I think if you read my work, you will see there has always been an ambivalence. In Colossus, for example, I argued that while there might be reasons for the U.S. to play a more consciously imperial role to deal with failed states and rogue regimes, there were three deficits: financial, manpower and attention. And I concluded that the American empire was dysfunctional and likely to screw up the undertaking, which it has – not enough resources, not enough boots on the ground, and the public losing interest. When I wrote [in 2003] that I was a fully paid-up member of the neo-imperialist club, that was irony. I was never a neo-conservative and I was skeptical the project would succeed.
How do you view the rise of Islamic power in North Africa and the Middle East?
I've been a skeptical voice on the so-called Arab Spring since the outset. If you take the institutional matrix of civilization in my book – secure private property rights, scientific literacy – they aren't well-established in places like Egypt. So the prospect of transition to a stable Western-style democracy strikes me as a low probability. More likely, political Islam will benefit and, while that may seem an improvement to people in Tunisia and Egypt, from the vantage point of regional stability, Islamist governments are likely to be far more confrontational toward Israel.
What's your reading of the Occupy Wall Street movement?
It's a variant of the populism you get after a major economic crisis – more of the 1870s variety than the 1930s, because it's not such a severe crisis. And it has two forms: the right-wing Tea Party and the left-wing OWS. The latter has one valid point: American society has become significantly more unequal than it was in the 1970s. But Wall Street isn't the sole cause. The reason income stagnated is not the wickedness of Wall Street. It's that globalization reduces massively the returns to unskilled labour. That's the big story OWS is not getting. And blaming it all on financial institutions misses the almost equal responsibility of political elites. The epicentre, the mortgage market, was rigged by interventions that horribly backfired. So the anger is legitimate, but it's been channelled simplistically into narrow demonization.
Are we necessarily doomed to collapse?
No, you can act or prevent it by identifying vulnerabilities and making the system more robust. Education reform, for example, is urgently needed in the West, particularly at the secondary level.
What risk is there that we might slip into the Chinese form, the illiberal form, of capitalism?
This is a siren song that I don't buy. It will become clear that the Chinese system has a fatal defect: It's not responsive to the needs of its people and is not competitive, because it's a one-party-system. Such systems tend to be corrupt and to misallocate resources. China does not have an easy way of moving toward the rule of law and secure property rights, which their new middle class will want. I feel more optimistic about India's future. But what we have to do is concentrate on what made the West the best – making our institutions work as they were supposed to. Then we are still in this race.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Michael Posner is a Globe and Mail feature writer.
