Martin LeFevre: History Catches Up To America

In 1989, shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, I started a company with a leading Russian businessman under perestroika. It was clear that the Cold War would soon be over, and that the USSR and US needed each other. The Soviet Union fell two years later, but it has taken 18 years for America’s collapse to manifest.

Growing up in the 60’s, I had been taught, “If the Russians ever throw off the chains of communism, we Americans will be there to help them” Russians must have heard the same line, because everywhere I went in the USSR in January 1990, the Russians said the same thing.

At that time, there was the feeling of being at a hinge of history. Living in Silicon Valley, I had the means and the opportunity to seize the historical moment. I have the same feeling now, although in a very different way, and with a much more sober assessment of the possibility that things could swing away from the way they’re headed.

Andrei was even better connected than he appeared when we met in San Francisco. Though his trip in ’89 was his first to America, there was an aura of confidence, competence, and power about him when we met through a now quaint-sounding program called, “Soviets Meet Middle America.”

When I was in Moscow there were always three cars waiting for him, and he said I could go anywhere and meet anyone in the Soviet Union. The guy was obviously well connected, probably too much so, and over the next couple of weeks he demonstrated it.

The first question Andrei asked me when we got back to his spacious apartment (with a hall closet stocked floor to ceiling with toilet paper, thus verifying a stereotype of the time) was: “Do you want to go in a political or economic direction?”

I had a half dozen partners in the States (who were smart enough to keep their day jobs), and had prepared well. We had obtained serious interest from various presidents and VP’s of large American companies, ranging from art houses to the aerospace industry. But Andrei’s question was the one that bedeviled us the most. We had decided to go in an economic direction.

After our mission failed, the Russians took the political path, the Chinese the economic path, and now both models have collapsed. So what did I learn from this experience, and is any of it applicable to the ‘hinge of history’ we stand at now?

Though I had spent (some may say misspent) the first 15 years of my adult life almost obsessively focused on philosophical questions, especially regarding the ‘riddle of man,’ I was not prepared for some of the things I encountered in the Soviet Union. Suffice to say that I had a baptism of fire in the philosophy of evil.

Sometimes I think that the two-year project to help bring about genuine cooperation between former superpower enemies, whose nuclear-armed rivalry had brought the world to the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was a crucible. Other times I feel like it was just a waste.

The main premise still holds however. It was this: Before the collapse of a world order occurs, a microcosm of its replacement must be in place, or only building from rubble will be possible. History has a momentum, and its direction can only be changed at anticipated junctures, and then only if radical changes at core levels have begun, through people thinking together.

At the time, the people I was working with in both the US and the USSR agreed that both superpowers were going to collapse, just in different ways. That turned out to be true, but I underestimated the power of American triumphalism and exceptionalism, which strengthened during the Clinton years and culminated excruciatingly during the Bush reign.

The Clinton Administration’s fervent, unregulated promotion of globalization gutted American manufacturing capability at a time when the Russians needed everything. And its deregulation of the banking industry set the stage for obscenely profligate and corrupt practices during the Bush Administration.

History has finally caught up with America. And Russian pride, after a decade of humiliation, has reared its ugly head in Georgia. In addition, the Chinese communist government is blaming America for the economic model they calculatingly copied.

Now a much wider and deeper world order is collapsing. On the political and economic level, internationalism (and its stillborn offspring multilateralism) is caving in under the weight of history. On the psychological level, human consciousness itself is being pushed, by self-made fragmentation, toward transmutation.

The post-Cold War opportunity was, I believe, America’s last chance to change course. I don’t see bottom here yet; but in any case the question is whether humankind will change course now, not America.

Clearly, a political center of some kind is necessary in a global society. With the bipolar world now ancient history, and the restoration of American leadership under Obama a fantasy, what will fill the ethical and leadership void?

The United Nations under Ban Ki Moon? As the collective voice of nations, the UN is pitifully weak. Ban Ki Moon seems like a decent man, but he’s even less influential than Kofi Annan. Of course that’s just what the United States and China want.

A new, non-power-holding body of world citizens is urgently needed, one that advances UN law-making and enforcement capability, even as it holds national and international governments accountable to humanity as a whole. Without it, the slow-motion collapse of the international system will continue, and fragmentation and fighting will increase.

It’s too late for America, but it’s not too late for humanity.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

© Scoop Media