Brief Notes

Sunday evening, I walked down from work to the waterfront. I ate some fries (with curried garden dip and fresh-squeezed lemonade) at a food shop on Peake's Quay before walking back up to the Comic Hunter, where I met up with Dave and Allan. Three games of Carcassonne ended up being played that night, ending with a pass by the Town & Country for dinner (I had clam chowder and arak liqueur, they had cheeseburger platters), back down to the waterfront, and then returning to our respective residences after an agreement to meet for the play (at Erin's desk in the Confederation Centre at 5:30 tomorrow).

Nothing much done today, apart from cleaning my room and pulling more information on Queen's for the student loan application and marvelling at the thunderstorm. Hopefully more tomorrow, or later tonight, including a fair bit of writing.

[BOOK REVIEW] On American Empires and their Futures

Bill Emmott. 20:21 Vision, Twentieth-Century Lessons for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 373 pp.
Emmanuel Todd. Aprs l'empire: Essai sur la décomposition du système américain. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2002. 232 pp.

Whenever I examine the prognostications of pundits on the future, I'm always interested to see where they agree. As a rule, I'm skeptical about long-term predictions, which as a rule have proven themselves to be wrong: My favourite example is that of early 20th century demographers in regards to the French population, which was supposed to decline sharply thanks to below-replacement fertility to less than 29 million when in fact in 1985 there were some 55 million French. Still, when two prognosticators using different methods agree on common factors in their future it should mean something.

Emmott (editor of the Economist) and Todd (a French writer and demographer) agree that, after a tumultuous 20th century in which the United States played a vital role by reinforcing generally liberal regimes worldwide against successive totalitarian threats, the United States has acquired a position of unchallenged dominance. The United States maintains a sophisticated and powerful military capable of global deployment; more importantly still, the United States has a first-class economy, a high level of human development, and a high degree of cultural influence that reinforces the United States' power. There is no challenger: Europe remains disunited and concerned by its demographic problems, China is preoccupied by its pressing need for economic development, Japan is still adjusting to its post-boom situation, Russia is far from reclaiming the superpower role it once had, and there are no other plausible contenders. (Todd is less sure of this than Emmott, but more later.)

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