The Committee of Public Safety

The Victory Disease's Progress: The Decay of Napoleon's Army in Russia

America suffers from victory disease. We have been so successful for so long that we are frozen into patterns of behavior that no longer fit the current world scene. Worse, when we’re wrong, we’re aggressively wrong. Change is not impossible. However, change is hard. We must live with uncertainty since we can’t predict exactly how we’ll need to change in order to adapt. However, we can take comfort (and hints, if extracted conservatively) from the example of past American eras.

Era of Consolidation (1819-1841): Having broken the European-Indian Encirclement, America sought to keep the circle from reforming by consolidating the nation into a compact mass impervious from European, particularly British, attack. Several adaptations were discovered through trial-and-error:

• Seeking parity in trading rights with other nations by slapping punitive duties on their imports if they put punitive duties on American commerce. Representative sample from James Monroe’s 1821 State of the Union:
  

  …so much of the several acts as imposed higher duties on the tonnage of foreign vessels and on the manufactures and productions of foreign nations when imported into the United States in foreign vessels than when imported in vessels of the United States were repealed so far as respected the manufactures and productions of the nation to which such vessels belonged, on the condition that the repeal should take effect only in favor of any foreign nation when the Executive should be satisfied that such discriminating duties to the disadvantage of the United States had likewise been repealed by such nation.

  By this act a proposition was made to all nations to place our commerce with each on a basis which it was presumed would be acceptable to all. Every nation was allowed to bring its manufactures and productions into our ports and to take the manufactures and productions of the United States back to their ports in their own vessels on the same conditions that they might be transported in vessels of the United States, and in return it was required that a like accommodation should be granted to the vessels of the United States in the ports of other powers. The articles to be admitted or prohibited on either side formed no part of the proposed arrangement. Each party would retain the right to admit or prohibit such articles from the other as it thought proper, and on its own conditions.

• Settling the Old Northwest and Old Southwest.
• Dissolving Indian enclaves and expelling their inhabitants beyond the Mississippi River.
• Tying the nation together with canals and roads.
• Building a huge common market by removing discriminatory state regulations that infringed on interstate commerce.
• Setting up a network of independent republics and (with Britain) excluding European imperialism from the Americas.
• Bringing in immigrants to augment the native population.
• Protection and encouragement of industry (manufactures):
  

  It may fairly be presumed that under the protection given to domestic manufactures by the existing laws we shall become at no distant period a manufacturing country on an extensive scale. Possessing as we do the raw materials in such vast amount, with a capacity to augment them to an indefinite extent; raising within the country aliment of every kind to an amount far exceeding the demand for home consumption, even in the most unfavorable years, and to be obtained always at a very moderate price; skilled also, as our people are, in the mechanic arts and in every improvement calculated to lessen the demand for and the price of labor, it is manifest that their success in every branch of domestic industry may and will be carried, under the encouragement given by the present duties, to an extent to meet any demand which under a fair competition may be made upon it.

  [...] It can not be doubted that the more complete our internal resources and the less dependent we are on foreign powers for every national as well as domestic purpose the greater and more stable will be the public felicity. By the increase of domestic manufactures will the demand for the rude materials at home be increased, and thus will the dependence of the several parts of our Union on each other and the strength of the Union itself be proportionably augmented. – Monroe (1821)

• Building the navy and fortifications to keep the circle broken:
  

  The examination of the whole coast, for the construction of permanent fortifications, from St. Croix to the Sabine, with the exception of part of the territory lately acquired, will be completed in the present year, as will be the survey of the Mississippi, under the resolution of the House of Representatives, from the mouth of the Ohio to the ocean, and likewise of the Ohio from Louisville to the Mississippi. A progress corresponding with the sums appropriated has also been made in the construction of these fortifications at the ports designated. As they will form a system of defense for the whole maritime frontier, and in consequence for the interior, and are to last for ages, the greatest care has been taken to fix the position of each work and to form it on such a scale as will be adequate to the purpose intended by it. All the inlets and assailable parts of our Union have been minutely examined, and positions taken with a view to the best effect, observing in every instance a just regard for economy – Monroe (1821).