Emmanuel Todd, National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED)  (609) 734-8000, [email protected]

Emmanuel Todd 伊曼纽尔·托德 

伊曼纽尔·托德（1951 年 5 月 16 日）是巴黎国家人口研究所 (INED) 的法国历史学家、人类学家、人口学家、社会学家和政治学家。 他的研究考察了世界各地不同的家庭结构及其与信仰、意识形态、政治制度和历史事件的关系。 他还发表了多篇政治文章，在法国受到广泛报道。

mmanuel Todd

Emmanuel Todd (16 May 1951) is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. His research examines the different family structures around the world and their relationship with beliefs, ideologies, political systems, and historical events. He has also published a number of political essays, which have received broad coverage in France.

帝国之后：美国秩序的崩溃

https://books.google.ca/books/about/After_the_Empire.html?id=3zLXMV2HDWQC&redir_esc=y

伊曼纽尔·托德, 哥伦比亚大学出版社，2003 年 - 233 页

伊曼纽尔·托德的《帝国之后》一书受到广泛评论和批评，它预测美国正在丧失其超级大国地位，因为它背离了平等主义和普世主义的传统民主价值观，经济上远远入不敷出，并继续激怒外国盟友和敌人 及其军事和意识形态政策。 随着美国全球主导地位的消失，托德预见到一个将欧洲、俄罗斯、日本和阿拉伯伊斯兰世界联合起来的欧亚联盟将会出现。

托德冷静而直率地审视了许多负面趋势，包括美国对非洲裔美国人社会经济融合的承诺减弱、日益依赖烟雾和镜子和外国投资者善意的贪婪经济，以及浪费国家资源的外交政策。 其“软实力”储备的同时，其军国主义纵火消防行为却遭到越来越多的抵制。 这本原创而大胆的书由一位预见到苏联解体的人口学家和历史学家撰写，不容忽视。

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order

https://books.google.ca/books/about/After_the_Empire.html?id=3zLXMV2HDWQC&redir_esc=y

Emmanuel Todd
Columbia University Press, 2003 - 233 pages

Widely reviewed and critically praised, Emmanuel Todd's After the Empire predicts that the United States is forfeiting its superpower status as it moves away from traditional democratic values of egalitarianism and universalism, lives far beyond its means economically, and continues to anger foreign allies and enemies alike with its military and ideological policies. As America's global dominance evaporates, Todd foresees the emergence of a Eurasian alliance bringing together Europe, Russia, Japan, and the Arab-Islamic world.

Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of "soft power" while its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance. Written by a demographer and historian who foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, this original and daring book cannot be ignored.

America Needs the World More than the World Needs America

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ea/2004_winter/2004_winter_20.html

After The Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order

By Emmanuel Todd

Reviewed by Jacqueline Grapin

If Emmanuel Todd were not French, his views would be taken more seriously in the United States. His vision, however, should not be ignored. His latest book is intellectually provocative and provides an excellent opportunity for reflection on the transformation of American power and the evolution of the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world.

Although his views are often controversial, Todd has a good track record in forecasting political events. His first book, The Final Fall, predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union at an unexpected moment by closely analyzing birth and death rates, infant mortality rates, and literacy statistics. A demographer and a historian, Todd earned his PhD at Cambridge University in England and he is now a researcher at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. He looks beyond the short–term perspectives of journalism to analyze what he sees as underlying trends, outlining a vision of the future. From this standpoint, his writing is a healthy challenge to existing generally accepted perceptions.

Todd describes how the United States has moved from self–reliance at the beginning of the 20th century to current economic dependence, unwillingly becoming a “predator” in the global system. In 2000 the total amount of new money siphoned off by the United States from the rest of the world was 19 percent for stocks and 30 percent for bonds. “If we correlate the American deficit not with the global GNP that includes agriculture and services but simply with the total value of industrial production, we come to the stupefying realization that 10 percent of America’s industrial consumption depends on imported goods for which there is no corresponding balance in national exports. This industrial deficit has doubled in little over five years since it stood at 5 percent in 1995.”

Todd notes that this fall in economic strength is not compensated for by the activities of American–based multinationals. Since 1998 the profits that they bring back into the country amount to less than what foreign companies that have set up shop in the United States are taking back to their own countries.

