The most common topic in journals, newspapers, and TV talkshows today seems to be the decline in US power, prestige, and economic influence. Books have been written identifying the end of the US Century with the influences which brought about the decline of Spanish power in the late Sixteenth Century, that of France in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, and that of Britain in the Twentieth.

Why This Ain't Necessarily So

This diagnosis is wrong because the same standards of measurement do not apply. America is a nation unlike any other nation in history and can't be measured by the same yardstick applied thoughout most of history (although in some respects it unfortunately can).

It is commonplace in international relations to assume that the goals of national power are security, influence, and dominance. Regrettably, most human history confirms this analysis.

The noted British historian Arnold Toynbee perhaps advanced the prevailing notion at its highest point of acceptance, arguing that nations must be just sufficiently challenged to draw out their greatest genius, and that this has through history been mostly a matter of chance. If a nation is left unchallenged, it retrogresses and never develops a distinctive civilization. If challenged beyond its capacity, it is defeated and its civilization destroyed and absorbed in that of the conquering nation.

But the founding of the American nation was counter-historical. This nation did not take its form from one conquering tribe taking under its dominion surrounding tribes as in Rome, Germany, France, Russia, Britain, India, Persia, or China. America was settled by peaceful occupation of largely unsettled lands by people from a variety of nations weeking peace and freedom, not influence or domination. Almost sixty per cent of the national territory of America was acquired by purchase. And while Native Americans may today dispute this, most of their forefathers willingly sold rights of occupancy to the advancing settlers -- at least until the natives finally realized that they were becoming outnumbered and were compelled to move on to other unsettled lands. But history has little room for the slow and the unready.

While we are presently seeing a rewriting of history to accomodate the soft-hearted and soft-minded attitudes of our times, the settlement of the United States was probably the most peaceful spread of a civilization in the history of the world. Reflect on the militancy which accompanied the spread of Greek or Roman civilization; the French experience in North Africa and South East Asia; the German advances in Prussia, Africa, or the Balkans; or the British in India, Africa, and China. America was semi-isolated by two great oceans. And while, with modern transportation this no longer applies, we had enough time to form our distinctive forms of government and social structures. With the exception of the War to End Slavery, America's challenges were essentially economic and cultural, and related to land, forests, mines, and industry.

President Coolidge spoke truly when he said, "The business of America is business." In pursuing largely economic goals, the people of the United States were able to create a classless and largely raceless society. Birth and inheritance are of far less influence than talent and initiative in gaining or maintaining market dominance. People of all nations (again, with exceptions -- largely orientals, where the gap is now rapidly being made up -- only proving Americans are imperfect humans) were welcomed to American shores so long as they accepted the basic American principles of hard work, tolerance for social and religious differences, and acceptance of the results of the ballot box.

But America Isn't Perfect: Far From It In Fact

The American record is, of course, not unblemished. Americans, like others, are human beings, not angels. Blacks were treated as slaves long after slavery was abolished in most of the rest of the civilized world. We had for a number of years an Oriental Exclusion Act. Mormons were persecuted, killed, and driven to the Mexican frontier for religious differences. And an army was sent from the United States to cow them into submission once it appeared that they might actually flourish after taking refuge in the Great Basin desert. But what American Blacks do not always recognize is that slavery still exists in some of the Islamic nations some American Blacks purport to esteem. And, at least following 1860, their physical existence has probably been better than that of most of their cousins in Africa even today.

Native Americans were not always allowed just to retreat to the next valley of unsettled land. Wrongs and injustices occurred. But this is a world of major wrongs and injustices, as virtually all peoples of every land can attest. Case in point: the current slaughter of Bosnians by their Serbian nighbors. The original inhabitants of France were conquered first by the Romans, then by the Franks. The native Brits were displaced by Germanic Angles and Saxons, who themselves later came under the domination of the Normans. Armenians even today remonstrate about gross mistreatment and slaughter by the Turks (and contemporary Azeris). And the Chinese, comprising almost a fourth of mankind, and creators of one of the truly great civilizations of the world, remain bitter about European incursions during the Nineteenth Century and the Japanese invasion of the 1930s.

Today's peaceful Scandinavians are descended from some of the most vicious maurauders of history.

Perhaps the greatest temptation in American history occurred under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt when, for a time, we responsed to the call of empire, following the lead of the Russians, the Germans, the French, and the British. But our higher natures prevailed and Cuba remained independent, the Philippines were freed, and the Panama Canal was returned to Panamanian control.

What Goes Around, Comes Around: the American System Contains Self-Rectifying Elements

Blacks, Indians, and Mormons all have access to education and the vote today. And Mormons, of all formerly despised groups, are today admired as super-Americans, exemplary candidates for the FBI, the CIA, and NASA, and the backbone of some best scientific research centers in the nation as well as in higher education.

So, one can insist that, compared to virtually all other nations, the American record looks good -- if far from perfect.

Some Specifics Regarding Why It is Wrong to Characterize America as Being in Decline

It is now possible to look at post-World War II US objectives to see how these relate to the perceived decline in American power and influence.

Following WW II, the United States would have been happy to proceed to immediate demobilization, as we did following the First Great War. But with the Soviet Union occupying most of central Europe and threatening much more, President Harry Truman announced a policy of containment. And the Marshall Plan was put in place to assist the prostrate European nations in their reconstruction efforts so that their peoples would not fall victim to Communist propaganda about the superiority of their system.

