Does America’s Superpower Status End with a Bang or a Whimper?

posted at 11:29 am on October 10, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Diplomacy ]   

The Weekly Standard has adapted as an article the 2009 Wriston Lecture of the Manhattan Institute delivered this past week by Charles Krauthammer. The topic is whether that sound we now hear resonating throughout the globe is the death knell of America’s tenure as a superpower.

Unfortunately, the video link to the entire address at the Institute’s website is down, but YouTube has the following two-minute clip, which captures the speech’s flavor.

Then of course there’s the article. In it, Krauthammer lays out the argument put forth by the left that our time is indeed at hand — that we have already begun our descent into ordinary nationhood as China rises up to assume the role as the world’s next America. Face it, they say. China already owns the U.S. national debt. All that remains is for us to leave the keys in the mailbox on our way out.

As the above clip reveals, Barack Obama is no small cheerleader for the new order. He seems to believe, as do the Europeans who have so eagerly embraced him on the world stage, that we have it coming to us. In the Obaman view, the decline in American hegemony and exceptionalism is redress for our past sins, which include unilateralism when multilateralism was called for (which is always), arrogance, derision toward Europe, and — let’s not forget — mistreatment of natives here at home.

Peter Wehner at Contentions suggests that Obama’s repeated mea culpae for these and other transgressions, many of them made while standing on foreign soil, are the reason he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Krauthammer also presents the opposing view, that fears of China’s preeminence are exaggerated and that “declinist” predictions are cyclical. Then he rejects both views. Krauthammer maintains that the “question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no” because ultimately it comes down to a matter of choice. America, he insists, can write its own future — that “America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline–or continued ascendancy–is in our hands.”

Which brings us back to the Obama Doctrine, which in turn suggests the choice has already been made for us. It’s a grim picture, but one countered correctly I believe by Max Boot, also of Contentions. Boot notes that Obama, whether it was intention or not, has already assumed the reins of leadership on a variety of International issues, including renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and global warming.

Boot also notes optimistically that the

U.S. economy remains the most dynamic among all the industrialized nations; our defense budget remains the largest in the world — bigger, by some measures, than the rest of the world put together; and our population remains young and energetic — not aging as rapidly as Europe, Russia, Japan, or even China.

These “fundamental ingredients of American success” are so deeply woven into the American fabric, Boot argues, that Obama may find it more difficult than he imagines to relinquish superpower status.

One can only hope.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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