America is turning into revolutionary France Politicians are wilfully ignoring the omens

Let’s start with the domestic and political situation. France in the late-18th century was bitterly inegalitarian. Economic inequality coexisted with social inequality — the old feudal caste system was starting to chafe against the realities of the early modern economy — and the political system itself had basically stopped functioning. Everyone knew reform was badly needed, but passing actual legislation was impossible. Special interests had the ability to veto every change, no matter how necessary, and as 1789 approached, total political gridlock became the order of the day. The French Revolution happened not because it was inevitable, but because the political system proved completely incapable of curing its deficiencies.

Does this seem a bit familiar? It should, because that is precisely the situation in the United States right now. An unequal political system has essentially seized up and stopped functioning, and is now stumbling towards election between the most unpopular president in modern history and the next-most unpopular president in modern history. One of those men is clearly fading rapidly, prone to slurring his speech or forgetting where he is; the other just became the first president to be convicted of a felony. Just as in France in the 1780s, violence, protests and disenchantment seem the likeliest conclusion.

But how is the economy doing? France in 1789 was famously bankrupt; in fact, the bankruptcy of the French Crown was the proximate cause of the entire revolution. It borrowed heavily to fund foreign wars and domestic spending, and before long, it had to keep borrowing even more money to pay off the interest on its old debt, only to borrow even more to pay for those loans, and so on. Finally, France could borrow no more, and the crisis began in earnest.

And yet, when it comes to fiscal impropriety, 18th-century France simply can’t compete with modern America. The US is by far the most indebted nation in the world today in absolute terms, gorging as it does on some $1 trillion in additional debt every three months. And unlike in revolutionary France, when public pensions and social welfare simply didn’t exist, America has a supplementary “shadow debt” of around $175 trillion, representing its commitments for future welfare.

On top of this already miserable situation, the US has to contend with another problem not faced by early modern France: deindustrialisation. On the eve of revolution, France was remarkably self-sufficient, which is why it could so easily go from a political and economic basket-case in 1789 to dominating most of Europe in 1812. By contrast, America in 2024 is not self-sufficient; the old industries that allowed it to dominate following the Second World War have now been sold off for scrap, and the US today is dependent on exporting dollars and importing physical goods in return. If demand for dollars drops, those physical goods cannot be quickly replaced. A much more painful period of economic readjustment will have to be undertaken in the US, while France in 1789 essentially only had to rationalise the resources it already possessed to become powerful again.

So, the social and political situation in contemporary America is at least comparable to that in France in 1789, while the economic situation is actually a fair bit worse. What about the military situation?

Well, in 1789, things didn’t look particularly good. France faced at least two big problems: first, its military was suffering from low morale and high levels of dissatisfaction. This partly had to do with the intractable divide between commoners and nobles, and partly with a series of disciplinarian reforms that were very unpopular. The second had to do with foreign policy. In 1787, Prussia invaded the Netherlands, which was supposed to be part of France’s rightful sphere of influence. Many French people wanted their leaders to defend the country’s honour against the Prussians, but Louis XVI declined — for the simple reason that France was too broke to afford a war. This failure to act like a great power didn’t just have domestic consequences; it convinced other great powers that France was becoming the sick man of Europe.

While these weaknesses shouldn’t be underestimated, they are in an order of magnitude less serious than those faced by the current United States. If you wanted to draw a comparison, the French Army’s disciplinarian reforms probably caused about as much discontent as the US military’s Covid-vaccine policy; not exactly a good spot to be in, but not life-threatening either. The US military, however, has significantly more pressing problems: the recruitment crisis is now so bad that it is undermining the combat readiness of entire formations. “Ghost units” — that is, units that should technically exist but practically don’t because they have no men — are now slowly proliferating across the US Army. Meanwhile, the Navy has a massive problem with chronic sleep deprivation, because there simply aren’t enough sailors to crew the ships to their full compliments. On top of these problems, the US military is increasingly unable to source ammunition for its weapons, and the Navy cannot build enough ships to keep itself from shrinking, nor can it now really perform scheduled repairs on the ships it has.

In other words, the French military had a crisis of internal culture, while the American military has a crisis of internal culture and a massive recruitment crisis and a massive logistics and sustainment crisis. On top of this, the US military is tasked with several orders of magnitude more work than the French: it has almost 1,000 bases across the world. The French failed to show up in the Netherlands in 1787 because they didn’t have enough money to pay for it; America, by contrast, has tried and failed to wage proxy war against Russia over Ukraine, and tried and failed to stop the Houthis from blockading the Suez Canal. In April, the US Army built an aid pier in Gaza as a sort of show of force, an illustration that the US military — whatever else one might say about the rest of America — was still up to the task. On Tuesday, the pier fell apart and was washed away.

Taken together, then, it seems that the position of the US in 2024 is much worse than that of France in 1789. Does this mean a revolution will happen?

It’s always easy to come up with a reason for why things will continue like they always have. That is simply how our brains work: if you’ve done your fire exercises over and over again and you suddenly smell smoke, your brain’s first reaction is likely to be “A-ha! Fire! Time to head for the fire exit!”. If you don’t know where that exit is, if you’ve never really thought about the possibility of a fire, your brain is very likely to respond to the sight and smell of smoke with an “ah, well, it can’t be that bad, right?”.

And perhaps, you might say, that is indeed the correct attitude to have today. Perhaps things really aren’t “that bad”. To which I would respond: but things are worse than were in France in 1789. All that remains to be seen is whether that simple, incontrovertible fact about our current moment leads to something or not.

---

Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

SwordMercury