I don't think 1.7% growth coming out of a very nasty recession is what you think it is...this is pretty much the weakest recovery since....ever?

I'd also keep my eyes on Egypt...apparently in that region the governments' think there's some advantage to holding Americans hostage again.

Hey, wouldn't a hostage crisis just complete the Carter years repeat?

The US has chosen its own decline. Twice in this decade, US business and financial leaders have proved to the whole world that they are liars, thieves, and criminals. In the US Accounting Scandal of 2002-2003, 40,000 US CEOs, CFOs, COOs, corporate presidents, vice presidents, and senior executives lied about their corporate profits to cheat investors out of huge bonuses that corporate leaders did not earn. In the US Financial Sandal of 2008 to the present, US financial institutions created sub-prime mortgages, made them 40% of the US mortgage market, created mortgage-backed securities for insurance, created hedge funds to bet against their own securities, coerced ratings agencies to give AAA ratings to securities that did not deserve AAA ratings, and sold the fraudulent securities to investors around the world. Twice in this decade, the US cheated NATO, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Pacific nations, Latin America, and the US. The US, and no one else, failed to regulate US business and financial leaders. The second set of choices were the wars. For 10 years, the US destroyed its computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and fertilizer, the basic parts of smart munitions. The US destroyed US ground and air vehicles. The US burned billions of gallons of gasoline, aviation fuel, and diesel fuel. The US wasted billions of man-hours in unproductive activities. The US chose to take these actions to support its policies. The third choice was Homeland Security. Prior to 9-11, 60% of scientists, engineers, and technicians in the US came from Asia. After 9-11, Homeland Security was established, and it restricted visas for Asians, and numerous intelligent, skilled persons set up companies in Asia to compete with US companies, and other Asians followed their lead instead of trying for US visas. US technology companies moved facilities to Asia because they could not be certain that Homeland Security would let enough scientific talent into the US. The US chose to accept the policies of Homeland Security; the US chose to spend vast sums on security; and the US is responsible for losses that the US suffered as companies and individuals took actions to overcome US restrictions. The fourth choice has been education. 13% of US students major in science, engineering, and technology compared to 50% in China. With the difference in population, China produces 17 times as many students in the sciences as the US. In an international test, China scored 1st in math and 1st in science while the US was 31st in math and 23rd in science. US students choose their subjects and study habits. The fifth choice is US sanctions. The US trades with 50% of the world. The US says that other countries are bad. Americans are slave owners, Jim Crow enforcers, and genocidal mass murderers of native Americans. Without being critical of the US, all countries have skeletons in their closets. China chooses to trade with 100% of the world and accepts that other countries must correct any defects at their own pace. The US chooses to lose the trade competition with China, and this results from US choices to respond to the behavior of other countries. The five major US choices and their results have been caused by the US. However, the US can change its choices to obtain better results in the future. The US can provide more and better regulators for business and financial sectors, and the US can separate finance from investment. The US can choose different foreign policies and end relationships that bring war to the US. The US can change visa policies to encourage Asian scientists, engineers, and technicians to come to the US, and the US can abolish Homeland Security with its many costs. The US can invest more in education for the sciences, increase scientific course requirements, and offer more financial and employment incentives for students in the sciences. The US can choose to focus on commerce instead of behavior with trading partners. I have outlined the major reasons for US decline and offered practical ideas for solutions. It the US chooses to ignore the advice, the US can adapt to its lower position in the world.

One thing i've noticed about theories of US decline is that they've very similar to theological doomsday theories.

They've been around since the 1960s and they keep postponing the day of reckoning much in the same way as the Book of Revelations enthusiasts do: they never admit that they were wrong in their predictions, only that they wrong in their timing.

It's always something new: Awesome Soviet growth, OPEC, Japan's rise, the power of the market via globalization or the rise of the multinational corporation, and now the rise of China. What's most remarkable about all these decline forecasts is that they tended to resolve with either no effect on US power or with the relative rise therein.

As Kagan and yourself have pointed out, there was no golden post-war era of unfettered US dominance. But the misperception is worse than that: it's now taken for granted (I can't understand why) that the USSR posed no real challenge to the US.

Chinese economic growth may be impressive but China does not have a global network of alliances to deliberately confront the US; it does not fund proxy wars that determine whether a developing country will come under its sphere of influence. Indeed, Iraq is a significant setback--but more significant than Cuba, Vietnam, or (less related to this point) the CCP's victory in China?

