Panic in the Skies

Ever since it became a superpower, America has suffered from bouts of paranoia over its possible decline. But this time feels different.

China’s balloon is destroyed off the coast of South Carolina (AP: Feb. 4, 2023)

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.¹

This is the closing sentence of historian Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). Originally published in Harper’s Magazine, the piece continues to resonate today, and for good reason. It diagnosed a pathology that has followed American culture since its founding: the tendency toward paranoia.

When the United States assumed its role as a superpower, this culture of paranoia evolved into an anxiety over whether it was declining as a great power. The United States has gone through multiple waves of what can be called “declinist panics” ever since, despite its short history as a hegemon. The first one came in 1957 when the U.S. was surprised by the Soviet satellite Sputnik.

The panic, at least within media and politics, was palpable then. LIFE magazine called it an “impending national disaster,” comparing it to the Fall of Rome and the Nazi conquest of France.² “[It] has made us the laughing stock of the whole world,” remarked Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.³ President Lyndon B. Johnson recalled later how “now, somehow, in some new way, the sky seemed almost alien.”⁴

The U.S. has suffered many more waves like it since. Henry Kissinger developed his worldview and career from such feelings during the 1960s.⁵ Then there was the “crisis of confidence” during the 1970s, and later the fear over Japan potentially besting the U.S. economically during the early 1980s. Even right before the collapse of the Soviet Union, bestselling books argued that American decline was here.⁶ The 1990s were subsequently full of such debates: is American renewal coming, or is it really all downhill from here?

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington even distilled it down to a science in 1988: declinist waves come in cycles, there have been no less than five of them since the 1950s, and contrary to popular belief they are actually useful. They play “an indispensable role in preventing what they are predicting.”⁷ Funny enough, he switched over to the hard declinist camp just a few years later.

I recount this brief history to illustrate that declinist panics have been an excessive part of America’s short history as a superpower. They generally come from within the state and are then broadcast to the public. But the current panic over spy balloons and mysterious objects in the sky stands out as different for a variety of reasons.

So About That Balloon…

At the time of writing, the U.S. military has shot down four flying objects in the past two weeks. The first incident involved the entire nation watching a Chinese balloon fly over the country for a few days until it was destroyed upon reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Every one of these downings was announced as breaking news but with little detail, especially the last three, lending itself to speculation as to why this was all piling on out of nowhere.

The recent events have all the hallmarks of a classic declinist panic, but they're unlike past ones for a few key reasons. Firstly, there's been very little self-reflection on America’s possible decline this time around. Secondly, previous panics have not had to contend with the public being much more declinist than the actual state itself.⁸ Thirdly, the panic seems oddly misplaced given that actual, tragic symptoms of American decline have been visibly unfolding as of late, like the recent highly toxic train derailment in Ohio.

The panic appears partly motivated by a desire to shore up legitimacy during a time when it is at historic lows. So much was plainly said in The Atlantic, which called this a “huge opportunity” because “Beijing has given the United States a rare opportunity to rally public concern and build international solidarity.” That same author, Richard Fontaine, also wrote in Foreign Policy a week ago that “while no one could have predicted it, China’s balloon may well spur America’s awakening.”

"Awakening" from what exactly? Historian

Daniel Larison

unpacks this in his recent piece on his substack Eunomia, about how we are living through a time of persistent “threat inflation.” It reminds me of what Hofstadter said about paranoia in American life almost 60 years ago. Larison writes:

The belief that the U.S. may be “losing” its “lead” or even “falling behind” in the “competition” predictably causes irrational responses.

Hawks have been trying to scare the hell out the public about China for some time, and they are going to seize on every incident, no matter how minor or unthreatening, to do that. When policymakers and pundits have been fueling a rivalry by appealing to and stoking fear, they can hardly be surprised when many people are then excessively afraid of the threat that they have been exaggerating every day. Threat inflation can sometimes work so well that the fear it creates takes on a life of its own.

[…]

The U.S. doesn’t know how to respond to real or imagined threats with sobriety because our political culture is so saturated in constant fearmongering about foreign dangers. When hardline posturing is treated as proof of taking something “seriously,” it doesn’t take much to get an increasingly stupid bidding war going among our politicians as they try to outdo one another in their aggressiveness. If someone responds to a relatively minor incident with anything less than incandescent outrage, it is cast as evidence of “weakness” and lack of “resolve.”

You can read the rest here.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek once joked that nowadays, we want the thing without the actual thing itself: like coffee without caffeine or beer without alcohol. Similarly, right now we seem to have a political panic without the declinism. Instead, the public has to live with the actual realities of decline, while the state is panicked over something else entirely. Something is out of sync here.

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1. https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

2. LIFE magazine, vol. 43, No. 21 (Nov 18, 1957), pg. 125-133.

3. Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference (Government Printing Office, n.d.), pg. 161.

4. Arlin Crotts, The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pg. 66.

5. Kissinger said in 1962, “Fifteen years more of a deterioration on our position in the world as we have experienced since World War II would find us reduced to Fortress America in a world in which we had become largely irrelevant.” It was from a fear of decline that he developed his realpolitik worldview.

6. Historian Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (1988) was a surprise bestseller. Kennedy described the United States as “like an old man attempting to work beyond his natural strength.”

7. Samuel P. Huntington, “The U.S.: Decline or Renewal?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Winter, 1988), pp. 76-96.

8. A majority of polled Americans believe the United States is “heading in the wrong direction” and 70% have “little to no confidence” in either party’s ability to govern.