Dismantling the Empire

After Latin America, East Asia is the area of the world longest under America’s imperialist tutelage. If you want to know something about the U.S. record in exporting its economic and political institutions, it’s a good place to look. But first, some definitions.

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt once argued that democracy was such an abused concept we should dismiss as a charlatan anyone who used the word in serious discourse with out first clarifying what he or she meant by it. Therefore, let me indicate what I mean by “democracy.”

First, there must be acceptance within a society of the principle that public opinion matters. If it doesn’t, as for example in Stalin’s Russia, or present-day Saudi Arabia, or the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa under American military domination, then it hardly matters what rituals of American democracy, such as elections, may be practiced.

Second, there must be some internal balance of power or separation of powers, so that it is impossible for an individual leader to become a dictator. If power is concentrated in a single position and its occupant claims to be beyond legal restraints, as has been true in the United States in the Bush years, then democracy becomes attenuated or only pro forma. In particular, I look for the existence and practice of administrative law—in other words, an independent constitutional court with powers to declare null and void laws that contravene democratic safeguards.

Third, there must be some agreed-upon procedure for getting rid of unsatisfactory leaders. Periodic elections, parliamentary votes of no confidence, term limits, and impeachment are various well-known ways to do this, but the emphasis should be on shared institutions.

With that in mind, let’s consider the export of the American economic, and then democratic, “model” to Asia. The countries stretching from Japan to Indonesia, with the exception of the former American colony of the Philippines, make up one of the richest regions on earth today. They include the second most productive country in the world, Japan, with a per capita income well in excess of that of the United States, as well as the world’s fastest-growing large economy, China’s, which has been expanding at a rate of over 9.5 percent per annum for the past two decades. These countries achieved their economic well-being by ignoring virtually every article of wisdom preached in American economics departments and business schools or propounded by various American administrations.

Japan established the regional model for East Asia. In no case did the other high-growth Asian economies follow Japan’s path precisely, but they have all been inspired by the overarching characteristic of the Japanese economic system—namely, the combining of the private ownership of property as a genuine right, defensible in law and inheritable, with state control of economic goals, markets, and outcomes. I am referring to what the Japanese call “industrial policy” (sangyo seisaku). In American economic theory (if not in practice), industrial policy is anathema. It contradicts the idea of an unconstrained market guided by laissez-faire. Nonetheless, the American military-industrial complex and our elaborate system of “military Keynesianism” rely on a Pentagon-run industrial policy—even as American theory denies that either the military-industrial complex or economic dependence on arms manufacturing is a significant factor in our economic life. We continue to underestimate the high-growth economies of East Asia because of the power of our ideological blinders.

One particular form of American economic influence did greatly affect East Asian economic practice: namely, protectionism and the control of competition through high tariffs and other forms of state discrimination against foreign imports. This was the primary economic policy of the United States from its founding until 1940. Without it, American economic wealth of the sort to which we have become accustomed would have been inconceivable. The East Asian countries have emulated the United States in this respect. They are interested in what the United States does, not what it preaches. That is one of the ways they all got rich. China is today pursuing a variant of the basic Japanese development strategy, even though it does not, of course, acknowledge this.

MARKETING DEMOCRACY

The gap between preaching and self-deception in the way we promote democracy abroad is even greater than in selling our economic ideology. Our record is one of continuous (sometimes unintended) failure, although most establishment pundits try to camouflage this fact.