Orthodox economic theory cannot explain the shrinking of American industrial activity, nor the transformation of the United States into a country whose specialty is consumption that relies on foreign imports. However Todd submits that “an imperial model of the Roman type does allow one to understand this process, namely as the economic consequences of a specific political and military organization.” He also demonstrates that there is a necessary correlation between increased U.S. economic dependence and the expansive growth of its military. In his view, however, the United States does not have the long term capacity to maintain such a system.

From his perspective, the U.S. struggle to be a democratic and economically independent nation was lost between 1995 and 2000. The imperial option, which is recent, is not the result of a strongly willed plan; rather it is the product of circumstances. The collapse of the Soviet system, while offering American leaders the momentary illusion of absolute power, led to the dream of establishing a stable, global hegemony. It did not result from a democratic debate, but from the tendency to choose the easiest solutions. The collapse of communism has permitted new and important countries to enter into this asymmetrical system of exchange. Today it is China, not Japan, which has the largest trade surplus with the United States.

“This voluntary servitude will only be sustained so long as the United States treats its partners fairly, or to be more precise, treats them more and more as members of the dominant central society as is consistent with one of the two basic principles of empire. The United States must win the periphery’s allegiance through its universalism – by its words as much as by its economic deeds – to the idea that ‘we are all Americans.’” But he adds: “Rather than feeling more and more American, we non–Americans are increasingly being treated as second–class citizens because, unfortunately for the rest of the world, a decline in universalism has become the central ideological tendency of America today.”

Todd’s thesis is that there will not be an American Empire in 2050 “because the United States simply does not have what it takes to be a true empire.” Two types of “imperial resources are especially lacking in the American case. First its power to constrain militarily and economically is insufficient for maintaining the current levels of exploitation of the planet; and second, its ideological universalism is in decline and does not allow it, as before, to treat individuals and whole peoples equally as the leading guarantor of their peace and prosperity.”

The question is posed whether universal terrorism is a myth. This expert predicts that cultural and demographic revolutions will be reducing population growth and spreading knowledge so that universal literacy will be achieved among younger generations by 2030 and a new global balance will be found. When higher literacy and lower birth rates, two universal phenomena, make possible the universalization of democracy, “the disturbances will disappear without the least outside intervention.” For him: “There is no global threat that requires an emergency response by the United States to protect freedoms. Only one threat to global stability hangs over the world today – the United States itself, which was once a protector and is now a predator.”

Todd subscribes to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s idea that so long as Europe and Japan are satisfied with American leadership, the empire is invulnerable. However “America’s clumsy tactlessness is not something out of the blue. Like the imperial option, it is the result of being lazily carried along, on the one hand, and short–term necessities, on the other.” Todd submits that the United States works to maintain the illusory fiction of the world as a dangerous place in need of American protection, but real America is too weak to take on anyone except military midgets such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The book shows how the return of Russia and the emergent autonomy of Europe and Japan may lead to the breakdown of the American order in the near future. He also demonstrates how “the micro military agitation of the United States is bringing about closer relations between the major strategic players – Europe, Russia and Japan.” In other words, exactly the opposite of what the United States should be trying to achieve if it really wants to be an empire. The nightmare behind Brzezinski’s vision could come true – Europeans trying to learn to walk without the help of the United States. The breakup of the old trilateral West would signal opportunities for China to position itself as a new power.

Europe is slowly becoming aware that Russia is no longer a strategic threat and is making a positive contribution to its military security. Once Russia, with its declining demography, becomes a harmless giant, Europeans and the Japanese may feel that they no longer need the United States as a protector. For the United States this would be a painful new scenario because it relies heavily on the industrial and financial resources of Europe and Japan. De facto, America's recent unilateralism may have accelerated such an evolution in Europe and moved the rapprochement between Europe and Russia irreversibly forward.

From this perspective, America’s real war is about economics not terrorism. Rather than reinforcing the image of America’s global leadership, its forced march into war has produced a rapid decline in the international status of the United States. Even though small in strictly military terms, the conflicts in which America is engaged are proving to be a serious economic burden when the “allies” no longer want to pay a major share of the costs as they did during the Gulf War.

