America’s problems at home and abroad have
led many to wonder if the US is in decline. US foreign policy, from
Syria to Ukraine, appears rudderless and impotent. The Iraq War is
widely seen to have been a failure, while US forces are leaving
Afghanistan with the Taliban still active and the country far from being
a happy democracy.
The US recovery from the recession has been weak, too, while China
and India – and even parts of Africa - seem to offer more glittering
possibilities for expansion and wealth creation than the US. China may
overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in GDP terms by the end
of the decade.
At home, the American political class appears to be almost at an
impasse, unable to address its challenges, as epitomised by last year’s
shutdown of the federal government. Political commentator Timothy Garton
Ash argues ‘the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags
with locked antlers’. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign
Relations, says that the failure of politics in Washington has been
‘hastening the emergence of a post-American world’.
Yet such declinist talk is hardly new, as exemplified by Paul Kennedy in his 1987 bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
America is still the largest economy in the world, despite having a
quarter of the population of either China or India. America is still by
far the greatest military power, has the world’s top universities and
produces the most cutting-edge research and technological innovation.
Even in ‘soft power’ terms, America is the pre-eminent source of the
world’s culture. In contrast, the much-vaunted ‘BRIC’ countries of
Brazil, Russia, India and China are all faltering in one way or another.
Is the US truly facing the prospect of being replaced as the world’s
greatest power? Is the sluggish America today in similar circumstances
to Britain at the time of First World War - the faded Greece to Asia’s
Rome? Or, is the declinist view overly pessimistic? After all, periods
of introspection and worry about US decline over the past 30 years have
given way to later resurgence. Is this time different?
Speakers
Dr Yaron Brook
Executive director, Ayn Rand Institute
Dr Jenny Clegg
senior lecturer, Asia Pacific Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston
Dr Sue Currell
chair, British Association for American Studies; reader, American Literature, Sussex University
James Matthews
management consultant; founding member, NY Salon; writer on economics and business
Sir Christopher Meyer
chairman, PagefieldAdvisory Board; former British Ambassador to the United States
Chair
Jean Smith
co-founder and director, NY Salon