No Longer Simple
It used to be so simple. The good guys were defenders and the bad guys were aggressors. Good guys liked free markets (innovative, resilient and prosperous) and bad guys ran centrally planned economies (archaic, inflexible and dirt poor). Good guys had moral principles and the bad guys were atheists and liars. Stars & Stripes v. Hammer & Sickle. It was so simple. Or so we thought.
But the Wall came down in 1988, reducing the world to one superpower. It seemed wonderful at first, and we all dreamed of peace and global prosperity. The Germanys united and the European Union emerged and China grew 8% a year and NASDAQ broke 5000. And no nation with a McDonalds ever started a war, Bush and Putin were buddies, Alan was in charge of our money and the IMF would bail out the needy and wasn't it going to be grand.
But the Trade Center came down in 2001. And it wasn't Russia. It wasn't any particular country at all, which in some ways was the scariest part. We didn't know why it happened, and we didn't know how to strike back. We didn't know how to protect ourselves. On one frightening day we realized that it was no longer simple.
Americans as a people are not particularly contemplative; we prefer action. We are pragmatic. We fear neither risk nor failure. We are impatient. So it was consistent with our national character that after brief deliberation we defined our mysterious enemy the best we could and tore apart his nest in Afghanistan, ignoring the naysayers. Understanding that terrorism was not disabled, a modest majority of the citizenry supported our leaders' instinct to take the fight to the next level. And we have.
What is the end game? Will we take on a series of dictators? Should we? Can we afford to? Can Islamic nations embrace individual rights and democracy?
Geraldo believes the American star is still rising. Bill sees the arc of her hegemony well past its peak, a shooting star plunging toward the Arabian Sea. A middle way of seeing this hegemony thing requires a dose of American optimism. It goes something like this: The hegemony or preponderant influence of the 20th Century was not so much America as it was the ascendance of democratic capitalism. As Bill Gross ably describes, America certainly has to work through its cycle of financial excess. But freedom's stock may still be rising. Perhaps Geraldo has read the history of Cyrus the Great. George Bush's rhetoric actually matches that of the Persian warrior-philosopher, and who knows, he may turn out to be his moral twin.
As I try to understand where the current turmoil will lead, I recall that in 1776 only one-third of the colonists supported the American Revolution. But their leaders had vision and the people had guts, and hasn't it been grand!
J. Michael Martin, JD, CFP, is president of Financial Advantage in Columbia, Md.