Immanuel Wallerstein: Pánico ante la deflación mundial

La Jornada, 8 de febrero 2014

No hace mucho tiempo, los expertos y los inversionistas vieron los mercado emergentes” –un eufemismo para China, India, Brasil y algunos otros– como como quienes podrían rescatar la economía-mundo. Éstos eran los que sostendrían el crecimiento, y por tanto la acumulación del capital, cuando Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y Japón fallaran en su previo y tradicional papel de pilares del sistema capitalista mundial.

Por eso impacta cuando, en las dos pasadas semanas, el Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Main Street, el Financial Times (FT), Bloomberg, el New York Times (NYT) y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) hacen sonar la alarma ante el “colapso” de esos mismos mercados emergentes, preocupándose en particular de una deflación que podría ser “contagiosa”. A mí me suena como pánico apenas contenido.

Primero, una palabra respecto de la deflación. Un mercado “en calma” es uno donde los precios nominales no bajan, y sólo trepan hacia arriba lentamente. Esto posibilita a vendedores y compradores predecir con razonable con- fianza qué decisiones son óptimas para ellos. Los mercados mundiales no han estado en calma, en este sentido, por algún tiempo. Muchos analistas fijan la fecha del inicio de la decadencia de esa calma desde el viraje de los mercados hipotecarios en Estados Unidos, ocurrido en 2008. Por mi parte, yo veo que el inicio de la decadencia de esa calma ocurrió en el periodo entre 1967 y 1973, y ha continuado desde entonces.

El mercado no está en calma si existe una deflación significativa o una inflación significativa. Éstas son realmente lo mismo en términos de su impacto sobre las cifras del empleo reales y por tanto sobre la demanda efectiva de producción de todo tipo. Cuando el empleo mundial real baja por una o por otra razón, existe sufrimiento agudo, real, para la vasta mayoría de la población mundial, y un vasto incremento en la incertidumbre, que tiende a paralizar la ulterior inversión productiva, lo que conduce a más sufrimiento y más parálisis. Es un círculo vicioso.

No hay duda de que algunos grandes capitalistas logran sacar provecho de la situación mediante sagaces manipulaciones financieras que implican especulación. Su problema es que apuestan fuerte –sea por preciar masivamente sus activos o por bancarrota. Sin embargo, por lo menos estos manipuladores tienen oportunidad de ganar masivamente. Es bastante seguro que la mayoría de la población mundial perderá, a veces masivamente.

¿Qué hay de los reportes de pánico? Michael Arnold en el WSJ se pregunta, “¿Empujarán las liquidaciones a que los bancos centrales de los mercados emergentes suban las tasas?” Él afirma que el alboroto fue ocasionado por “cifras de crecimiento decepcionantes” para China y la devaluación de la divisa de Argentina. Arnold se preocupa en particular por India e Indonesia, que tienen “una gran carga de deuda y una pesada dependencia hacia los préstamos del exterior”, por lo que se movilizan para frenar la inflación. Menciona a Turquía como otra zona de problemas.

Hal M. Bundrick en Main St enfatiza el contagio. Cita tanto los cambios en la política monetaria estadunidense como las preocupaciones en torno a la economía china, más los disturbios políticos en Turquía, Argentina y Ucrania, como promotores de la “aceleración de la decadencia”. Cita a un banquero ruso en torno a la caída del rublo y en relación a una atmósfera “cercana al pánico”. Dice que este pánico está “cruzando de los mercados emergentes a los desarrollados en términos de sensibilidades”.

Gavyn Davies en el FT intitula su nota, “¿Será que el mundo emergente descarrile la recuperación global?” Dice que las divisas emergentes han estado en “caída libre”. También ve la desaceleración china como el punto clave, en particular por su impacto sobre las “economías abastecedoras” (es decir, los países que venden productos primarios a China), especialmente Brasil, Rusia y Sudáfrica. Afirma que “el dolor de una burbuja crediticia” no es sólo problema de China, sino el de Turquía, India e Indonesia. Si la baja en el crecimiento chino se profundiza, esto amenazaría con convertirse en “una renovada recesión global”. Tras terminar con una nota ligeramente optimista, de inmediato se retracta de lo anterior diciendo que sus simulaciones (la base de su ligero optimismo) se basan en viejas tendencias que tal vez no se sostengan más.

Ralph Atkins en FT habla del “espectro de la deflación”. La deflación, aun cuando sea positiva en el corto plazo, “es definitivamente negativa para los capitales accionarios” en el más largo plazo. Su preocupación parece ser la zona del euro. Habiendo citado las razones de otros para verle el lado más brillante, termina diciendo “el espectro de la deflación usó su capa de invisibilidad”.