Todd warns against the decline of universalism in the Anglo–Saxon world, “a decline that prevents the United States from having an uncorrupted vision of international relations and in particular from being able to deal decently and strategically well with the Muslim world.” From his perspective, the centrality of oil in U.S. strategy is illogical. America would be vulnerable in the event of an interruption of just about anything, so the centrality of the oil question has no rational economic explanation. Fear of an interruption of oil supplies should in no way lead to an obsession with the Middle East since there are alternative sources. However he notes: “The energy supply it seeks to control is not America’s but the world’s, and in particular the supply of the two poles that are both industrially productive and overwhelming exporters to the United States – Europe and Japan. Here the American foreign policy could indeed be described as imperial.”

Todd suggests that the United States may already have lost control of Iran and is in the process of losing Saudi Arabia. “The American fixation on the oil of the Muslim world has more to do with fears of being kicked out of the region than designs to expand its empire. It says more about the worries of the United States than about its power – a worry over the all too real prospect of overall economic dependence for which the energy deficit is only a fitting symbol, and second, a worry over the prospect of losing control over its two productive protectorates, Europe and Japan.”

In his preface, Michael Lind predicts: “The Europhobia of the American elite will not spare England which in many ways represents for them the very essence of Europe.” Emmanuel Todd notes that “the English are in a better position than all other Europeans to observe not just America’s faults, but its evolution. They are America’s closest ally, but they are also the group most subjected to the ideological and cultural pressure that crosses the Atlantic since they do not have the natural protection that the filter of a foreign language offers the Germans, the French, and others.”

For Todd, the neoconservatives will go down in history as “the grave diggers of the American empire.” He sees the chess game advancing slowly because each of the powers, not just the United States, has several fundamental deficiencies. “This is why there will be no final checkmate symbolizing the victory of one power but instead a stalemate formalizing the incapacity of any power to dominate the others.” Together, Europe, Russia, and Japan are two and a half times more powerful than the United States. In the long run Todd expects that “the strange behavior of the United States in the Muslim world will steadily push the three other powers of the northern hemisphere toward closer ties.” In this context, China appears as a silent power waiting for the mistakes and weaknesses of today’s “best and brightest” to bring their results.

Happily, Todd does not predict the immediate fall of the American Empire. He merely explains that America needs the world more than the world needs America, because the United States cannot “go it alone” any more. And he makes it clear that America’s unilateralism goes against its own interests. His view is that what the world needs is not that America disappear but that it return to its true self – democratic, liberal, and productive. What Emmanuel Todd does not say is what would happen if the United States did just that.

Emmanuel Todd: The paradox of America's fading empire

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/The-paradox-of-Americas-fading-empire3

EMMANUEL TODD  January 26, 2014 

The most important event of 2013 was the change in the relationship between the U.S. and Iran (through the nuclear talks). This is a major point. I have always said that a new kind of civil society has emerged in Iran, so there is nothing new as far as that country is concerned. The new American policy is a dramatic shift.

     My prediction of a decline in American power turned out to be absolutely correct. But what we are seeing is that this reduction in power is producing, at last, a more reasonable attitude toward the outside world. In the days of President George W. Bush, there was something unbearable about the U.S., about the idea that there is just one form of democracy with a specific type of financial capitalism, and that this must be extended all over the world. Perhaps the emergence of a new, more reasonable American foreign policy is important in terms of geopolitical balance. It means the risk of war and the risk of conflict, or hysterical conflict, is lower or nil.

     I was not very impressed by the election of Barack Obama as the first black president. I took it as a gimmick. At the time, there was a sort of panic over the financial collapse, and I thought the election was used to trick us into forgetting the incredible financial mess the U.S. produced.

     Obama's re-election was something different, however. The social security debate in the U.S., such as the one over Obamacare healthcare reform, is something very important to me. When you start discussing these things, people will tell you, "Look at how the tea party is taking control of the Republican Party." But I know that the tea party receives most of its support from Americans over 60, the aging generation.

     Perhaps the U.S. is again turning into something different. Perhaps we are on the verge of a new phase where America tries to think again in terms of equality. I have no conclusion, but one must not miss the turning points in history.

     It is obvious we need the U.S. and the American imperial system. The period from 1945 to perhaps 1980 was good for the "free world" when there was the Soviet threat. But after the Cold War, the U.S. was losing industrial might and tended to compensate by using military action. This produced negative reactions everywhere and produced the defeat or disaster in Iraq in the George W. Bush era.

