9/11 reviewed, meaning of life

Hi i wrote an article in class when i was bored please read




AT NINE o'clock on the morning of September 11th 2001, President George Bush sat in an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, listening to seven-year-olds read stories about goats. “Night fell on a different world,” he said of that day. And on a different America.

At first, America and the world seemed to change together. “We are all New Yorkers now,” ran an e-mail from Berlin that day, mirroring John F. Kennedy's declaration 40 years earlier, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, and predicting Le Monde's headline the next day, “Nous sommes tous Américains”. And America, for its part, seemed to become more like other countries. Al-Qaeda's strikes, the first on the country's mainland by a foreign enemy, stripped away something unique: its aura of invulnerability, its sense of itself as a place apart, “the city on a hill”.

Two days after the event, President George Bush senior predicted that, like Pearl Harbour, “so, too, should this most recent surprise attack erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone.” Francis Fukuyama, a professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, suggested that “America may become a more ordinary country in the sense of having concrete interests and real vulnerabilities, rather than thinking itself unilaterally able to define the nature of the world it lives in.”

Both men were thinking about foreign policy. But global terrorism changed America at home as well. Because it made national security more important, it enhanced the role of the president and the federal government. Twice as many Americans as in the 1990s now say that they are paying a lot of attention to national affairs, where they used to care more about business and local stories. Some observers noted “a return to seriousness”—and indeed frivolities do not dominate television news as they used to.

But America has not become “a more ordinary country”, either in foreign policy or in the domestic arena. Instead, this survey will argue that the attacks of 2001 have increased “American exceptionalism”—a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in the mid-19th century to describe America's profound differences from other nations. The features that the attacks brought to the surface were already there, but the Bush administration has amplified them. As a result, in the past two years the differences between America and other countries have become more pronounced.

Yet because America is not a homogeneous country—indeed, its heterogeneity is one of its most striking features—many of its people feel uneasy about manifestations of exceptionalism. Hence, as this survey will also argue, the revival and expansion of American exceptionalism will prove divisive at home. This division will define domestic politics for years to come.

Not all New Yorkers any more

From the outside, the best indication of American exceptionalism is military power. America spends more on defence than the next dozen countries combined. In the nearest approach to an explicit endorsement of exceptionalism in the public domain, the National Security Strategy of 2002 says America must ensure that its current military dominance—often described as the greatest since Rome's—is not even challenged, let alone surpassed.

In fact, military might is only a symptom of what makes America itself unusual. The country is exceptional in more profound ways. It is more strongly individualistic than Europe, more patriotic, more religious and culturally more conservative (see chart 1). Al-Qaeda's assaults stimulated two of these deeper characteristics. In the wake of the attacks, expressions of both love of country and love of God spiked. This did not necessarily mean Americans suddenly became more patriotic or religious. Rather, the spike was a reminder of what is important to them. It was like a bolt of lightning, briefly illuminating the landscape but not changing it.

The president seized on these manifestations of the American spirit. The day after he had defined America's enemies in his “axis of evil” speech, in January 2002, Mr Bush told an audience in Daytona Beach, Florida, about his country's “mission” in the world. “We're fighting for freedom, and civilisation and universal values.” That is one strand of American exceptionalism. America is the purest example of a nation founded upon universal values, such as democracy and human rights. It is a standard-bearer, an exemplar.

But the president went further, seeking to change America's culture and values in ways that would make the country still more distinctive. “We've got a great opportunity,” he said at Daytona. “As a result of evil, there's some amazing things that are taking place in America. People have begun to challenge the culture of the past that said, ‘If it feels good, do it'. This great nation has a chance to help change the culture.” He was appealing to old-fashioned virtues of personal responsibility, self-reliance and restraint, qualities associated with a strand of exceptionalism that says American values and institutions are different and America is exceptional in its essence, not just because it is a standard-bearer.

On this view, America is not exceptional because it is powerful; America is powerful because it is exceptional. And because what makes America different also keeps it rich and powerful, an administration that encourages American wealth and power will tend to encourage intrinsic exceptionalism. Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations dubs this impulse “American revivalism”. It is not an explicit ideology but a pattern of beliefs, attitudes and instincts.

The Bush administration displays “exceptionalist” characteristics to an unusual extent. It is more openly religious than any of its predecessors. Mr Bush has called Jesus his favourite philosopher. White House staff members arrange Bible study classes. The president's re-election team courts evangelical Protestant voters. The administration wants religious institutions to play a bigger role in social policy.

It also wears patriotism on its sleeve. That is not to say it is more patriotic than previous governments, but it flaunts this quality more openly, using images of the flag on every occasion and relishing America's military might to an unusual extent. More than any administration since Ronald Reagan's, this one is focused narrowly on America's national interest.

Related to this is a certain disdain for “old Europe” which goes beyond frustrations over policy. By education and background, this is an administration less influenced than usual by those bastions of transatlanticism, Ivy League universities. One-third of President Bush senior's first cabinet secretaries, and half of President Clinton's, had Ivy League degrees. But in the current cabinet the share is down to a quarter. For most members of this administration, who are mainly from the heartland and the American west (Texas especially), Europe seems far away. They have not studied there. They do not follow German novels or French films. Indeed, for many of them, Europe is in some ways unserious. Its armies are a joke. Its people work short hours. They wear sandals and make chocolate. Europe does not capture their imagination in the way that China, the Middle East and America itself do.

Mr Bush's own family embodies the shift away from Euro-centrism. His grandfather was a senator from Connecticut, an internationalist and a scion of Brown Brothers Harriman, bluest of blue-blooded Wall Street investment banks. His father epitomised the transatlantic generation. Despite his Yale education, he himself is most at home on his Texas ranch.

Looked at this way, the Bush administration's policies are not only responses to specific problems, or to demands made by interest groups. They reflect a certain way of looking at America and the world. They embody American exceptionalism.

American exceptionalism is nothing new. But it is getting sharper

“EVERYTHING about the Americans,” said Alexis de Tocqueville, “is extraordinary, but what is more extraordinary still is the soil that supports them.” America has natural harbours on two great oceans, access to one of the world's richest fishing areas, an abundance of every possible raw material and a huge range of farmed crops, from cold-weather to tropical. Not only is it the fourth-largest country in the world, but two-thirds of it is habitable, unlike Russia or Canada. Any country occupying America's space on the map would be likely to be unusual. But as de Tocqueville also said, “Physical causes contribute less [to America's distinctiveness] than laws and mores.”

In his 1995 book “American Exceptionalism,” Seymour Martin Lipset enumerates some of these laws and social features. In terms of income per head, America is the wealthiest large industrial country. It is also the only western democracy to have practised slavery in the industrial era. It has the highest crime rate and highest rate of imprisonment (though crime, at least, is falling towards European levels). Its society is among the most religious in the world. Perhaps less obviously, Americans are more likely than almost anyone else to join voluntary associations.

America has a highly decentralised political system, with federal, state and local governments all collecting their own taxes, writing their own laws and administering their own affairs. Its federal government spends a relatively low share of national income. The country has more elective offices than any other, including, in some states, those of judges, which means that in each four-year cycle America holds about 1m elections. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it also has one of the lowest voter turn-outs, making it at once the most and the least democratic democracy.

It has no large socialist party, and never has had. Nor has it ever had a significant fascist movement. Unlike conservative parties in Europe, its home-grown version has no aristocratic roots. America has one of the lowest tax rates among rich countries, the least generous public services, the highest military spending, the most lawyers per head, the highest proportion of young people at universities and the most persistent work ethic.

But the term “exceptionalism” is more than a description of how America differs from the rest of the world. It also encompasses the significance of those differences and the policies based upon them. People have been searching for some wider meaning to the place since its earliest days. In 1630, the year the Massachusetts Bay Company was founded, John Winthrop, the colony's governor, described his new land as “a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”

And as they have looked, people have found two quite different reasons for thinking that America is special. One is that it is uniquely founded on principles to which any country can aspire. In 1787, Alexander Hamilton wrote in the first Federalist Paper that “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

That is America-as-model. George Bush has embraced the idea. Commemorating the first anniversary of the attacks of September 11th 2001, he said that “the ideal of America is the hope of all mankind.” He was echoing Lincoln, who called America “the last, best hope of earth”.

But exceptionalism has another meaning: that America is intrinsically different from other countries in its values and institutions, and is therefore not necessarily a model. Thomas Jefferson said that “Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours are perhaps more peculiar than those of any other in the universe.”

In 1929, Jay Lovestone, the head of the American communist party, was summoned to Moscow. Stalin demanded to know why the worldwide communist revolution had advanced not one step in the largest capitalist country. Lovestone replied that America lacked the preconditions for communism, such as feudalism and aristocracy. No less an authority than Friedrich Engels had said the same thing, talking of “the special American conditions...which make bourgeois conditions look like a beau idéal to them.” So had an Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, and a British socialist, H.G. Wells, who had both argued that America's unique origins had produced a distinctive value system and unusual politics.

Lovestone was purged, but his argument still has force: America is exceptional partly because it is peculiar. As usual, de Tocqueville had thought about both meanings of exceptionalism before anyone else. In his book “Democracy in America”, he described not only what is particular to democracy, especially the way in which it changes how people think and act (what he calls “the quiet action of society upon itself”). He also described what was, and is, particular to America: its size, the institutions it had inherited from England, its decentralised administration.

These two versions of American exceptionalism have more in common than might appear at first sight. Both suggest that the experience of America is open to others. The idea of America-as-model implies that other countries can come to be more like America, though American differences may still persist over time. The idea that America is intrinsically different is also consistent with the notion that outsiders can become American, but they must go there to do it and become citizens—hence America's extraordinary capacity to assimilate immigrants.

There are three points to grasp from this gallop through the history of American exceptionalism. First, it is, as Mr Lipset put it, a double-edged sword. It helps explain the best and the worst about the country: its business innovation and its economic inequality; its populist democracy and its low voter turn-out; its high spending on education and its deplorable rates of infant mortality and teenage pregnancy. Exceptionalism is often used either as a boast or as a condemnation—though in reality it is neither.

Second, the two strands help explain why exceptionalism is divisive within America itself. Most Americans are doubtless proud of the “exemplary” qualities of their country. But the non-exemplary, more peculiar features do not always command universal approval.

Third, there should be nothing surprising, or necessarily disturbing, in a revival of exceptionalism. America has almost always been seen as different. The question is: has anything changed recently?

Unparallel tracks

It is always risky to proclaim a break in a trend. Yet evidence is growing that, over the past decade or so, America has been changing in ways that do make it more different from its allies in Europe, and September 11th has increased this divergence.

