As most of us enjoyed a carefree spring break, the nightly news was not comforting. Recent stories reported on severe financial troubles for America's largest automaker, General Motors, and for our largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, Lucent Technologies. Bloodshed marked last week's third anniversary of the Iraq War. Events like these raise questions about America's strength. However, while the problems they represent are serious and must be addressed appropriately, they do little to seriously damage America's unquestionable dominance in the strategic and economic realms. This dominance has, over the past few years, evolved into a feeling of superiority. Although it is justified in some ways, we all too frequently take it to the next -- undeserved -- level, converting it into invincibility. Such an assumption is false and dangerous. Despite its hegemonic status, America is not invulnerable. This is reflected in present problems with two issue areas: non-state actors and the environment. Traditional dominance-building tools, such as amassing further military power or encouraging additional economic growth, are useless, for America can dominate neither area and must not even try to dominate the environment.
From a military or an economic perspective, America's primacy is unquestionable. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, the American economy -- unsurprisingly the world's largest -- accounts for more than 21 percent of global GDP. China, larger both in terms of population and land area, comes in second, contributing a significantly lower 13 percent. In fact, the American GDP exceeds that of China and Japan combined. U.S. military spending in 1999 was greater than that of the next thirteen countries, and five-and-a-half times higher than China's, which had the second-largest military expenditure. America is also likely the only existing country which can afford nearly unilateral military action, act without United Nations approval, and suffer only such minimal political repercussions as it has suffered for its headstrong rush into Iraq.
This preeminence, however, is of little help outside the statist domain. The World Markets Research Center's Terrorism Index, which evaluates and ranks "countries by the degree of risk of terrorism in 186 countries and against those countries' interests abroad," awards first place to the country most likely to experience a terrorist attack in the next year. America is fourth on this list. The good news is that we are not first; the bad news is that we are only outranked by Colombia, Israel and Pakistan -- a less than comforting bunch. Non-state actors such as various terrorist groups and guerrilla insurgencies therefore pose a significant threat to America and will continue to do so regardless of our wealth or military might.
While it would be nice -- although impossible -- if America could become even stronger and eradicate all forms of terrorism across the globe, such an act would not eliminate the critical problem of the environment where hegemony and self-righteousness are both helpless. Over a thousand Americans died and thousands more were displaced in the Katrina disaster, a stark reminder of the immense might of the physical world. Reflections of American world domination, our capacity to use military force worldwide, were of no benefit to them. Conversely, the environment poses one of the few serious threats to American primacy. For example, Katrina's economic damages are projected to exceed 70 billion dollars, which is almost as much as a year of the Iraqi war. These threats cannot be met with attempts to subjugate the environment, but instead by raising awareness and making environmentally-friendly concessions. Although it is arguable that human climate-changing activities have contributed to the magnitude of the past hurricane season, one cannot deny that the potential for hurricane destruction of New Orleans has been acknowledged in scientific literature years before the catastrophe. If more people were made aware of the dangers of living on Gulf Coast lands behind precarious levees, or if settlement were prohibited in those areas, the impact of the event would be much less significant.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned sense of supremacy tends to blind us to these less obvious problems. The knowledge about them is out there; now all we need is awareness and foresight to use it.
