Birth Of The Neo-Atlantean Elite And The Pursuit Of A Hemispheric Golden Age
The Complete Edition
I. An Elite Unrestrained
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” - John Winthrop
I was born in Kentucky; my childhood there was prosperous and stable– a stark contrast to the calamitous decline some of my extended family suffered in Venezuela. The three years I spent in Mexico at the height of Felipe Calderon’s war against the cartels instilled in me a deep gratitude for the ideals and conditions of the United States. Here was a refuge against the violence endemic to so many other parts of the world. I love this country; my future wife and children will be Americans, and I will always be grateful for the simple fact that it has been a shining city upon a hill for me and my family. For a substantial part of the country and the world, however, this has not been the case.
There is another image from my youth that is perhaps a better reflection of the character of the United States since the resolution of the Cold War– that of the flying city of Laputa from the classic Studio Ghibli film Castle In The Sky. The film makes it clear that the levitating city of Laputa, untethered from the Earth through its abundant wealth and scientific and technological capabilities, dominated the planet militarily. In time, Laputan society collapsed due to the unbound lust for power and wealth its elites displayed absent any effective checks on their power from other states. The post-1991 American elite have effectively governed the United States as Laputa. Our possession of vast natural resources and position on the North American continent have allowed us to remain far removed from the harsh realities, conflicts, and constraints that plague other states. Without a true international peer to restrain them, American elites have acted upon their worst impulses, executing a variety of devastating policies that have undermined the unipolar order they sought to uphold. From the evisceration of the American interior’s social fabric via both the introduction of addictive, lethal opioids and the offshoring of its industrial capabilities, to the utter destruction of the Middle East through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their second and third order effects, it is clear that the post-1991 American elite have acted under the illusion of their own impunity. But all decisions have consequences, and we are witnessing– especially with the Russian invasion of Ukraine– the birth of a new, and more volatile, global order.
Navigating this new order successfully will require the ascendance of an elite class capable of overcoming the internal divisions of the American public and acting decisively in the new global conditions at hand. Unfortunately for us, our country, with its vast swathe of citizens inhabiting the political center, is trapped between two extremes seeking to capture the American state apparatus and simultaneously incapable of fulfilling the aforementioned objectives.
It is evident that the movement that has emerged from the extreme left— referred to as the Successor Ideology by American writer Wesley Yang and commonly known as “Wokeness”— is decreasing the quality and functionality of American institutions while embracing anti-white rhetoric. The chief opponent to Wokeness from the other extreme is the white nationalist movement that enthusiastically embraced the campaigns and presidency of Donald Trump. Its proponents do not understand the consequences their capture of elite institutions of culture and governance would bring upon the country. To fully appreciate the ramifications of either extreme emerging victorious in this political conflict, we must look to history across the Caribbean. The story of my family, in particular, is an instructive case because it follows the decline of one ruling class and the rise of another in Venezuela. There are key lessons that must be taken from Venezuelan and, more broadly, Latin American history if the US is to escape the trap that has befallen the region.
II. Había una vez en Boconó…
My maternal grandmother, Blanca Quintero Gonzalo, was born in 1928 in Boconó, Venezuela. Like all of Latin America, Venezuela possessed (and still possesses) a rigid caste structure based on the proportion of European descent one can claim. Boconó was no different, and my grandmother’s family formed part of the upper echelon of its social world. Fortune did not favor her personally, however, as she lost her father and with him, the family’s sole source of wealth, at a young age. She worked to support her younger brother’s education, forgoing any of those opportunities herself. Her sister’s marriage to Saúl Guerrero Rosales, who would later serve as the General Commander of the Air Force, the Minister of Transportation, and the Ambassador to Spain, allowed the family as a whole to maintain some degree of status. When my grandmother married my Costa Rican grandfather, the Venezuelan caudillo Marcos Pérez Jiménez served as the godfather of the wedding. But the family’s fall, while delayed, could not be denied. When the caudillo’s regime was overthrown, my grandmother’s family was spared because their decline in status meant they were no longer perceived as threats to the new order.
