“there is little doubt that the United States will continue to decline as a decisive force in world affairs over the next decade. The real question is not whether U.S. hegemony is waning but whether the United States can devise a way to descend gracefully, with minimum damage to the world, and to itself.”
Wallerstein is joined by Robert Pape, who wrote in Foreign Policy in January 2009 that
“America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq War, growing government debt, increasingly negative current account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell for American hegemony.”
Clearly their viewpoint is rather bleak, and it would be nice to chalk it up to the impractical pessimism of lonely scholars confined to their studies. But there is a nerve-racking amount of data that seems to support their claims, especially when you look at American power in comparison to the growing strength of China. Whereas the US has dominated the world market since it emerged from the Great Depression and World War II, China is now, in the words of the UN Secretary-General, “the world’s fastest growing economy” while we lag in a recession that shows few signs of turning up. And who could forget the well-publicized Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests performed by the OECD in 2009? The tests, which compared subject skill levels in states with compulsory education, showed American 15-year-olds lagging in 25th, 17th, and 14th places in math, science, and reading, respectively; students in Shanghai, who were counted as representative of the entire People’s Republic of China, garnered 1st place in all three categories. And as we seem to slip behind economically and socially, our political influence in the international system shows signs of wavering as well; while the Washington consensus reigned supreme over our neighbor to the south from the 1980s to the early 21st century, Mexico has been following suit with the other Latin American nations in tightening their relations with China. It is looking more and more like Gideon Rachman was correct when he wrote so poetically in Foreign Policy magazine that
“Americans can be forgiven if they greet talk of a new challenge from China as just another case of the boy who cried wolf. But a frequently overlooked fact about that fable is that the boy was eventually proved right. The wolf did arrive -- and China is the wolf.”
However, as with any theory, there is an equally vocal opposition to the declinists. This group, the American primacists, argues that the status quo is maintainable and that the US is no way being forced out of its hegemony. They all have their reasons; theorists Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth claim in their book World Out of Balance that the US is so powerful that it now operates outside any kind of traditional international system, while Josef Joffe credits the American provision of public goods and global band-wagoning for enduring unipolarity and default power status. Still others, led by Joseph Nye, argue that, even if traditional indicators of power are wavering, the US can maintain its world power status via soft power—“when one country gets other countries to want what it wants” through cultural and ideological allure.
If primacy and declinism are on the opposite ends of a spectrum, I sit just shy of the primacists; while I doubt the US is in danger of collapsing and causing chaos in the international system, I also cannot say with any certainty that the US will always be #1 with a bullet. I do believe that the United States will remain a great power, mostly because of our unmatched soft power in the international system. Even when other states disagree with us politically, our enduring “cultural attractiveness” ensures not just our survival but also our success. In fact, one of our main insurances against decline is the long-standing global appeal and mass consumption of American pop culture; as long as the US puts wildly successful movies, music, and television out into the world market, which it is doing at an increasing rate, its interests will be protected by pop-cultural allies in the international system.
Now, I see how this concept could sound trivial. International relations is such a complicated game of reputations, power plays, intelligence, and perceptions that box office receipts and top 40 hits should have no role in the field—but they do. When Joseph Nye first defined the concept of soft or co-optive power, he called it, “the ability of a country to structure a situation so that other countries develop preferences or define their interests in ways consistent with their own. This power tends to arise from such resources as cultural and ideological attraction.” He elaborated, “If a culture [is] attractive, others will more willingly follow.”American culture is certainly one, of not the, most attractive culture in the world; I don’t mean to say that ours is vastly superior to any others, simply that it is more popular globally. And American culture is not just made up of what we might call ‘high’ and enduring culture—the classic literature of Twain and Fitzgerald, the paintings of Rockwell, and the like—but also the mass media that makes up pop zeitgeist. American superstars are one of our biggest exports, and they make up a big part of our national identity. The idea of Hollywood and ‘making it big’ are deeply ingrained in our national consciousness, so much so that from pre-school many of us want to be actresses and even into adulthood we can enroll in rock star camps for the weekend. It’s just another iteration of the American Dream, but one that has taken hold both at home and abroad. The attractiveness of our culture is driven by to popularity of our mass media—namely music, movies, and television—because it is so easily accessible from anywhere.The attractiveness of our culture is driven by to popularity of our mass media—namely music, movies, and television—because it is so easily accessible from anywhere. When people become invested the US for entertainment value, they become more tied to our cultural products and thus us as a nation.
