In an insight of extraordinary prescience, even though in a 19th-century context, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1835 "Democracy in America" that there were "two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but which seem to tend toward the same end" — Russia and the United States. "Their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."
When de Tocqueville wrote, Andrew Jackson was president of the United States and Nicholas I was emperor and autocrat of all the Russians. The western international boundary of the U.S. lay along the crest of the Rocky Mountains and the headwaters country of the Red River of the South; Alaska was still Russian America. No one could have predicted then the course each nation would take, and it is unlikely that, had de Tocqueville explored the details of his speculation, they would look anything like the modern history of either nation. Nonetheless, the 20th century saw the full realization of de Tocqueville's undefined but confident sense of destiny for the two countries.
It is not clear, though, that the 21st century will favor either of them. Despite President Trump's expressed determination to make America great again, internationally the United States is 45th in literacy, 36th in mathematical competence, 25th in science competence, 24th in reading competence, 49th in life expectancy, 27th in infant mortality, sixth in median household income, fourth in the strength of its labor force and second in the value of our exports. We lead the world in only three categories: the number of incarcerated citizens per capita, the number of adults who believe angels are real, and in defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are our allies. Moreover, our current president seems to have detached the United States from the most successful peace pact in the history of the modern world, viz., the European Union. The distance from the current data to "the greatest nation on earth" is, well, great.
At the same time, the Soviet Union, which was Russia's greatest achievement of power, has disintegrated. The current Russian Federation is 1.5 million square miles smaller than the former Soviet Union, which was 8.5 million. Russia's literacy rate is similar to the U.S., its infant mortality rates and life expectancy much worse. Although the U.S. ranks 41st on the world press freedom index, Russia ranks 148th. It ranks near the bottom of median household income. Leading a country much diminished, Vladimir Putin seems determined the make Russia great again, not unlike Donald Trump, whatever the cost in the personal freedom of its citizens or its respect on the world stage.
If America is not great, what made it great in the first place? Most Americans would say freedom and equality. Additionally, it's the conviction of many who would call themselves conservatives that limited government was the key, along with the absence of taxes. But the fact of the matter is that without government, there is no freedom. For as the writers of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, made very clear to a populace afraid of big government in 1787, without a government powerful enough to seriously restrain those who would callously manipulate and exploit the unsuspecting, illiterate and gullible, freedom is an illusion. As for equality, the civil rights revolution and the subsequent reassessment of our national history have demonstrated, equal rights, also, have been a figment of American imagination. Proclamations of equality without the law or the will to enforce them are, we have learned, convenient, and explosive, fictions. At the same time, throughout our history, Americans have understood the wisdom attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., viz., that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
As David Ramseur's new book captures wonderfully, there's an abiding affinity in Alaska for the people of Russia, especially far east Siberia. On a people-to-people basis, we have much to share. But in the area of national policy, the greatness of either country, de Tocqueville notwithstanding, is very much in jeopardy.
Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.