Most of the previous half-century was a period of convergence. Between 1945 and about 1990, America and Europe seemed to be growing more like one another in almost every way that matters. Economically, Europe began the post-war period in ruins. According to Angus Maddison, an economic historian, in 1950 average incomes in western Europe were 54% of American ones. By the early 1990s, the ratio had passed 80%. Richer EU countries now boast a standard of living comparable to America's. Until the mid-1980s, America and Europe also both had stable populations, declining fertility rates and growing numbers of old people.

In the 1960s, America moved closer towards European levels of government spending through the Great Society programmes. This was the start of Medicaid for the poor and, later, increased regulation of industry through bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency.

With Watergate and the Vietnam war, America started to approach European levels of cynicism about government and military intervention abroad. In 1976, a sociologist, Daniel Bell, wrote a book whose title encapsulated the conventional wisdom of the time: “The End of American Exceptionalism”. Later changes seemed to prove him right. In the 1980s, European countries started to organise their economies on more American lines. Governments privatised and deregulated. Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, set up NASDAQ clones and started using share prices to measure a company's or manager's performance.

In politics, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were both engaged in similar projects to shrink the size of the state. Bill Clinton (who was wildly popular in Europe) proclaimed himself a paid-up member of the largely European “third way”.

When communism collapsed, Mr Fukuyama hailed “The End of History”. Countries, he argued, would henceforth tend to become more alike, more democratic, more liberal, more globalised. There would be less exceptionalism, of the American or any other kind.

But things did not work out that way in foreign affairs, and other sorts of convergence may be coming to an end, too. The demographic differences are now startling. Around 1985, America's fertility rate bottomed out and began to rise again. It is now at almost two children per woman, just below the replacement level of 2.1, and looks set to rise further. Europe's fertility rate is below 1.4 and falling. Even China's is 1.8, and its birth rate is dropping fast.

At the moment, the EU's population is considerably larger than America's—380m against 280m—and will grow further with enlargement next year. China's is nearly four times as large as America's. But on current trends, by the middle of this century America's population could be 440m-550m, larger than the EU's even after enlargement, and nearly half China's, rather than a quarter.

America will also be noticeably younger then and ethnically more varied. At the moment, its median age is roughly the same as Europe's (36 against 38). By 2050, according to Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, America's median age will still be around 36, but Europe's will have risen to 53 (and China's will be 44). In the 1990s, America took in the largest number of immigrants it had ever seen in one decade: 33m people now living in the country were born outside it, and Latinos have become the largest ethnic group. “America,” says Hania Zlotnik of the United Nations Population Division, “is the world's great demographic outlier.”

Then there is the technology gap. Each year, more patents are applied for in America than in the European Union. America has almost three times as many Nobel prize-winners than the next country (Britain), and spends more on research and development than any other country. On one measure of academic performance, over 90 of the world's top 100 universities are in America.

Europe and America have also been diverging economically, though one should be cautious about that. In the seven years from 1995 to 2001, real GDP rose by 3.3% a year in America but by only 2.5% a year in the European Union. The bursting of the stockmarket bubble and the subsequent recession reversed this pattern—in 2001, GDP growth was higher in Europe than America—but the gap opened up again as the economies recovered. On current estimates and forecasts, growth in America in the three years to 2004 will average 1.3 percentage points a year more than in the 12-country euro area. Some 60% of the world's economic growth since 1995 has come from America.

These relative economic gains may be reversed. It is hard to see how the country can sustain both its huge trade and budget deficits. On the other hand, its growth in the 1990s reflected a big improvement in productivity, which rose by over 2% a year in the 1990s. The number of hours worked also rose. In 1982, Europeans and Americans put in roughly the same number of hours each year. Now, Americans work a daunting 300 hours a year more.

These divergences began at different times and for different reasons. The demographic gap began to open up as long ago as the mid-1980s. Economies started to diverge in the mid-1990s. Even in the area most relevant to the terrorist attacks—foreign policy—the roots of transatlantic differences arguably go back to the fall of communism in 1989-91. September 11th did not create these tensions, but it dramatised some of them. The attacks took place at a time when America was governed by an administration already less engaged in Europe than any in recent history, and when almost all the other measures were, for the first time in 50 years, pointing in the same direction—away from Europe, as well as from much of the rest of the world.

If this pattern continues, America may be entering a period of even greater dominance in world affairs. That alone makes American exceptionalism of more than domestic importance. American power will be divisive abroad—but it will also bring conflict at home, because a significant portion of Americans does not believe that the era of convergence is over. When Howard Dean, a Democratic presidential candidate, said that “We won't always have the strongest military,” he was slapped down by his own party as well as by Republicans. But he touched a nerve. The next section will explain how exceptionalism divides America as well as defining it.

American values divide as well as define the country

THE new National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia stands three blocks from where the Declaration of Independence and the American constitution were adopted. Post-it notes are dotted around the museum for visitors to reply to questions such as “What does it mean to be an American?”“It means I have a responsibility and obligation to protect my freedom and that of my children,” runs one typical reply. Or: “It means to say when I disagree.” Or: “Sometimes it means unbridled capitalism.”

To a second question, “Should the ten commandments be displayed in public buildings?” the replies range from, “They are the foundational laws for the constitution” to, “We have the right to freedom from religion.” And to a third, “What makes you feel free?”, they include: “Our military forces willing to give their lives for mine”; “Not to have to think about it”; or simply, “USA rocks!”

American values are distinctive, but not uniformly so. Patriotism and religious faith are unusually strong. Americans stress personal responsibility rather than collective goals. Many are fairly conservative in their social opinions and are somewhat more likely than Europeans to disapprove of divorce, abortion and homosexuality. Yet people on both sides of the Atlantic find international terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction equally worrying. And Americans are in some ways more open than Europeans—or were, until the terrorist attacks of 2001 made them less welcoming—in their greater approval of immigration and the value of “other cultures”. It is this particular combination of values, as much as strong patriotism or religiosity, that really makes America stand out.

Begin with an area of clear difference: attitudes to the role of government in a free market. People in almost every country surveyed by the Pew Research Centre in 2003 say they are better off in a free-market economy. But asked which is more important—that the government should guarantee no one is in need, or that it should not constrain the pursuit of personal goals—Europeans in both east and west come down roughly two-thirds/one-third in favour of a safety net, whereas Americans split two-thirds/one-third the other way.

However, when asked, “Does the government control too much of your daily life? Is it usually inefficient and wasteful?”, two-thirds of respondents on both sides of the Atlantic say yes. So the differences seem to have less to do with the way that governments are viewed, and more to do with Americans' belief in the importance of individual effort. Pew's pollsters sought to measure this belief by asking people in 44 countries, “Do you agree or disagree that success is determined by forces outside your control?” In most countries, fewer than half thought that success was within their control. In only two did more than 60% consider success a matter of individual effort: Canada and, by the widest margin, the United States.

In other areas, American exceptionalism is less clear-cut. For example, nine out of ten Americans say they are very patriotic, according to Pew. But Indians, Nigerians and Turks are equally patriotic. Among wealthy nations, Americans are also the most likely to go to church and to say God is very important in their lives, but again Indians, Nigerians and Turks are more religious than Americans.

Lots of Americans like to buy products that shout, “I'm large. I'm loud. I'm ready for anything,” such as army assault vehicles lightly disguised as cars, or outdoor grills the size of small kitchens, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, calls this “getting in touch with your inner longshoreman”. Yet at the same time Americans seem to be developing a more restrained side. They are just as likely as Europeans to say that people with AIDS should not be discriminated against. Support for the idea that “women should return to traditional roles in society” has fallen from just under a third in the late 1980s to about a fifth now, roughly the same as in Europe. Both Americans and Europeans overwhelmingly disagree that when jobs are scarce men should be given priority.

Americans are slightly less likely than Europeans to find homosexuality socially acceptable, and less likely to support gay marriage, but tolerance of gays is on the increase (see chart 3). Americans also tend to be fairly positive about the contribution of immigrants to society, whereas in most of the rest of the industrial world more than half the population thinks immigrants are bad for their countries.

These differences and similarities are best understood as values arranged along two spectrums of opinion. One spectrum, says the World Values Survey of the University of Michigan (which invented the idea), measures “traditional values”. The most important of these is patriotism; others concern religion and traditional family ties. Americans tend to be traditionalists. A remarkable 80% say they hold “old-fashioned values” about family and marriage. At the other end of this spectrum are “secular-rational” values, for whose adherents religion is a personal, optional matter, patriotism is not a big concern and children have their own lives to lead. Europeans tend to be secular-rationalists. On this spectrum, America is indeed exceptional.

The other spectrum measures “quality of life” attitudes. At one end of it are the values and opinions people hold when economic and physical insecurity dominates their lives, as often happens in poor countries. This makes them suspicious of outsiders, cautious about changing patterns of work and reluctant to engage in political activity. At the other end are values of self-expression involving the acceptance of a wide range of behaviour. On this score, Americans and Europeans are similar, because neither group is engaged in a struggle for survival any more.

But the two spectrums together suggest that there is a “values gap” within America itself too. In Europe, countries have become both more secular and more “self-expressive” as they have got richer. In America, this did not happen. That has profound implications.

E pluribus duo

In 1999, Gertrude Himmelfarb, a social historian, argued that America is becoming “One Nation, Two Cultures”. One is religious, puritanical, family-centred and somewhat conformist. The other is tolerant, hedonistic, secular, predominantly single and celebrates multiculturalism. These value judgments are the best predictor of political affiliation, far better than wealth or income.

In the 2000 election, 63% of those who went to church more than once a week voted for George Bush; 61% of those who never went voted for Al Gore. About 70% of those who said abortion should always be available voted for Mr Gore; 74% of those who said it should always be illegal voted for Mr Bush. As Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, pointed out, a map showing the sales and rentals of porn movies bore an eerie resemblance to the map of the 2000 election results.

America, it is said, can live together because Americans live apart. The two cultures occupy different worlds. Traditionalists are concentrated in a great L-shape on the map, the spine of the Rockies forming its vertical arm, its horizontal one cutting a swathe through the South. With a couple of exceptions, all these “red states” voted for Mr Bush in 2000.

The rest of the country is more secular. This includes the Pacific coast and the square outlined by the big L, consisting of the north-eastern and upper mid-western states. With a few exceptions, these “blue states” voted for Mr Gore in 2000.

Their differences are deeply entrenched. Traditionalists are heavily concentrated in smaller towns and rural areas. Secularists dominate big cities. Southerners tend to be a bit more religious, a bit more socially conservative and more supportive of a strong military stance than the rest of the country. Intriguingly, black southerners are more conservative than blacks elsewhere, though less conservative than their white neighbours.