Boconó was also home to my paternal grandfather, Epiménides García. Unlike my grandmother, though, he was triracial and born to a single mother in abject poverty. His opportunities for formal education were limited, so he too worked instead to send his younger brother, Samuel, to school. In time, his brother would have an opportunity to demonstrate his talents after receiving an invitation to attend military school in Caracas. As he ascended through the military hierarchy to the rank of colonel, his family’s social and economic status ascended with him. My grandfather, for his part, married my grandmother, a pharmacist trained at the Central University of Venezuela.
Though my grandfather passed away in 1992, his family’s fortunes continued to rise. His second cousin Hugo García Hernández, also from Boconó and my father’s godfather, mentored Hugo Chávez in the military and helped him found the socialist party Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) which swept the previous Venezuelan elite out of political power. My father’s godfather would later serve as the ambassador to Russia from 2009-2012 and the ambassador to Mexico for several years starting in 2013. Familial connections to influential regime leaders were not enough to paper over growing political divides though. My father’s brother was blacklisted by the Chávez regime after protesting its political activities along with other employees of the state-owned petroleum corporation PDVSA. My father has not had contact with that side of the family for many years.
Living in Kentucky, I was largely isolated from the relatives and social context that would have informed me about my family’s history. It was only in adolescence that I began to ask questions about our past. Ultimately, I am thankful my life took this course because it has allowed me to perceive those events– and Latin American history in general– as an outsider.
The reality is that Latin America is dysfunctional because its elite culture, unlike those of Western Europe, the United States historically, Japan, or China, is broken. This manifests itself in two specific ways: a lack of noblesse oblige, the responsibility that the privileged in society bear to act with generosity and compassion towards the poor, and a profound elite selfishness that strangles any aspirations for collective greatness. Both factors stem directly from the experience of the Spanish colonial project.
When the Spanish conquered the Americas in search of wealth and power, they removed Amerindian elites and placed themselves at the top of each social hierarchy. This in and of itself is no great crime and follows the patterns of history closely; they took for themselves the Mandates of Heaven previously held by the Aztecs and Inca, among others. Furthermore, it is logical that trust in a minority-controlled society would be based on ethnic or racial similarity. To ensure control over the empire it had conquered, political power in the colonies was issued to those of primarily Spanish descent. It is fair to say that any other group would have conducted itself in a similar manner. The problem is that this method of social organization has outlasted its initial imperial utility and acted as an enormous constraint on the aspirations of the region for, at the very least, two centuries. After independence from Spain was achieved, a significant portion of Latin America was unable to experience positive economic and cultural development because its elites, having carried over colonial attitudes on race to the nascent regimes, did not perceive the lower classes as belonging to their in-group, effectively destroying any sense of noblesse oblige that could have changed the trajectory of the region. Any elements from the lower classes that rose above their station to produce things worthy of admission to the elite found themselves crashing against barriers to their upward mobility put in place by the ruling classes. Enormous social pressure was exerted on these rising individuals to marry into higher caste (i.e. more European) families, weakening their descendants’ links to the lower classes and perpetuating this caste system– responsible for the region’s dysfunction– into the future. Amongst the public, this phenomenon is known as “mejorando la raza” or “improving the race”.
In his analysis of the work of Vilfredo Pareto in The Machiavellians, James Burnham notes that the most evident barrier to free circulation of the elite– which is necessary for a society to remain dynamic and strong– is the aristocratic principle, that manifests itself most clearly as the children of elites receiving positions of great power and influence at the expense of greater capacity individuals from the non-elite (Burnham p212). If this trend is carried far enough and the “elite becomes ‘closed’ or almost so, degeneration is bound to set in” and the society suffers from poor governance (Burnham p213). Vast swathes of Latin America are governed by ruling classes with effectively closed elite structures that produce terrible governance outcomes. These systems, combined with the mechanisms of racial absorption these structures use to break the links of solidarity that rising non-elites possess with the masses, prevent any positive developments in governance from occurring.
