Amid waning global clout

[unhappycamper]

http://www.arabnews.com/news/532876

Amid waning global clout
Ali Wayne
Published — Saturday 1 March 2014

As it prepares to release a new national-security strategy, the Obama administration is working to counter the growing conviction that US influence in international affairs is receding. At the recently concluded Munich Security Conference, for example, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared that he could not “think of a place in the world (where the United States is) retreating, not one. … This narrative … is flat wrong and it is belied by every single fact of what we are doing everywhere in the world.”

While assessments of declining US influence are exaggerated, few would dispute that it is experiencing relative decline. Strategic missteps have contributed, as have systemic economic weakness and a perception that the United States is increasingly incapable of competent self-governance. But the central driver of that phenomenon is one over which the US has little control: An ever-growing roster of powers is ascending militarily, economically, and politically.

While many events could slow or even disrupt “the rise of the rest” (such as a global recession on the scale of, or more severe than, that of 2008–2009), none will reverse it. It would thus be imprudent for the United States to focus on staying No. 1. Should it do so, it will conclude not only that it is in decline, but also that its decline is absolute and accelerating. After all, China already leads the world in many areas, including foreign exchange reserves, manufacturing output, and exports. Based on current trends, moreover, it will soon top the pecking order in consumer spending, stock-market capitalization and gross domestic product. Further down the road, China could even overtake the United States in defense spending.

A more sensible foreign-policy course for the US would proceed from a simple but powerful proposition: America’s pre-eminence is inextricably linked to and contingent upon the health of the liberal international system whose creation it nurtured after World War II. Those who want US leadership to remain a linchpin of international affairs should accordingly strategize to make that architecture more resilient, more inclusive, and more nimble.

[GeorgeGist]

1. Lost.

American is no longer an useful example of middle class prosperity.