Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

This ruthlessness has been as evident in the two countries' dealings with each other as in their relationships with the rest of the world. The United Kingdom and the United States have often stood together as allies or partners, but when they have done so it has been, quite properly, on the basis of hard calculations of self-interest. The accompanying rhetoric might claim a "special relationship," but even on the occasions of closest cooperation, each country has always looked after itself first when a choice has been necessary. Mead has written elsewhere of their relationship during World War II, when the two countries worked more closely together than ever before, "No reptilian brain could have dealt as unsentimentally with an old friend as Franklin Roosevelt and the Treasury Department dealt with Churchill's government," and, "Despite the best efforts of Lord Keynes, the United States picked the imperial carcass very clean during the war." It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the dismantling of the British Empire was an unacknowledged but important U.S. aim during and immediately after the war.

AN EXPLOSIVE CENTURY

In an impressive set of concluding chapters, Mead meditates on the consequences of the triumph of the Anglo-Saxons in creating a maritime-capitalist order that now encompasses the whole world. Americans, he observes, are inclined to see that triumph as essentially resulting from the application and attraction of certain principles and values. But this is a case of victor's amnesia. As the rest of the world rightly understands, the Anglo-Saxon success has been based on power and is the product of "long and bitter battles to shape the future of the world." Today, the civilizations of the world have to live together in a state of unprecedented intimacy because "liberal capitalist society imposes its preferences on the rest of the world." Much of the world bitterly resents this and is seriously destabilized by it. But having created that intimacy, the United States is going to be faced with managing its consequences as the prime task of its foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

How should the United States go about this, and what are the prospects of its success? Mead is extremely interesting on these questions and cautiously optimistic. He believes that the emergence of a cluster of substantial powers in Asia -- China, India, Japan, and Russia -- will work in favor of the United States, because these states have the potential to form a stable balance of power among themselves. And should they fail, the United States would still be well placed to manipulate and exploit the power equation among them. The greatest danger, Mead argues, is not the rise of China and India but their failure -- which, given the magnitude of the tasks facing them, is not unlikely. If one were to fail, it would seriously upset the regional balance and require more active intervention on part of the United States. If both failed, the region would be reduced to chaos.

Mead expresses qualified optimism concerning the future of the West's relations with Islam. The extreme Wahhabi and Salafist movements of today, he observes, bear a striking resemblance to some of the radical Protestant groups of the Reformation. They, too, wanted to return to the original sources of their faith, denounced later deviations and elaborations, attacked rival cults, demanded theocratic rule, and, if deemed necessary, spread their religion by war. The Puritan movement adjusted to reality after repeated failures and over time became a critical force in the development of Anglo-American liberalism and democracy. Mead speculates that in the medium to long term, the same process of adjustment might happen in Islamist movements.

But "we should not delude ourselves with easy optimism," Mead warns. "A collective whose feelings have been deeply outraged" by 300 years during which "the Christian powers have been carving up the Islamic world" is not going to set its grievances aside quickly or easily. More generally, the non-Western world is going to have to ride out "huge storms" because of the tempo of change, and those will be even bigger, faster, and more disruptive than the ones that convulsed the West during its own murderous progress to modernity. Mead sees an "explosive century" ahead.

The United States, Mead notes, will continue to be the dominant presence in the next century (he will have no truck with American declinism). The question is, how should it play its hand? In different chapters, Mead offers two different answers to that question. First, "stick to the plan" -- the plan being the maritime grand strategy by which, in Mead's account, the United Kingdom and the United States created the modern world. Second, the United States should adopt a policy of ethical realism, based on the thinking of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, that combines moral concern, an acceptance of the reality of power, and prudence in its exercise.

Opinions will vary about the compatibility of these two pieces of advice. But setting that aside, each has its own implausibility. Sticking to the plan means continuing the implementation of the very policy that created the current state of affairs: it would result in more intimacy with non-Western civilizations and more of the problems that flow from that intimacy. Staying the course would require managing sensitive dealings with other civilizations, which is not an Anglo-Saxon specialty. Why, then, should it mend rather than intensify the damage?