Providential Societies

Providential societies, as we might call them (with apologies to Ms. Bogan)—societies that no longer have the stomach for economic, social, cultural, or military risk—are analogous to investors who have lost their tolerance for market risk. It is an iron law of modern portfolio theory that rewards are, at least within reason, positively associated with the risks incurred. Investors can avoid risk quite easily: by, for example, putting all their money in Treasury bills. But this is the investment equivalent of sticking one's head in the sand and hoping to become invisible. Progress marches on, carrying along with it its handmaiden, inflation. Investors who own only Treasury bills become a little poorer every day in real terms. If those investors are unfortunate enough to have to pay taxes on their meager interest, their backward progress accelerates profoundly. Investors who cannot tolerate risk therefore die a little bit each day investment-wise, becoming slightly poorer than they were before, a process that leads inevitably to economic death; that is, to poverty.

Like risk-averse investors, societies that become unwilling to take risk also die a little bit each day, becoming a little poorer relative to societies that are more vigorous. It is essential, for example, that individuals be willing to take entrepreneurial risk—otherwise, new businesses will not be formed. But taking entrepreneurial risk means accepting the risk of personal failure and the risk that cushy jobs provided by existing firms will be eliminated. It is essential that businesses be exposed to competition, including competition from foreign firms and from hostile takeovers of poorly managed businesses. Otherwise, businesses become complacent and inefficient. Societies that find themselves so risk averse that they can no longer start new businesses or permit open competition for existing businesses are societies whose growth begins, imperceptibly at first, to slow and ultimately to stop. Opportunities for further advancement begin to disappear for already-affluent citizens, but also for citizens and immigrants who have the bad luck not to be already affluent. The slowing growth of these societies also imposes severe burdens on the development of emerging economies that depend on exports for their own economic growth.

And, like it or not, it is essential that societies be vigilant in their own defense, notwithstanding the economic costs and, of course, the risk that citizens may die in battle. Indeed, this is probably the ultimate touchstone for societies that have entered a terminal stage of decline—remarkable as it may seem, societies caught in the throes of providentiality simply cannot bring themselves even to take on the costs and risks of their own defense.

This is precisely the condition in which most of the advanced postindustrial societies of Europe and Scandinavia have found themselves. Our first glimpse of European ineffectuality came in Kosovo and Bosnia in the 1990s, when, among other atrocities, a tin-pot dictator named Slobodan Miloševi slaughtered thousands while (European) United Nations troops stood by and watched the carnage. Only when American troops entered the fray—very much against the wishes of the Europeans and the U.N.—was the murderous rule of Miloševi brought to an end, peace imposed, and the dictator brought to trial for war crimes.

The Balkan conflict was, to some extent, a (messy) tempest in a teapot. But if the Europeans were incapable of mounting a credible military operation in their own backyard, where they faced an obvious threat to European peace and stability, what possible chance was there that they could mount credible military operations against more distant threats, such as those posed by Iraq or North Korea? The answer, of course, is none at all. In the 1991 invasion of Iraq, despite United Nations approval of the attack, the contribution from most of Europe was almost risible.¹¹

In the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, so-called “old Europe” was solidly opposed to the attack. Although there were certainly important reasons to examine the American case for an invasion, the Europeans were transparently opposed to the war for other reasons altogether. Some of those reasons had to do with a natural fear of massive American military and economic power and the desire to band together to limit it. Other, more selfish, reasons had to do with (legal and illegal) trade relations with Iraq. But the fundamental fact of the matter was that no European country (except Britain, which joined in the attack) had any military capacity to wage a war in Iraq, hence the notion of a “United Nations” coalition was a hollow joke from the beginning.¹²

A society that possesses an imposing military force can make the decision to use it or not, and, like America, it might make those decisions wisely or unwisely. But at least the choice is there. Europe had no choice. Despite their incredible wealth, despite being vastly more advanced socially, economically, and technologically than Iraq, the European nations were no match, individually or collectively, for Iraqi power. Hence, the European rationale for opposing the war proceeded not from substance but from a kind of disease—the disease of providentiality.