Putin has called the collapse of the USSR a geo-political disaster. It was (the Russia at least): not only is there no counterpart to NATO in Europe, but the alliance basically (in crude terms) won Eastern Europe. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization doesn't come close to the single-mindedness and effectiveness of the Warsaw Pact.

The US faces no effective global ideological challenge on par with Cold War communism (What global superpower does al-Qaeda control?). China does not export any distinct socioeconomic ideology (if it even has one) and the rise of 'authoritarian capitalism' is not clearly a threat to the US. Its not cohesive, far from stable, and some of the countries that belong to that grouping (namely, the Gulf oil exporters) are US allies.

Yes, China is making important investment and trade-related linkages with various African and Middle Eastern governments. But the scale of the cooperation and knowledge-transfer does not even come close to what Khruschev and Brezhnev did in their heyday.

So maybe i'm missing something crucial. I'm honestly really confused about where this certainty of US decline is coming from. Is any external challenge to Washington today a tangible replacement(s) for the ideology of communism and for Soviet power?

Apologies: I know some of the points I made have already been covered!

China Says EU Ban on Iran Oil Not 'Constructive'
By (Reuters) Jan 26, 2012

"China on Thursday criticized the European Union for banning oil imports from Iran, Beijing's third biggest crude supplier and a major trading partner. The European Union agreed on Monday to ban imports of oil from Iran and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at pushing Iran into reining in its nuclear activities that Tehran says are for peaceful purposes. China has long opposed unilateral sanctions that target Iran's energy sector and has tried to reduce tensions that could threaten its oil supply. China is the largest buyer of Iranian crude oil, importing 30 percent more from Iran in 2011 compared to the previous year."

America's economy is the core of its power. If the economy stagnates, then we will lose our ability to project military and political power abroad. Fortunately, our economy is very dynamic because it is a decentralized network of empowered regional economies. The core of America, "we the people", will reinvent ourselves again and maintain our nation's strength.

ECONOMIC - While Washington is stumbling around, local communities across the nation are moving to renew American economic strength on their own by promoting exports, attracting foreign investment, and building new industries (see Bruce Katz's piece on the Pragmatic Caucus for example: http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2011/1026_pragmatic_caucus_katz_rodin.aspx).

MILITARY - Technological breakthroughs from regional industrial clusters (simulations in Orlando, advanced robotics in Pittsburgh, etc.) will continue fueling American military superiority. Our military will help develop these technologies and our entrepreneurs will branch off to commercialize new products for civilian use.

POLITICAL - As local communities contribute to America's overall economic success and military power, it will strengthen Washington's message about the benefits of human rights, the rule of law, and open markets and efforts to build the security alliances that underpin global prosperity.

America's success has never been guaranteed. We reached this point through concerted efforts. Though many are now struggling and there is much work to do, my money is still on the American spirit.

In the debate surrouding the case for America's waning influence around the globe, one key underlying theme keeps arising - American exceptionalism. The question being, is the United States really an exceptional country? Usually when theorist argue against this notion, they cite several key area's where America is either on the decline or never was top-knotch. Though i personally believe this issue to be moot, exceptionalism much like love, tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Yet, with that aside, we have to realize that being "exceptional" and being "perfect" are too vastly different things. If the standard for being an exceptional country is being perfect - well, then it's not even up for discussion, cause no country is perfect. So, if we're going to have a debate about America's influence and whether it's on the decline, we need to start it from there. You can not start this debate on the notion that we are perfect, and then back it up with citing a few area's were we lack. I'm not sure where the standard for an exceptional country came from, but i can guarantee it didn't start with perfectionism.

The point Michael Beckley most hangs his hat on is that real US GDP has grown faster than China's since 1991. This may be true, but it's a mathematical
fact that if a nation with a GDP 1/2 of that of another nation grows 1% per annum faster, that after 70 years the GDPs of the 2 nations would be equal. For the first 60 years the larger nation's real GDP would actually grow faster than the nation gaining on it. It's only in the last 10 years that the pursuer's real GDP growth would excede that of the other. Of course China's not growing just 1% faster, but 6-7% & it's real GDP growth has likely exceded the US's for the last several years.
Having said that, I truly hope he's right on his other points

I have always thought that it is better to live with rich neighbors than with poor ones - and crackhead neighbors are the worst, of course. It seems to me that it would be better to live in a world of wealthy nations than of poor ones too.

