After seeing images of the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his amazement. He couldn't believe something like this had happened to America. He thought he was looking at a Third World country. In the Russian President's surprise we find a deep-rooted and surprising idea; namely, that America is somehow exempted from the usual sorrows and disasters. The power of the United States and the success of its economy are so unprecedented, so extraordinary, that a myth of American invulnerability has not only infected the inhabitants of the United States. Even distant rulers, frustrated by the misery and despair of their own people, have unconsciously absorbed the idea that America is protected from the usual afflictions of history.
I recall a conversation with a Chinese acquaintance. He was an admirer of the late Chairman Mao, founder of the country's communist regime. Despite his Marxist-Leninist indoctrination, he found himself addicted to the blessings of American liberty and prosperity. When I mentioned the fact that China's communist leaders dreamed of using nuclear weapons against American cities, he reacted with shock. "But that would be immoral," he blurted. When I questioned him further, he spoke of America as a special place of happiness. All humanity had a stake in its preservation, he suggested. He was sincere, even emotional as he spoke.
America is unique to history. Surrounded by oceans, protected from predatory great powers by sheer distance, accustomed to the "pursuit of happiness," the American people have enjoyed an unprecedented liberty and security. This may be attributed to political arrangements affirmed and supported by the United States Constitution: (1) the maintenance of national unity under a federal government capable of enforcing "the rights of the Union" (as described in Federalist No. 28 by Alexander Hamilton, who wrote: "How wise will it be in them by cherishing the Union to preserve to themselves an advantage which can never be too highly prized!"); (2) a system of checks and balances under which powers and responsibilities are divided between different branches of government as well as between the state governments and the federal government.
Freedom in any country cannot be reliably protected by legalism, or by those few principled men who understand and respect legal tradition. The key to liberty is to divide power between magistrates. This division prevents the reduction of the country under a single band of robbers. At the same time, this divided government must be dynamic and energetic enough to maintain the Union against foreign powers as well as the threat of domestic separatism (i.e., the threat of a single country being divided into two or more rival states).
The balance between liberty and Union has been maintained in America for over 200 years. Certain questions were resolved in the American Civil War, leading to a federal government with greater authority to coercive national homogenization. Under this constitutional variation the United States became the world's leading industrial power by 1905. It became the world's leading financial and military power by 1945. The success of the system in terms of power and prosperity cannot be denied. Unfortunately for America, however, the world has gradually undergone a series of changes. Technology has eliminated the effectiveness of the oceans as protective barriers. America is now vulnerable to attack by long-range aircraft and missiles. The unique openness of American society, and its open borders, makes it vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. The proliferation of nuclear weapons, especially to Asian nations, leaves the United States without effective defense (except defense by the threat of nuclear retaliation). Defense by the threat of retaliation is only a theory. Those who are unafraid to die, and those who see death as a passage to heavenly rewards, cannot be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation. Martyrdom is a concept that negates any "balance of terror."
Furthermore, as technology advances, new weapons and new techniques are developed by rival powers. These weapons and techniques can be used to circumvent the "balance of terror." Directed energy weapons, surreptitiously deployed in space, offer the possibility of immediate and instant destruction applied to America's retaliatory forces. We do not fully understand the potential of electromagnetic pulse weapons, advanced biological weapons or psychotropic chemical weapons. America's strength has come from its wealth, and its wealth from its liberty. But the free society, the open society, is now uniquely vulnerable. This is the tragic reversal of our time. The ideologies of liberty confront the weapons of mass destruction. Technology has made the free and wealthy nation more comfortable. Simultaneously, it has made the free and wealthy nation more vulnerable. Weapons of mass destruction intrinsically favor the ideology of the tyrant. This is a turning point in history. This turning point resembles what happened in the late Middle Ages after the development of ranged weaponry, when armored cavalry lost its dominant role. A great change in political organization and ideology is about to take place.
What I describe here is independent of the deterioration of the value system underlying liberty, and the intellectual decline that daily attends the gradual liquidation of limited government. The technological revolution that replaced literate culture with television culture, leads to the inflation of desires as well as the inflation of the currency and government control. Technology has undermined the foundations of American liberty, security and prosperity.
