America's Brezhnev Years Are Over, Now Time For Something Worse

All writers have their old reliable warhorses to trot out there, and for years one of mine was the idea that the United States had entered its Brezhnev Years. I started blogging about it way back in the Dubya years, and in the early months of Trump’s first term I wrote my definitive account of the thesis.

In case you don’t know, Leonid Brezhnev oversaw the USSR in its years of decline. He helped push Khrushchev aside in 1964, and ruled until his death in the early 80s. During this time the Soviet Union appeared strong with thousands of nuclear missiles, a successful space program, a massive military, suppression of Prague Spring in 1968, and expansion of Soviet influence in both Central Asia and Central America. In the 1970s, when the United States was hit by stagflation, the Eastern Bloc was attracting foreign investment. The high oil prices that hurt the West benefitted the USSR, with its abundant reserves of black gold.

It all turned out to be an illusion. Beneath the military might, the standard of living stagnated. Soviet communism had once promised a bright future, now it stopped pretending it could offer that hope. A common joke among workers was “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” The system went on, but the belief in the underlying ideology of the Soviet system waned. When that system finally collapsed, it did so in large part because the majority no longer believed in Marxism-Leninism anymore.

Similarly, the United States post-Cold War had appeared to be strong, a world-striding colossus, even a “hyperpower.” The failed wars in the aftermath of 9/11 meant to confirm that power only exposed its weakness. In the 2010s “deaths of despair” rose and the stagnation and even decline in life expectancy mirrored similar trends in the late Soviet Union. Just as belief in Soviet ideology declined, more and more Americans lost their belief in democracy. Instead, they began to prefer a nihilism rooted in consumer values.

Donald Trump’s second election victory, which like the first cannot be considered a fluke, is that nihilism’s triumph. It is alarming to see him and Musk dismantle crucial aspects of the state in blatantly illegal ways and for them to rip apart the postwar political order with the support of purportedly conservative politicians and minimal pushback from the masses and the institutions. Many have been shocked or dismayed by this. I am too, but I am not surprised. Democracy is under attack, and right now I do not think that the majority of Americans consider it worth defending. The old regime is falling like a house of cards because like Soviet communism it does not retain the faith of its people.

When I made the Brezhnev Years metaphor, I did not necessarily believe that the United States would have a collapse like the Soviet Union’s. For a long time I assumed the American empire’s end would resemble the British empire’s. I figured there would be a long slow decline while the nation sat adrift without its old national identity. The US would still be an important nation, but more in terms of its lingering cultural influence than politically. Oh how wrong I was! Things are looking much more like the Soviet scenario. Heck, we are watching an oligarch loot state agencies as I write this.

Does this mean the American union will break as the Soviet one did? I mostly doubt that, since the Soviet republics were based on nationality, unlike the American states. The breakup of the USSR was, in reality, the end of the longer-term Russian empire. However, if states like California are going to pay a disproportionate share of the nation’s tax revenue and then have disaster relief denied to them I think all bets are off.

I want to be clear that I am not being entirely pessimistic here. Our old system was extremely flawed and had anti-democratic elements that right wingers have been exploiting, from packing the courts with reactionaries to changing voter qualifications to extremely gerrymandered districting. My most fervent hope is that out of this disastrous collapse we will be able to build something better in its place. However, that can only happen once we acknowledge the sad reality that there is no “return to normalcy” in the offing. The only way out is through. The Democratic leadership has failed to understand this, and so it’s on the rest of us to put our shoulders to the wheel to make what Abraham Lincoln called a “new birth of freedom.” Anything short of that is failure. We can look to modern Russia and its fate after imperial collapse to understand what’s at stake.