There have been attempts to break the hold of the past to forge new futures worthy of global admiration. Both Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionary who dreamed of the liberation and unification of Spanish America under a single state, and Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan liberator of South America who sought to create a powerful, multiracial state in the form of the Gran Colombia, were foiled by the selfishness of local colonial elites too invested in the racially exclusive social structures inherited by their countries after the Spanish-American revolutionary wars. It is my belief and fear that, regardless of the victor and absent an alternative, the current contest between the extreme left and right factions vying for control of the United States could condemn us to the adoption of an elite culture or structure that mirrors either that of the Latin American present or its past. Such a result must be avoided at all costs.
The rising elite that carried Hugo Chávez into power in Venezuela may have seized the Mandate of Heaven from the primarily European-descended class previously in control, but it has done virtually nothing worth admiring or even respecting. As Venezuela collapsed at their hands, they looted the country, seemingly convinced that their actions were fair based on the centuries they spent kept from the halls of power. Their primary motivation was vengeance, not justice, and I see many of those same undercurrents within the Woke faction amongst whites and non-whites alike. A functional and flourishing society cannot be built on vengeance and resentment. Would the capture of America’s institutions by this faction lead to a similar outcome as that which we have seen within Venezuela? This is a question we should not wish to answer.
My concerns regarding the Woke movement’s opposite are focused not so much on perceptions of their desires for vengeance against an elite they feel has betrayed them– though intense vindictiveness is certainly something one should be wary of– but the fact that their potential capture of the national apparatus and insistence on the importance of white control of institutions could recreate the closed, stagnant caste structure that has plagued the countries of Latin America for centuries. The danger here, additionally, is that this faction often disguises beliefs in white superiority and purity under the guise of arguments in favor of merit and fairness to appeal to a white majority that does not share its extremism. No one can deny the impacts, both positive and negative, of European contributions to global civilization, but the emphasis on purity is ironic and farcical given what our study of ancient DNA has revealed. Europeans themselves are Mestizos and Pardos, having been forged from the admixture of three separate racial groups thousands of years in the past: the Western Hunter-Gatherers of Europe, Early European Farmers migrating from Turkey, and the pastoralists of the Indo-European migrations. I find it likely that the reassertion of a notion of white superiority and control in a country as diverse as the United States would recreate the low-trust, extraction-based model of public and elite relations first imposed on Latin America during the Spanish conquest. This development would also fly in the face of the overwhelmingly positive demographic trends presently occurring.
Intermarriage rates across all ethnic and racial groups in the United States are rising. These statistics represent a strong signal that the psychological boundaries of the ingroup are expanding more and more to encompass a wider variety of Americans. Just as the Catholic Church in Western Europe was able to generate greater pro-sociality and solidarity amongst Europeans by eviscerating the clan structure of Europe’s tribes via the banning of cousin marriage– a fascinating subject explored in Joe Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World– voluntary love marriage has the capacity to achieve the same within the United States. To do so, however, Americans must stop holding up the European world as the pinnacle of civilization. Instead, we should view it as a parent, one whose influence is profound, but who is ultimately distinct from the child. And shouldn’t the desire of the father and the natural destiny of the son coincide on this mission: the pursuit and accomplishment of great feats by the youth that are grander than those of the previous generation? A Western Hemisphere that finally recognizes that the most defining aspects of its many cultures arise from the delicate interplay of European, Amerindian, African, and Asian influences is one that can begin to move confidently in the world, secure in its identity. What I called the Neo-Atlantean identity in my first essay a year ago is, at its core, Afro-Eurasian or, put simply, American. Shifting the way people across the hemisphere view their relationship to the Western world should not be too difficult of a feat. After all, the history of the West is the history of civilizational succession–with the clearest examples being the transitions from Greece to Rome and Rome to Christendom. Charlemagne was a Frank, not a Roman, and yet he still inherited the title of Augustus and emperor long after the western empire had fallen.
III. Contours of the Neo-Atlantean Elite
The American public has sought a change in the composition of its elite since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. It feels like a distant memory now, but Obama rose to the presidency voicing the public’s concerns regarding the country’s trajectory since the end of the Cold War. He drew tremendous support from midwestern voters who had been on the receiving end of the assaults on America’s productive capabilities via the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the establishment of permanent normal trade relations with China. The chaos unleashed through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with a greater awareness of world history due to his international background, made Obama much more anti-war and skeptical of American involvement in foreign affairs than the post-1991 American elite. Unfortunately, he cared too much for the approval of the elite circles he joined and was either unwilling or unable to make the structural changes to the economy and foreign policy he had promised during his campaigns. On the cultural front, many Americans found themselves unprepared for and openly hostile to the US’s first non-white president.
