The Future Still Belongs to America

Great piece from Walter Russell Mead, at Wall Street Journal:

It is, the pundits keep telling us, a time of American decline, of a post-American world. The 21st century will belong to someone else. Crippled by debt at home, hammered by the aftermath of a financial crisis, bloodied by long wars in the Middle East, the American Atlas can no longer hold up the sky. Like Britain before us, America is headed into an assisted-living facility for retired global powers.

This fashionable chatter could not be more wrong. Sure, America has big problems. Trillions of dollars in national debt and uncounted trillions more in off-the-books liabilities will give anyone pause. Rising powers are also challenging the international order even as our key Cold War allies sink deeper into decline.

But what is unique about the United States is not our problems. Every major country in the world today faces extraordinary challenges—and the 21st century will throw more at us. Yet looking toward the tumultuous century ahead, no country is better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities or manage the dangers than the United States.

RTWT.

There's not a lot to quibble with, although Mead might underestimate the challenge of transnational terrorism --- which is promoted by powerful regional states --- to the stability of the international system. If the issue is geopolitics and the rise and fall of great powers, then, yes, America's well positioned for continued primacy for generations. Other than that, I think folks will appreciate systemic arguments like this when the economy's expanding and unemployment's declining.