Nye recognized the importance of pop culture tailor-made for mass consumption; he noted, “A country that stands astride popular channels of communication has more opportunities to get its messages across and to affect the preferences of others.” So popular media has a dual purpose: not only does it tie foreign countries to American cultural exports, but it also creates opportunities to spread ideologies. For instance, when you sympathize with a TV character and their personal plight, you start to identify with their beliefs and become invested in maintaining their way of life, even if its in a fictional universe; the global audience of Friends attached to their favorite New Yorkers, and likely feel somewhat connected to the continuance of their fabulous and supposedly-normal New York City lives. Knowing this, shows that depict supposedly typical American lifestyles have the opportunity to export American ideologies with varying levels of subtlety. This is a particularly helpful thing to understand when you realize that even countries that in no way line up ideologically with the US and are even sometimes painted as enemies consume our media; decades ago Nye used the fact that “Nicaraguan television broadcast American shows even while the government fought American-backed guerillas,” but the trend continues today as girls in Saudi Arabia download torrent files of Grey's Anatomy. Our pop culture, as defined by our overseas blockbusters, hit television shows, and international top 40 music, is both an important component of our national identity and the grease on the wheels of cooperation with other states that consume our media as voraciously as we do.
However, for the argument to hold up, our culture must still be the undeniable favorite even as our traditional means of power rise and fall. If our political fades, should it not follow that our movies, music, and televisions would not longer be voted most popular? Fortunately for us, no. Despite the fact that no one wants to fight a war along side us, they still download American music on iTunes. There have been 28 artists and groups who released singles that sold more than 5 million copies in the last decade, and 21 of them were American born-and-bred performers; out of the seven who were not, five—Justin Bieber (Canada), Shakira (Colombia), Leona Lewis (UK), Rihanna (Barbados) and Avril Lavigne (Canada)—produced their singles through US record labels. The remaining two are Thelma Aoyama and Utada Hikaru, both Japanese pop performers. Even as the US lost political approval following the invasion of Iraq, American music held strong in the international market; in the summer of 2002 St. Louis rapper Nelly, Detroit rapper Eminem, and New York rappers Fat Joe and P. Diddy dominated the music charts, while in the summer 2009 New York singer-songwriter (and insane performance artist) Lady Gaga and the LA-based Black Eyed Peas had two hits a piece in the worldwide top 10. And the all-time highest selling global single is an American cultural standard; over 50 million people own the song "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby.
American television, while not necessarily dominating domestic programming in other countries, still has a popular presence overseas. Friends ran for all 10 of its seasons in the UK, regularly drawing in as many viewers as original British programming, and is still currently in syndication just like it is in the states. The lives of 6 New Yorkers at Central Perk also continues to run in non-western countries, including Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan. Desperate Housewives, despite losing some its popularity here, became part of the cultural consciousness in Australia and the United Kingdom—so much so that it was referenced by name in the British drama Skins. Other popular American programs, such as How I Met Your Mother, Castle, and ER, have also gained a following when broadcast overseas; in fact, the US shows Glee and Friends hold four of the top ten most-watched episodes on the British youth-oriented channel E4. And that doesn’t even take into account the influence American television has on foreign original programming; much of our domestic reality programming, including So You Think You Can Dance and The Amazing Race, have both their American originals and foreign iterations broadcast worldwide; Fox’s dance competition has been recreated in 16 countries including Israel and South Africa, while CBS’s global scavenger hunt has eight different adaptations ranging from Latin America to China.
But where continued American pop culture hegemony is most astonishing is in the film industry. When Nye wrote in the fall of 1990, the world was at the height of the Washington consensus period and, while US films only constituted 6-7% of all made internationally, they still got 50% of screen time; the dominance has continued into this century, even as the US is looked upon less favorably by foreign nations. For the week ending February 13, 2011, 41 out of 53 reporting countries had Hollywood movies like Tangled and No Strings Attached atop their box office charts. The American #1s were displaced in the remaining 12 only by films native to those countries in which they had the biggest receipts; no other country had any exported movies reach the highest grossing position. And the popularity of American movies is actually increasing to the point that Hollywood-distributed movies are significantly more overseas than they are stateside. Take, for instance, the Toy Story franchise: in 1999, Toy Story 2 made 49.3% of its $485 million internationally, and in 2010, Toy Story 3 made a whopping 61% of its $1.06 billion gross internationally. Considering Avatar, which made over $2 billion and 72.7% of its profit outside of the US, and The Dark Knight, which made $468.5 million at foreign box offices, it is clear that American cinema is still internationally popular, to say the very least.
