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Sound the Alarm
| Article
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11685 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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2 / 1994 |
1,593 Words |
| Author
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Mark Blitz
Mark Blitz is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna
College in California. |
THE ENDANGERED AMERICAN DREAM
How to Stop the United States from Becoming a Third World Country and How to Win the Geo-Economic Struggle for Industrial Supremacy
Edward N. Luttwak
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993
365 pp., $24.00
Edward Luttwak was last heard and seen predicting massive American casualties in the Gulf War. Now, with The Endangered American Dream, he has returned to predict our increasing transformation into a Third World country unless we learn to wage the "geo-economic struggle" in full force. Given Luttwak's track record, one might wonder why a sensible person should pay any attention to his argument. Indeed, one's doubts are compounded by the book's penchant for overstatement and excess.
Yet, to dismiss him out of hand would be unfair. Much of what Luttwak says is true, and much of the rest is well argued. Both the good and bad parts have been heard before, but this, in a way, is the book's virtue. Once one gets beyond Luttwak's unconvincing schematic discussion of geoeconomics, one discovers a handy compendium of the facts, pseudo facts, and fears that appear to define America's present or future decline.
Luttwak's basic argument is that we have left the world of geopolitics and have entered the world of geoeconomics, where national economic rivalries replace the political and territorial rivalries that once led to war. Our need to compete and to continue to retain our cohesiveness by having an enemy means that Japan has replaced the Soviet Union in the public's demonic consciousness. The world's wish to have a model of success means that Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has replaced the Prussian general staff as the image of organizational perfection to be emulated and admired. The public is not altogether naive in its fears or loves, however, because Europe and Japan, with their organized industrial strategies, are formidable rivals indeed. We are ill equipped to defeat them, let alone keep up with their efforts.
The United States already shows signs of being a Third World country, the argument continues, and, according to some estimates, may become one fully by the year 2020. We suffer from a massive lack of capital, especially "patient capital" for long-term investment, and are increasingly becoming a country of two classes, the poor and the superrich. There are a decreasing number of high-wage
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