Mortal Splendor: THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IN TRANSITION by Walter Russell Mead(Houghton Mifflin: $19.95; 381 pp.)

Most Americans, clinging to an innocence of yesteryear, would probably be surprised to learn that there is an American empire whose hegemony extends over the non-Communist world. And just as they might be getting used to the idea (there’s nothing like American flags protecting Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf to confirm this point), along comes Walter Russell Mead with the news that it’s all over. We may be the shortest-reigning empire on record.

In “Mortal Splendor,” Mead chronicles and forecasts what he calls “the basic political fact” of our times--”the decline, and ultimately, the fall of the American Empire.” He does so with an impressive and insightful grasp of history.

The American empire, says Mead, emerged from a World War II bargain: “Britain Ltd. and France SA rejected a hostile takeover bid from Germany and called in the United States as a ‘white knight’ suitor.” It signaled the end of European colonialism. After the w1634872352and its bloc--took its cues from the United States.”

Empire, Mead reminds us, “breeds resistance; all of history bears out this statement. The American Empire is no exception; political and military movements opposed to American power have sprung up on four continents since the Second World War. There is no reason to suppose that such development will cease in the years to come.”

Mead faults both liberals and conservatives for their inability to grapple with the problems confronting a declining empire. He characterizes Jimmy Carter as “the accountant of decline,” a believer in simple idealism who didn’t realise that his Democratic predecessors--Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson--had been just as deceitful as Nixon.

In reaction to the ambiguity of the Carter years, Ronald Reagan and the American right came to power. They were at least clear about what they wanted to do. Mead characterizes their message to the Third World as follows: “Pay off your foreign loans, cut back on your social spending, and allow the continued exploitation of your labor and raw materials by foreign-owned companies.” And he adds: “It can be no surprise that a government with such a program is desperately worried about the spread of international terrorism.”

The triumph of Reaganism was accompanied by a revival of apocalyptic thinking, which is, Mead points out, “characteristic of social groups that see no clear way into the future; it is a world view characteristic of a dying class.”

According to Mead, the decline of the American empire has continued no matter who has been in the White House. “Nixon attempted to outmaneuver the forces of decline; Carter tried to make peace with them; and in both cases the realities of American decline destroyed the political power of the administration. It fell to Reagan to discover how the United States could, temporarily, be governed even as the process of decline accelerated.” What Reagan did, says Mead, is simply to declare disasters--return of Vietnam POWs, receptions of Iranian hostages--victories. “These celebrations provide a focus for national pride, but they should not be confused with the achievements of an empire on the rise,” notes Mead.

Mead concludes that the “United States appears firmly committed to a policy that risks defeat for the empire and disaster for the nation” and that “the outlook for democracy in the United States is not good.”

Eighty percent of “The Mortal Splendor” is devoted to such ruminations. Even Mead is depressed by his analysis. And so in the last section of his book, he tells us how we can avoid the fate of Rome. His basic prescription is to make common cause with the peoples of the Third World. He makes the dramatic point that the people who today are subjects of the American empire live in a “single economic and political entity that is more interdependent than the thirteen colonies were in 1776.” However, most of those people have little or nothing to say about what goes on in the government of the empire (the United States). That won’t work in the future, warns Mead, any more than the United States could work half-slave, half-free or as a house divided against itself. The aim of the United States, he insists, should be to become “ primus inter pares in a kind of global commonwealth.”

The most important step in that direction, says Mead, is to raise wages in the Third World, not so much for moralistic reasons but because it would be healthy for our bank accounts. He refrains from specifying how this could be accomplished, but he asserts that it’s crucial for it to be done. He anticipates the arguments that would be raised against this proposal, mainly that it would produce virulent inflation. They are similar, and just as invalid, he maintains, as the arguments raised a century ago against proposals to reduce working hours and regulate the use of child labor. The gains in this case would be similar, says Mead--and they would be gains for the whole world. “Low-wage societies generally experience the kind of decadence associated with great contrasts between wealth and poverty. High-wage societies tend to place a greater value on individual life and human dignity than do low-wage ones.”

Mead also argues that the logical implementer of his program is the Democratic Party. His conclusion therefore constitutes a would-be manifesto for the Democrats. Ergo, if a Democratic candidate in the near future advocates that workers in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore get wage hikes raising them to the level of a steelworker in Pittsburgh or an aircraft worker in Los Angeles, the source of that idea will be clear.

Mead has, I think, much to teach all of us. He challenges our memory of history. He’s worth reading for his asides into what has gone into the making of American society. To cite just one example, he paints a telling portrait of the Eastern, Anglo-Saxon Establishment that played a major role in the liberal coalitions of the 20th Century. Many of these Establishment figures, he relates, were educated in the classics by Endicott Peabody at the Groton School in New England. From Groton came the Auchinclosses, the Biddles, Morgans and Du Ponts, plus Franklin D. Roosevelt (class of 1900), W. Averill Harriman (class of 1909), Sumner Welles (class of 1910) and Dean Acheson (class of 1911). Their influence has steadily declined. “Acheson,” says Mead, “would have certainly preferred turning over the State Department to his housemaid’s son than seeing Richard Nixon in charge of foreign policy.”

Mead was an honor student at Groton during the turbulent 1960s while his father, a Southern clergyman, was active in the civil rights movement. He was graduated from Yale and then became director of the Upward Bound program in Lowell, Mass. This is his first book.