Y nada menos que Christine Lagarde, la directora general del FMI, dijo a figuras del establishment reunidas en el Foro Económico Mundial en Davos que hay una amenaza mundial a los mercados en tanto Estados Unidos recorte su estímulo en efectivo. Hay un “nuevo riesgo en el horizonte que necesitamos vigilar de cerca”. Y cita los “efectos de derrame... en los mercados emergentes”.

Esa misma semana, Bloomberg hizo un editorial que comenzó: “Las economías de los mercados emergentes tuvieron una semana brutal”. Ellos vieron a los mercados emergentes demasiado atados al dólar estadunidense y por tanto “concretamente sensibles a las fluctuaciones –reales o imaginadas– en la política monetaria estadunidense”.

Así que le predican a la Reserva Federal estadunidense para que no “apriete demasiado pronto” y predeciblemente le predican a los países emergentes para que “mejoren sus políticas”.

Y nada menos, Landon Thomas del NYT nos informa que el nuevo slogan de moda en Wall Street, que reemplaza a BRICS es “los Cinco Frágiles”. Esta lista incluye a tres miembros de BRICS (Brasil, India, Sudáfrica) más Turquía e Indonesia. Deja fuera a China y a Rusia, cuyos pesos geopolíticos parecen contar fuertemente en las escalas.

Todo mundo parece proferir buenos consejos, seguros de que de algún modo se paliará la situación. Pocos parecen preparados a admitir que la demanda global efectiva es el real problema. Pero uno siente que, por debajo de la superficie, todos entienden esto. Es por eso que entran en pánico, porque entonces, todo su énfasis en el “crecimiento” –una fe cardinal– queda socavado. En ese caso, la crisis se vuelve algo que no es cíclico, sino estructural, para lo cual uno debe responder no con paliativos, sino inventando un nuevo sistema. Esta es la famosa bifurcación en la que sólo hay dos posibles resultados –uno mejor y uno peor que el actual sistema existente, uno en el que todos estamos implicados como jugadores.

Traducción: Ramón Vera Herrera

© Immanuel Wallerstein

Gran Bretaña, en busca de una identidad post hegemónicaImmanuel Wallerstein

La Jornada, 9 de junio 2013

Hubo una vez un tiempo en que el sol nunca se ponía en el imperio británico. ¡Pero no más! En 1945 Winston Churchil profirió la famosa frase: No me convertí en el primer ministro del rey para presidir la liquidación del imperio británico”. Pero, de hecho, eso fue exactamente lo que hizo. Churchill supo diferenciar entre la rimbombancia y el poder.

Desde 1945 Gran Bretaña siempre ha intentado, con dificultad considerable, ajustarse al papel de una potencia hegemónica del pasado. Uno tiene que apreciar lo difícil que es esto, tanto sicológica como políticamente. Hoy parecería que los dilemas de esta estrategia política implosionaron por fin, y que enfrenta opciones que son todas malas.

Gran Bretaña emergió de la Segunda Guerra Mundial como uno de los Tres Grandes –Estados Unidos, Unión Soviética y Gran Bretaña. Sin embargo, era el más débil de los Tres Grandes. La estrategia que eligió fue hacerse el socio menor de Estados Unidos –la nueva potencia hegemónica. A esto se le llamaba, por lo menos en Gran Bretaña, la “relación especial” que mantenía con Estados Unidos.

El beneficio más grande que Gran Bretaña obtuvo de esta relación especial fue la transferencia inmediata de tecnología nuclear, lo que permitió que Gran Bretaña fuera, desde ese momento en adelante, una potencia atómica. Estados Unidos no tuvo un gesto semejante, de ninguna manera, con la Unión Soviética. Mucho menos con Francia. Estados Unidos buscaba un monopolio nuclear global, compartido únicamente con su socio menor. Por supuesto, como bien sabemos, este monopolio global fue desecho primero por la Unión Soviética, luego por Francia y China, y después por un buen número de otros Estados.

En la Europa occidental continental los primeros pasos hacia la reconciliación franco-alemana comenzaron como la Comunidad Europea del Carbón y el Acero. Ésta incluía a seis naciones –Francia, Alemania, Italia y el trío Benelux de Bélgica, Holanda y Luxemburgo. No incluía a Gran Bretaña. Estos primeros pasos hacia la Unión Europea de hoy fueron alentados en ese entonces por Estados Unidos, como un modo de hacer posible la incorporación de las partes occidentales de Alemania en lo que habría de convertirse en la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN).

