The World America Made by Robert Kagan

Author:Robert Kagan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307961327
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

SO IS THE UNITED STATES IN DECLINE?

ALTHOUGH WE CAN DIMLY see the outlines of what the next world order might look like, it is still from the safe vantage point of a world order that remains shaped by the United States. The question is, how long will it last? Perhaps the mere fact that we can see the distant shore is enough to raise doubts. Is the United States in decline? And if so, is its decline inevitable, or is it still within the power of the United States, and other nations, to fend it off?

How to evaluate whether the United States is actually in a state of steady decline or whether it is going through a difficult period from which it will recover? Much of the commentary on American decline these days rests on rather loose analysis, on impressions that the United States has lost its way, that it has abandoned the virtues that made it successful in the past, that it lacks the will to address the problems it faces. Americans look at other nations whose economies are, for the moment, in better shape than their own, and which seem to have the dynamism that America once had, and they lament, as in the title of Thomas Friedman’s latest book, “That used to be us.”

It doesn’t much help to point out that Americans have experienced this unease before, that many previous generations have also felt this sense of lost vigor and lost virtue. Even in 1788, Patrick Henry lamented the nation’s fall from past glory, “when the American spirit was in its youth.”

The perception of decline today is certainly understandable, given the dismal economic situation since 2008 and the nation’s large fiscal deficits, which, combined with the continuing growth of the Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Turkish, and other economies, seem to portend a significant and irreversible shift in global economic power. Some of the pessimism is also due to the belief that the United States has lost favor, and therefore influence, in much of the world, because of its various responses to the September 11 attacks. The detainment facilities at Guantánamo, the use of torture against suspected terrorists, and the widely condemned 2003 invasion of Iraq have all tarnished the American “brand” and put a dent in America’s “soft power”—its ability to attract others to its point of view. There have been the difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which many argue proved the limits of military power, stretched the United States beyond its capacities, and weakened the nation at its core. Some compare the United States to the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars serving as the equivalent of Britain’s difficult and demoralizing Boer War.

With this broad perception of decline as the backdrop, every failure of the United States to get its way in the world tends to reinforce the impression. Arabs and Israelis refuse to make peace, despite American entreaties. Iran and North Korea defy American demands that they cease their nuclear weapons programs.

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