These pop media exports are so salient overseas that it would be hard to argue that the United States will fall from great power status any time soon. As Nye implied, the exposure to American culture created by foreign consumption increases indentifiability with us as a nation and invests external populations in our success. If the US were to suffer some kind of powerful shock that thrust it out of hegemony or into instability, its unlikely that our films, music, and television would still be produced and exported at the break neck speed they are now; if the country is struggling to reorganize and figure out a new place in the international system, as other fallen great powers such as the Roman Empire or the Soviet Union had to, Hollywood and all its pop culture exports would likely fall by the wayside. As long as the United States survives, there will still be the sequels, spin-offs, and greatest hits albums that foreign populations are much more invested in than they ever were in our politics.
The continued popularity of our media culture can be used greatly to our advantage. We are, in the words of Nye, "astride popular channels of communication" that we should use to reinforce United States culture overseas. There is a fine line between subtlety and propaganda, but it would smart for Hollywood to underscore its products with American ideology. That is not to say that our all television shows need to look like The Andy Griffith Show or that Lady Gaga should produce a dance remix of "God Bless America,"; creativity and diversity are the reasons our media is so well-received worldwide, and we cannot lose that. Rather, as they often do already, producers could focus on themes like democracy, overcoming adversity, and tolerance--elements of the American experiment that are now our American dream. Everything does not need to be set in the heartland of the good ol' US of A to reinforce the belief in these concepts that prop up the United States; the Star Wars franchise, a new American classic, is set in a galaxy far far away but still manages to propagate the dangers of an evil dictator, intergalactic species tolerance, and pushing past disadvantages like losing an arm. And since the 70s we have seen our justice system glorified in Law & Order (whose format was sold and adapted to the UK, Russia, and France), our women heralded in "California Girls" by Katy Perry (winner of the MTV Europe Best Video Award) and our military prowess, well, glorified in Inglourious Basterds (which grossed $23.5 million in Germany alone). Even cultural products that seek to expose the dark side, like the Bourne trilogy or Syriana, show off the silver lining of the United States by showing there are still 'real' Americans fighting for the founding ideas that their country sometimes turns its back on. Those movies do not pit anyone against us or inspire anti-American sentiment; it's actually the opposite, because it shows we are willing to be self-critical and recognize their shortcomings. The decision-makers in our media, or at least those interested in the United States hegemony that guarantees their giant paycheck and limited taxes, should continue to produce work that ever-so-subtly highlights the wonders of American living and promotes US interests.
This is not to say that pop cultural hegemony is all it takes to maintain great power status. To return to what I conceded earlier, international relations is a complicated game and no one factor can determine who holds the all the cards. It is just one element of soft power, which includes long-built political reputation and identifiable ideology, and traditional 'hard' power is still relevant. Military and economic forces play equally if not more important roles in writing history. However, pop culture is an important facilitator of international influence because it makes the dominating material power of the United States an easier pill for other countries to swallow. As long as American media creates the universal language of pop culture and maintains its global attractiveness, the US will have outlets for ensuring its success by tying others to its ideologies and investing others in the survival of its culture. As we shape global tastes, we can shape global interests.
“America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq War, growing government debt, increasingly negative current account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back at the Bush administration years as the death knell for American hegemony.”
“Americans can be forgiven if they greet talk of a new challenge from China as just another case of the boy who cried wolf. But a frequently overlooked fact about that fable is that the boy was eventually proved right. The wolf did arrive -- and China is the wolf.”
If primacy and declinism are on the opposite ends of a spectrum, I sit just shy of the primacists; while I doubt the US is in danger of collapsing and causing chaos in the international system, I also cannot say with any certainty that the US will always be #1 with a bullet. I do believe that the United States will remain a great power, mostly because of our unmatched soft power in the international system. Even when other states disagree with us politically, our enduring “cultural attractiveness” ensures not just our survival but also our success. In fact, one of our main insurances against decline is the long-standing global appeal and mass consumption of American pop culture; as long as the US puts wildly successful movies, music, and television out into the world market, which it is doing at an increasing rate, its interests will be protected by pop-cultural allies in the international system.
