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COMMENTARY
December 19, 2007
The tour of years
As the year-end approaches it is the tradition among journalists to look backward and forward; mostly backward, over a span of 12 months. Longer periods are considered when we use the conceit of anniversaries.We mark this month, for instance, the 100th anniversary of the sailing of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Teddy Roosevelt sent the 16 battleships and escorts of this “Great White Fleet” on a round-the-world tour. Truly Magellanic: for the Panama Canal was not yet open. The ships had to negotiate the Straits of Magellan, and the ice floes of the Southern Ocean, beyond the tip of South America (where a big Canadian cruise ship foundered just last month). The fleet was greeted almost everywhere it called with crowds waving American flags. It paused in Sicily, to deliver disaster relief to the victims of an earthquake. Over the century since, the U.S. Navy has been perhaps the world's most reliable and efficient provider of emergency services. To say nothing of its contribution to planetary wars. We might remember that voyage, under Rear Admiral Charles Sperry, as the symbolic event marking America's emergence as a superpower. Britain had ruled the waves through the previous century, and taken upon herself the role of “world policeman.” On her watch over the high seas, piracy and the slave trade had been diminished, almost to nothing, for the first time in recorded history. And, a sea-borne international system of trade and communications had been secured. As the 20th century wore on, that torch, lighting the way to freedom and order, was passed from London to Washington. Our kids today are taught in school, when they are taught any history at all, that Imperialism “was” an unmitigated evil. Alas, this is an unmitigated lie, and it is to European Imperialism that not only we, but formerly subject peoples, owe lives much longer and less painful than those of our ancestors. For in addition to free trade, and the rule of law at sea, the fleets carried with them ideas, and technology -- most significantly, certain principles of hygiene which, more even than the discoveries and techniques of modern medicine, contributed everywhere to longevity, prosperity, and health. Imperialism is a mixed blessing for both conqueror and conqueree, and the whole story is of course complex. It is not an avoidable subject. Notwithstanding the fond dreams of the wilfully naive, war will remain a recurring feature of human history. And the power relations upon which war and peace alike are structured, have always been with us, and will continue -- so long as we are humans formed into large societies. And should we cease to be that, we only return to the conditions of the jungle. Through the 20th century, the power of America grew and grew. A decade after the Great White Fleet's circumnavigation, the entry of the U.S. into the First World War confirmed her status as one of the great powers. Her contribution to the Second World War was decisive, over both Atlantic and Pacific. Through the Cold War she provided the shield for the West, and all Western allies, against the advance of Soviet Communism. And when that enemy collapsed, from its own internal contradictions, America emerged as the world's “hyperpower” -- a superpower with no plausible rival, whether military, economic, or social. A fleet of Red China's “People's Liberation Army Navy” has been making its first port calls in the West this year, in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt's enterprise of a century ago. It is a reminder that superpowers come and go, and that America's purchase on the sovereignty of the seas must take its place in history. Nor is there any law of nature to guarantee the most benign power will become the strongest. Unremitting human effort alone will maintain a status quo, just as unremitting labour is constantly applied to altering circumstances we once took for granted. As the World Bank declared last week, in a re-assessment of the Chinese economy, it is not nearly about to overtake that of the United States. Depending on the method of analysis (including the use of such gimmicks as “purchasing power parity”), which depend in turn upon often fictional Chinese government statistics, the Chinese GDP is only three-fifths the size previously calculated, and perhaps as small as one-quarter. The claimed growth rates are also quite suspect. But by contrast, the scale of Chinese military expansion has almost certainly been seriously underestimated by the inept intelligence agencies of the West. On balance, Red China is indeed an emerging rival to the American hyperpower. The vagaries of the oil price, the proliferation of advanced weapons technology, and many other factors create opportunities for other despotic powers to rise. Those who look forward optimistically to a time when America will be less dominant -- may even be retreating before new challengers -- are fools indeed. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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