Though the average person may believe there were significant differences in opinion between Barack Obama and Donald Trump, this is simply not true and it stems primarily from their opposing positions on cultural issues. Trump’s personal rivalry with Obama and perpetuation of the birther movement disguised profound similarities in the way the two men viewed the country’s post-Cold War trajectory and history of foreign intervention. Like Obama, Trump received significant support from midwesterners who had suffered the consequences of American deindustrialization. Many of those individuals had eagerly supported Obama in his early years, but disillusionment with his administration’s inability to change the structure of the American economy pushed them into the camp of his greatest rival. Trump used his GOP opponents’ support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to politically dismember them. He also showed much greater awareness of the history of American intervention abroad than the standard Republican in an interview with Bill O’Reilly in 2017 where, in response to O’Reilly referring to Vladimir Putin as a killer, Trump said, “You think our country’s so innocent?”. Even on questions regarding relations with strategic partners, both Obama and Trump were deeply aligned. In a 2015 essay in The Atlantic titled The Obama Doctrine, Obama called many of America’s global partners free riders that had to be coerced into acting as effective allies. Trump merely took more abrasive approaches with the US’s counterparts when in office.
Several common threads ran through the administrations of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. If the two were so aligned on subjects such as these, what is the nature of the conflict between the movements that emerged under their administrations? Ultimately, the social chaos of the last 14 or so years has been about the nature of America’s cultural identity. Those of you who have read The New Atlantis are familiar with my claims that the countries of North and South America have always been defined by the extensive cultural fusion from diverse sources they experienced. Early colonial histories confirm these notions. However, a significant portion of the United States has operated under a different understanding of the country’s character. For these individuals, the United States is best understood as a “New Europe”— with the growing non-European diversity of the country bringing deep anxieties they have about their place within a rapidly changing society to the forefront. The election of America’s first non-white president crystallized these feelings. They fear, above all, replacement and it is for this reason that the Neo-Atlantean framework, with its ability to assuage these concerns, is so crucial for the success of the American experiment. We are not witnessing replacement, but fusion, and a shift towards a more historically accurate understanding of the true character of the United States.
Though many did not recognize it for what it was at the time, America has already experienced a proto Neo-Atlantean movement. I am referring to the candidacy of Andrew Yang for the presidency in 2020. Perhaps some of the most telling aspects of Yang’s candidacy were his affirmation of his American identity over his more specific racial identity and his refusal to describe America’s problems using the language and concepts dominant within identity politics frameworks despite his obvious minority status, preferring instead to weave a narrative of unprecedented technological change revolutionizing the country. Discussions about the accuracy of this narrative or the feasibility or desirability of a universal basic income– Yang’s signature policy proposal– are missing the forest for the trees. Yang’s candidacy demonstrated something quite intriguing; there are a significant number of American elites across industries that are open to, if not undeniably in favor of, a break from the extreme left-right duopoly hashing it out in the political arena. As James Burnham noted in The Machiavellians, elite shuffling in a society is typically only partial. One faction of the elite identifies a rising coalition and absorbs it, ousting the elements in opposition. And the elites that backed Yang are certainly influential enough to assist in the execution of such a maneuver.
From the rising technological elite, Yang received endorsements from Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX), Jack Dorsey (Twitter/Square), Alexis Ohanian (Reddit), and Tony Hsieh (Zappos). From the cultural elite, icons such as Dave Chapelle, Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, Norm Macdonald, James Gunn, Anita Baker, and Van Jones pitched their support. Traditional and populist conservative figures have likewise expressed admiration of or openness to Yang’s coalition and ideas, including Jeb Bush, Gregory Mankiw, Tucker Carlson, and Geraldo Rivera. If Wokeness is the thesis and its counterpart is the antithesis, the Yang coalition demonstrated the contours of a potential synthesis of both visions. I believe Yang perceives the situation in a similar way; his current efforts are focused on transforming the Forward Party political action committee into a new political party. I am inclined to believe that there is a reservoir of vast, untapped mass support waiting for someone who is able to make the proper adjustments to this initial run and more effectively and aggressively press its case. Surveys during the 2020 primaries indicated that Yang was one of two candidates most capable of converting support from Trump’s base.