The political effect of these differences is increasing. For historical reasons (Republicans having been the anti-slavery party in the civil war), white southerners were part of the Democratic coalition, circumscribing for many years the political impact of southern conservatism. Now, as the region becomes more Republican, that conservatism is getting noisier.

In contrast, multiculturalism is deeply entrenched in blue states. The states with the highest levels of immigration of Latinos and Asians include New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and California—what Mr Frey calls America's new melting-pots. Mr Gore won all of them, except Texas and Florida. These were special cases: both had governors called Bush; both had seen the largest inflow from other parts of America of white immigrants, who tend to be more conservative.

The differences between the two Americas seem to be getting sharper. A new survey of American values by Pew finds greater social and sexual tolerance, yet also more strictness on matters of personal morality. The number of people saying they completely agree that there are clear and universal guidelines about good and evil has risen from one-third to two-fifths in the space of 15 years.

One of America's characteristic features is its sunny optimism, the sense that anything is possible. Yet there is an 18-point gap between the number of Democrats and Republicans who agree with the statement “I don't believe there are any real limits to growth in this country today.” Democrats are usually keener than Republicans to urge the administration to pay attention to domestic issues. This gap has widened from three points in 1997 to 16 points now. On America's role in the world, the importance of military strength and patriotism itself, the gap between the parties has never been wider.

So if there is a revival of exceptionalism—in the sense both of greater divergence from other countries, and of policies based on it—it will be controversial. Red states are likely to welcome it. Blue states probably will not.

But there are complicating factors. The red-blue split implies that two tribes are forming, with people within each of them thinking more or less alike. In reality, things are rarely that clear-cut. In his book “A California State of Mind”, published in 2002, Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute in San Francisco showed that voters in that state do not fit the bifurcated pattern of the 2000 election. California is one of the most solidly Democratic (blue) states. Most voters call themselves socially liberal and environmentally friendly, which seem like “European” attributes. Yet in other ways California is as unEuropean as you can get, a place of swirling ethnicities that looks towards Latin America and Asia.

Californians wanted the large tax revenues the state had generated during the boom years of the 1990s to be spent on social programmes, rather than handed back in tax cuts—again, a European impulse. Yet, in flat contradiction, they did not want their state government to grow because they did not trust politicians to spend the money wisely—an exceptionalist, American characteristic.

Part of this muddle is doubtless specific to California. Yet there are mixed views and big contrasts between opinion and behaviour in many other places too. For example, Americans in heartland states express traditional views about family and personal morality especially strongly, yet the incidence of divorce, teenage pregnancy, births out of wedlock and murder is slightly higher there than elsewhere.

Land of the soccer moms

Among all the ways America is unusual, one of the least noticed but most important is that more than half the population lives in suburbs. In this, it is unique in the world: in most European countries, for example, over two-thirds of the population is classified as urban. American suburbia has changed radically in the past 20 years. It is no longer a homogeneous world of nuclear families, dormitory towns and middle-class whites. Now there are ethnic suburbs (most immigrants go straight there); office parks (90% of office space built in the 1990s was suburban); poor suburbs near towns; and rich ones on the outskirts. Some suburbs even try to recreate European towns: an intriguing counter-example to the general pattern of divergence.

Yet compared with the sharp differences between cities and rural areas, suburbs still show a residual similarity of values. Those that matter most are family achievement and moderation. This is the land of soccer moms, SUVs, meticulously kept subdivisions, oboe practice for kids and school runs.

Such people make up a hefty share of the roughly 40% of Americans who describe themselves as politically moderate. They explain the softening of some of the sharp edges of American exceptionalism, such as declining support for the death penalty since the mid-1990s and greater acceptance of gays and inter-racial dating. Suburban moderation cuts across the bright line between red and blue states.

On this reading, the distribution of American opinion forms a bell shape. The traditionalists and the secularists are the two tails, which are getting fatter and more vocal. In the middle is a bulge of moderate opinion, indifferent to, or even repelled by, this contest. It is up to politicians to decide whether to appeal to the extremes or to the centre. But before delving into politics, stop to look at the most important of the “exceptional” qualities: religion and patriotism.

Americans are becoming more religious, but not necessarily more censorious

SADDLEBACK church could exist only in America. On any Sunday, over 3,000 people from the suburbs of southern Los Angeles flock to the main Worship Centre, which looks less like a cathedral than an airport terminal. If you want to experience the rock bands, theatrical shows and powerpoint sermons in a traditional church, you can: they are piped into one by video link. Or you can watch the service on huge video screens while sipping a cappuccino in an outdoor café.

But in case you think this is religion lite, Rick Warren, the pastor, will quickly encourage you to join one of the thousands of smaller groups that are the real life of the church. Saddleback members will help you find a school, a friend, a job or God. There is a “Geeks for God” club of Cisco employees, and a mountain-bike club where they pray and pedal.

To Europeans, religion is the strangest and most disturbing feature of American exceptionalism. They worry that fundamentalists are hijacking the country. They find it extraordinary that three times as many Americans believe in the virgin birth as in evolution. They fear that America will go on a “crusade” (a term briefly used by Mr Bush himself) in the Muslim world or cut aid to poor countries lest it be used for birth control. The persistence of religion as a public force is all the more puzzling because it seems to run counter to historical trends. Like the philosophers of the Enlightenment, many Europeans argue that modernisation is the enemy of religion. As countries get richer, organised religion will decline. Secular Europe seems to fit that pattern. America does not.

In fact, points out Peter Berger, head of the Institute on Religion and World Affairs at Boston University, few developing countries have shown signs of religious decline as their standards of living have risen. It may be Europe that is the exception here, not America. There is no doubt, though, that America is the most religious rich country. Over 80% of Americans say they believe in God, and 39% describe themselves as born-again Christians. Furthermore, 58% of Americans think that unless you believe in God, you cannot be a moral person.

There is also some evidence that private belief is becoming more intense. The Pew Research Centre reported that the number of those who “agree strongly” with three articles of faith (belief in God, in judgment day and in the importance of prayer in daily life) rose by seven to ten points in 1965-2003. In the late 1980s, two-fifths of Protestants described themselves as “born again”; now the figure is over half.

The importance of religion in America goes well beyond personal belief. Back in the 1960s, Gallup polls found that 53% of Americans thought churches should not be involved in politics, and 22% thought members of the clergy should not even mention candidates for public office from the pulpit. By 1996, these numbers had reversed: 54% thought it was fine for churches to talk about political and social issues, and 20% thought even stump speeches were permissible in church.

For God and Republicanism

These shifts in opinion have given a boost to one particular group of churches: evangelical Protestants. They embrace a variety of denominations, including Baptist, Confessional and Pentecostal churches, all of which stress individual salvation and the word of the Bible rather than sacraments or established doctrine. In 1987, they were the third-largest religious group in America, with a membership of 24% of the adult population; now they are the largest, with 30%. The percentage of Catholics has stayed stable, largely thanks to Latino immigrants, but established Protestant churches, such as Presbyterians, have declined sharply.

A marriage of church and politics

Evangelical Protestants bear out the European view that religion in America is politically active, socially conservative and overwhelmingly Republican. Almost two-thirds of committed evangelicals—the ones who attend church most frequently and say they hold strictly to the Bible—describe themselves as conservative, by far the largest proportion of any religious group. They are also more likely than other churchgoers to rate social and cultural issues as important, somewhat more likely to say homosexuality should be discouraged, and most likely to want to rein in the scope of government.

Over time, evangelicals have become more willing to engage in politics, too. White evangelical Protestants represent almost a third of registered voters now, up from slightly below a quarter in 1987. Their leaders have tried to unite the various evangelical churches as a political force, establishing the Moral Majority in 1979 and the Christian Coalition in 1989. Their comments speak for themselves. Franklin Graham (Billy's son) called Islam “a wicked religion”. The former president of the Southern Baptist Convention called the Prophet Muhammad “a demon-possessed pedophile”.

Such political activism, the growth of new churches and the increased intensity of belief has led some to argue that America may be in the early stages of a fourth Great Awakening, a period of religious fervour when the variety, vigour, size and public involvement of religious groups suddenly increases. Earlier awakenings occurred in the late colonial period, the 1820s and the late 19th century. Might the same thing be happening again?

The evidence seems to be against it. Church attendance has not been increasing, as a new awakening would suggest. The Gallup organisation found that it fell slowly in the 1960s and 1970s, stabilised in 1980 and has remained level since then, with about two-thirds of the population claiming membership of a church.

These findings are based on how often people say they go to church, something they tend to exaggerate. But a collection of records from the churches themselves, summarised by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, shows the same pattern (see chart 4). So do figures from the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which show that in 2000 some 141m Americans—or half the population—were members of a church. That is a lot, but it falls well short of the four-fifths who believe in God as a private matter. And it is active churchgoing that makes the difference between private belief and public consequences.

Even among fundamentalist Protestants, public influence is patchy. There was, for example, no huge turn-out of conservative Christians in the 1998 mid-term elections, even though the Lewinsky scandal infuriated religious voters. After President Bill Clinton's impeachment and acquittal, Paul Weyrich, a leader of the Moral Majority, wrote to the Washington Post to say that conservative Christians had “lost the culture wars”—hardly evidence of growing influence.

It is not even clear how important religion is in determining the political and social views of evangelical Protestants. The largest concentration of these churches is in the South, among whites. But white southerners held conservative views on homosexuality, government, defence and so on long before the Moral Majority was invented. It is just as likely that social conservatism has encouraged evangelical churches as the other way around.

The Pew study tried to disentangle the role of religion in determining churchgoers' views from other factors, and found that only in social and cultural attitudes (on matters like abortion and homosexuality) was religion alone a powerful factor. Even there, broader demographic factors were more important.

Don't believe a word of it

Lastly, although the number and membership of charismatic churches has certainly grown, there has been an offsetting increase in those who describe themselves as of no religion at all. Since 1960, the number of self-described secularists (atheists, agnostics and those not affiliated to any organised religion) has roughly doubled. According to a survey by the City University of New York (CUNY), 14% of Americans between 18 and 34 describe themselves as “secular” and a further 9% as “somewhat secular”.

Secularists are more likely to live on the Pacific coast or in the north-east, in a city, have a college degree, be male, single, and either lean towards the Democrats or be politically independent. Committed evangelicals are more likely to live in the south, vote Republican, lack a college degree, live in towns or rural areas, and be female and married. In other words, America looks like two tribes, one religious and one secular.