     When Bush was in power, Americans became -- by pretending to be so militarily powerful -- completely repulsive. But as soon as they admit that their power is waning, people on the periphery of the empire can start worrying about a world without the U.S. Army. And what they imagine is not very pleasant. Once the U.S. acknowledges that it is not the ruler of the world, once it acts reasonably, then many, many nations will realize that they need the U.S. This is the paradox.

     Once the U.S. admits this, the decline in America's hard economic and military power will produce a rise in its soft power.

Russian diplomacy

I'm very happy to learn that the relationship between Russia and Japan is better. The Putin regime is domestically very tough, but when you consider the Russian role in international affairs, it is basically reasonable and positive. They're always on a balancing act and will act against too much power by anybody, and Russia is a positive element in world affairs. It was proved by the talks on Syria.

China's control issues

Many people will tell you these days that China will be the great power after the U.S. I do not belong to that school. No demographer believes in a brilliant or simple future for China, because of its demographics. We have learned that China is going to change its "one-child policy," but it is simply too late. We have no experience of this kind of demographic imbalance in a country of 1.3 billion people. A small country can make adjustments through immigration or emigration, but China is so big that there is no correcting what it has done.

     China was able to produce a Communist revolution, like Russia did, by strongly promoting equality among all people. What is happening now in China is a tremendous rise in inequality, more than in other countries. Development through exports of goods and imports of foreign capital, and China's transformation into the "workshop of the world" -- this was very much a decision taken by the oligarchies and capitalist system in the West. The Chinese Communist Party is a little like a rodeo cowboy trying to stay on a bucking horse. 

     It is quite unpleasant these days for Japan to be so geographically close to China (with the security tensions in the East and South China seas).

     I talked about this at a symposium in Kyoto in December 2013. I said China would use such tensions to ease domestic resentments and difficulties. I would say that, mentally, China seems much closer to the year 1900. You have a mix of basic literacy, economic takeoff and the collapse of traditional religion -- in this case communism. So the Chinese have a tendency to become over excited and therefore develop strong nationalistic attitudes. It would be ridiculous to overestimate China's military ability. If the U.S. and Japan stick together, there ought to be no problem.

Confusion in Arab countries

In the case of the Arab world, you have something very specific, a very close family system with the equality of brothers. The state is very weak because the authority patterns are diffuse.

     If the fertility rate is going down, it means that the whole sexual attitude and sexual relationship between men and women, will be changing, so there's always a moment of instability. I have a notion of almost unavoidable transition crisis. 

     In the Arab world, we are seeing revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and there is a dramatic problem in Syria. But this is no worse than what we experienced in Europe. If you compare everything that has happened in the Muslim world -- the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the revolutions -- to European history -- the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Nazism, fascism -- this is nothing. Europe was the place for people killing each other in the name of ideology. Things were much worse in Europe. What is happening in Syria, though, is on a European scale.

Europe: free to a fault 

Besides China, the other big problem in the world is Europe. There is a connection between free trade and the rise of inequality and, additionally, depression. There is so much pressure on wages in most developed countries. When you get close to actual free trade, what you have is economic war against all. As long as you can manipulate your currency, you can use what we call in French protection par le change -- "protection through currency management." But we cannot do this in the eurozone. Europe used to be a place with a preference for social and trade protection; now it is turning into a zone of raging free trade wars and maximum deflation.

     What we have is German industry destroying French, Italian and Spanish industries, and so on. Germans are charming people; their problem is that they are too efficient. You have Germany as a continental hanger-on and dominant power. It is like the story of the novel "Metamorphosis" by Kafka, in which a man goes to sleep and wakes up transformed into a giant bug. To me, this is a metaphor for what is happening to Europe. We went to sleep a community of free and equal nations and woke up as ... a hierarchy of nations with the Germans on top. Europe no longer is the continent of democracy. 

     In my book "After the Empire" I predicted the emancipation of Europe from the US correctly. What I had in mind is the emancipation and the Franco-German co-leadership. I even suggested in "After the Empire" that France should share her seat in the Security Council in the UN with the Germans.

     The problem we have in France is that the ruling class has a German inferiority complex. The French elite were just as responsible as Germany. The mess comes from France because the French elite first invented the Euro supposedly to have German bounded. In fact, the opposite happened.

