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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. Congratulations to this week's winner:
Letter of the Week
NAVAL GAZING
An interesting point about the decline of great powers is the size of their naval forces. At one time, Britain had by far the greatest and most powerful fleet in the world. Along with that fleet came an empire, and once that empire vanished after World War II, so did the Royal Navy. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Royal Navy was only a shadow of its former self prior to World War II, let alone World War I.
Today, if (and this is an important "if") you take away Britain's nuclear powered submarines (both ballistic missile and attack submarines), it has a smaller navy than India's, a former colony. Think about that: The Royal Navy, once the envy of the modern world, has now drifted into almost Third World Status.
The once powerful French, German, Spanish, and Dutch navies are basically a joke and are lucky if they can send one or two ships outside of their home waters. They are basically coastal defense forces, and although they make some noise saying they can "project power" (such as the "European Rapid Reaction Force," which was always a bad joke), they can no longer project power overseas in any meaningful quantity. Even during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Royal Navy was a small sideshow to what the US Navy had in the area.
Now look at the United States. As of today, we still have the most powerful Navy in the world. We are still the only country on this planet that can project power quickly to almost any spot on the planet. At the height of the Cold War, the US Navy played an enormous role in discouraging the Soviet Union from attacking NATO.
Yet today the US Navy is rapidly declining, and with it our influence in the world. Keep an eye on the future acquisition of new warships for the Navy. If we decide to quickly decline as a world power, you will see the size of our navy rapidly decline as well. There is already talk about reducing the size of our carrier battle groups to 11 and there is serious debate in Congress as to whether or not we need carriers at all. We are also rapidly reducing the size of our escort ships and our submarines (both ballistic missile and attack). So if we throw in the towel, expect to see our navy devolve into a coastal defense force, rather than a world-wide power projection force.
Remo Salta
Ridgewood, New Jersey
MARK SAYS: As an addendum to the above, bear in mind that in 1945 the Royal Canadian Navy was the third largest surface fleet in the world. When countries turn in on themselves - as social democratic entitlement states always do - the most obvious symbol of outward, global projection is the first to go.
INDIA RISING?
While I agree with much of your article (“The Seductions of Decline”), your suggestion that there would be no country to usurp America as she declines fails to mention one potent contender: India. India lacks the demographic dilemmas of Russia, China, and (a country also left unmentioned) Japan. It also lacks the insanity of leadership in avowedly Islamic regimes (not to mention their dependence on a sole, finite resource). It has a lively and expanding intellectual class and the type of government that can sustain a sprawling country whose demographics make America look like, well, Sweden.
So, due to its size, its population dynamics, its economic vitality, etc, I would wager that India is by far the most logical and valid suggestion for a successor to America's hegemony— which, by the way, would likely cast China in the role of early to mid 20th century Germany: embittered and jealous (though free of the genocidal nonsense of Nazi ideology, in spite of rabid nationalism).
So if we're playing the speculation game, why not throw out the possibility of a world war centered on a conflict between China and India some time in the next 100 years?
Steve
FREE “LUNCH”… OR TRADE?
Decline is a choice, even if it's made inadvertently. Hard to not have decline when a country's productive capacity was relocated to another country, and a rival at that. How do you support a massive military when the industries that generated the funds to support it are gone?
The Chinese probably can't believe their luck: all these American businessmen bringing all this knowledge and capital and intellectual property to be stolen— and all with the acquiescence of the US government. Mind boggling. Never say no to a free lunch.
WD
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Mark, I was most recently struck by your recent article about our country's decline. I am a descendant of European immigrants. They came to this country with nothing. They cut down forests, broke prairie sod, and built houses (shanties by today's standards). Eventually, they and their descendants thrived. It was their efforts and values, and those of like-minded others, who built this country.
But I fear it is too late; that we have passed the tipping point where a majority of our voters support a European welfare state. If this is irreversible, then we must look to a new future. Where do we— the disfavored producers— go to re-create a new America? Build an island in the middle of the Pacific and call it Americus? Do we emigrate with our wealth to an underdeveloped poor nation until our numbers allow us to conquer it like my ancestors did here in California in 1846?
I sure hope this is not what some of us begin to consider.
Mike LaSalle
California
MARK SAYS: You won't need to build an island. When President Obama fulfills his campaign pledge to lower the oceans, many uninhabited atolls will be re-emerging from the depths.
PLEASURE-DOME GIVES WAY TO THUNDERDOME
Regarding declining societies, I feel that, in attitude, the British have gone from Christian Stoicism to Epicureanism. What eventually happened to past essentially Epicurean societies, I don’t know; but I’d be curious to know if or how some of the richer societies were jolted awake.
Chuck Chambers
KICK ME, I’M IRISH
You write about the British that they, in the scales of history, have been a force for good in the world.
Tell that to the Irish.
Kieran McAuliffe
Toronto, Ontario
MARK SAYS: Well, speaking as a bog trotter myself and one whose family had a small but energetic role in the founding of the Irish Free State, I would say very few sentient Irishmen would seriously disagree with my statement. Which is why, like Canada, independent Ireland retained almost all the institutional systems it inherited from Britain. We're talking about "the scales of history", so go ahead, start weighting: The global hyperpower plus the regional powers in every corner of the planet (South Africa, India, Australia) plus three-sevenths of the G7 plus the functioning bit of China, etc, etc, vs the potato famine. C'mon, man, you're in Toronto. Get over it.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PREMIER?
Mark, I've been fascinated by this whole issue with Premier Williams. Always interesting when politicians clam up (and I guess we should be grateful for these moments). The "tight-lipped" response by his office leads me to believe he may have simply said "I'm not waiting around in this line."
I knew more about President's Reagan's colon than I did my own. Not so with Premier Williams: it's as if he's a victim of medical rendition (to a hospital "black site", I suppose). I can't wait for the film version.
It will be Clooney's finest.
Joe Giles
Phoenix, Arizona
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