America was once the future
Monday Memo: 4/13 AD2026
“It’s only our first exchange and already the Prime Minister is asking me the questions. This approach is stuck in the past and I want to talk about the future. He was the future once.”— Dec. 7, 2005, newly elected Conservative Party Leader David Cameron to British Prime Minister Tony Blair at their first matchup at Prime Minister’s Questions
“I will watch these exchanges from the backbenches. I will miss the roar of the crowd, I will miss the barbs from the opposition, but I will be willing you on...The last thing I would say is that you can achieve a lot of things in politics. You can get a lot of things done. And that in the end, the public service, the national interest, that is what it is all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all, as I once said, I was the future once.”— July 13, 2016, departing Prime Minister David Cameron at his last Prime Minister’s Questions, following the referendum vote in favor of Brexit which he had campaigned against.
After Napoleon fell in the 19th century, Britain was free to trade and colonize with no fear of a rival shutting it out of the market. But competition came from the upstarts across the Atlantic: the Americans. The United States could not match Britain in might, but it could outdo it in fierce trade and speed. This “Yankee trader” persona later gave rise to the greedy aliens, the Ferengi, in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Americans owed their speed to clipper ships, beginning with the design first produced in Baltimore. American clippers ruled the trade routes because they put speed before cargo. Their narrow hulls and vast sails outpaced every other ship of the era. The Chinese tea trade drove this growth; because tea spoils and loses flavor, the first merchants to reach port got the best prices. Foreign companies began to contract out to Americans.
The two powers also fought to win the minds of the Atlantic world. Which would be the “empire of liberty”? Thinkers from Budapest to Buenos Aires asked this question. When Britain abolished slavery in 1834, it won a round. But in the 1830s, the United States scrapped most property rules for voting while Britain continued to exclude working-class men. Slavery was worse than a lack of votes, but outsiders noted both countries’ urge to reform and the reactionaries who opposed it.
When European revolutionaries fled after the failed uprisings of 1848, many went to Britain, but more chose the United States. Yet Britain did not just outlaw slavery; it waged war, while continuing the industrial revolution. Those who wanted to see the future of humanity went to London, Glasgow, and Birmingham. Britain, not America hosted the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, the first world fair, in 1851.
The American Civil War also became a fight for the future. Abraham Lincoln’s administration outperformed Lord Palmerston’s, by explicitly rededicating the USA to the creed of the Declaration of Independence while the British covertly aided the rebel-Confederate slavocracy. By 1870, Britain was losing its lead—materially and in the imagination of the world—to the United States during the second industrial revolution, marked by electricity and steel. Asia and Africa watched; Japan studied and copied both nations.
In the early 20th century, American liberalism seemed to have won. Millions of immigrants moved to the land of opportunity. After the First World War, however, Soviet communism and fascism emerged as potent rivals. Countries joined the Axis in the 1930s because they thought Germany and Italy were the future. Most of the world disagreed. Others thought they saw the future in Stalinism. American liberalism fought these ideologies to define the next age of humanity. The Cold War was the continuation an ongoing competition. Soviet communism was finally an ideology that could match liberalism in rhetoric, but ultimately not in results. The future always arrives, and countries always look to join the side that represents it. In the 1990s the world followed Uncle Sam. Things are changing.
Ask yourself, “does the United States look like the future or the past”? I recently spoke with students who have studied in Shanghai. They are not impressed with America. They did not see China through a “controlled lens,” as some Americans who seek false comfort believe. They saw the future in China. A theme at “Outside the Academy” is to warn against wishcasting. As in the 1920s, the US faces the challenge of successor ideologies competing for the future. The world is deciding whether to bet on America, China, or a new group of powers.
History has no end, and the competition is constant. If a country wishes to remain a great power, it cannot indulge fantasy and irresponsibility for long. Once lost, a lead, and the admiration of the world is hard to recover.
Act accordingly.