Now, I see how this concept could sound trivial. International relations is such a complicated game of reputations, power plays, intelligence, and perceptions that box office receipts and top 40 hits should have no role in the field—but they do. When Joseph Nye first defined the concept of soft or co-optive power, he called it, “the ability of a country to structure a situation so that other countries develop preferences or define their interests in ways consistent with their own. This power tends to arise from such resources as cultural and ideological attraction.” He elaborated, “If a culture [is] attractive, others will more willingly follow.”American culture is certainly one, of not the, most attractive culture in the world; I don’t mean to say that ours is vastly superior to any others, simply that it is more popular globally. And American culture is not just made up of what we might call ‘high’ and enduring culture—the classic literature of Twain and Fitzgerald, the paintings of Rockwell, and the like—but also the mass media that makes up pop zeitgeist. American superstars are one of our biggest exports, and they make up a big part of our national identity. The idea of Hollywood and ‘making it big’ are deeply ingrained in our national consciousness, so much so that from pre-school many of us want to be actresses and even into adulthood we can enroll in rock star camps for the weekend. It’s just another iteration of the American Dream, but one that has taken hold both at home and abroad. The attractiveness of our culture is driven by to popularity of our mass media—namely music, movies, and television—because it is so easily accessible from anywhere.The attractiveness of our culture is driven by to popularity of our mass media—namely music, movies, and television—because it is so easily accessible from anywhere. When people become invested the US for entertainment value, they become more tied to our cultural products and thus us as a nation.
Nye recognized the importance of pop culture tailor-made for mass consumption; he noted, “A country that stands astride popular channels of communication has more opportunities to get its messages across and to affect the preferences of others.” So popular media has a dual purpose: not only does it tie foreign countries to American cultural exports, but it also creates opportunities to spread ideologies. For instance, when you sympathize with a TV character and their personal plight, you start to identify with their beliefs and become invested in maintaining their way of life, even if its in a fictional universe; the global audience of Friends attached to their favorite New Yorkers, and likely feel somewhat connected to the continuance of their fabulous and supposedly-normal New York City lives. Knowing this, shows that depict supposedly typical American lifestyles have the opportunity to export American ideologies with varying levels of subtlety. This is a particularly helpful thing to understand when you realize that even countries that in no way line up ideologically with the US and are even sometimes painted as enemies consume our media; decades ago Nye used the fact that “Nicaraguan television broadcast American shows even while the government fought American-backed guerillas,” but the trend continues today as girls in Saudi Arabia download torrent files of Grey's Anatomy. Our pop culture, as defined by our overseas blockbusters, hit television shows, and international top 40 music, is both an important component of our national identity and the grease on the wheels of cooperation with other states that consume our media as voraciously as we do.
However, for the argument to hold up, our culture must still be the undeniable favorite even as our traditional means of power rise and fall. If our political fades, should it not follow that our movies, music, and televisions would not longer be voted most popular? Fortunately for us, no. Despite the fact that no one wants to fight a war along side us, they still download American music on iTunes. There have been 28 artists and groups who released singles that sold more than 5 million copies in the last decade, and 21 of them were American born-and-bred performers; out of the seven who were not, five—Justin Bieber (Canada), Shakira (Colombia), Leona Lewis (UK), Rihanna (Barbados) and Avril Lavigne (Canada)—produced their singles through US record labels. The remaining two are Thelma Aoyama and Utada Hikaru, both Japanese pop performers. Even as the US lost political approval following the invasion of Iraq, American music held strong in the international market; in the summer of 2002 St. Louis rapper Nelly, Detroit rapper Eminem, and New York rappers Fat Joe and P. Diddy dominated the music charts, while in the summer 2009 New York singer-songwriter (and insane performance artist) Lady Gaga and the LA-based Black Eyed Peas had two hits a piece in the worldwide top 10. And the all-time highest selling global single is an American cultural standard; over 50 million people own the song "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby.
American television, while not necessarily dominating domestic programming in other countries, still has a popular presence overseas. Friends ran for all 10 of its seasons in the UK, regularly drawing in as many viewers as original British programming, and is still currently in syndication just like it is in the states. The lives of 6 New Yorkers at Central Perk also continues to run in non-western countries, including Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan. Desperate Housewives, despite losing some its popularity here, became part of the cultural consciousness in Australia and the United Kingdom—so much so that it was referenced by name in the British drama Skins. Other popular American programs, such as How I Met Your Mother, Castle, and ER, have also gained a following when broadcast overseas; in fact, the US shows Glee and Friends hold four of the top ten most-watched episodes on the British youth-oriented channel E4. And that doesn’t even take into account the influence American television has on foreign original programming; much of our domestic reality programming, including So You Think You Can Dance and The Amazing Race, have both their American originals and foreign iterations broadcast worldwide; Fox’s dance competition has been recreated in 16 countries including Israel and South Africa, while CBS’s global scavenger hunt has eight different adaptations ranging from Latin America to China.