Any conversation about elite politics in the United States is incomplete if it does not take into account the positioning of Peter Thiel, the tech industry’s most famous contrarian. Thiel’s open support for the Trump campaign in 2016 set him apart from the vast majority of Silicon Valley’s voters. It is worth understanding what exactly Thiel wants out of his forays into politics and whether his talents for capital allocation could be realigned towards a different cause. Though I harbored doubts that this realignment could occur, a conversation with a friend persuaded me that there is perhaps an opportunity here that I could not perceive before. I came out of this conversation on Thiel thinking that the three major outcomes he hopes to achieve through his political acts are:
the preservation of values and ways of thinking inherited from Western civilization,
a return to the deep collaboration between the private and public sectors that defined Silicon Valley’s birth, and
the prevention of institutional dysfunction and decay through the “Woke” lowering of standards of excellence in the name of diversity.
All three of these goals are better fulfilled through the adoption of the Neo-Atlantean framework embodied by Yang’s candidacy. Viewing the Americas as the latest successors to the Western tradition allows us to hold on to the most valuable contributions of that world while creating enough space for innovations that emerge from the synthesis of other cultural influences with the country’s Western foundation. During his campaign for the presidency, Yang regularly spoke of the importance of cooperation between the tech industry and the government, going so far as to say it was a matter of national security that the US provide as much support to American tech companies in fields like artificial intelligence as the Chinese Communist Party does to its homegrown tech behemoths. Finally, there is a compromise with regards to the prevention of institutional dysfunction and decay that may ameliorate the concerns of both Thiel and his opponents. Currently, Asian Americans in the US demonstrate high levels of educational attainment and professional excellence that allow them to contribute significantly to the organizations they join. Their inclusion in elite institutions and companies would not compromise their output and could ensure that a greater variety of opinions be represented at the highest levels of American society. Inclusion of other minorities within these organizations could occur through decades-long processes of educational and professional development supplemented by intermarriage. Ultimately, alignment with the culturally libertarian and industrially/technologically-focused Yang movement also seems like a better cultural fit for Thiel than striking an alliance with Evangelical voters and other social conservatives who have always viewed him with suspicion because of his sexual orientation. In the end, it may be that he does not feel sufficiently compelled by such arguments to shift his efforts, but the potential upside of convincing him is great enough to warrant an attempt.
I don’t know that Andrew Yang will be the one to marshal the representatives of these social forces into a coherent class capable of replacing our current crop of elites. His destiny may be to serve as a figure more akin to John the Baptist, evangelizing and preparing the country for someone who is able to complete the initial vision. Even if it is not him, though, I have an idea of the populations from which such a person might arise. The American writer Wesley Yang posited, during the Andrew Yang campaign, that Asian Americans– having suffered intense discrimination and outsized economic success– could play the role of mediator in American political life. The argument is essentially that those of Asian descent have felt the entirety of the American experience and thus are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between white and black Americans. Though this observation is an important one, it is incomplete. There are not enough Asian Americans in the country for them to act as effective mediators by themselves. There are, however, two other groups that could cooperate with them in this role. Hispanic immigrants to the US have followed a similar trajectory to their Asian counterparts, though on a demographically broader and more economically modest scale. The increasing numbers of mixed-race/ethnicity Americans, meanwhile, serve as a powerful reminder that the conflicts and social paradigms of the past do not have to dictate the shape of the future. Together, these three groups could serve as national mediators while allying with center-right and center-left white Americans alienated from the extremes and black Americans who both reject the condescension and paternal racism of the Woke movement and are deeply aware of the threat the white nationalists pose. Such a political coalition could form a new national center capable of serving as a stable foundation for the country while it transitions into the America of The New Atlantis.
