The greatest nation in the world?

Which is the greatest nation in the world? A distinguished writer in The Express Tribune bestowed this title on the US, arguing that the election of Barack Obama as president reflects an absence of prejudice in America since he is a descendent of black slaves. Actually, Obama is neither a slave descendant, nor fully black. However, there are other more fundamental issues with this argument. First, does Obama’s election really reflect an absence of racial discrimination in America? Second, is the absence of discrimination sufficient criteria to coronate a country as the greatest nation globally? Finally, is it even meaningful to speak of a greatest nation?

Obama’s election was a seminal event for America given that all but one of its 43 earlier presidents had been white Protestant males. The exception, John F Kennedy, was a white Catholic male! Even though Obama is a non-typical black, his election has partially healed the racial scar, which afflicts American society because of slavery and segregation. However, such discrimination is institutionalised in many forms, the most devastating of which is the manner in which American basic public education, the bedrock of human advancement, is financed.

Unlike most developed countries, large metropolitan areas in America consist of dozens of small cities, each of which finances its own elementary education systems through city-level property and sales taxes. Since property values and sales volumes are higher per capita in richer cities, they have much better public schools than poor cities where most blacks reside. While federal grants help close this gap somewhat, there remains a huge gap in educational quality across cities. Stuck in low-income school districts, black children do not have the same access to quality education as white children. Such educational disparities do not exist in most developed countries. Racial stratification also continues to occur in employment, housing, lending, and government in America, certainly less so than in countries like Pakistan and India, but more so than in other developed countries, which represent a better comparison base for a country like America.

Secondly, should absence of discrimination be the sole criterion for judging the greatness of a nation and if not, what should it be? In comparing countries, one must consider a broad range of factors instead of getting fixated on only one measure, such as discrimination. Some people may measure national greatness by scientific, economic and military prowess. For me, all these represent intermediate variables and the real criterion is actual final human outcomes. Such outcomes include the quality of life opportunities that a country provides to its own citizens as well as how it treats people in other societies. They are reflected in measures like the crime, poverty, economic inequality, life satisfaction, environmental pollution, gender equity, health and educational levels in a country. While America obviously does much better than countries like Pakistan and India in terms of the opportunities it provides its own citizens, it clearly lags behind Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden, along almost all these measures. Sweden also compares favourably and even does better than the US on many intermediate variables, like technological innovation, economic competitiveness, economic growth, inflation, budget and trade deficits and unemployment. Finally, Sweden also does not have the chequered record that countries like the US, Japan, Germany, the UK and France have had over the last 100 years in terms of mistreating other nations. Nor have Sweden and other Scandinavian countries faced the same economic turmoil recently as America and many other European countries did. Thus, personally, I would rate Sweden and other Scandinavian countries higher than the US as national role models. While these countries have higher tax rates than America, their superior social and economic performance validates their higher tax policies.

So, does this make Sweden the greatest nation in the world? Personally, I find such titles analytically meaningless and melodramatic.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2012.