Sometime in the late 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor” of Germany, famously quipped: “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.”
And that was not a simple jealousy towards a rising and distant power. The sarcasm masked an astute observation by a great statesman. It appeared that America could make colossal political and military mistakes, face internal calamities, like the Civil War and economic crises, and yet still somehow, seemingly against reason and common sense, emerge more resilient and stronger than before.
The Chancellor suggested there was no good explanation for that phenomenon beyond pure luck being on the American side. Sure, Bismarck understood there were other reasons behind America’s success, but without luck, the result would be much different.
Yet America’s phenomenal success in the 20th and early 21st centuries is even more extraordinary. Was that pure luck again? It was not. No lucky streak may have run so long against such overwhelming odds as the events of the last century.
One commonly accepted explanation is the power of American institutions and American democracy. That answer may explain the resilience of the United States, but not the power it has projected across the entire world for more than a hundred years.
How has the country torn by many deep inherent contradictions managed for so long to remain a superpower of the entire world?
America's unprecedented industrial base
America’s preeminence on the world stage has been a direct result of the strength of its economy and unprecedented industrial base. In the decades preceding World War I, it was becoming clear that America’s economy was unmatched in adapting existing technologies, inventing new ways to make goods, and manufacturing on the scale unseen by any industrialized country.
World War II, the war against Germany, another economic behemoth of the time, translated that economic “miracle” from industrial wonder to a strategic asset.
When World War II is being discussed, the Battle of Britain, D-Day, and Stalingrad are often mentioned as the pivotal events of the war that turned the tide in the Allies’ favor.
What is usually missing from the discussion is the mention of America’s economic prowess that served as the backbone of the Allied victory. America could produce enough ships, tanks, airplanes, and whatever the war effort required to support the United States, the UK, and the Soviet Union.
The Lend-Lease Act was not just a critical financial vehicle to support the Allies during the war. It would mean absolutely nothing and contribute nothing unless the United States could produce millions of items of war equipment and ship them halfway across the world.
The shipbuilders in the United States kept producing more ships to transport war material from the US to the UK and then to Russia than the German submarines could sink. It is often said that Stalingrad was the war’s turning point.
Yet the Red Army, the millions of poorly trained Soviet citizens sent to death by Stalin without regard for the casualties, was being transported, fed, and kept warm by the American industrial war machine.
The United States emerged from the ashes of World War II with its economy and industrial capacity surpassing those of any other country. Ironically, the Cold War provided a perfect opportunity for the United States to come up victorious one more time.
One may claim the United States got lucky yet again. The Cold War was a standoff between two economic systems, or to be precise, between two countries: The United States and the Soviet Union.
Not only had the United States been surpassing the Soviet Union in every aspect of their respective economies, but the very structure of the Soviet Union’s economy was highly inferior and irreparably defective.
Time – as some economists at the time had pointed out – was on the United States’ side. It is no coincidence that despite numerous political mistakes, the idiotic naivete, betrayal of friends, and tragic misunderstanding of the Soviet leadership, the United States prevailed so completely in the Cold War.
It was America’s economy and industrial base that won the struggle despite the dwellers of the White House’s persistent failure to understand the foe in the Kremlin.
American democracy has produced leaders of different caliber. Some were magnificent. Some were not so much. Most were average, perhaps no better or worse than the contemporary leaders in the rest of the world.
A common mistake is to assume and expect democracy to produce better leaders.
That is not a feature of a democratic system. But what made America different from other democratic and non democratic countries is the ability of its economy to absorb the mistakes by the country’s leaders and elites, no matter how stupid, shortsighted, naive, and consequential those mistakes were.
America grew not because of its leadership, but rather despite it. Perhaps that was the exact contradiction that made the late Chancellor pause and make the famous quip.
We are currently at the precipitous moment in history. America’s industrial base, the luck that has kept it in the blessed company of “idiots, drunkards, children,” is gone. The decades since the end of the Cold War have seen an almost complete dismemberment of what made the country so special.
The service economy, according to the believers in the “end of history”, was supposed to replace that part that made things. Making things was not worth the effort in a world devoid of conflict. Yet history did not end, and the conflict has arrived. The war with Iran has demonstrated two catastrophic realities.
The United States does not understand how to wage war, and its economy is unable to support one even against an adversary such as Iran. After a few months of conflict, the United States has almost run out of missiles.
That is just one of many “discoveries”, but perhaps the most telling one. It was not luck that made America great. And it is not luck that may make it great again. But even if it was, it appears to be running out.
The author lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.