Economically, this means that the increased productivity of the developing nations increases the net world wealth, and as partakers of that wealth we benefit as well, as seems to be the case.

Politically it means a greater inter-involvement, interdependecy, that would lessen the risk of spontaneous conflict. And indeed it seems that the peoples most willing to engage in conflict are those with the least to lose.

And of course the prospect of the other 4 billion peoples attaining our standards of living seems daunting to the environmentalists that will rue our demands on the Earth's infrastructure given us. But it is better to rely on man's ingenuity and market forces than to relegate - or wish - our neighbors to be poor.

Sincerely,

Dr. Pangloss

I wonder if the question wouldn't be better stated in terms of how we respond to two different challenges:

1. In a couple of decades, we will live in a more multipolar world. We may still have a majority of the multipoles on our side, as we probably do now, but it will be a different world that we do not dominate as we did in the Cold War, especially if

2. Over the same interval, asymmetrical military capabilities come into their own, making large expensive warships and space systems vulnerable to less expensive missiles.

We are likely to see a more intense rivalry in the Middle East if it goes more extensively nuclear. If our fleet can no longer operate close to east Asia, we may also see greater tension and a new arms race between the great powers there (India, China, Korea, Japan).

The great danger is not that our decline will be China's gain, but that everyone will be less secure in a world where everyone grows.

firstly, the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are still authoritarian. In fact, it is arguable that in Egypt for instance they are MORE authoritarian than before.

America's policies over the last 50 years are responsible for it's supposed poor standing with people in the Middle East? Well the MB which won most of the vote in Egypt was anti-American since it's founding in the 20s. Walt should try reading what Qutb actually wrote in 1949 but that would get in the way of his opinions!

As for the locals being hostile, surely decades of anti-western propaganda has more to do with popular feelings. That said, guess where all these people would like to go.... Hint it isn't China or Iran.

Whilst the appearance of charlatans like Walt might have damaged some of the credibility of academia, the US universities are consistently the top in the world. People from all over the world come to the US to learn about anything.

As for the regional "powers", none of them compare to the influence that the US has even in Turkey or India or Brazil's backyard.

As usual, nothing Walt has to say stands up to even cursory scrutiny.

Once again no where is there mentioned where the common man fits into this empire, without the average smucks support the empire will fall. The elite are losing the common man. How many angels can dance on a head of a pin anyway?

What you are missing is the deep disaffection many Americans feel towards this country. This is no longer the flawed democracy about which I was so naively proud. Instead, it is a militarized-corporate plutocracy, a fascist precursor that has caused millions of needless deaths, including up to 100,000 American soldiers, since the end of WWII. It is an aggressor, invader, murderous occupier (and I don't mean Wall Street!) It is the world's major source of terrorism - state terrorism. It it the chief reason why states like N. Korea and Iran seek nuclear defenses. Our leaders seek hegemony on every continent, ocean as sea. We are meddlers, troublemakers, supporters of dictators and oppressors. For no good reason, we have made the people of Cuba suffer and kept the people of Haiti languishing in poverty, inflicted murderous drug warfare in Columbia and Mexico. provoked the overthrow of legitimate governments in Central and South American, in Iran, and assassinated African leaders who would not be our puppets. That is only part of what you are missing.

Any analyst (like Drezner) who has future hopes or dreams of some day being appointed to a US government post requiring Senate confirmation is simply not going to agree with the premise "The US is in decline." I cannot help but think this is skewing the debate a bit.

If you're using old benchmarks.

Things like clothing manufacturing and even heavy equipment are going or have gone overseas. We simply cannot compete with third world wage scales.

We do well in research and development, agriculture, and a few other areas.

Diplomatic influence is still strong, but power belongs to those who have money. We used to have money. Now we have debt. And a military/industrial complex hangover. Our power in the world comes from a bloated military presence around the globe rather than our wisdom.

This new century looks like it's going to belong to Asia.