But the really distinctive feature of American religion is the area in the middle. Most Americans do not become members of a church to sign up for a crusade or to sit in judgment on miserable sinners. For them, churchgoing is a matter of personal belief, not conservative activism. Their religion is mild.

In 1965, according to Gallup, half of respondents said the most important purpose of their church was to teach people to live better lives. Since then, the share has grown to almost three-quarters. This is the biggest change in America's religious life in the past 40 years.

Alan Wolfe, of the Boisi Institute for the Study of Religion at Boston College, points out that American religion is exceptional in two senses: not only are Americans more religious than Europeans, but they have no national church. Thanks to the separation of church and state, the country has nothing comparable to, say, the Catholic churches of Italy and Spain, or the Church of England. Americans are members of sects.

The two kinds of religious exceptionalism are connected. Rather as in the economic sphere competing private companies tend to produce wealth and activity, whereas monopoly firms have the opposite effect, so in the religious sphere competing sects generate a ferment of activity and increased levels of belief, whereas state churches produce indifference.

This has implications for the quality of American belief. Churches come and go with astonishing speed. The statisticians of American religious bodies tracked 187 denominations (and there were many more) between 1990 and 2000; in that time 37 disappeared and 54 new ones appeared on the scene. Adherents and pastors, too, are constantly on the move. One study found that half the pastors of so-called “mega-churches” (suburban ones like Saddleback, with Sunday congregations of 2,000 or more) have moved from another denomination. According to the CUNY study, 16% of American adults—33m people—say they have switched denominations. For some churches the share of new adherents was startlingly high. In 2001, 30% of Pentecostalists had joined from another church and 19% had left; among Presbyterians, 24% came in and 25% went out.

Such churning limits doctrinal purism, which might otherwise be expected in a new church. Instead, churches try to attract floating believers—what Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist, calls “a generation of seekers”. According to Mr Wolfe, American churches are therapeutic, not judgmental. They stress “soft” qualities such as guidance and mutual help, not “hard” ones like sin and damnation.

This means that the charismatic and evangelical churches are not typical of the whole of religious life in America. If the pattern of public opinion in general is bell-shaped, that of religious belief has the profile of a Volkswagen Beetle: a bump of evangelical Protestants at the front, a bigger bulge of uncensorious congregations in the middle and a stubby secular tail. That must temper the notion that religion is running amok in America, or that it is causing America to run amok in the world.

At Saddleback church, Rick Warren preaches that abortion is wrong. On a recent Sunday, anti-abortion groups lobbied for their cause as parishioners left church. Mr Warren told them not to return. He agreed with their views, but members of his church, and newcomers, might not. He did not want abortion to get between members and the more important matter of their relationship with God.

American patriotism is different from the European variety

HERMANIO BERMANIS holds up his right hand to take the oath of American citizenship. Half a million do the same every year, but this ceremony is unusual. It is being held in the Walter Reed military hospital, in the presence of two cabinet members, because Army Specialist Bermanis, who was born in Micronesia, had both legs and his left arm blown off on active service in Iraq. His right hand is all he has to hold up.

The ceremony gave expression to a powerful sentiment: American patriotism. As de Tocqueville noted long ago, “The inhabitants of the United States speak much of their love for their native country.” Seymour Martin Lipset begins his book on American exceptionalism with a remark unusual for an academic: “I write as a proud American.” In a new survey of American values by the Pew Research Centre, fully 91% of Americans say they are very patriotic.

Europeans have long been bothered by this feature of American life. De Tocqueville again: “There is nothing more annoying...than this irritable patriotism of the Americans.” But since September 11th the Europeans have become even more disturbed. They associate patriotism with militarism, intolerance and ethnic strife. No wonder they consider it an alarming quality in the world's most powerful country.

Yet European and American patriotism are different. Patriotic Europeans take pride in a nation, a tract of land or a language they are born into. You cannot become un-French. In contrast, patriotic Americans have a dual loyalty: both to their country and to the ideas it embodies. “He loved his country,” said Lincoln of Henry Clay, “partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.” As the English writer G.K. Chesterton said in 1922, America is the only country based on a creed, enshrined in its constitution and declaration of independence. People become American by adopting the creed, regardless of their own place of birth, parentage or language. And you can become un-American—by rejecting the creed.

This dual character softens American patriotism. “My country, right or wrong” may be an American phrase (it comes from a toast by Stephen Decatur, an American naval hero), but only one American in two agrees with it, according to the Pew survey. Only two years after September 11th, fewer than half the respondents supported the statement that “We should try to get even with any country that tries to take advantage of the United States.”

However, there is one trend in American opinion that should give pause for thought. Republicans have long been slightly more likely than Democrats to say they are intensely patriotic, but the gap has widened dramatically, and is now by far the largest on record. In 2003, 71% of Republicans said they were intensely patriotic, compared with only 48% of Democrats. An even larger gap has opened up in responses to the proposition that “The best way to ensure peace is through military strength.” The number of Democrats who agreed with that sentiment slumped from 55% in 2002 to 44% this year.

The intensity gap may well reflect differing attitudes to the war in Iraq, the domestic effects of which will presumably fade with time. But the gap may also be an early indication of a more lasting split: over the passion of loyalty, and what counts as “real” patriotism.

American politics has become more partisan, and nastier

THE 2000 election was the third dead-heat in a row. In votes for the House of Representatives, the widest margin of victory between 1996 and 2000 was a mere 1.3 percentage points. Essentially, every presidential and House election came out at a dead heat, 49:49.

The 2002 mid-term elections brought a change. In House races, Republicans won 51% of the popular vote, Democrats 46%. As Michael Barone, a political journalist, points out, statistically this margin was not significant, but politically it had a big impact. Republicans captured the Senate, the first time the president's party had ever won the upper chamber at this point in the electoral cycle. They gained 141 seats in statehouses, giving Republicans a majority of state legislators for the first time since 1952. The party kept its majority among state governors. In Washington, it controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. The victory was highly unusual: most mid-term elections punish the incumbent party, especially at times of economic weakness. But does it presage a bigger electoral breakthrough, the beginning of the end of the 50-50 nation?

It might. Ever since the New Deal, there have been more registered Democrats than Republicans. In the four years before September 11th, according to the Pew Research Centre, Democrats held a small advantage in party identification (34% of registered voters described themselves as Democrats, 28% as Republicans). But immediately after the terrorist attacks Democratic affiliation dropped sharply, and in the past two years the parties have been roughly balanced. There was a further rise in Republican identification after the Iraq war earlier this year, so at the moment Republicans have an advantage in party identification for only the second time in 75 years (see chart 5). September 11th seems to have been a turning point.

But long-term trends were helping Republicans anyway. The defection of the South—America's most populous region—broke up the old Democratic coalition. In 2002, Republicans won the South by an even larger margin than in their landslide victory of 1994. The rise of an investor class (half of Americans own shares) benefits the party, because middle-class shareholders tend to back Republican causes such as privatising Social Security, the federal pensions system.

These long-term trends are reinforced by significant temporary gains. The campaign-finance reform of 2002 shifted the balance of advantage towards the party that raises more cash from individuals, which currently means the Republicans. Sophisticated computer software has turned redistricting—the ability of the dominant party in state assemblies to gerrymander district boundaries—from an art into a science. In 2002, Republicans controlled the legislatures of three big states—Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. By amazing coincidence, in Gore-majority districts where Republicans drew new boundaries, their party won 11 more seats than in 2000.

Breaking the deadlock

So it is not hard to see why Republican strategists think their party may be on the verge of breaking the 50-50 deadlock. Yet, on balance, the evidence is still against the idea that there has been a fundamental shift in electoral politics. The 2002 elections did not break the mould. For incumbents to gain as much as Republicans did last year is unusual but not unprecedented. Democrats also won against the odds in 1998. And as Gary Jacobson of the University of California at San Diego points out, the Republicans' success in 2002 can be largely explained by special factors.

At that point, Mr Bush's personal ratings—the highest of any president—ran well ahead of his ratings on the economy. Usually the two do not differ much. That implies that but for the war on terrorism, which buoyed up his overall popularity, Mr Bush would not have been able to shield Republican candidates from economic discontent. This is unlikely to apply in 2004. Mr Bush's popularity also scared off the Democrats, who fielded a particularly feeble bunch of challengers. They have a few more creditable ones now.

Usually, incumbent parties lose seats in mid-term elections because congressmen squeak into marginal seats on the coat-tails of a successful president. But Mr Bush had no coat-tails in 2000, so in 2002 Republicans had fewer vulnerable seats to lose. Add in the special impact of redistricting, and most of the Republican success in 2002 can be explained by the party's skills in squeezing the most out of a largely balanced electorate rather than by a fundamental shift in its favour. There was little evidence that voters were less polarised in 2002 than they had been in 1996-2000.

Opposites repel

In one sense, that does not matter. If Mr Bush hopes a permanent majority is within his grasp, he may well dash ahead with an ambitious agenda. But he may also do that if he fears the partisan divide is too deep to be overcome. If so, his party's current political dominance would be just a window of opportunity, and he should take advantage of it before it closes.

But the persistence of a deep electoral division effects how his policies—or any president's policies—are received and carried out. It tempts Mr Bush (or any Republican) to push for more extreme policies, and any Democrat to push for the opposite extreme. The divide also encourages partisan behaviour among voters. This increasing polarisation could turn out to be the most important trend in American politics today.

George Wallace, a former governor of Alabama, used to say there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the parties. But polarisation is growing in Congress. Republicans are now twice as likely to toe the party line in the House and Senate as they were in 1975. Democrats are about one-and a half times as likely. Ad hoc “coalitions of the willing” have become much rarer in domestic politics.

Partisanship is rife in congressional committees. Heads of committees used at least to pay lip service to the minority party when proposing legislation, but since Newt Gingrich's takeover in 1994, partisan control has by and large been the rule. Committee chairmen now routinely squelch attempts by Democrats to influence legislation, leading to petty squabbling and ill temper.

Partisanship is also evident in redistricting, which has increased the number of safe seats towards North Korean levels. In 2004, only 30-40 congressional seats are likely to be truly competitive—a quarter of the number in the 1990s. Since 1964, the share of House incumbents re-elected with over 60% of the vote has risen from 58% to 77%. This makes congressmen's politics more extreme.

If your district is rock-solid, you have little reason to fear that voters will kick you out for moving too far from their opinions. The main threat comes from party activists, who tend to be more extreme in their views and can propose a challenger in primary elections. So the dangers of drifting too far to the middle outweigh those of drifting too far to the extremes. Partisan redistricting marginalises centrist voters, aligns the views of candidates more closely with extremists on each side and radicalises politics.

