After the Empire


After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order is a 2001 book by French demographer and sociologist Emmanuel Todd. In it, Todd examines the fundamental weaknesses of the modern United States to conclude that, contrary to American conventional wisdom, America is fast losing its grip on the world stage in economic, military and ideological terms. Todd predicts the fall of the United States as the sole global superpower.

1976 prediction of Soviet collapse

Todd attracted attention in 1976 when, aged 25, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates. In the late 1970s, Todd was widely pronounced an "anti-communist", just as, following the publication of After the Empire, he has been attacked as "anti-American". He challenges these labels and describes himself as a historian and anthropologist first; and it was his concern as a historian, rather than political passion, that motivated him to write After the Empire. In late 2002, he believed that the world was about to repeat the same mistake that it had made in regard to the Soviet Union during the 1970s—misinterpreting an expansion in US military activity as a sign of its increasing power, when in fact this aggression masks a decline.

Post-Cold War geopolitical climate

Todd writes that the United States became an empire not by strategy but by accident, following the sudden collapse of its main adversary, the Soviet Union. With the globalization of investment, it then indulged in the luxury of conspicuous consumption using incoming capital while going deeper and deeper into debt. In reality America is like a crumbling Roman empire—overextended with excessive arms spending, inequality and disgruntlement at home. To keep the rest of the world in line, and prevent its creditors calling in their debts, all America needs to do then is to wield a big stick.
"The real America is too weak to take on anyone except military midgets," Todd states. This is why there is such hostility to states such as North Korea, Cuba, and Iraq, an underdeveloped country of 24 million exhausted by a decade of sanctions. Such "conflicts that represent little or no military risk" allow a US presence throughout the world. Further, the "theatrical media coverage...must not blind us to a fundamental reality: the size of the opponent chosen by the US is the true indicator of its current power". Todd argues that America would be incapable of challenging a more powerful country, and that "only one threat to global stability hangs over the world today—the United States itself, which was once a protector and is now a predator."

Predictions

Todd is above all a demographer, and he bases much of his opinion on statistical elements. Therefore, Todd notes some disturbing American trends, such as rising stratification based on educational credentials, and the "obsolescence of unreformable political institutions." Increasingly, he argues, the rest of the world is producing so that America can consume.
Todd argues the risk to the United States is that its clumsy tactics could backfire by provoking a geostrategic realignment and alliance in Europe and Asia. In the future the real power will rest with Europe. Todd suggests that Eurasia possesses the majority of global wealth and is able to work with other countries because it shares a universalist ethic that respects the rest of the world, including Arab and Muslim countries. Europe will evolve into a united force and its protected industrial base will allow it to rapidly reestablish its military might. Over time, Europe's and Russia's cultural friendship will strengthen and the Cold War-era ties which bind the United States together with Europe will be severed because of the vast divide separating "European and American civilizations", which Todd calls "the emancipation of Europe". If Europe, Russia and Japan draw closer as a result of the "drunken sailor" United States, then Washington will have achieved exactly the opposite of what it sought.

Solutions

Todd believes the US should return to its universalist and egalitarian roots, expressed in the 19th century, or make genuine attempts to expand civil rights and be a stabilizing element for the world, like they were in the 1950s. Todd also believes that Europe should rearrange the geopolitical balance around a Eurasian pole consisting of a Europe led by a trio of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, relying on Russia to provide military support as well as oil and natural gas.

Reception