It is not lost on me that there are two crucial traits that characterize the potential mediators. First, they are largely newcomers to the United States. These individuals are enlivened by the optimistic stories of America they encountered in their homelands and unburdened by the weight of American history. Second, this collective bears significant influence from individuals who embody and transcend the contradictions of the American experience. A mediating figure capable of bringing the vision of the New Atlantis to fruition must emerge from this place– America’s racial frontier far from the black-white paradigm that has dominated its history. Such a movement should only be transitory. The eventual goal should remain the dissolution of America’s various tribes, with Hispanics and Asians– the two groups exhibiting the highest rates of intermarriage in our society– acting together as the substrate that binds the country. Intermarriage offers white and black Americans something as well: psychological relief and escape from the weight of history. Just as the modern British are an amalgamation of the various European groups that made their way to the island, the American of 3000 A.D. could be a blend of all the disparate races that have found themselves on this vast continent. For our purposes, though, it is enough to simply reach a state in which Americans at the level of the family are deeply interlinked with fellow citizens of diverse origins.
Of course, there is another end result that we must consider. Though I do not believe it is their first choice, it is possible, and maybe even quite likely, that the white nationalist movement of the extreme right would be willing to admit Asians and Hispanics into American “whiteness” if they were willing to preserve something similar to the black-white divide of the past. I do not doubt that many immigrants to the US would secretly be fine with such a trade. It is also not socially far-fetched; I have watched my own status in America shift before my very eyes over the last 26 years. When I was a child in Kentucky, it was clear that I and other Hispanics were separate from the American mainstream. By the time I reached university, my induction into social whiteness was halfway complete. Now, living in a state where Hispanics are a major part of the social fabric, I have felt the process end. I am regularly perceived by even white Americans not as an ethnic minority, but simply as an American. Given the experiences of discrimination many recent arrivals to the US endure, it is entirely understandable that the prospect of acceptance into the majority at the expense of a minority would be enticing to them. I, at times, have felt this siren song myself. But such a path is the wrong one, morally and politically. The assimilation of Asians and Hispanics into whiteness while preserving some form of the black-white divide would lead to significantly adverse social outcomes. These new “beige Americans”— as some theorists have called them— might feel less responsibility for the conditions foisted upon the American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS), arguing perhaps that their ancestors both overcame intense discrimination and are not responsible for the sins of slavery and the Jim Crow era. In response, a black minority might become ever more desperate in its attempts to escape its social and economic position. Thus, America’s cycle of racial violence would begin anew.
It will not be easy to avoid such an outcome, but it must be done. Resigning ourselves to a social structure reminiscent of the one in place at the time of America’s birth is an act fundamentally against the American spirit.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” - John F. Kennedy
The path to the New Atlantis faces many obstacles. We are aiming for nothing less than the shattering of America’s past racial structures and the refounding of the American project with all of its wonderful and inspiring promises extended to all of its inhabitants, as they always should have been. Only in doing this can America fulfill its destiny in the world.
IV. Embracing A Multipolar Order
The rise of the Neo-Atlantean elite to power in the United States would be a monumental step in the right direction, but it is, by itself, not enough. Without express constraints on the capabilities of these new elites, what is to stop them from following the paths of their immediate predecessors? In his analysis of the theories of Gaetano Mosca, an Italian political scientist from the early 20th century, James Burnham noted that “liberty is a condition for an advanced ‘level of civilization’” and “needed to permit the fullest release of the potential social forces and creative impulses present in society, and their maximum development”(Burnham p248). Furthermore, liberty requires a public opposition, for the “existence of a public opposition (or oppositions) is the only effective check on the power of the governing elite” (Burnham p248). It is vital, then, that legal innovations such as The Bill of Rights be preserved along with a wide distribution of technologies and weapons amongst the public that can curtail elite action domestically. Burnham’s analysis here, however, is incomplete because it excludes the role that inter-state competition plays in the regulation of elite activities. A ruling class is, above all, concerned with its own survival, and the threat of its removal by a hostile state forces it to govern its population well so that the country is both healthy and productive enough to emerge victorious in the event of a war. These truths, once obvious, have been forgotten since the United States prevailed over the Soviet Union, but they dominated the thinking of early American statesmen.