Away from Capitol Hill, partisanship has also grown in lobbying. Both parties have tried to control lobbyists, the fourth branch of American government, but Republicans have got better at it than Democrats. Every Tuesday, lobbyists troop to the office of Rick Santorum, the leader of the Senate Republican conference, to talk about hiring Republicans—an ex-chief of staff here, a pollster there. Republicans place their protégés in lobbying firms. The firms raise money for Republican candidates and help get them elected. Legislators then place their protégés in the firms. And so it goes on.

Above all, polarisation has grown in the electorate, evidenced by a sharp decline in split-ticket voting (choosing a president from one party and a congressional representative from another). In 1972, 44% of congressmen and women represented a different party from the one whose presidential candidate carried their district. In 2000, the share was under 20%.

The truly independent voter seems to be disappearing. That may seem curious, because those who call themselves independents easily outnumber self-identified Democrats or Republicans. Yet most so-called independents vote consistently one way or the other. The White House reckons that less than one-third of independent voters actually switched parties in the past three elections.

With the decline of swing voters, there seems less and less point in running presidential campaigns to appeal to the slim middle. Instead, elections have become contests to mobilise core supporters. The 2000 and 2002 elections were both turn-out races.

The upshot is that politics has become warfare. What matters most is the size and bloodthirstiness of your troops, not winning over neutrals. Politicians take the first opportunity to reach for weapons of mass destruction, such as Bill Clinton's impeachment or the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California. It is no longer possible to agree to disagree. Your enemies must be “Stupid White Men”, guilty of “Treason”, who live in a world of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” (to quote the titles of three of this year's political bestsellers).

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PART 2


Increased partisanship has implications for the nature of America's public debate, the country's decentralised political tradition and Mr Bush himself. Politics as warfare is rooted in debates about fundamental issues. Over the past few years, the Republicans have become the “exceptionalist” party by celebrating America's traditional values and stressing qualities that make the country intrinsically different. Call that conservative exceptionalism.

In contrast, Democrats are divided. Mainstream Democrats, including members of the Clinton administration, go for the other type of exceptionalism, the city-on-a-hill variety—though Mr Bush claims to espouse that, too. Others—notably Howard Dean and the left—seem to regard exceptionalism of any kind as a bad thing. Still others embrace what might be called liberal exceptionalism, celebrating America's egalitarian, anti-aristocratic heritage. In different ways, all these distinctions are based on values or principles.

Steamrollering the enemy

In contrast, winning at all costs is not, or not necessarily. Take the 2002 Senate election in Georgia, one of the nastiest campaigns of recent memory. The Democrat, Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, was demonised as soft on Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The culture of victory may supersede arguments about values and substance because conquest becomes imperative.

America's political system is decentralised, with proud, distinctive traditions at state level, and national parties that used to be loose coalitions of diverse groups which banded together to win power. Partisanship, on the other hand, is a centralising force that encourages uniformity. America's distinctive political traditions have been tested before, and survived. In the early part of the 20th century, a time of just as much partisanship in voting and in politicians' behaviour, America did not move towards the party-dominated political systems familiar in Europe. But there was less ideological coherence then, and no television or national media groups to reinforce a consistent message.

Now localism is weaker. And, at least on the Republican side, it faces a national organisation more disciplined, more firmly under the control of the White House, more fiercely loyal to the president—and more prepared to throw its weight around. In the 2002 elections, the White House intervened to persuade local parties in Minnesota, South Dakota and Georgia to change their senatorial candidate. The White House's choice won in two of the three states against the odds.

This does not mean that party structures themselves have strengthened. In fact, in terms of raising money they are weaker than they have been throughout most of American history. But the parties are ideologically more distinct. And within the parties, politicians are more partisan and less diverse in their backgrounds.

As for Mr Bush himself, he has proved a polarising president, better at solidifying the Republican base than at extending it. Two years after September 2001, his own party's approval of him stood at over 80%, but Democratic approval had fallen below 20%. This stunning gap marks Mr Bush as even more divisive than Bill Clinton, who suffered just as much from Republicans' hostility as Mr Bush does from Democrats'. But whereas Mr Clinton's policies were more popular than he was, with Mr Bush it is the other way around. His ratings on the economy and tax cuts are lower than his overall approval levels. The next section explains why.

How “exceptional” is George Bush?

FOR a moment, it seemed that the attacks of September 11th 2001 had created a new opportunity for political leadership. The mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, transformed himself overnight from an effective, if cantankerous, administrator into a symbol of the resilient city. Mr Bush might have emulated him. Americans rallied round the president after the terrorist attacks. His speeches at the time expressed the mood of national determination. His stature as commander-in-chief grew. Yet Mr Bush made no real attempt to unify the nation behind a domestic cause. He made no call for sacrifice, as Franklin Roosevelt had done after Pearl Harbour. Asked what people could do for the nation at a time of crisis, Mr Bush replied: Go back to normal. Go shopping.

This could perhaps be regarded as a failure of the president's imagination. But there is another reason. President Bush says he wants to promote America's universal values. In that sense, he is a city-on-the-hill exceptionalist. He also claimed during the 2000 election campaign that he would be “a uniter, not a divider”. But his political personality is too complicated for either claim to be wholly convincing.

There are two George Bushes. One is ideological, divisive, willing to tear up the rule book and push strongly conservative policies. This is the Bush loved by Republicans, loathed by Democrats (see chart 6). The other is more incremental and sometimes more bipartisan. Yet even this Bush, who might appeal to the middle, is also surprisingly audacious. His audacity causes wariness among voters who are not strongly inclined for or against him.

Big-government conservatism

Foreign policy shows Mr Bush in rule-book-destroying mode. He has rejected the cornerstone of cold-war diplomacy, the doctrine of containment, and is unwilling to treat states as legitimate merely because they are internationally recognised or stable. This puts him at odds not only with European, but with cold-war traditions of American diplomacy.

In some areas of domestic policy, Mr Bush has been almost as far-reaching. The best example is tax. As Bill Galston of the University of Maryland puts it, “Ronald Reagan thought government was the problem. George Bush thinks tax is the problem.” Mr Bush is in fact more radical, or more determined, than his Republican predecessor. Mr Reagan cut taxes in his first year but increased them later in the face of widening budget deficits. Mr Bush cut them in each of his first three years, despite the prospect, by the third year, of deficits as far as the eye can see.

This year, total federal revenues stood at 17% of GDP, the lowest level since 1959, which was long before Medicare, Medicaid, federal education programmes and today's defence build-up. Mr Bush's tax policy is consistent with the “exceptionalist” view that, in a twist on Thomas Jefferson's words, “the government that governs best, taxes least.” It has heightened differences in the tax burden between the two sides of the Atlantic.

What about the other George Bush? This is the one who created the biggest new bureaucracy since Harry Truman: the Department of Homeland Security. This is the Bush who has pushed the powers of the federal government into education, hitherto a state preserve, by requiring annual testing of students and raising federal spending to supervise those tests. It is the one who has allowed the Justice Department to detain suspected terrorists for longer periods and with less judicial review.

This is the Bush who is trying to set up a national energy policy to reduce dependence on foreign oil; who slapped protectionist barriers on steel; who signed a farm bill costing $180 billion over ten years; who set up a White House office to promote marriage (surely the last thing a conservative government should be poking its nose into). And this is the one urging Congress to expand state health care for the elderly to cover some of the costs of prescription drugs—an action President Clinton's Medicare adviser says would be “the biggest expansion of government health benefits since the Great Society.”

In all, the Bush administration in its first three years increased government spending by 21%. It will rise even higher if the president wins a second term and fulfils his promise to reform Social Security, because of the huge transition costs. In contrast, during the Clinton administration government spending fell as a share of GDP. “Appalling,” says Ed Crane, the head of the libertarian Cato Institute which campaigns for small government.

This rise in the scope and cost of government seems to contradict the idea that American exceptionalism is increasing on Mr Bush's watch. Clearly, he is not an exceptionalist in the small-government, Reagan mould. He does not believe government is part of the problem. This qualifies, but does not rebut, the notion that exceptionalism is growing. Still less does it mean Mr Bush is making America's government more “European”.

The combination of large tax cuts and increased spending has turned a budget surplus of 2.4% ofGDP in 2000 into a 3.5% deficit in 2003—one of the fastest fiscal deteriorations in history. With more spending pressure, the proposed expansion of Medicare and the desire to make “temporary” tax cuts permanent, the deficit is likely to rise yet further, to around 5% of GDP by 2004-05, near the record post-war deficit set in 1983. This would almost certainly be unsustainable, so Mr Bush's economic policy must be counted a work in progress at best, a shambles at worst.

And even though Mr Bush is no small-government exceptionalist, he is no European-style welfare statist either. As Jonathan Rauch has argued in National Journal, a magazine for Washington insiders, the thread running through his non-defence government expansion is increased choice rather than increased government. Higher spending on school tests enables parents to assess the quality of schools and choose between them. Health-care reform as originally proposed is supposed to let private health providers compete with Medicare. Social Security reform, if it happens, would allow people to save for their own retirement through individual accounts that would compete with the existing pay-as-you-go system.

These two Bushes coexist uneasily. Neither is likely to dominate the other, because of the way the president runs his administration. Mr Bush has an MBA, and it shows. He sets overall goals but lets his lieutenants work out how to meet them and goes with the policy that best pleases him. Different policies, therefore, reflect different strands of Republicanism. Sometimes neo-conservatives have the president's ear; sometimes traditional realists do. Sometimes corporate barons seem uppermost; at other times, supply-siders. This fluidity makes for a dizzy, sometimes invigorating, often incoherent mixture.

Summing up

The conclusion must be that Mr Bush's policies are somewhat exceptionalist, increasing his appeal to the red states and reducing it in blue ones. At the same time, the combination of radical ambition and uncertain outcomes leaves voters in the middle nervously suspending judgment.

The president's radical policies and the growth of partisanship have increased the importance of extreme opinion and marginalised the centre. After September 11th, Mr Bush appealed strongly to traditional American patriotism. His tax policies appealed to small-government conservatism. Both implicitly encouraged exceptionalism. All this lessened the moderating influence of the middle.

Exceptionalism and partisanship reinforce one another. Exceptionalism exists anyway; partisanship increases its importance. Partisan politics is growing anyway; exceptionalism gives it character and spirit. By exaggerating existing divisions, Mr Bush seems to have hardened his country's battle lines. And they seem to have hardened him.

American exceptionalism is a fact and a fate. It does not have to be a problem

IS AMERICAN exceptionalism something to worry about? Many people will say yes. Their concerns are understandable but overblown.