But where continued American pop culture hegemony is most astonishing is in the film industry. When Nye wrote in the fall of 1990, the world was at the height of the Washington consensus period and, while US films only constituted 6-7% of all made internationally, they still got 50% of screen time; the dominance has continued into this century, even as the US is looked upon less favorably by foreign nations. For the week ending February 13, 2011, 41 out of 53 reporting countries had Hollywood movies like Tangled and No Strings Attached atop their box office charts. The American #1s were displaced in the remaining 12 only by films native to those countries in which they had the biggest receipts; no other country had any exported movies reach the highest grossing position. And the popularity of American movies is actually increasing to the point that Hollywood-distributed movies are significantly more overseas than they are stateside. Take, for instance, the Toy Story franchise: in 1999, Toy Story 2 made 49.3% of its $485 million internationally, and in 2010, Toy Story 3 made a whopping 61% of its $1.06 billion gross internationally. Considering Avatar, which made over $2 billion and 72.7% of its profit outside of the US, and The Dark Knight, which made $468.5 million at foreign box offices, it is clear that American cinema is still internationally popular, to say the very least.
These pop media exports are so salient overseas that it would be hard to argue that the United States will fall from great power status any time soon. As Nye implied, the exposure to American culture created by foreign consumption increases indentifiability with us as a nation and invests external populations in our success. If the US were to suffer some kind of powerful shock that thrust it out of hegemony or into instability, its unlikely that our films, music, and television would still be produced and exported at the break neck speed they are now; if the country is struggling to reorganize and figure out a new place in the international system, as other fallen great powers such as the Roman Empire or the Soviet Union had to, Hollywood and all its pop culture exports would likely fall by the wayside. As long as the United States survives, there will still be the sequels, spin-offs, and greatest hits albums that foreign populations are much more invested in than they ever were in our politics.
The continued popularity of our media culture can be used greatly to our advantage. We are, in the words of Nye, "astride popular channels of communication" that we should use to reinforce United States culture overseas. There is a fine line between subtlety and propaganda, but it would smart for Hollywood to underscore its products with American ideology. That is not to say that our all television shows need to look like The Andy Griffith Show or that Lady Gaga should produce a dance remix of "God Bless America,"; creativity and diversity are the reasons our media is so well-received worldwide, and we cannot lose that. Rather, as they often do already, producers could focus on themes like democracy, overcoming adversity, and tolerance--elements of the American experiment that are now our American dream. Everything does not need to be set in the heartland of the good ol' US of A to reinforce the belief in these concepts that prop up the United States; the Star Wars franchise, a new American classic, is set in a galaxy far far away but still manages to propagate the dangers of an evil dictator, intergalactic species tolerance, and pushing past disadvantages like losing an arm. And since the 70s we have seen our justice system glorified in Law & Order (whose format was sold and adapted to the UK, Russia, and France), our women heralded in "California Girls" by Katy Perry (winner of the MTV Europe Best Video Award) and our military prowess, well, glorified in Inglourious Basterds (which grossed $23.5 million in Germany alone). Even cultural products that seek to expose the dark side, like the Bourne trilogy or Syriana, show off the silver lining of the United States by showing there are still 'real' Americans fighting for the founding ideas that their country sometimes turns its back on. Those movies do not pit anyone against us or inspire anti-American sentiment; it's actually the opposite, because it shows we are willing to be self-critical and recognize their shortcomings. The decision-makers in our media, or at least those interested in the United States hegemony that guarantees their giant paycheck and limited taxes, should continue to produce work that ever-so-subtly highlights the wonders of American living and promotes US interests.
This is not to say that pop cultural hegemony is all it takes to maintain great power status. To return to what I conceded earlier, international relations is a complicated game and no one factor can determine who holds the all the cards. It is just one element of soft power, which includes long-built political reputation and identifiable ideology, and traditional 'hard' power is still relevant. Military and economic forces play equally if not more important roles in writing history. However, pop culture is an important facilitator of international influence because it makes the dominating material power of the United States an easier pill for other countries to swallow. As long as American media creates the universal language of pop culture and maintains its global attractiveness, the US will have outlets for ensuring its success by tying others to its ideologies and investing others in the survival of its culture. As we shape global tastes, we can shape global interests.
Interesting essay. I feel like it took a little bit of time to get to your thesis/ arguing point. As it first started I was very interested to read about your views of the past (And likely future) decline of our country. Then it took a turn to be about cultural representations of our country throughout the world.
ReplyDeleteEither way it is assuredly an interesting take on the matter. Personally I think if our country defaults economically like many believe it to that the cultural part of america will fall into shadow behind our governments attempt to fix the problem. But the rest of the world might disagree. Good essay.