WHEN trying to pinpoint a date that signalled the terminal decline of the United States as a global superpower, future historians could do worse than pick Aug 2, 2011.

Although this was the day America pulled back from the brink of fiscal disaster, it was also the day the US Congress announced to the world how dysfunctional it had become. And far from being a solution to America’s economic crisis, Congress has now become a big part of the problem.

The unedifying spectacle of a handful of Republican congressmen holding their nation — and the world — hostage for weeks did little to reassure the rest of us that there was somebody at the helm in Washington. President Obama looked like a hapless victim of a mugging, handing over all his valuables at gunpoint to a bunch of hoodlums.

We may well ask how decision-making in Washington — often a messy business marked with compromises and wheeling-dealing — could have got to this hysterical level of brinkmanship. Pundits are quick to tell us that the Tea Party represents a grassroots movement that seeks a return to a small government with minimal federal spending and taxes.

Not so, says George Monbiot in a recent article in the Guardian. Reminding us that the Tea Party movement “was founded and is funded by Charlie and David Koch”, he calls the recent events in Congress a “political coup”. The Koch brothers are billionaires who have poured some $85m into lobbying for lower taxes for corporate America, combined with fewer and weaker regulations for industry. Monbiot concludes his article thus:

“A handful of billionaires have shoved a spanner into the legislative process. Through the candidates they have bought and the movement that supports them, they are now breaking and reshaping the system to serve their interests….”

The last few years have shown us that despite bringing the global banking system to its knees through sheer greed, bankers continue to reward themselves with obscene salaries and bonuses. Indeed, the wealthy are highly adept at protecting and furthering their interests at the cost of the wider public good.

Again and again, politicians reassure us that what’s good for the rich is good for the economy as their profits will lead to investments that will create jobs. But currently, corporations in the US are sitting on a cash mountain that totals over a trillion dollars, and yet unemployment continues to rise. Indeed, over the past decade, the income of the top one per cent of Americans has risen by 18 per cent, while that of industrial workers has fallen by 12 per cent. So much for the trickledown effect.

The deal worked out to break the deadlock over the debt ceiling does little to fix the basic problem: how to plug the growing gap between income and expenditure. Currently, the US is a country that would like to offer its citizens a Nordic level of social security, but with the lowest taxes in the developed world. In addit ion, it would like to maintain its defence spending at the current level of $685bn.

Clearly, something has to give. In 1987, American historian Paul Kennedy wrote a prescient book titled The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Here, the author examines the trajectory followed by a number of major powers including Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire and the United States. His conclusion is fairly obvious, but appears to have escaped most statesmen.

Basically, Kennedy argues that over time, a great power’s economy declines relative to its rivals, but its political ambitions dictate a large military. There is thus an overhang in which the state can no longer sustain its defence spending, and runs up large debts. According to Kennedy, rising defence expenditure “leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities, and weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defence”.

This is an apt description of the United States today, excepting that the Republicans are refusing to raise taxes. This has created a situation where Obama, having inherited two wars from Bush, and pushed through expanded (and expensive) medical coverage, must now somehow find the money to pay for it all.

Given a political consensus in Washington, there might have been a broad agreement to reduce the deficit in a gradual manner to minimise the impact of the cuts on the most vulnerable sections of society. But with the dominance of big business over the Republican Party, and their distrust of Obama who they consider a radical socialist, any meeting of minds seems improbable.

While framing the US constitution, the founding fathers wrote in strong checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in any one institution or individual. But as we have just seen, a group of uncompromising congressmen can hold a gun to the administration’s head, and threaten to bring the whole system to a grinding halt.

Another factor at work is the determination of the Republicans to make sure that Obama is not re-elected next year. To this end, they have consistently opposed him at every turn, making it very hard for him to govern. The whole business of the ‘Birthers’ who refuse to believe that he is indeed an American citizen and was born in Hawaii is a case in point. For weeks, the right-wing media hyped up this canard until, humiliatingly, the president of the United States was forced to produce his birth certificate.

Similarly, a significant number of Republicans believe Obama to be a closet Muslim despite his regular attendance in his church. Clearly, many Republicans have very strong reservations about having a black president, and while they can’t voice this prejudice openly, they continuously snipe at him in an effort to bring him down at any cost.

But judging from their latest effort, the cost can be very high indeed. The level of polarisation they have introduced into politics is making it very difficult to forge a consensus on any issue. The American — and the global — economy is much too fragile to subject it to the kind of cliff-hanger drama we have just witnessed.

In a recent poll, a large proportion of Americans said they thought their representatives had acted more like children than adults. Hopefully, come next election, these politicians will be sent back to nursery where they belong.

irfan.husain@gmail.com