An increased sense of national distinctiveness in any big power must worry the small fry who live in its shadow. America's alliance with Europe kept millions of people free and wealthy during the cold war. To the extent that American assertiveness threatens that alliance, it also hurts something that has done immense good.

But the world has lived with American differences for two centuries. The suspicions surrounding their current revival are due in part to foreigners' shock at the end of the somewhat artificial closeness engendered by the cold war, and in part to the war in Iraq. As other countries begin to adjust to changes in America, and as profound disagreement over Iraq fades into milder wrangling about the occupation, alliances will be rebuilt. That is already beginning to happen.

Some of the features that make America different cause problems within the country because they are divisive. True, qualities such as Americans' optimism and their stress on individual responsibility encourage unity. But other features are more partisan, including religiosity, small-government conservatism and perhaps intense patriotism. America is already deeply divided between traditional and secular cultures. The increase of partisanship, the culture of political victory at all costs, Mr Bush's own policies and his enormous appeal to traditional America all risk making matters worse.

Yet the contest of values is a source of strength as well as weakness for America. New opinions are always bubbling up; elite views are always being tested. This is messy but not acquiescent. De Tocqueville argued that the most insidious threat to any democracy was apathy, which conducts people “by a longer, more secret, but surer path towards servitude.” America's culture wars help to bar that secret path.

And for everyone other than Americans themselves, the country's divisions should be less worrying. Doctrines of American exceptionalism tend to be self-regulating. Mr Bush stresses them and meets opposition from the left; a President Howard Dean would no doubt downplay them and meet opposition from the right.

In addition, there are two external constraints upon American exceptionalism. One is the sheer difficulty of engagement abroad. As problems pile up in Iraq, people at home will become ever less likely to support the idea that America has a unique mission in the world.

The other constraint is economic. At the moment, the world economy depends too heavily on American growth, and America depends too much on borrowing abroad. At some point, global economic imbalances will be corrected and, if things go well, growth in the rest of the world will begin to catch up with America's, making its economic performance less divergent from its partners'. Meanwhile, America's budget problems will constrain President Bush. In 2000, surpluses enabled him to make expansive, nation-changing promises. As the red ink flows, he is likely to be forced into small-scale, incremental promises for his second term.

In the end, though, American exceptionalism worries outsiders because it seems both to represent and encourage a more dangerous world. Doctrines of exceptionalism seem to fit with the notion that the post-cold-war world is a battleground of warring cultures and hostile ideologies, the “clash of civilisations”. In such a world, the anti-exceptionalist tenets of the European Union—that countries should play down their differences—seem to offer a safe haven. Exceptionalists reply that the world's conflicts are there for all to see, and that American power is likely to promote not chaos, but safety.

No one knows which of these ideas will be more influential in the world in future: America's top-dog exceptionalism or the EU's basket of squealing puppies. But for America itself, the choice has already been made. America is a nation apart in both senses: different from others, and divided within itself.

Read all that

"land of the soccer moms"

Juliaz wrote:Read all that

i wrote it 1 year ago for test

Sanne wrote:

Juliaz wrote:Read all that

i wrote it 1 year ago for test

good enough to be on wikipedia

Juliaz wrote:

Sanne wrote:

Juliaz wrote:Read all that

i wrote it 1 year ago for test

good enough to be on wikipedia

tnx

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FR wrote:.

did you read it?

Sanne wrote:

FR wrote:.

did you read it?

.

FR wrote:

Sanne wrote:

FR wrote:.

did you read it?

.

Sanne wrote:

FR wrote:

Sanne wrote:

FR wrote:.

did you read it?

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FR you really should read my article tho, dont just spam even though this is the spam section it's pretty interesting (i think it actually is) and i got an A for it on my english-

Sanne wrote:FR you really should read my article tho, dont just spam even though this is the spam section it's pretty interesting (i think it actually is) and i got an A for it on my english-

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no really read it (ghehe now i can get more posts)


oh almost forgot:
How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open?

Sanne wrote:no really read it (ghehe now i can get more posts)


oh almost forgot:
How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open?

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So im going to post another essay of mine about old english poems, very interesting

Sanne wrote:So im going to post another essay of mine about old english poems, very interesting

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Industrial warfare by its very definition requires that belligerent nations harness the entirety of their economic might during wartime. The First World War saw the epiphany of economic mobilization, in the sense that all combatants were to mobilize not only their base industrial strength, but also their agricultural sectors. Agriculture was to take a pivotal role during the conflict, not only feeding the domestic population, but also providing valuable products vital to war industries and crucial foreign exchange needed for the importation of arms purchases. Unfortunately for European belligerents, the role of agriculture in wartime and the methods in which production could be sustained in the midst of total warfare were as mystifying as how to break the trench deadlock. When war was declared in 1914, it had been nearly a century since the last great continental war. Previous agricultural coping methods had been rendered obsolete not only due to the increased pressures of total war, but also the changes that had been seen in agricultural production and dependencies throughout all of the major participants. Together these twin problems led to an almost total collapse of food security in Europe by the end of 1918. This paper will seek to examine the extent to which the war affected the agricultural systems of Russia, Germany, and Great Britain.

Before any systematic examination of these three nations can be made, the role of agriculture during the First World War needs to be examined. During the second decade of the twentieth century, warfare had shifted decisively towards the defensive with the invention of long-range artillery and machine guns. In these circumstances a prolonged defensive war between the Entente and the Central Powers could be the only result. Locked in trench warfare armies were unable to feed themselves from off the land, nor would seasonal changes force them to seek winter quarters. Massive agricultural drains were inevitable, as each man needed to be well fed. All armies, including those of France, Great Britain, and Germany looked to provide a daily ration of over 4,000 calories for their soldiers, including large intakes of fresh meat and bread, along with smaller portions of goods such fresh vegetables.1 Just as important was the need to sequester and feed millions of horses, still in general use for both cavalry and general transportation purposes. Further adding to this crushing burden was domestic consumption, an area that was to prove critical for all three powers. Nutrition for workers was critical, for;

. . . the resultant increase in working hours, speed-up production, night shifts, use of women in industry, congestion and delays in transportation, inadequate housing, and possible restrictions in food supplies, and the concomitant increase in strain and stress on the worker, the health of the working man and woman becomes of prime importance.2


Providing these vast amounts of agricultural produce could be nothing but a priority for all three nations immediately after the start of the First World War, particularly in the case of both Great Britain and Germany, where great attention had been paid towards food security in the decade before the outbreak of war.

Russia

When Russia entered the First World War it was the acknowledged bread basket of Europe. During 1910 alone, Russian peasants had produced upwards of 225 million bushels of wheat – and of these yearly crops large amounts were exported to foreign markets or into the northern urban centers.3 When the war began all outside observers believed that food security would be a foregone conclusion – Russian exports would merely be diverted inwards towards the civilian population and the troops at the front. In reality the agricultural system in place within Russia was exceedingly brittle, and by 1917 food security within the country was to almost totally collapse, helping to lead the nation into the hands of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

During the decades leading up to the war, Russian agriculture usually produced anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the grain available for export worldwide. Most of this grain was produced in the southwest region of the country, stretching from the rich soils of the Ukraine and moving as far east as the Volga, and including some portions of the Caucasus.4 Other, more northernly areas, were less suited for cereal growing, owing to poor soils and a short growing season, needed fertilizer to fully utilize the growing season. Industrialization in the country had drastically increased the population in these northern areas, along with the extension of primary urban centers such as St. Petersburg and Moscow. This increase rapidly led to a loss of agricultural self-sufficiency by the end of the nineteenth century, and by the time of the First World War, large parts of Russia were dependent on the timely movement of Ukrainian and Volga grain into the northern markets.5

Production was widely done by small peasant farmers, with upwards of five and a half million farms sized no larger than 5.5 acres a piece. Larger farms, those owned and operated by better off peasants and the landed gentry were largely in the minority.6 Despite this, the landed gentry accounted for an amount of marketable surplus far above their respective stations, providing upwards of 20 percent of the domestic surplus. Peasants on the other hand maintained themselves on an almost subsistence basis, retaining well over half their annual crops, only their vast numbers allowed them to account for their 78 percent share of surpluses.7

Throughout all sectors of Russian agriculture there was little reliance on modern agricultural equipment such as tractors, substituted instead by a heavy and continuing dependence on sheer human and animal muscle power. This was most evident in regards to horses, valued by both the military and the agricultural sector, they were quickly sequestered by military officials following the German declaration of war. By the start of 1917 more than 2.1 million horses had been taken for military usage, but this still only accounted for a mere ten percent of available animals in the nation. While this did force many farmers to give up their fittest draught animals, peasants “had horses enough to spare during the war.”8

Placing large numbers of men into the army in contrast was to have large detrimental affects on the Russian agricultural system. As Peter Gatrell notes a substantial number of workers on the most productive gentry owned farms went into the army in the first two years of the conflict. In the first wave of conscription over 800,000 day and migrant labourers, accounting for fourty percent of the normal workforce, were placed in uniform.9 To a small extent these farms could attempt to bolster their production numbers by mechanical production, but the small domestic supplies of farming equipment were rapidly moved towards war production. Imports of agricultural supplies were also curtailed, rapidly being forced off the market with the close of both the Baltic and the Black Sea to outside trade. Among smaller peasant farms there was also a sharp contraction of available labour, in some areas upwards of fifty percent of the normal male labourers by the time the Russian army managed to put 9.45 million men under arms in 1916.10 The province of Khar'kov for instance saw four out of every ten households devoid of a single able-bodied adult male worker by late 1917.11

Despite these manpower losses, Russian grain production did not dip substantially within the first two years of the conflict, only falling appreciably from the prewar average during 1916.12 Yet this overall drop was still well within the normal trend of domestic agriculture. Nikolai Mikhailovich, writing to Tsar Nicholas II, noted nothing unduly about local agriculture, writing, “the grain harvest is good – in some places all that can be desired. Harvesting and threshing are going on everywhere, and there is hope that the work will be finished on time in the fall.”13 Rather than a widespread decrease in production that would cause a total loss of food security, the problems that would lead to agricultural instability was the cause of two factors – infrastructural instability, and reckless governmental intervention.