So we should get used to the idea that we're not king of the hill anymore. And if we had any wisdom, we should be forward looking so we can position ourselves accordingly. Because to pour too much effort into trying to hang on to our glory days will certainly bankrupt us all.

x

Professor Walt and Professor Drezner have written extremely well argued papers and after having written a rather rash response to the former yesterday I have now re-read the two essays. Professor Drezner asks at the end of his paper: “Am I missing anything?” I am afraid he is.
Neither of them talks in much detail about the errors of US foreign policy decision making in the post-war period. I beg to submit that two of the greatest such errors were US decision to stand by Israel through thick and thin and to enter into a long lasting relationship with Pakistan not long after. In my view, these were fateful choices. In my view, both were wrong to some extent. In my view, they have the potential to take the US down to the bottom like dead albatrosses around the mariner’s neck – if there is no correction while there is still time. The two essays do not talk about either of these countries in detail.
Mr Obama has spoken in unmistakable terms about US commitment to Israel. This may operate as incitement to Israel to be even less responsible than it has been in the past about an adjustment of its relations with its neighbours and especially with the Palestinians. If Jews were entitled to their state in 1948, so are Palestinians now. The US has done nothing to nudge Israel along the path of accommodation. Quite to the contrary, one often reads about ideas like “Greater Israel”. One might as well talk about the revival of the classical Roman empire. However, there is hardly possibility that Israel shall have peace unless it returns to its borders of 1967.
Iran may be called to order now, in whatever manner and by whatever means, and with whatever other consequences, but nothing will serve to eliminate possibility that other challenges to Israel shall arise in due time. There are players in the Middle East some of whom are flush with money and who have not committed themselves irrevocably to forgoing the nuclear option: let us not be inveigled into believing that signature on the 1968 treaty means much. Other candidates for nuclear weapon power may arise in the region, making it rather harder for the US to go on underwriting Israel’s security into an indefinite future. In spite of the influence of the Jewish lobby in US politics, there is a limit beyond which US decision making should not be hostage to considerations relating to Israel’s security: US decisions must flow from US national interests. That is a consideration that will not change with the passage of time or the arising of other poles in world affairs – when they arise. Nor can the US go on being the sole guarantor of non-proliferation.
Several US presidents while visiting China have allowed themselves to be misled into committing themselves to ideas and expressions which made nonsense of some seeming assumptions of US power. More than once joint communiqués and statements issued at the end of such visits gave an impression as if the G-2 had already emerged and as if the affairs of the world were to be run by some sort of a concordat between them – US in the West and China in the East. I am afraid the days are gone when the rest of the world was prepared to applaud while US presidents delivered themselves in eloquent terms. Mere oratorical flourish now reduces such actors to gladiators jumping to the tune of Mandarins. The rest of the world is not prepared to go on being hewers of wood and drawers of water for any candidates for great power, both old and new.
Pakistan is a case where US policy makers have not thought through their decisions and choices as seriously as was perhaps needed. For one thing, Pakistan has not graduated to the status of a mature and stable State that could take its decisions in its own best interests – at the very least. Often times Pakistan’s decisions have been hasty and calculated to bring about complete failure and discomfiture, not always because of external factors. It is Pakistan that chose to go and sit in China’s lap not long after the India–China war of 1962, which for India was really a non-war because India did not fight: China had a walk over. And Pakistan thought this was a golden opportunity that it could cash. Once having got into that comforting embrace Pakistan never looked back: it remains tied to China as one of its two satellites, North Korea in the northeast and Pakistan in the southwest. No one in Pakistan seems to have considered the contradiction between its close relationships with both US and China at the same time. But this is a functional actuality that has been in evidence at least since 9/11. No one in the US either has considered the contradiction between Pakistan’s status as a frontline not-Nato ally in the global war against terror and Pakistan’s by now well documented adherence to terror as an instrument of its policies. And yet no one in the US talks about the need for a revision or at the very least reconsideration of US–Pakistan relations. The two learned professors do not either.
V. C. Bhutani, Delhi, India, 30 Jan 2012, 0830 IST

I think that it would erroneous to compare cold war USA and present day USA. The best vantage point would be 1990 when communist block was dismembered and USSR began to unravel. It was the time when USA became the unquestionably sole superpower, both economically and militarily.

The decline starts when you are at the top and you become the target. It has been slow decline for USA ever since for last 21 years with US taking lead in almost all the wars, hurting the economy and global popularity . The key is how USA stops the decline from going further.

