The America in Decline Narrative: Russian Propaganda?

 

We know that Russian propaganda works by identifying existing points of fracture in a country and amplifying those fracture points by promoting certain narratives.  The “America is in decline” narrative has been around since at least the 1960s.  Some trace it back to the Civil War and Reconstruction as an expression of white southern resentment over the loss of their privileged status.  Nevertheless, the America in decline narrative has proved false again and again.  By the 1990’s the United States was the sole superpower on the planet, able to project itself anywhere in the world by means of finance, economics, military might, and soft power (notably popular culture).  In the 2010’s, when the moaning and complaining for the political and religious right was beginning to reach a fever pitch about how everything was breaking down in America, the United States was still by far the biggest economy in the world, the richest country, the dominant source of popular images and entertainment for much of the world, and hands down the greatest military power.  It was still, by far, the first choice among those leaving other countries to seek economic opportunity.  When the Trump campaign announced that it wanted to “make America great again,” implying that it was no longer great, the United States was still all the things I just mentioned.  America was and remains great.

Othello and Iago

 

The America in decline narrative is, of course, a useful story for political ends.  Every dictatorship that has come to power on a wave of popular support has done so on the “our country is in trouble—I will rescue it,” line.  Anyone aspiring to “set everyone straight” would find the narrative eminently useful.  But it only works if enough people think that the country is indeed in trouble.

 

So, if America is, in fact, still a great country, where is the messaging of America’s apparent decline coming from?  There are certainly internal sources, notably from those who pine for an earlier, “simpler” time, often holding up an imaginary past, stripped of its unseemly elements, like those art deco murals of American history in public buildings—a mythologised past.  But many Americans who lived through that mythologised past will remember that it was only a good time for some and a terrible time of oppression for many others.  As some have pointed out, the move toward greater equality and equity has been met with backlash in certain quarters. This produces a natural fracture point in the society that can be exploited.

 

A subsidiary part of the America in decline narrative is the idea that all empires eventually fall.  True enough, but let’s put that in context.  Comparisons are often made to ancient Rome, with the suggestion that the immorality of the elites led to Rome’s fall—a handy point of reference for those criticising the move toward greater personal freedom.  This narrative ignores many, much more significant factors such as economic stagnation, inflation, pestilence, population decline, degradation of agricultural land, displacement of small farmers (whose sons were the source for the legions of the phase of expansion) by large estates worked by slaves, poor leadership, etc.  It also overlooks the fact that most of those great empires we seem to be talking about had long histories before they “fell”.  Rome was on the ascendant for some 800 years before it reached its time of troubles in the 200’s.  China has gone through phases of expansion and decline for over 2,000 years.  England’s transformation from regional kingdom to global power took 800 years if we count from the time of William the Conqueror.  Why should the United States after only two centuries bizarrely be at the end of its time of greatness?

 

By contrast, Russia is without a doubt an old empire in steep decline.  Demographically, technologically, economically: all the indicators for the mid to long term future should give the Kremlin grounds for concern.  Russia only has three arrows left in its quiver: natural resources, nuclear weapons, and subversion.  Short of provoking Armageddon, Russia’s only hope to be taken seriously on the world stage (to be taken seriously is perhaps Putin’s greatest hope for his country) is to keep the ship afloat with oil exports while weakening rivals with disinformation, leveraging the natural inner fracture points by amplifying them.

 

It is time for Americans to seriously consider whether outside malign forces have not, by way of internet clickbait and amplified angry memes, exaggerated a domestic disagreement into a culture war.  Divide and conquer or divide and rule have been a hallmark of Russian operations since the time of Ivan the Terrible in the 1500’s.  The great Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was the largest land empire in Europe until the 1700’s, was torn apart internally when Russia exploited the disagreements among the nobility.  Catherine the Great had her former lover made the king of Poland and intervened on behalf of the anti-reformist party to undo a new constitution that could have led to a strengthened Commonwealth. Unable to respond to Russian aggression effectively, the Commonwealth was easily picked apart by its eastern neighbour cooperating with Prussia and Austria.  It must be pointed out that Russia got over half the territory and immediately set about framing it as a “bringing home” of other Russians.  Indeed, everything Russia does is reframed propagandistically in this way.  Now, in something of an echo of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 1700’s, it is the United States that has become hamstrung in its response to Russian aggression by internal squabbles being exploited by the Kremlin.

 

If you think America needs “re-greatening”, then perhaps you have inadvertently fallen for a narrative that the Kremlin wants you to internalize.  The most useful thing for them is an insecure America, at war with itself, distracted by domestic arguments, unable to act effectively in the wider world.  Wake up!  Don’t listen to the deceiver’s voice out of the Kremlin.  America is great, and the only way to undermine that greatness is for Americans to buy into the lie.