Infrastructural problems in regards to food distribution began to appear in Russia by the end of 1915, when at least one governmental minister, Alexander Krivoshein, alluded to the possibility of disaster, stating, “the railways are choked, and pretty soon it will be impossible to move war freight and food supplies . . . I have an idea that the Germans watch with pleasure the result of this attempt to repeat the tactics of 1812.”14 Transportation was not a unique problem during the First World War, but for Russia the problem was to prove phenomenal, for the country was not only the largest grain producing region in the world, but also the largest country in the world. As such, any substantial movement of grain north into industrial and urban centers such as Moscow required an enormous effort on the part of Russian rail infrastructure. Normally the movement of agricultural product was within the capabilities of the rail-lines, but war also clogged the rails with precisely timed troop, munition, and supply movements. Large numbers of locomotives and rolling stock, which would normally be prioritized for grain shipments, where therefore sequestered for military usage. Additionally, coinciding with the poor harvest of 1916 was a widespread reduction in the numbers of available freight wagons and locomotives. Russian planners found themselves grappling with the loss of nearly six thousand wagons, and more than one-third of their locomotives.15 This loss of transport capacity wrecked havoc in urban areas such as St. Petersburg, so that by the start of 1916 many millers were forced to reduce their output by as much as one-third. Accordingly, S.S. Demosthenov states, “the root of the trouble was not in a smaller production of flour, but in the inability of the mills to work to their full capacity, so as to satisfy the heavier demand for flour.”16 Similar problems were regularly noted at portions of the front, especially in the diary of Andrei Vladimirovich;

. . . We get all our food from Russia. The Ministers have taken upon themselves the organization of the food supplies needed for the millions in the army. We have now reached the time when the supply is less than the demand. To the continuous demands and to the insistent arguments that the shortage leads to a crisis, the Ministers answer quite coolly: “Cut down the demands. Give the horse ten instead of twenty pounds of oats, five instead of fifteen pounds of hay, or don't give him anything at all.” The same is true of meat . . . an army cannot fight without food. But they are, seemingly, little concerned with the army, and are mainly interesting in keeping the country quiet.17


Such events only proved the fact that “less developed, agrarian economies tend to disintegrate under the stress of total war.”18

Paradoxically, Russian government intervention had at least helped to start the crisis in food security. With its limited amount of rolling stocks, the government continually placed an emphasis on its soldiers at the front throughout the entirety of the war. Coping with smaller and smaller amounts of available transportation food was shunted away from domestic civilian consumption and almost totally towards the front. Smaller loads of grain towards urban centers was the prime result and as a result food prices skyrocketed, followed shortly thereafter by a preponderance of speculation and profiteering.19 Measures which would have prevented such crisis were not put forward by Tsarist ministers throughout the entirety of the war, instead they merely concerned themselves with the supply of food to the soldiers. Early in the war troop commanders have been given the authority to scour the local countryside for available food resources, and behind the lines designated storage areas for appropriated grain stockpiles were rapidly set up. Near the end of 1915 the government took this line of thought one step further, creating a “Special Council on the Food Supply”. This council was tasked with procuring food for the army and could fix prices for the sale of goods towards the military.20 Unfortunately the Russian government neglected to extend these price controls to the greater civilian market and as a consequence produced two separate markets within the economy in which civilian food prices remained unregulated and prone to profiteering. During the same time this harmful policy reduced the amount of grain shipments into the northern urban areas to a mere 65 percent of its 1913 level.21

Resulting from these twin disasters was an almost total collapse of food security by the end of 1916. By that time the amount of food needed to sustain morale and curtail rioting was simply not reaching the civilian population. Peasants in Kherson province were to have on average an annual consumption rate of 450 kg of bread, while in the northern industrial towns of Kostroma and Tula this total only reached 215 kg.22 A sense of despair and helplessness thereafter filled the hunger ridden areas of the country. “What is the use,” explained one peasant in northern Russia, “of planting carrots and beets, when they will be stolen before the roots are really set?”23 Within months this lack of food security was to topple the Tsar and eventually lead to a Bolshevik takeover of power. Yet even then the effects of the First World War continued to prevent full restoration of agricultural security until well into the next decade, Samara on the Volga River, one of the largest cereal producing regions in Russia, was producing only 2 percent of its prewar average during the 1921 harvest.24

Germany

Germany entered the First World War with the most industrialized economy of any European power. Not surprisingly, this also translated into a modern, highly efficient agricultural system in which large numbers of chemical fertilizers and farm machinery. While Germany was able to maintain high outputs on munitions and the goods needed to keep millions of men in the field, they could not maintain food security within the country itself, and as a result the collapse of Germany in late 1918 can be seen as an agricultural defeat as it can also be seen as a military one.

The problems associated with food production had not been unforeseen by the German government. In many respects the entire scope of food security revolved around the ambitious naval programme put forward by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz was aimed at securing German access to outside markets during any war against Great Britain. In the decade before the conflict began German shipyards had laid down twenty-one modern dreadnought battleships in an effort to contend for naval superiority on the North Sea.25 Tirpitz stated as such;

To me it seems quite obvious that the British Empire, depending as it does on imports from overseas, should regard the protection of its trade routes as indispensable . . . Great Britain as a world power stands or falls with her predominance at sea . . . we should without doubt strive to maintain our seapower with the same solicitude as that now seen by the British Ministers.26


While Tirpitz did manage to provide a solid challenge to Great Britain in the years before 1914, German production did not allow for the state to leave what Tirpitz referred to as the “danger zone”, a period in which the number of German capital ships lagged behind those of Great Britain. Within Germany the threat was seen as quite real, as shown by the views of several prominent writers in the Deutsche Revue;

Germany's endeavor therefore must be to possess a fleet which is powerful enough to make blockade of our coasts impossible, even by the most powerful foreign navy, which would at the same time obviate the danger of a harrying of coastal towns and of a landing force.27


Despite such warnings the Kaiserliche Marine as a result entered war on the strategic defensive, and was further marginalized with their strategic defeat in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. Thereafter naval initiative was surrendered to the Royal Navy for the rest of the war. Resulting from this was the ability of Great Britain to commence a full and total blockade upon Germany. Foodstuffs and fertilizers had been blockaded in previous European wars, but by the start of the twentieth century all powers had agreed to a system of contraband whereby foodstuffs and fertilizers would have been immune from seizure by a warring party should they be offloaded at a neutral port.28 Helmuth von Moltke took this into account when devising the invasion of France, leaving Dutch ports open for usage as a “windpipe” for critical goods such as grain and fertilizer.29 This idea was largely foreseen by everyone at the time, and at least one British diplomat referred to port of Rotterdam as 'quasi-German'.30 Great Britain, however shamelessly reneged on its earlier contraband protocols, seizing any food shipments bound for Germany, and even going so far as to impose restrictions on agricultural trade with the Netherlands to prevent any trade with Germany.

On land these restrictions to trade rapidly upset the agricultural system in place before the war. Unlike its neighbour to the east, Germany had moved towards modern means of production involving chemicals and widespread mechanization. Above all other nations in Europe they had looked towards fertilizers to boost production, using three times as much as farmers in neighbouring France.31 Potash, nitrogenic, and phosphoric fertilizers were all widely in use, but only potash was available in sufficient quantities domestically. Both nitrogenic and phosphoric fertilizers were largely imported from areas such as Chile, and so German agriculture rapidly had to make due with only their domestic supplies. Potash usage skyrocketed as a result, expanding from 356,000 tons of usage in 1913, to 834,000 tons five years later.32 Artificial nitrogenic production also improved domestically, but both of these methods were unable to replace the fertilizer imports to any large degree. All told fertilizer usage on German farms was to contract by upwards of fifty percent.33

The German agricultural sector not only found itself deprived of essential fertilizers, but also a larger percentage of its workers. At the time the agrarian sector still employed nearly five million workers. More importantly many of these workers were highly skilled in areas such as livestock management, making the agricultural sector highly disproportionally vulnerable to any large scale conscriptions. Unfortunately, the German government, largely decentralized and in many cases startlingly ineffective had not put into place any measures to protect its agricultural workers. As such over three million men from that sector were called up for active duty during the conflict. This proved exceedingly detrimental for highly specialized farms, and as Avner Offer suggests, “many farms, perhaps even the majority, lost the man who made decisions before the war.”34

Further harming German farmworkers was the loss of critical fodder imports due to the blockade. Prior to the war upwards of six million tons of fodder was imported into the country, mostly grain and rye, yet within weeks the majority of these supplies were drastically reduced. Domestic supplies of fodder also suffered and contracted. Rye production which had reached 10.4 million tons in 1914, eventually collapsed to only 6.7 tons in 1918.35 Much of these declines can be blamed towards the lack of fertilizers and the loss of agricultural workers in the first few years of the war. Another additional loss, that of draught animals, was also felt harshly on many farms, and this only exacerbated problems on many farms.

Loss of animal fodder heralded another problem for food security - fewer animals could be sustained while the supply of fodder dropped. This led German authorities to cull large parts of their animal herds, most notably in 1915 with the Schweinemord, a mass slaughter of hogs that occurred throughout the country.36 Additional chances to import animals or meat from neighbouring neutrals such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Denmark, largely failed to make up for these losses – and by the last two years of the war, pressure from Great Britain and France rapidly excluded what few outside sources of livestock that could be found. The number of livestock imports as a result fell by as much as fifty percent.37 For a country that had prided itself with a high level of meat consumption this was disastrous not only to caloric intakes, but also to moral.

Other crop grown products also suffered contraction throughout the war due to the loss of farm labourers, fertilizer, and draft animals to the army. Rationing was the predictable route to curtail the potential loss of food security. Daily rations were initially pegged at 3,000 per day, and this largely placed on every citizen in the country. Despite the move to lengthen stocks, official rations quickly spiraled downwards due to the lowering of yields throughout the war. By 1916 the Food Office was forced to lower ration levels to a mere 1,985 calories. Within only a few months this was again lowered to 1,336 – and then in mid-July 1917 bottomed out at only 1,100 calories per day.38 In this atmosphere profiteering ran rampant, and black markets were set up throughout urban areas where workers were most in need of additional food supplies. These illicit supplies were to play an important part in curtailing famine throughout the war, providing upwards of fourty to fifty percent of all calories.39 Yet the need to rely on illegal activities to procure the nutrition needs can only be seen as the last failing of food security in Germany.

Great Britain

Among European nations Great Britain was the one that had gone furthest away from the notions of agrarian self-sufficiency by the start of the First World War. Since the repeal of the Corns Laws in 1846 the British Isles had overwhelming looked towards outside support for its daily supply of grains and other supplies such as sugar. Food security was therefore the most tenuous in Great Britain - liable to contract drastically in a short period of time during the right circumstances. Notwithstanding this fact, the government of Great Britain was able to ensure food security throughout the war, doing better than any other combatant within Europe.

