Obama Buttresses Case for U.S. Resilience With Book From Unlikely Source
When Senator Barack Obama was photographed clutching a copy of “The Post-American World” as he left his campaign plane during the Democratic primaries in May 2008, some critics viewed it as a telling sign that he embraced a view of the United States as a waning world power.
Now, as he runs for re-election, President Obama has latched on to a new foreign policy book, which offers a more appealing narrative for a leader facing fresh charges — this time from Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidates — that he is leading the United States into its twilight of global influence.
The book, “The World America Made,” makes the case that the nation’s decline is a myth, a reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 rather than to any genuine geopolitical shifts. In a delicious coincidence for the White House, the author is Robert Kagan, a neoconservative historian and commentator who advises Mr. Romney. The president has brandished Mr. Kagan’s analysis in arguing that the nation’s power has waxed rather than waned.
The truth about the United States’ place in the world, of course, is more complex than either Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney would portray it in the heat of a political campaign. The United States is not the unchallenged global power that it was after the fall of the Soviet Union, most foreign policy experts agree. And China, which is on track to have the world’s largest economy by 2030, will soon be a genuine rival.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/politics/obamas-theme-of-us-resilience-finds-support-in-new-book.html?pagewanted=all
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