No es seguro que los dirigentes británicos apreciaran esta nueva estructura continental europea. Gran Bretaña pareció reaccionar buscando asumir una postura geopolítica independiente de Estados Unidos. Y unió fuerzas con Francia e Israel para atacar al Egipto de Nasser. En ese entonces Estados Unidos buscaba otra estrategia en Medio Oriente, y de inmediato reprendió a Gran Bretaña y le insistió que retirara sus tropas. Esto fue humillante para Gran Bretaña, pero también le recordó los límites de su capacidad para ser independiente de Estados Unidos.

Sin embargo, después de esto, Estados Unidos comenzó a alentar a Gran Bretaña a unirse a las estructuras continentales. En parte, esto se debió a que Estados Unidos comenzó a preocuparse al ver que estas estructuras asumían una posición, inspirada por los franceses, relativamente independiente. Desde el punto de vista estadunidense, Gran Bretaña podría ayudar a evitar esto. Desde el punto de vista británico, entrar ahí tenía una ventaja particular. El último vestigio remanente de su antigua hegemonía era el importante y continuo papel de la City de Londres en las finanzas mundiales. Gran Bretaña necesitaba acceso a los mercados europeos para garantizar este papel.

Así que Gran Bretaña entró en las estructuras para el gran disgusto de Charles de Gaulle, que entendió con bastante claridad las motivaciones estadunidenses al respecto. Para la década de los 70, fue la hegemonía de Estados Unidos la que comenzó a ser cuestionada. Tanto Francia como Alemania impulsaron aperturas diplomáticas con la Unión Soviética, que habrían de culminar mucho después, en 2003, en la resistencia franco-ruso-alemana, que logró que el Consejo de Seguridad no respaldara la invasión militar estadunidense de Irak.

Al comenzar el caos geopolítico, el gobierno británico se alió totalmente con Estados Unidos. La completa subordinación de Tony Blair a la política estadunidense comenzó a avergonzar aun a la opinión pública británica, que empezó a valorar bastante menos una relación especial tan unilateral. Más y más gente en Gran Bretaña buscó retirarse del vínculo con Estados Unidos y de los vínculos europeos. La creciente fuerza del Partido de la Independencia del Reino Unido (UKIP) es una expresión importante de este cambio de sentimientos.

Gran Bretaña se ha negado a entrar a la zona del euro. En el torbellino económico que se volvió tan evidente después de 2008, el deseo de retirarse de la Unión Europea creció constante en sí misma, sobre todo al interior del Partido Conservador. Esto, por supuesto, alarmó a los grupos financieros de la City de Londres, que correctamente vieron que una de las consecuencias podría ser que Frankfurt eclipsara a Londres como centro financiero europeo.

Gran Bretaña tiene otros problemas –la siempre creciente fuerza del regionalismo (y hasta el prospecto de independencia) de Gales, Escocia e Irlanda del Norte. Gran Bretaña se resiste, lo mejor que puede, a quedar reducida a Inglaterra. Y lo está haciendo en un momento en que Estados Unidos no parece estar significativamente comprometido con algo siquiera semejante a una relación especial.

El problema de Gran Bretaña hoy es que todas las opciones que enfrenta son malas. Gran Bretaña desea insistir en que todavía es una potencia militar importante. Pero el mismo gobierno que lo pregona es también el que está reduciendo el gasto para sus fuerzas armadas, y el tamaño de las mismas, como parte de su programa de austeridad.

El mayor problema con Gran Bretaña hoy es que el resto del mundo ya no lo considera un país importante como actor financiero o geopolítico. Ser ignorado no es el destino más feliz para un poder hegemónico del pasado.

Traducción: Ramón Vera Herrera

© Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein.: End of the Road for Runaway Factories?

 April 15, 2013


Ever since there has been a capitalist world-economy, one essential mechanism of its successful functioning has been the runaway factory. After a period of significant accumulation of capital by so-called leading industries (usually about twenty-five years), the level of profit has gone down, both because of the undermining of the quasi-monopoly of the leading industry and because of the rise in labor costs due to syndical action of some sort.

When this happened, the solution was for the factory to “runaway.” What this means is that the site of production was transferred to some other part of the world-system that had “historically lower wage levels.” In effect, the capitalists who controlled the leading industries were trading increased transaction costs for reduced labor costs. This maintained significant income for them, if nonetheless lower than in the previous period when they still had a quasi-monopoly.