An uneducated appraisal of British agricultural systems before the First World War would undoubtedly show the country vulnerable to the loss of its food security. Domestic agriculture in the country accounted for a mere fourty percent of caloric intake within the country.40 Moreover the most important foodstuff, grain, was even less secure domestically. Of the almost sixteen billion calories annually derived from grain from 1909 to 1913, fully eighty-one percent came from foreign sources.41 Largely this was due to the fact that agriculture on the British Isles had become unprofitable in most cases, and only the most profitable land remained under plow, with much of the less productive areas returned to grass. Since 1872 the total acreage of plowed land had declined from a height of 13,839,000 acres to only 10,306,000 in 1914, representing a twenty-six percent contraction on cultivated land.42 This contraction was even more pronounced for wheat, as the sown area declined from 3,680,000 acres in 1970 to only 1,370,000 in 1904.43 Since wheat was the primary foodstuff on the British Isles this was therefore a grave shift away from self-sufficiency. During the same time period that cultivated land decreased by twenty-six percent, per capita imports of wheat more than doubled from 138 pounds to 294 pounds in the period ending in 1913.44

In addition to declines in turns of the annual wheat harvest and sown acreage, the number of workers used in agricultural production also fell drastically in the same fourty year period. Whereby agriculture employed 3 million workers in 1870, by 1911 this number had fallen to only 2.3 million.45 This figure however includes seasonal labourers, and the entrenched permanent labour source is far less – no more than 800,000.46 Throughout the war this figure fell precipitously. Within the first ten months of the war fully 15 percent of permanent labourers were recruited by the army, and this only increased in further years, reaching 35 percent by mid-1918.47

Asides from requiring the conscription of agricultural workers, the British Army also was in need of tens of thousands of horses. At the start of the war the British Army only commanded 25,000 horse, but when the war ended this number had expanded remarkably to 591,000, along with 213,000 mules.48 So large was this problem that an ad hoc solution was ruled by the aptly named Remount Department. Asides from their 25,000 horse reserve which was immediately available for military purposes, surveys conducted during 1911-12 selected another 130,000 domestic horses which could be sequestered in short notice. Within six days of the war starting, these, along with another 35,000 horses were impressed. Throughout the rest of the war the British Army sequestered another 300,000 horses domestically.49 Together the removal of this scale of horses was immense, and while the majority of domestically sequestered horses did not come from the agricultural sector, the losses still topped ten percent.50 Mechanization held the opportunity to pick up the slack, but at the start of the war British agriculture had not mechanized to any great extent. Yet P.E. Dewey estimates that less than 1,000 tractors were being operated within Great Britain before the start of the war, and this figure only increased to around 3,500 by the end of 1917. Since this increase was still unable to meet the shortfall created by the impressment of horses, older, less hardy horses were forced into work.51

The loss of these significant numbers of agricultural workers and draft animals had an unhealthy effect on British agriculture throughout the short term. The three largest staples within the British Isles – wheat, potatoes, and meat, at one point or another during the conflict. Mostly this occurred in 1917, when domestic production of wheat dropped from a prewar high of 6,221,000 tons to only 5,166,000 that year. Potatoes faired worse, dropping in production from 7,605,000 tons in 1913 to only 5,469,000 tons.52 On the whole however domestic production fared well, and even managed to expand after the David Lloyd George government came into power. At the end of the conflict British domestic production looked better than it had at any time since the 1890s with grain acreage growing by 20.6 percent, barley by 10.1 percent, and potatoes an astounding 43.9 percent. This large increase in domestic production was to increase the total caloric intake of the nation by more than two billion calories by the end of the war.53

While domestic sources managed to increase their production in the latter half of the conflict, Britain still relied predominantly on foreign foodstuffs to maintain food security. During the initial few months of the conflict the total supply of food imported predictably dropped as imports from the Central Powers dropped off entirely – most notably the entire supply of sugar to Great Britain was cut off by suppliers in Germany and Austria-Hungary.54 Russian wheat was also curtailed when the Ottoman Empire entered the war, using the its control of the Dardanelles to block passage through to Russian Black Sea ports. Consequently the British turned towards its former colonies, most notably Canada and Australia, along with the United States and Argentina to supply the large amount of wheat it needed. Moreover this need was continuous for as Avner Offer states, “at their highest, stocks rose to seventeen weeks' supply; at their lowest, they would last only six and a half weeks.”55 Asides from wheat, other critical sources of food, such as sugar, jam, fruit, and eggs, could all be cut off if Great Britain lost control of the sea – and while some of these products could be successfully substituted for or rationed, their loss would only be viewed as a highly detrimental failure.

In order to secure the safe passage of foodstuffs across the Atlantic and into British ports it was an accepted fact that Great Britain would need to maintain naval dominance. Without tariffs to spurn domestic production the navy could only be viewed as an insurance policy, a view held by J.B. Haldane when he address Parliament in 1902, “the Commerce of this country was something approaching £1,000,000,000 and the naval estimates only amounted to some 3 per cent of that. That was not an extravagant premium of insurance.”56 Like Germany the Royal Navy had significantly expanded in the decade before the First World War. In the last full fiscal year before the start of the war concern over imports had pressured the Asquith government, nominally against military expenditures, to expand the naval estimates to a record £44,400,000. Concern for the issue permeated every level of British society, prompting the secretary of Working Men's Club to state;

Given a semi-starvation consequent on a war, the people would cry out that the war should be stopped, even to the extinction of Britain as a dominant power in the world. This would not be at once, of course. Men would muster to the defense of the country, moved by a patriotism which is largely blind and inherent, not informed and resolved. But, however just the war, or however necessary, you would find men who would see clearly only the side of our opponents. After the first month of starvation, workmen would heed these arguments, and resentment with their terrible lot would grow. The second month the feeling in favour of peace, - peace at any price – would, under the fearful pressure of starvation, finally force the strongest Government to the acceptance of humiliating terms. Of this I am convinced.57


Such concerns were raised numerous times throughout the early part of the century, particularly by one retired Army Major, Stewart Murray. He had retired early in order to spread the threat of famine during more fully, and he declared within one of this many pamphlets, “for, if our Empire fall through neglect of proper defense, with it will fall our trade, and with our trade will go our food. And what would then be left of the British working man?”58 Throughout the decade before the war, concerns such as those made by Murray were raised regularly by private citizens and government officials, and to a large extent they made headway.

When war began the Royal Navy had properly defined its role in the coming conflict, and it was to prove the most powerful agent in the successful continuation of food security within the British Isles. While there was concern about the threat to British shipping, the Admiralty largely thought this would come from isolated raiders, but on the whole the strategic situation would lend itself well to Great Britain. Rear-Admiral Slade, Director of Naval Intelligence, put it as such;

The cases of Great Britain and Germany are not dissimilar as regards their wealth-producing sources. This country is practically dependent on industrial production, and so to a very great extent is Germany. This condition implies a necessity for raw material, and consequently a dependence on the sea. Our need for overseas supplies may be greater, but our power to obtain those supplies is also greater, largely due to our superior geographical position.59


While it was acknowledged that the Royal Navy held the upper hand throughout the war, there were two episodes in which the Kaiserliche Marine became supremely threatening to trade – and therefore food supplies. The first of these incidents occurred directly after the start of the war with the introduction of cruiser warfare upon British merchant vessels. Resulting from the few months that these raiders ran loose was the loss of several hundred thousand tons of shipping, one vessel, the Emden eventually sank over 66,000 tons worth of merchant vessels.60 While these initial raider were at times highly effective, they could only last several months before eventually being rounded up and destroyed by superior British and Commonwealth vessels.

The second, and far larger threat towards food security on the high seas was the German Unterseeboot. Ideas to use submarines in commerce warfare were not new, indeed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had published an article only months before the start of the war entitled, “Danger! A Story of England's Peril” in which a small power with only sixteen submarines is able to destroy British commerce and force a peace.61 When Germany began to use submarines for commerce warfare early in 1915 it was a strike at the very lifeline of Great Britain, and it was aimed directly at wheat, a supply that went from “hand to mouth.”62 The idea for direct attacks on food shipments was immensely workable in the eyes of German theorists, for as has been noted stocks in England never rose past seventeen weeks, and often hovered closer to eight. In achieving this prices for grain within Great Britain would rise unacceptably, thus guaranteeing panic, and potentially forcing the British out of the conflict. While this was could be achieved in theory, the Germans neglected to look at the advantages possessed by Great Britain. Even within that country the inevitable defeat of just such an unrestricted submarine campaign was noted by many men, including Dr. Eduard David;

The Minister of the Marine believes that, by sinking 600,000 tons monthly, we can destroy one half of England's merchant tonnage in six months. But he overlooks the fact that we must count on 150,000 tons of new ships being built each month, and that German tonnage in the neutral countries may be seized and so give a similar increase.63


This prediction rapidly became reality, for rather than fatally harming the British war effort it only brought the United States into the conflict – instantly adding another 6.5 million tons of shipping that could conceivably carry wheat into Great Britain.64 Likewise German authorities had failed to take into account the amount of their own interned shipping would at once be moved against them with the entry of the United States. Hours after the entry of the United States into the conflict the second and larger naval threat against British food security was immediately denied.

Food security in Great Britain was therefore nearly undisturbed throughout the first world war. Even in 1917 when crop harvests in both the United States and on the British Isles were less than expected, and the threat of submarine warfare was ever present the average caloric intake in the United Kingdom only decreased by 4 percent from the prewar average, a real difference of only 122 calories – almost business as usual.65

Conclusion

Throughout the First World War the issue of food security became an important, indeed an overriding factor for all nations, but most importantly in the three states which have been examined. Among all several critical factors appeared. The first was the ability for the nation to grow the needed amount of food to feed all civilians and military personal within the state. Should the state be unable to produce these foodstuffs domestically they would need to be imported. The morale shaping influence of food in wartime is the second dominant issue. All three states were largely influenced moral wise by how well they could feed their populace – Russia, which fared the worst, was forced to withdraw from the conflict before any other major power, largely resulting from a lack of food security in the northern industrial areas where chronic shortages fatally harmed morale. Germany faired little better, slowly waning towards famine due to the shortages imposed by military necessity and of a wartime blockade. Great Britain on the other hand retained morale throughout the conflict by keeping its population well fed and stocked with not only staple goods, but valued luxury products such as tea – something both Germany and Russia failed to do. Finally there was the issue of geography, paradoxically an area where Great Britain turned out to be dominant. Russian geography worked against the war effort and food security, forcing a brittle infrastructural system to move massive quantities of staple foods into important urban areas far to the north. Germany was likewise hampered, forced to relinquish nearly all of its imports by the last two years of the war, and ultimately being unable to overcome the geographical advantages that Great Britain possessed in the defense of its own food security.

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Sanne wrote:

Sanne wrote:no really read it (ghehe now i can get more posts)


oh almost forgot:
How did you get here? Did someone leave your cage open?

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