Greatest Nation Questions

Which is the greatest nation on earth?

Well, there are lots of ways of answering this. We could look at legacies from ancient history, and choose Egypt, Iran, Greece or Italy. Or more recent history at retaining independence or avoiding invasion and choose Thailand or even Afghanistan. Doing well after independence might favour Botswana.

Natural beauty might lean us towards Norway or Austria or even Indonesia. Retention of ethnic diversity would suggest Papua New Guinea. More literally, Russia has the largest land mass and Nepal the highest mountains.

Culturally, Bach was from Germany, Monet from France and Shakespeare from England. But Argentina gave us their tango.

Australia has always punched above its weight at sports. But if we take sport down to its most fundamental, Jamaica’s sprinters or Kenya’s marathon runners have a claim.

Socially, we could take Canada for its tolerance, New Zealand for its balance, Uruguay for its progressiveness, Sweden for its female emancipation, Switzerland for its quirky local democracy, Bhutan for its happiness index or Denmark for its overhyped hygge. Singapore leads once again on recently published PISA education statistics, followed by Estonia. Japanese live the longest after people from Monaco, while Ukraine might be the most equal. Costa Rica has a great renewable energy performance.

Economically, China’s recent development has been amazing, but Qatar has the highest GDP per capita.

If we wanted to be really radical, we might choose Antarctica as the place humans have managed to mess up the least so far.

The last answer is the only meaningful one that any alien could come up with, and the one that reveals what a pointless question this is. Just like trying to identify the greatest corporation, or religion or song or painting, context is everything. If I was not so ignorant of most of the world, I could probably make a claim for every nation that ever existed.

Even the USA. The US still has a narrow lead in total GDP and a large one in military might, though the latter has not led to many triumphs, at least recently. Culturally, there are great cities. American firms rank among the world’s most successful innovators too. A claim based on values would be on rather shakier ground. But for sure, the US is a great nation and New York is a great city and I feel honoured to spend time here.

I was drawn to the question by a recent poll quoted in the Economist, which asked citizens of many countries if they thought their own nation was the greatest on earth.

You may not be too surprised by the results. Less than 10% of people from most places considered their own land the greatest – France even scored 0%. But the score in the US was 60%. More than half of those polled thought their nation was the greatest.

The reason, in my opinion, is simple. People here are conditioned to believe it.

The world is regularly portrayed as a sort of playground or colony to Americans. US products are routinely described as the best in the world, with no evidence, indeed no likelihood than any comparison outside US borders has been attempted. This week, we have been invited to buy the world’s softest pyjamas, of all things.

I actually cheered last week on Thursday Night Football when (amidst the usual glorification of the military and references to world champions of a sport nobody else plays) a venerable commentator described a barbecue joint in Kansas City as perhaps the finest in the US. This was a departure – commentators would nearly always claim the joint to be the finest in the world. Well done, Al Michaels.

Time Magazine, who should know better, publishes an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world. Invariably, over half are Americans. Now it is fair enough that a US magazine should see mainly US people in its sphere of influence. But I would have expected just one small reference in four years to this context, and the possibility, however small, that someone in Johannesburg or Kuala Lumpur might come up with a different list.

Does this matter, or is this just a bitter old pedant having a moan or even expressing some jealousy? Well, indeed belief and pride have an upside. They create optimism, innovation and the ability to rally people around to an idea. Some of that has helped the US in the past, and its opposite arguably holds back some European nations.

But I believe that overall the belief of exceptionalism does serious damage, and I think the history of all fallen empires supports this claim. In the end, it happens to corporations and sporting superpowers as well. Groups of people who believe themselves inherently superior become arrogant, they fail to learn from outside, they try to impose flawed ideas on others, and eventually they implode.

The US really struggles to learn. I saw this in business whenever I was part of a team that included a US delegation – they spoke the loudest and listened the least. There is remarkably little US journalism or academia setting out to discover how the nation can learn from other nations.

US foreign policy has been a litany of imposing flawed ideas, or at least attributing false expectations to others about US values. Partners and allies become vassals and clients. The widespread assumption, right to the very top, that Iraqis or Venezuelans or Vietnamese would want to be invaded still amazes me, and the same mistake is repeated again and again.

The implosion starts when the fantasy starts to crack among its own subjects. If we really are the greatest nation, how could 9/11 happen, and how can it be that a generation grows up poorer than the previous one and in constant fear of unemployment or foreclosure?

If the premise is exceptional greatness, there can only be two explanations. Either the leaders are failing, or the very fabric of the nation is being infiltrated and weakened by outsiders. These are precisely the arguments used by Trump, and we saw in November how powerful they are. I fear that we’ll see in the coming years where they lead.

It will be hard to achieve, but the best advice for well-meaning leaders in the US would be to gradually wean the nation away from its delusion. It is hard because there are easy votes in building up the nation and personal risks to realism, such as attacks as someone who doesn’t love one’s country. It is telling that Hillary used her invited column in Time just before the election to laud US exceptionalism.

But it is feasible to change the mindset gradually. Few nations have achieved it without serial humiliations – Suez did quite a lot of good for the UK in the longer term. I predict a few humiliations over the next few years, which might help an honest coalition in four or eight years. For in the end, this delusion of greatness is truly toxic.