Early American history was defined by its elites’ pursuit of security from external threats. The utter inability to produce manufactured goods during the Revolutionary War prompted figures such as Alexander Hamilton to promote the industrialization of the United States through proper statecraft. George Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793 and its long-lasting legacy could be read, likewise, as a policy akin to the protectionism of the infant industries models pursued by the East Asian Tigers in the latter half of the 20th century. The fledgling United States was nurtured and kept from international entanglements until its total population and productive capabilities had matured enough to compete with the European powers that dominated the global arena. Beyond these, I am inclined to believe that the promotion of the American System of internal improvements by Henry Clay, Kentucky’s most esteemed senator, and Abraham Lincoln, another Kentuckian and perhaps America’s most revered president, was motivated by a deep existential fear that Europe might one day turn its gaze towards the vast land and resources of the young republic across the sea. The lesson that must be taken from all of this is that the elite must live with a constant, but healthy, existential fear if they are to be incentivized to act with good intentions. Classical history, too, supports this notion. Is it not telling that Rome’s political dysfunction and elite and public polarization began after its only true peer, Carthage, was crushed in the final years of the Second Punic War? The cracking of the American unipolar order presaged by the Russian-Ukrainian War and the rise of China and India is not a sign of America’s terminal and unavoidable decline. The coming multipolar order is the single best opportunity for the United States to experience a rebirth of excellent governance and internal development. And it is under these conditions that America’s true role in the world system can finally be embraced.
There are two parts that the United States under a Neo-Atlantean elite must play in order to usher in a new age of prosperity for the world. First, it must direct its attention away from the far reaches of the planet and to its own hemisphere. The recognition and full embrace of its own Afro-Eurasian identity at the elite level has the capacity to trigger a revolutionary social transformation amongst the countries of Latin America. For all that Latin American elites might speak of their hatred for their northern gringo neighbors, the truth is that they follow American trends and mimic American attitudes almost religiously. I have observed this behavior closely; the three years I spent in Mexico amongst the children of local elites showed me they love to consume American cultural products, parrot American attitudes, and vacation in the United States. Social transformation in the US– accelerated via social media and global telecommunications– would trickle down into the region, eventually leading to the upending of the caste structure that has stifled its development and prosperity. Neo-Atlantean elites would find allies amongst disaffected individuals of local ruling classes who have long had to abide by the stiff constraints of a stagnant, degenerate cultural order.
It is in the interests of elites on both sides to pursue this path. For the US, the dismantling of the inherited racial structures of Latin America would have profoundly beneficial effects. Illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America cross the border into the United States because they correctly perceive that the US has a far more open social and economic system that can afford them a greater opportunity for upward mobility than what they would have in their home countries. When the violent acts of the cartels and other criminal organizations present within the region are taken into account, it becomes evident that these immigrants are merely responding to incentives. Crushing these criminal organizations while dismantling the closed systems that restrain upward mobility in Latin America would lead to decreases in the immigration flows that are destabilizing the US’s political order since immigrants would not feel compelled to leave their newly stable and open societies. Creating more opportunities for upward mobility, good governance, and general prosperity within Latin America itself becomes even more important when we think about the potential effects that future climate events might have on the people living in the region. If the US wants to avoid scores of climate refugees flooding into the country from the south, it should take a more active interest in seeing the region progress.
