Evil Empires

A good thriller requires an infinitely superior enemy bent on world domination or some other nefarious goal.

Usually, that role is filled by the prevailing Evil Empire. During the 1930s and ’40s, that slot was amply filled by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. After WWII, the Soviet Union stepped up to the plate, offering Cold War and surrogates like North Vietnam and Angola.

As the Red Star began to fade, authors and economists began casting around for a new enemy. With only one superpower, the field was severely depleted. For a while, the Japanese played the role as an excellent candidate. Their rising economic power, built on automobiles, consumer electronics and heavy machinery, drove a boom.  They bought US government debt and companies with undervalued yen. Their real estate purchases included the Rockefeller Plaza, half the golf courses on the West coast and most of Hawaii.

I’m reading an old Clive Cussler book, written in the late 1980s. His evil Japanese Industrialists were bent of nuclear extortion, using atomic bombs planted in ugly brown imported cars. The plot was believable at the time. Many Americans were already convinced that we would fall into a new Greater East Asian co-Prosperity Sphere.

Then the bubble burst.

Japan fell into an economic slump that has lasted most of the last twenty years. If they can’t get their own financial house in order, how can they manage world domination?

More recently, the Chinese have poked their heads behind the curtain. They own most of America’s public debt. Our country is awash in Chinese goods. They are actively engaged in industrial and military espionage, and are hacking into every computer in America, including mine. Besides, they are a repressive society, with a vast network of internet gatekeepers who to keep every Chinese person from Googling about Tiananmen Square. As if they don’t already know. They’ve got the bomb, for God’s sake! It’s time to teach our kids to duck and cover all over again.

Behind the bamboo curtain, China has its own set of troubles. They are growing too quickly. Factory workers want human rights and air conditioning. Two-thirds of the population still lives in abject poverty. They’d have trouble projecting military force across the straits into Taiwan.

But the novelists aren’t worried. Korea is waiting in the wings, the Russian oligarchs enjoy brutality as much as their obscene wealth, and Jihad is alive and well despite the demise of Osama bin Laden.

There will always be an evil empire. We just have to pick the right one for the week our next thriller comes out. They may be gone tomorrow.