Birth of Nations

Say goodbye to the idea of America as one nation--and one market--indivisible under God. That’s the implicit acknowledgment of one of America’s defining institutions--McDonald’s. Specifially, the fast-food giant is reorganizing its U.S. operations into five relatively independent geographic divisions. The days of one hamburger, one America are gone.

McDonald’s primary anxiety, of course, is to find a way to fend off competition from Wendy’s and Burger King. But the underlying trends that forced the company to regionalize its restaurant decision-making are the same ones that make it increasingly difficult for other U.S. institutions to develop effective national strategies, including foreign policy and governance.

For better and worse, it is less and less possible for nationally minded elites, sitting in Washington and New York, to construct policies that simultaneously protect and promote the interests of Los Angeles, San Francisco and other emerging regional metropoles. Instead, a new, much more decentralized model of governance, one capable of accommodating the growing diversity of the American politico-cultural economy, must be developed. Short of that, the stage could be set for a series of economic and cultural civil wars pitting regions of the country against each other.

A rapid series of economic, social and technological changes, especially immigration and economic globalization, have transformed the United States into a microcosm of the world. The exceptional uniformity that characterized American society in the early post-World War IIperiod has been supplanted by extreme diversity. The most integrated national market in the history of the world is splintering into an array of niches.

Nevertheless, the idea that the United States is and will remain one nation with a common culture and a clear set of “national” interests is deeply ingrained in the American political psyche. It is a vision based largely on a myopic view of U.S. history.

The America that emerged after World War II was the product of a long process of nationalization. Its milestones were:

* The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the emergence of New York City as the commercial, financial and corporate capital of a highly integrated American industrial heartland stretching from Massachusetts to Illinois;

* The defeat of the South in the Civil War and passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the principle of equal rights to African Americans and established the primacy of national citizenship over state citizenship;

* The rise of the progressive movement and the development of Teddy Roosevelt’s “new nationalism,” which provided the intellectual foundations for the emergence of an activist national government;

* The homogenization of the American population following passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and the success of the “Americanization” movement;

* The rise of radio and, later, television, which helped to nationalize politics and popular culture;

* The automobile revolution that turned America into the most internally mobile nation in the world and spurred the development of a network of interstate highways;

* The Great Depression, World War II and the onset of the Cold War, all of which greatly increased the need for a strong centralized national government.

Today, the flow of U.S. history is moving in precisely opposite directions. National unity is being eroded from above and below.

* The national economy is becoming part of an integrated global economy and the primacy of the old industrial heartland is now challenged by the emergence of new economic centers in the South and the West, each with their own set of interests;

* The campaign for equal rights and integration has metamorphosed into a series of demands for the recognition and acceptance of social and cultural differences;

* The primacy of national government is challenged by more and more calls for new forms of global governance and efforts to return greater authority to states and localities;

* Immigration, legal and illegal, has eroded the homogeneity of the U.S. population and multiplied the connections between American society and other societies around the world;

* The communications revolution has simultaneously turned national media giants into global media mega-giants and spurred a proliferation of new forms of local and niche media;

* As a result of the air-transport revolution, it is now often cheaper and easier for someone in New York or Miami or Atlanta to travel to London that it is for them to get to a rural American town in Montana, New Hampshire or Alabama;

* Finally, with the end of the Cold War, there is no longer as much of a need for a vast national-security establishment.

Although this transformation is still in its infant stages, the shape of the future is becoming clear: America is destined to become a country of distinct, relatively independent regions, each with its own politico-cultural economies, metropolitan centers, governing elites and global interests.

It’s too early to predict the precise number and boundaries of these regions. Twenty years ago, in a book considerably ahead of its time, Joel Garreau described the “nine nations of North America.” Today, it seems he may have underestimated the number. Based on existing economic and demographic trends, it’s possible to imagine 20 or more core regions stretching across the country. The character of each region will be determined by the nature of its principal industries

the ethnic composition of its population, the political orientation of its dominant elites, and the extent and location of its global connections.

At present, this evolution is most noticeable and advanced along the southern and western borders of the United States. Metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle have already taken on distinct personalities and begun to develop quasi-independent economic strategies and foreign policies.

To better understand this, it is helpful to take a snapshot of those metropolitan centers anchoring evolving regions. In Atlanta, the most important forces are the global reach of its leading corporations, especially Coca Cola and Delta Airlines; the international visibility that comes from being the headquarters of CNN; the strong ties to developing countries created by the presence of the Carter Center, the Centers for Disease Control and CARE, the world’s largest relief organization, and the deep interest of the city’s African American majority in Africa.

By contrast, Charlotte is at the center of a new Southern industrial belt dominated by manufacturing and banking. While host to a large number of foreign companies and heavily involved in international trade, the city and its hinterland are still relatively homogeneous with a clearly dominant white majority, a substantial African American minority and few Asians or Latinos. Internationally, the region, including neighboring South Carolina, is most closely tied to Europe, especially Germany.

The future of Miami, with its special ambience and highly diverse Latino and Caribbean immigrant populations, is closely linked, on the one hand, to the international fashion industry, while, on the other, to developments in Cuba, Haiti and Latin America. Indeed, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that Miami now pays much more attention to Milan and Havana than it does to Washington.

In Houston, oil is still king, but the major topic of conversation there, as in the rest of Texas and the Southwest, is usually Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement. With Latinos, most of whom are Mexican Americans, slowly becoming the Lone Star State’s political majority, the region’s ties to its southern neighbor will inevitably proliferate; as they do, its culture and economic interests are bound to become ever more distinct from those of other parts of the United States.

With the decline of Aerospace, Southern California’s interests are more closely connected than ever to the global competitiveness of its entertainment and tourist industries, the continued growth of small- and medium-sized businesses mostly started by new immigrants, and its ability to maintain its position as the leading entrepot for U.S. trade with Asia. As home to the nation’s largest and most ethnically diverse immigrant community, Los Angeles and its surrounding counties are much more closely connected to the rest of the world than most other metropolitan regions--hence, much more likely to be affected by political developments in countries as far apart as Vietnam, China, Israel, Iran and Guatemala.

In the San Francisco Bay area, the future hinges on the ability of Silicon Valley to maintain its position as the capital of the world’s high-tech industry. In its efforts to maintain that preeminence, the region’s computer makers and software writers will need to form strategic partnerships with hardware and software companies in India, Italy, China, Brazil and South Africa just as much as they will need to develop partnerships with companies in Seattle, Austin and Cambridge. Finally, the political economy of Seattle can be summed up in three words: Boeing, Microsoft and Asia.

Given the strength of the centrifugal forces at work, it is a naive and dangerous ambition to cling to the idea of one nation, once culture. Naive, because it assumes that newly powerful regional elites will ungrudgingly cede the clout and influence they have won back to national elites in Washington, who they already believe to be largely out of touch with the changes going on in the country their backyards. Dangerous, because it could block the United States from developing a new formula for national governance, one that would preserve a place for national authorities while giving regional elites more latitude to develop the strategies and relationships that will best promote their region’s interests.