The Secret to World Dominance

SANDY HUFFAKER/Getty Images NewsIntolerable: Anti-immigration activists may think they are safeguarding the American dream, but they could not be more wrong.

To achieve the status of hyperpower is to join an exclusive club. Throughout history there have been only a handful of these societiesones that achieved such economic and military preeminence and projected their power on such a vast scale that they became world dominant. The list includes some, such as Rome and Great Britain, that are well known. Others are less so. The first hyperpower was ancient Persia, founded in 550 B.C. by Cyrus the Great, which ruled over a third of the worlds population at the height of its power. Another was the great Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan, which in the 13th century conquered half the known world. Examined together, hyperpowers reveal a remarkable pattern. For all their enormous differences, every hyperpower in history was strikingly tolerant and pluralistic, at least judged by the standards of its time. In fact, tolerance was in every case vital to the achievement of hegemony. Conversely, the decline of hyperpowers has repeatedly coincided with xenophobia. In other words, the secret to world dominance is tolerance.

Tolerance in this context does not mean equality or even respect in the modern, human rights sense of the word. Instead, tolerance here simply means letting very different kinds of peopleregardless of ethnicity, religion, or skin colorlive, work, and prosper, even if for self-interested reasons. Why is tolerance necessary for world dominance? Simple. To dominate vast portions of the globe, not just the bits close to home, a society must be at the forefront of global technological, military, and economic frontiers. And at any given historical moment, the most valuable human capital, whether in the form of intelligence, physical strength, skill, knowledge, networks, or creativity, is never found within any one ethnic or religious group. To pull away from its rivals on a global scale, a society must have the best and the brightest, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or background.

Persia and Rome, for instance, accepted warriors of every ethnicity and religion into their fold, unlike the ancient Greeks who were fixated on pure blood. Thus, Persians and Romans built the mightiest armies of their time. Tolerance was similarly crucial for the Mongols. Only by absorbing the best human capital from conquered lands, particularly Chinese engineers capable of building massive siege machines, were the Mongols able to overcome the great walled cities of Europe and the Middle East. In the modern era, as commerce and innovation replaced plunder and expropriation as the engines of wealth, tolerance assumed a new formimmigration. Allowing people in replaced conquest as the most effective way for a society to incorporate the worlds best thinkers and laborers.

Todays United States is the quintessential example of this modern model. Drawn by relative tolerance, immigrant labor and talent has propelled U.S. growth and influence, from westward expansion in the 19th century, to industrial explosion and victory in the 20th century atomic race, to todays staggering preeminence in the digital age. But this U.S. formula for success is in danger. Because, like every hyperpower in history, tolerance is also sowing the seeds of dissent. History shows that tolerance eventually hits a tipping point where too much diversity becomes a liability, triggering conflict, strife, and backlash. Just such a backlash may now be occurring in the United States. Increasing numbers of Americans are calling for a crackdown on immigration. Highly skilled workers from Europe and Asia find it difficult or impossible to obtain employment visas. Television hosts led by CNNs Lou Dobbs often feature stories that cast a negative light on immigrants, and even respected scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington warn ominously about the danger posed to the United States by Hispanic immigration.

This anti-immigration turn poses a serious economic threat to the United States. Just weeks ago, Microsoft opened a massive research and development center in Canada, in part because foreign engineers can more easily obtain employment visas there. As Googles Vice President for People Laszlo Bock puts it, Every day we find ourselves unable to pursue highly qualified candidates because there are not enough H-1B visas.

There is an even larger dangera threat to the United States international standing and national security. It has become de rigueur to compare the United States to Rome. But in at least one respect, the analogy is badly misplaced. Ancient Rome had an advantage in that it could make the peoples it conquered from Europe to Africa subjects or even citizens of the Roman Empire. The United States has no intention of doing the same. When U.S. officials speak of bringing democracy to the Middle East, they are not envisioning Iraqis voting in the next U.S. presidential elections.

As a result, millions if not billions of people all over the world today feel dominated bybut no connection or loyalty tothe United States. This is a recipe for anti-Americanism, which is not only bad for business but, in its extreme form, breeds extremism and terrorism.

A relatively open immigration policy is one of the only effective ways for the United States to forge goodwill and close ties with the world it dominates. Through legal immigration, the United States offers opportunities to more than a million foreigners annually. Millions more think of the United States as a home to their relatives and a place they might someday also live. No one believes that immigration should be left unchecked or that national security should be compromised in the name of friendship or economic progress. But a xenophobic anti-immigration turn is a surefire way to bring down the American hyperpower.