     I make jokes about the French President Francois Hollande these days. There is a paradox that the French President is in constitutional terms the most powerful chief of the executive in the whole Western world. But the French Government has no control over monetary policy, the French President can do nothing. Do not take this as a personal thing against Hollande but I can no longer call him President, but Vice-Chancellor (i.e. vice Prime Minister in Germany) Hollande.

     Things are getting worse and worse in Southern Europe. What we have there is a collapse of social systems and democracy, and so much violence. The economy is supposed to save the currency, so we keep saving the euro. It is like a god, and you have to make sacrifices to the gods.

     I used to think the euro was bound to disappear. I'll probably be vindicated someday -- the euro will collapse and I'll be considered a major prophet. But I wonder what will happen over the next few years. The elite say the disappearance of the euro, the collapse of the euro, would be a complete disaster, that it is impossible.

     There was a time when I thought protectionism would be good for Continental Europe by pushing up wages and thereby increasing global demand. But I no longer think this is a viable option because of the attitudes of Germany and France toward trade. My preoccupation now is not protectionism; it is getting rid of the euro. Protectionism through currency management is my only real goal now. All I want is to move away from the ideology of absolute free trade. The French will protect their cinema. Americans will protect their military things. The Japanese will protect a lot of things.

In praise of Abenomics

I know Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are right-wing, and I'm just like any center-left person in Europe or the U.S., but I'm all for Abenomics. That is because the implicit goal of the policy mix is the welfare of the general population. I wish we had something like this in Europe.

     I have always been fascinated by comparisons of Germany and Japan. They have so much in common -- the same family structures, male primogeniture traditions, industrial traditions and emphasis on technology. These days, however, I'm fascinated by the complete divergence between the two.

     Germany has adjusted to free trade by placing maximum emphasis on trade. The country seems to be unconsciously going back to some kind of power politics on the European continent, organizing the eastern part as labor and using the western part as consumers and controlling the whole lot. In contrast, Japan is isolated, so there is no possibility for it to dominate and expand. But this also means Japan will try flexible monetary policies, which is rather the opposite. Now you have a flexible Japan and a rigid Germany.

     I'm instinctively against the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) because I think less free trade is the solution. I have always been under the impression that the TPP is a political thing; it is not free trade but regional trade. It leaves out China. I always thought the purpose was much more ideological than practical.

     When I think about Japan, the real problems I see are not with the economy but rather with the birthrate and aging population. These issues are much more important than the TPP.

    Japan is very different from France and Sweden. Though women in Japan can study and get degrees in higher education, they can work. There will be a contradiction between career and children. This is what must be solved and this is very difficult because it gets to the heart of the way of life.

Emmanuel Todd is a French historian and demographer at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques=INED) and the author of "After the Empire." This article is an excerpt of an interview with Mikio Sugeno, Nikkei senior correspondent for Europe.

Criticism
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The claim that the Empire is American is questioned as such by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their Empire. They claim that the origins of the Empire are in Europe, not in the United States, based on the emigration of scientists from Europe to the United States,[10] especially from Austria, during and around the Second World War.

Quotes

The idea that, under the pretext that a country is democratic, its citizens, after an internal debate, can legitimately decide to bomb the citizens of another country is an idea that will end up killing democracy. The United States is a greater danger to peace than Iran.

English translation

• The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, 1979, Karz Publishers, translated by John Waggoner (La chute finale: Essai sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique, 1976)

• The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social Systems, 1985, Blackwell Publishers, translated by David Garrioch (La Troisième planète, 1983)

• The Causes of Progress: Culture, Authority, and Change, 1987, Blackwell Publishers, translated by Richard Boulind (L'enfance du monde, 1984)

• The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture, 1991, Blackwell Publishers, translated by Anthony C. Forster (La Nouvelle France, 1988)

• After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, 2003, Columbia University Press, translated by Christopher Jon Delogu, foreword by Michael Lind[13] (Après l’Empire : Essai sur la décomposition du système américain, 2001)

• A Convergence of Civilizations: The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World with Youssef Courbage, 2007, Columbia University Press, translated by George Holoch[14] (Le Rendez-vous des civilisations, 2007)

• Who is Charlie? Xenophobia and the New Middle Class, 2015, Polity Press, translated by Andrew Brown[15] (Qui est Charlie? Sociologie d'une crise religieuse, 2015)

• Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus, 2019, Polity Press[16] (Où en sommes-nous ? Une esquisse de l'histoire humaine, 2017)