That Used to Be Us_ How America Fell Behind in thted and How We Can Come Back - Friedman, Thomas L. & Mandelbaum, Michael [9]
Anybody Around Here Know How to Write a Telegram?
Then that wall in Berlin came down. And like flowers in spring, up sprouted a garden full of rosy American assumptions about the future. Is it any wonder? The outcome of the global conflict eliminated what had loomed for two generations as by far the most menacing challenge the country had faced: the economic, political, and military threat from the Soviet Union and international communism. Though no formal ceremony of surrender took place and there was no joyous ticker-tape parade for returning servicemen and women as after World War II, it felt like a huge military victory for the United States and its allies. In some ways, it was. Like Germany after the two world wars of the twentieth century, the losing power, the Soviet Union, gave up territory and changed its form of government to bring it in line with the governments of the victors. So, watching on CNN as people in the formerly communist states toppled statues of Lenin, it was natural for us to relax, to be less serious, and to assume that the need for urgent and sustained collective action had passed.
We could have used another Long Telegram. While the end of the Cold War was certainly a victory, it also presented us with a huge new challenge. But at the time we just didn’t see it.
By helping to destroy communism, we helped open the way for two billion more people to live like us: two billion more people with their own versions of the American dream, two billion more people practicing capitalism, two billion more people with half a century of pent-up aspirations to live like Americans and work like Americans and drive like Americans and consume like Americans. The rest of the world looked at the victors in the Cold War and said, “We want to live the way they do.” In this sense, the world we are now living in is a world that we invented.
The end of communism dramatically accelerated the process of globalization, which removed many of the barriers to economic competition. Globalization would turn out to be a blessing for international stability and global growth. But it enabled so many more of those “new Americans” to compete for capital and jobs with the Americans living in America. In economic terms, this meant that Americans had to run even faster—that is, work harder—just to stay in place. At the end of the Cold War, America resembled a cross-country runner who had won his national championship year after year, but this time the judge handed him the trophy and said, “Congratulations. You will never compete in our national championship again. From now on you will have to race in the Olympics, against the best in the world—every day, forever.”
We didn’t fully grasp what was happening, so we did not respond appropriately. Over time we relaxed, underinvested, and lived in the moment just when we needed to study harder, save more, rebuild our infrastructure, and make our country more open and attractive to foreign talent. Losing one’s primary competitor can be problematic. What would the New York Yankees be without the Boston Red Sox, or Alabama without Auburn? When the West won the Cold War, America lost the rival that had kept us sharp, outwardly focused, and serious about nation-building at home—because offering a successful alternative to communism for the whole world to see was crucial to our Cold War strategy.
In coastal China, India, and Brazil, meanwhile, the economic barriers had begun coming down a decade earlier. The Chinese were not like citizens of the old Soviet Union, where, as the saying went, the people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them. No, they were like us. They had a powerful work ethic and huge pent-up aspirations for prosperity—like a champagne bottle that had been shaken for fifty years and now was about to have its cork removed. You didn’t want to be in the way of that cork. Moreover, in parallel