The reason why labor costs were lower in the new location is that the runaway factory recruited labor from rural areas that were previously less involved in the market economy. For these rural workers, the opportunity to work in these runaway factories represented a rise in real income, while at the same time for the owners of the runaway factory these workers were being paid less than those who had been working in the previous location. This is what is called a win-win solution.

The problem with this seemingly wonderful solution has always been that it was not lasting. After about another twenty-five years, the workers in the new location began to launch syndical action, and the cost of their labor began to rise. When it rose enough, the owners of the runaway factory had only one real option – to runaway once again. Meanwhile, new leading industries were being constructed in zones that had accumulated wealth. Thus, there has been a constant movement of the location of industries of all sorts. Quasi-monopolies after quasi-monopolies! Runaway factories after runaway factories!

It has been a marvel of capitalist adjustment to a long process of constant change of circumstance. This marvelous system has however depended on one structural element – the possibility of finding new “virgin” areas for relocation of runaway factories. By virgin areas, I mean rural zones that were relatively uninvolved in the world market economy.

However, over the past 500 years, we have been “using up” such areas. This can be measured quite simply by the de-ruralization of the world’s populations. Today, such rural areas are reduced to a minority of the world’s surface, and it seems likely that by 2050, they will be a very, very small minority.

To see the consequences of such massive de-ruralization, we need only turn to an article in The New York Times of April 9. It is entitled “Hello, Cambodia.” The article describes the “flocking” to Cambodia of factories that are fleeing China because of the rise of wage-levels in China, a previous recipient of such runaway factories. However, the article continues, “multinational companies are finding that they can run from China’s rising wages but cannot truly hide.”

The problem for the multinationals is that the incredible expansion of communications has caused the end of the win-win situation. Workers in Cambodia today have begun syndical action after only a few years, not after twenty-five. There are strikes and pressure for higher wages and benefits, which they are receiving. This of course reduces the value for the multinationals of moving to Cambodia, or Myanmar, or Vietnam, or the Philippines. It now turns out that the savings of moving from China are not all that great.

The Times article notes that “some factories have moved anyway, at the request of Western buyers who fear depending on a single country.” Conclusion of a manufacturing consultant: There are risks of moving to Cambodia, but “there’s a risk in staying in China, too.” In any case, is there somewhere to move the runaway factory? Or is Cambodia the end of the line?

The bottom line is that the combination of already enormous and still increasing de-ruralization and the rapidity with which workers can learn of their relatively low wages and therefore begin to take syndical action has resulted in a continuing rise in the pay levels of the least skilled workers, and therefore a worldwide negative pressure of the possibilities of accumulating capital. This is not good news for the large multinationals.

This is all one element in what has become the structural crisis of the modern world-system. We are experiencing a combination of ever-increasing austerity pressures on the 99% with a capitalist system that is no longer so profitable for capitalists. This combination means that capitalism as a world-system is on its way out.

Both sides are seeking alternatives – but obviously different ones. We are collectively facing a “choice” over the next decades. One possibility is a new non-capitalist system that replicates (and perhaps worsens) the three essential features of capitalism – hierarchy, exploitation, and polarization. The other possibility is a new system that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian. The latter system, one should underline, has never existed in the history of the world. But it is possible.

In any case, Cambodia is not the future of the modern world-system. It represents rather the last vestiges of a mechanism that no longer performs its task in salvaging capitalism.

Turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt: Beginning or End of the Revolutions?

Immanuel Wallerstein

15 febrero 2013

In Tunisia in December 2010, a single individual ignited a popular revolution against a venal autocrat, an uprising that was followed promptly by a similar eruption in Egypt against a similar venal autocrat. The Arab world was astonished and world public opinion immediately was very sympathetic to these “model” expressions of the struggles around the world for autonomy, dignity, and a better world.

Now, three years later, both countries are mired in fierce political struggles, internal violence that is escalating, and great uncertainty about where this is leading, and to whose benefit. There are some aspects particular to each country, some that are reflected in uprisings throughout the Arab or Arab-Islamic world, and some aspects that bear comparison to what is happening in Europe and to some extent everywhere in the world.

What happened? We must start with the initial popular uprising. As is often the case, it was started by courageous young people who were protesting against the arbitrary power of the powerful – locally, nationally, internationally. In this sense, it was anti-imperialist, anti-exploitation, and profoundly egalitarian. It bears much comparison to the kinds of uprisings that occurred around the world between 1966 and 1970, which we sometimes call today the world-revolution of 1968. As then, the protests touched a deep chord within the country and attracted wide public support far beyond the small group that launched it.