There is no single country that is in position to replace USA. China is more an economic adversary than an ideological adversary. Chinese haven't shown any particular tendency to use Chinese communism to throw a challenge at American Wilsonian democracy. Moreover, the SIno US economic relations are too intertwined to see one remaining same without other.

The other country could be within the NATO block. The closest could be UK which doesn't have the will or geography to challenge USA.

On the broader point, I think both Walt and Drezner are correct in some ways. Any hawkish American foreign policy could be dangerous for American economy but any US over cautiousness would be suicidal for global influence. Iran is coming out to be where both Walt and Drezner was proving correct. The middle path approach is something Americans have to follow.

I think so, a couple of things, but I'm not quite sure how to integrate them into the grand unified theory that people like to come up with on this question--if there can even be one. They're things I'm not sure how to integrate into much of anything, actually. But living in London for 14 years, and spending time in Europe and Asia, gives a certain perspective on this.

First, it must mean something that one of the two major political parties is now dominated by people who everyone else in the world regards as incredibly thick and uninformed, at best, and insane at worst. I talk to European investors a lot, and they're frankly horrified at what passes for political discourse, and the thought that Obama might lose to one of these jokers. If I talked to Latin American investors, I imagine (althoguh I admit I dont' know) that this horror would be suitably amplified by what passes for the debate on immigration.

Second, I remember a lunch in Hong Kong several years ago--2005, I think--at a conference the bank I worked for at the time was sponsoring for Asian investors, and this was with a nice Indian gentleman who was a portfolio manager somewhere. The kind of person who in some respects was interchangeable with portrfolio managers everywhere--had his MBA from someplace respectable, was a CFA, made money for investors, followed the global economy, etc etc. And what we mainly talked about--or what he mainly talked about, with me listening with some degree of bewilderment--was how the Tsunami inThailand, no question about it, was caused by secret US Navy nuclear testing in the Indian ocean. And not only he believed it--everyone he knew believed it as well.

And the reason for this, he said, was the War on Terror. It's going to take a long time to get over the burden here--does anyone really think the US will ever again get an Olympics or some such, after the experiences many brown-skinned officials of various agencies have repeatedly had with the TSA and other border representatives? Memories tend to be long about this sort of thing.

The third thing is that the US is essentially broke. There is a huge amount of denial about this, but we have yet to see a really comprehensive write-down of crappy assets by the banks--those strip malls on the outer suburbs of Phoenix are never going to be worth what they're on the books for, and the CDOs based on them held by everyone in the world have yet to be appropriately priced as well; we have cheerfully entered major military undertakings with the absolute certainty that we would not have to pay for them, and we're still not paying for them other than by cutting other stuff; and we enjoy an economy that has survived over the past several decades on the back of a homebuilding industry and the belief fostered by the finance industry that because people had access to really easy credit, people were therefore rich. This will take years to unwind, and in the meantime, it's a good thing we have those amber waves of grain to export, and all that coal to carry around. We're looking at a resource-based economy here, and it's not comforting--think Australia. You want to know why Warren Buffett wanted to own a railroad? Because if your economy depends on resource extraction, then what you want to own is a railroad. Boeing and Caterpillar can only accomplish so much for the US economy, and what they are accomplishing, it's not having much multiplier effect.

I'm really looking forward to President Santorum bombing the hell out of Iran.

As seems too often the case in such back and forth posts between commentators, salient comments tend to be ignored or minimized from one side or another.

Here is Walt's last line in his initial response to Dan Drezner's post:

'The danger, of course, is that repeated assurances that America is still on top will encourage foreign policy mandarins to believe that they can continue to make the same blunders they have in the recent past, and discourage them from making the strategic choices that will preserve U.S. primacy, enhance U.S. influence, and incidentally, produce a healthier society here at home.'

Here is part of Drezner's reply, discussing the inverse of Walt's cautionary words:

'The discussion of China in the GOP presidential campaign, as well as Obama's mercantilist State of the Union address, strongly suggest that political assessments and political rhetoric about Chinese power need a strong jolt of sobriety. Walt is concerned that an overestimation of American power will lead to stupid foreign policy decisions, but I'd wager that an overestimation of Chinese power would lead to equally stupid foreign policy decisions. '

Is not Dan Drezner's response both on target, and worthy of consideration?