Fouad Ajami believes people should not rush to bet on America's decline. An excerpt:
Rome was long dead and buried when Gibbon, working in London, published his first volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. The destiny of the American empire is still unfolding. The bailout package, a staggering $700 billion, is only 5 percent of our national output; the country could afford it. While some may seek to write the obituaries of the American imperial republic, a survey of universities placing in the top 500 globally, conducted by Shanghai University, gave the United States a huge lead in such institutions: 159 versus 31 in Japan, 30 in China (the data include Hong Kong and Taiwan), and 2 in India.
[HT: The American ]
2 comments:
I'm afraid I've got a bad news for you. USA has never been a "superpower" or a "world leader". It is a powerful country among others, but was never the equivalent of empires like the Roman empire. USA self-proclaimed supremacy is mainly a product of US media to generate patriotism.
It is precisely because it lived far above its means that USA is confronted with crisis. When you believe in yourself much more than others do, you're either a genius or you are wrong. And there are very few geniuses.
I don't wish anything bad to USA, I just wish US people realize that they are part of the world and not leading the world. Maybe a lesson of humility would be welcome.
Bruno,
You'll recall that it was a French foreign minister who described the USA as being a hyper-superpower.
Your view of the US media is way off. The US media are predominantly left-wing and are hardly known for jingoistic patriotism.
My guess is that most Americans would dearly prefer to withdraw from the world and let some other powers take more of a leadership role. We don't think of ourselves as leading the world in any "we talk and they listen" mode and Americans certainly realize that they are part of the world.
"When you believe in yourself much more than others do, you're either a genius or you are wrong." That reasoning is flawed. You can believe in yourself more than others do without being or believing yourself to be a genius. That simply addresses your level of self-confience. It also does not mean that the others are right.
Humility is a virtue that all nations, including the Europeans who often hold the Americans to a different standard than they apply to themselves (e.g. check out French intervention in Ivory Coast), should embrace.
There will be a predominant power in the world. If the United States should not play that role, consider how it would be fulfilled by Russia, China, or radical Islam.
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