. Hence, intervention abroad has become a burden

and not a sign of power. However, a second camp perceives the matter from the other side of

the spectrum. This camp is led by the American political scientist Joseph Nye who still

believes in the dominance of the US. He argues in his book Bound to Lead (1990) that “the

United States, with abundant resources to assure its global leadership, was by far the

dominant world power and that this dominance should continue to grow,” and with “the

collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s left the United States at the end of the Cold

War as the sole remaining military superpower.” Ironically, a gargantuan army cannot boost

a declining economy. On the contrary, it would be just another burden since military power

in the modern world is mainly used for psychological deterrence and countries will think

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twice before using it. Even, after the war on terrorism in Iraq and the dot-com crash 1,

advocates of imperial ambition have envisioned the “projected fall of the American empire.”

In the preamble of the article, Donald White implicitly hints his point of view

concerning the rise and decline of nations. He acknowledges the idea that great empires of

history do decline as Herodotus, the father of history, asserted: “Great empires of history do

decline and have declined.” The same is applicable to the US as it “has declined from the

position of preeminent power it had reached in the middle years of the twentieth century.”

However, “The decline and fall of the empires of the past are recorded by historians, but the

story of the world role of the United States is still being written.” By this, White means that

decline is reversible as Americans have the ability to turn the tide. This is possible if and only

if a reform of a system that proved its deficiency is implemented. Indeed, White states that

“the United States [should not] force its will abroad without a decent respect for the opinion

of the world's peoples.” Also, “US interdependence with other countries requires not

dominance, which would continue to deplete material resources … but instead cooperation

with allies and prospective allies to share burdens of defense and to pursue common

interests.” White supports the idea of the United States being in a position of leadership but

only through: “Collective security, rather than unilateral policy, [which would] renew the

opportunity for US leadership through a legitimacy founded on international procedures and

institutions that might enable the great powers to restrain military force and weak countries

to receive protection in a pluralistic world.” The US has to understand that power today

emanates from within. “Physical strength is important,” White declares, but “the prospects

for national power depend more on what the United States does within its country than what

it does to project its power globally. The United States' world position is based fundamentally

on the people's response to the problems that continue to beset Americans at home:

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It was a period (2002-2004) of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet in which many companies failed and shut down.

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increasing savings, investing in technological advancement, finding alternative energy

supplies, revitalizing educational quality, putting consumption in line with production,

providing adequate health care, ensuring a decent old age, and conserving the environment.”

White condemns politicians (George W. Bush, whose presidency witnessed the Afghan and

Iraq wars) who ignore the problems that continue to beset Americans at home.

To conclude, this essay intends to analyse White’s “Mapping Decline: The

History of American Power” through examining the three main focuses of his article which

are the circumstances that led the US to be a global power, the debate concerning the decline

of the US, and his point of view and solutions suggested for this issue. Unlike Spengler who

was pessimistic about the future, Whites is not pessimistic about the situation of the US. To

reverse the course of its decline is still possible only if the nation reassesses its priorities in the

favour of its people’s welfare.