Prospective Latin American elites also have much to gain from such an arrangement. Providing more avenues for ambitious individuals to rise within their societies would have profoundly transformative effects on the prosperity of the region. Elite alignment between the US and Latin America could also open the door for manufacturing and other industrial processes to be moved from Asia to the Americas, accelerating the entire hemisphere’s economic and technological development and improving its self-sufficiency while decreasing the risk to all countries involved that major events –like pandemics or wars– might fracture critical supply chains. The implementation of such policies would mark important changes in the way the two sides have traditionally dealt with each other. For valid reasons, there are many people in Latin America that do not trust the US government. Historically speaking, the Monroe Doctrine was deeply predatory and regional anti-communist actions during the Cold War destroyed many lives. But the past does not have to determine the course of the future. There are reasons to believe that a Neo-Atlantean elite in the US would be heavily disincentivized from following the path its predecessors paved. For one, this rising elite’s attitudes regarding foreign military adventures would be deeply influenced by the experiences of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m inclined to believe they would want to avoid similar traps in countries such as Mexico and Venezuela, which are substantially closer to the US’s territory. Furthermore, developments in military technology are allowing small groups of people to wield asymmetric levels of violence against larger opponents. Deterrence against foreign aggression in such an environment would be substantially easier to enforce than in the past. Finally, the reality is that the coming multipolar order will host a number of powerful states vying to penetrate their peers’ spheres of influence. The US will remain a powerful state, but negative actions against its neighbors could be balanced via assistance from other states such as China or India. I don’t believe any of this will be necessary though. The countries of the Americas are more similar to each other than they are to any others around the world. There are over one billion Americans– in the continental sense– stretching from the northernmost regions of Canada to the southernmost tip of Argentina. Why shouldn’t they band together to compete against the emerging civilization-states around the world that likewise have populations numbering over one billion?
In his essay Chronopolitics & American Statecraft, writer Ahmed Eldakhil of Post Apathy divided the states of the world into three categories depending upon their relationship with time. The category of the historical state, which he wrote included countries such as China, India, Turkey, and Russia, were those that were each rooted within “a distinct timeline of events and narratives that not only define their historical origins but influence their contemporary political decision-making and therefore their future trajectory”. The suspended states, effectively those found on the European continent, were those that view themselves as post-historical entities. Their elites no longer dream of new futures for their populations and they rely largely on the United States for protection and direction. On the far end of the spectrum are the futurist states, with the United States exemplifying “the futurist state par excellence” that, because of its youth and founding through dual political and industrial revolutions, is one of the nations “least tethered to history”. Though they are not mentioned in the essay, the countries of Latin America likewise belong to the category of futurist states. They were born of globalization and the populations and cultures that have emerged there are, with their northern neighbors, the newest in the world. But they, like the United States, are prevented from reaching their full, futurist potentials by the racial and social structures they inherited from their colonial eras. After these historical shackles are finally released, these countries can play the role they were always meant to– to serve as the vanguard of humanity into the future.
The lack of deep historical burdens in the Western Hemisphere along with the influx of influences from across the world means that the citizens of the Americas can experiment more freely and take greater risks than their counterparts in the Old World. The Americas will generate and test ever more ideas and technological creations that the historical states across the planet can choose to apply depending on their needs. This global order mirrors the barbell investment strategy of minor extreme risk taking and major hyper-conservatism Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized in his books The Black Swan and Antifragile. By allocating a minority of resources to high risk investments while allocating a majority of resources to hyper-conservative investments, humanity can ensure that it captures as much of the upside of its decisions as possible while minimizing its exposure. To clarify, I am not envisioning a sort of technological imperialism flowing out from the Americas to the rest of the world. There are proven methods of industrialization that historical states can and should pursue on their own terms. That being said, there are certain ideas and creations that might be so potentially disruptive to the social orders of these states that their testing would be better left to those without millennia of tradition. Depending on the results of these experiments, the historical states could choose to apply them if they so desired. The vast diversity of the historical states in existence and their tendency to apply these new American technologies in unique ways depending on their values, meanwhile, would ensure that human civilizational diversity blossoms into the future, preventing the formation of a global monoculture and making humanity as a whole more antifragile.
This dream of the Americas and their place in the global order has consumed my thoughts for well over a year now. I know that it is possible to build it and to usher in a new hemispheric golden age. There are many pieces of the puzzle that remain to be solved. Constructing a new civilization is not a task that can be done alone; we must all make the decision to create a better future together. In doing so, we will see the image of the United States as a shining city on a hill flourish and grow into an image of the Americas as shining continents across the sea.
You might like "The Seventh Millennium: A Look at Life's Possibilities in the new age before us. See here: shorturl.at/ayFXY -- especially the parts about elite overproduction and the need for a new counter-elite. Also, for propulsion, this essay: shorturl.at/cwBRX