What happened subsequently? A generalized anti-authoritarian revolution is a very dangerous thing for those with authority. When initially repressive measures didn’t seem to work, many groups sought to tame the revolutions by joining it, or seeming to join it. In both Tunisia and Egypt, the army entered the picture, refusing to shoot at the protestors but also seeking to control the situation after the deposing of the two autocrats.

In both countries, there had long been a strong Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. It had been outlawed in Tunisia and carefully controlled and circumscribed in Egypt. The revolutions permitted them to emerge in two ways. They offered social assistance to the poor who had been suffering from the neglect of the state. And they decided to form political parties in order both to gain a majority in the parliaments and to control the writing of the new constitutions. In the first elections of each country, they emerged the strongest political party.

Following this, there were basically four groups competing in the political arena. In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood party – Ennahda in Tunisia, the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt – there have been three other political actors: the secularist forces more or less on the left, the Salafist forces on the far right who sought to legislate a far more stringent version of sharia than the Muslim Brotherhood parties, and the still strong but quasi-underground supporters of the old regimes.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood parties and the secularist forces are in fact quite divided internally, especially about the strategies they wish to pursue. The Muslim Brotherhood parties are faced with the same political dilemmas that have been for the last few years those of right-of-center parties in Europe. The countries have severe and continuing economic problems, which gives rise to and/or strengthens parties on the far right, which threatens the ability of the “mainstream” right-of-center party to win future elections. In these situations, there have been those everywhere who want to win back voters on the far right by moving in their direction and being “hardline” with the left or secularist forces. And there have been the so-called moderates who think the party should move to the center and regain votes there.

The left or secularist forces contain in turn a wide gamut of groups: truly left groups (but multiple ones) and middle-class democrats seeking to encourage closer economic links with strong market forces in Europe and North America. On economic questions, these middle class groups are quite close in fact to what the moderate Islamist forces propose.

Meanwhile, the forces still loyal to the old venal regimes maintain control over one key institution, the police. It is the police who shoot at the demonstrations of the secularist forces. When these forces protest about the assassination of Chokri Belaid, a key secularist leader, Tunisia’s prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, a so-called moderate Islamist, protests that he is as appalled as they at the assassination. To this, the secularist groups reply that the Islamist parties, and especially their so-called hardliners, are responsible in any case indirectly because they have created the climate within which such an assassination could take place.

Furthermore, Tunisia and Egypt are not isolated countries. Their neighbors in the Arab world and beyond are also in turmoil. The geopolitical intrusion of outside forces is very great. Both countries are relatively poor and need outside financial help to deal with the continuing and growing unemployment made more severe by the loss of tourist income that for both countries was a central source of revenue.

So where is all this heading? There are only two possible directions. One is the end of the revolution, at least for the time being. The two countries could see strongly-entrenched rightwing governments, supported (perhaps even controlled) by the military, with socially conservative constitutions and cautious foreign policies. The other is the beginning of the revolution, in which the initial spirit of 1968 regains force, and both Tunisia and Egypt become again beacons of social transformation for themselves, for the rest of the Arab world, for the entire world.

For the moment, it seems as though the forces that are pushing for the end of the revolution have the upper hand. But in this chaotic world, it is far too early to lower the curtain on a renewed revolutionary force in both countries.

Immanuel wallerstein: U.S. Foreign Policy and American Public Opinion

www.iwallerstein.com

As the U.S. elections approach, U.S. foreign policy is gingerly becoming one of the issues. It is no secret that over the past half-century, there has been a certain long-term consistency to U.S. foreign policy. The sharpest internal differences took place when George W. Bush became president and launched a supermacho, deliberately unilateral attempt to restore U.S. dominance in the world by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush and the neo-cons hoped to intimidate everyone around the world by using U.S. military strength to change regimes that were deemed unfriendly by the U.S. government. As seems clear today, the neo-con policy failed in its own objective. Instead of intimidating everyone, the policy transformed a slow decline in U.S. power into a precipitate decline. In 2008, Obama ran on a platform of reversing this policy, and in 2012 he is claiming that he has fulfilled this promise and therefore undid the damage the neo-cons caused.

But did he undo the damage? Could he have undone the damage? I doubt it. But my intent here is not to discuss how successful U.S. foreign policy is or is not at this moment. Rather I wish to discuss what the American people think about it.

