The republic is more resilient than you think

In mid-1989, shortly before the collapse of the USSR, an outgoing Rand Corporation Soviet-watcher named Francis Fukuyama captivated the chattering classes with an essay predicting “The End of History.” Short version: The impending demise of communism made the universal triumph of liberal democracy all but inevitable. To borrow from what Wordsworth said about the French Revolution, that would have indeed been “very heaven.”
But if anything, the rise of autocracies and the political and social turmoil in the US and other democracies in recent years point downward to the very hot place — so much so that jeremiads about the implosion of the American form of government are now seen as surefire clickbait.
Bloomberg columnist and Harvard law professor Noah Feldman looks back over two episodes of profound unrest in US history and takes a more measured view. In 1858, congressional dysfunction, a feckless president, and a Supreme Court compromised by the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford case left the federal government unable to stanch secessionist moves by Southern states, much less resolve the underlying issue of slavery. Result: the Civil War.
About a century later, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. ignited smoldering divisions into riots in more than 100 American cities. The subsequent assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy led many Americans to believe, as the New York Times later wrote, “that the nation had gone mad; that the normal rules and constants of
politics could no longer be counted on.”
The good news, as Feldman sees it, is that Americans face circumstances that more closely resemble the aftermath of 1968, when conflicting social forces were gradually reconciled and redirected into electoral competition, not stoked into civil war. Notably, Congress and the Supreme Court checked the worst excesses of President Donald Trump’s administration, above all his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“It doesn’t look as if our political institutions are headed for an 1858 kind of breakdown,” writes Feldman. “The tougher medium-term question is whether the Trump supporters’ condemnation of our institutions, which isn’t susceptible to either change or cooptation, is deep and durable enough to erode them.”
Not to harp on Fukuyama, but as many commentators have noted, his initial essay also misread the trajectory of what has become the world’s leading autocracy. As in 2021, one of the defining challenges for years if not decades to come will be managing tensions between the US and China.
Fortunately, says former supreme allied commander of Nato James Stavridis, “2022 may turn out to be a bit of a breather.” President Xi Jinping will be focused on making the Winter Olympics a success, keeping Covid under control, and preparing for the 20th Communist Party Congress. “The US should take advantage of this year of living quietly by taking the time to consider all aspects of its relationship with China,” writes Stavridis. That means finally publishing the National Security Council’s overarching
strategy, which must enable the US to confront China even as it seeks to cooperate on threats such as climate change.
One area where the two superpowers need to put down their dukes is in financial markets, where interventions “can have far-reaching consequences that are hard to undo,” argues Bloomberg’s editorial board. Any new US measures “should be clear, narrow and targeted to protect US investors and national security, not simply to undermine China’s economy.”
Bloomberg columnist David Fickling sees wind and solar capacity rising about 50% over their pre-pandemic levels, but no recovery in upstream oil and gas spending. Whether that means the world turns a corner on carbon emissions depends on China’s energy choices. Shuli Ren will be watching next year to see whether China’s billionaires and Xi can reconcile their conflicting economic agendas and make nice. Balls down.
—Bloomberg