The most important element in current U.S. public opinion on U.S. foreign policy is uncertainty and lack of clarity. Recent polls show that for the first time a majority of Americans think that the military interventions Bush undertook in the Middle East were an error. What these people seem to see is that there was a large expenditure of U.S. lives and money for results that seem to them to be negative. 

They perceive the Iraqi government to be closer in sentiment and policy to the Iranian government than to the United States. They perceive the Afghan government to be on very shaky grounds – with an army infiltrated by enough Taliban sympathizers that they can shoot U.S. soldiers with whom they are working. They want U.S. troops to leave by 2014 as promised. But they do not believe that, once these troops leave, there will be a stable government in power, one that is somewhat friendly to the United States.

It is significant that, in the U.S. debate between the two vice-presidential candidates, Democrat Joe Biden asserted with vigor that U.S. troops would not be sent into Iran. And Republican Paul Ryan said that no-one on his side was thinking about sending in troops. They both may or may not have been telling the truth about their positions. The thing to notice is that they both seemed to think that any threat on their part to send in ground troops would hurt the chances of their party with the voters.

So then what? That is precisely the question. The very same people who say that the U.S. interventions were an error are in no way ready to accept yet the idea that the United States should not continue to maintain, even expand, the scope of U.S. military forces. The U.S. Congress continues to vote budgets for the Pentagon that are larger than the Pentagon itself requests. In part this is the result of legislators wishing to retain jobs in districts in which there are jobs linked to the armed forces. But it is also because the myth of U.S. superstrength is still a very strong emotional commitment on virtually everyone’s part.

Is there a creeping isolationism in prospect? Up to a point, no doubt. There are indeed voters on the further left and the further right who are beginning to assert more boldly the necessity and the desirability of reducing U.S. military engagement in the rest of the world. But I believe for the moment this is not, or not yet, a strong force.

Rather, what we may expect is a slow and quiet, but nonetheless very important, revision of how Americans feel about particular sets of allies. The turn away from Europe, however Europe is defined, has been going on for a long time. Europe is regarded as somehow “ungrateful” for all that the United States did for them in the last seventy years, militarily and economically. To many U.S. citizens, Europe seems too unwilling to support U.S. policies. U.S. troops are currently being withdrawn from Germany and elsewhere.

Of course, Europe is a big category. Does the ordinary American have different views about eastern Europe (the ex-Soviet satellites)? Or about Great Britain, with which the United States is supposed to have a “special relationship”? The “special relationship” is more the mantra of the British than of the Americans. The United States rewards Great Britain when it toes the line, and not when it deviates from the line. And the ordinary American seems hardly aware of this geopolitical commitment.

Eastern Europe is different. There have been real pressures from both sides to maintain a close relationship. On the U.S. side, there has been the government’s interest in using the eastern European link as a way to counter western European tendencies to act independently. And there have been pressures from the descendants of immigrants from these countries to expand the links. But eastern Europe is beginning to feel that the U.S. military commitment is thinning and therefore unreliable. It is also beginning to feel that economic links with western Europe, Germany in particular, are more crucial for them.

Antagonism to Mexico because of undocumented migrants has come to play an important role in U.S. politics and has been undermining the theoretically close economic links with Mexico. As for the rest of Latin America, the growth of its independent geopolitical stance has been a source of frustration to the U.S. government and a source of impatience to the U.S. public.

In Asia, so-called China-bashing is an increasingly popular game, despite all the efforts of U.S. governments (both Democratic and Republican) to hold it in check. Chinese firms are barred from some kinds of investment in the United States that even Great Britain welcomes.

And finally, there is the Middle East, a central area of U.S. concern. Currently, the focus is on Iran. As in Latin America, the government seems frustrated by its limited options. It has been pressed constantly by Israel to do more, although no one is quite sure what “more” means.

Support for Israel in every possible way has been a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy since at least 1967, if not longer. Few dare to challenge it. But the “few” are beginning to get more open support from military figures, who suggest that Israel’s politics are dangerous in terms of U.S. military interests.

Will the pervasive support of Israel continue unabated in the coming decade or two? I doubt it. Israel may be the last of U.S. emotional commitments to fade. But fade it almost surely will.

By 2020 probably, and certainly by 2030, U.S. foreign policy will have begun to digest the reality that the United States is not the all-powerful single superpower, but simply one of quite a few loci of geopolitical power. The change in outlook will have been pushed by the evolving views of ordinary Americans, who continue to be more concerned with their own economic welfare than with problems beyond their borders. As the “American dream” attracts fewer and fewer non-Americans, it turns inward in the United States.