For a number of years, both European and American economists were preoccupied with what was perceived was a chronic "dollar shortage". Some considered that, given US wealth and resources, there was no way Europe would ever regain its economic position in the world. And as recently as 1971 Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber was writing about Le Defi Americain, putting forward the view that American surplusses were enabling them to buy up European businesses and industries on the cheap, and that this would inevitably alter European culture and lifestyles adversely and forever.

What has in fact happened is that the economic gears of markets and the laws of competetive advantage and disadvantage have been grinding inexorably, if slowly; and, almost miraculously, every goal American society set out to accomplish in the post-war world has been achieved:

On the economic front, the defeated enemies of WW II, Germany and Japan, have not only recovered, but are now challenging, if not surpassing, the victors. Yes, the United States briefly contemplated adopting the so-called Morgenthau Plan, calling for the totally demolition of German industry, making that nation no more than an agricultural backwater in perpetuity. But our more generous nature led us, in the event, to make Germany full beneficiary of the Marshall Plan and within eight years Germany was on its feet and competing with the world. Each of the almost-prostrate former allies now have per capita GNPs approaching (and some in advance of) that of the industrial-giant USA. And, as a result of US aid (and open markets), there are an increasing number of new economic tigers operating in today's world markets: Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Should these events be interpreted as evidence of "the economic decline of the US"? Or are they in fact unmistakable examples of the achievement of the major US post-war economic goals? Almost certainly, viewed in the perspective of the arguments put forward above, no one could argue that the US would have been stronger, or better off, or more successful, had we adopted measures which would have kept the rest of the world impoverished and, hence, more dependent to suit today's critics.

This success, as it is argued here it most certainly is, can perhaps best be measured against the achievement of America's post-war political goals, which were a) to contain communist expansion, b) foment the spread of democratic institutions, c) promote human freedom and wellbeing, and d) contribute to resolving international conflicts short of war. To be sure, we had to take a stand in Korea: but forty years after the Korean conflict, the ground seems prepared for a final resolution between the separated North and South. And, while debate continues over the US stand in Vietnam, more and more people agree in retrospect that the evils of the Vietcong regime, as demonstrated in post-conflict events, justified the effort, if not the outcome. In retrospect it can be seen that, probably because of the US stand, the dominoes did not fall throughout Southeast Asia. And, paradoxically, Vietnam may have prepared the ground for the US-PRC rapprochment five years later. The recent success in the Gulf War, with the widespread support and participation by many nations, may be the culminating evidence of emerging world support for the US policy of collective defense.

But without question, the supreme example of US political success over the past forty-five years of sustained effort, has been the collapse of Soviet power and the taming of Chinese communism. To be sure, one can cavil by pointing to Tianenmen, and the Chinese case is not yet ready for the history books. But the facts are that China is reforming its economy, basically along moderate capitalist lines. The economy in some of the southern provinces is growing at a twenty per cent per annum rate, and overall by nearly ten per cent. The Chinese people are better off today than perhaps in their entire four thousand year history. And the pressure for accompanying political reform is evident to anyone who has been following Chinese affairs.

The success of the US (now only slightly to be distinguished from the generalized Western) system of economics and government has set a powerful example for the Chinese, as well as for almost all the world, with the evident exception of Japan, and was probably the basis for the Tiananmen events. We are no longer tarred with the imperialist brush. China has experienced its own even greater evils from what Harrison Salisbury has called the new domestic imperialism. And America and Americans are today more popular in China (and Russia and Easern Europe) than we have any right to be, considering our individual and national shortcomings. Lady Liberty was the symbol of the student uprising. At Tiananmen, And English is spoken by every tenth man on the streets of Beijing.

As a concrete example of how things are often not as bad as commonly thought, one of the commonest criticisms of American society in recent years is that we have become so improvident that we have the lowest savings rate among all the industrialized nations of the earth and must depend on capital imports from Germany and Japan in order to meet our basic investment needs. Here, too, a recent study has found that this is an altogether too superficial view of the facts. Seems that the efficiency of the American financial market and technique of American managers makes our capital go two-thirds to three-fourths farther than either Japanese or German capital invested at home. So our savings rate of 5 per cent is actually the equivalent of some 8.75 per cent compared to the effectiveness of Japanese or German savings -- a much less shabby performance than we have long been led t believe.What Looks Like Decline to Some, Is to the Thoughtful, Clear Evidence of Prevailing US Military, Social, Political, and Economic Success

Can anyone imagine that these almost unimaginable political/military events could have transpired had not the United States persevered (and been seen to persevere) in its efforts to promote the economic well-being not only of our European cousins, but of Africa, Asia, and Latin America? They've been as interlinked as America's own success, where wise heads recognize that freedom to achieve economically is dependent on stable, predictable, and liberal government which protects not only life and property, but freedom of expression, religion, and association.

Perhaps the prophets of gloom find perverse joy in speaking of the decline of American values, culture, economy, and military might. But some of us view the glass not only as half full, but rapidly filling -- not only for us, but for the world at large as democratic institutions, free markets, and the American language and culture spread. Not nearly as fast, nor as comprehensively, as one might wish, but filling nevertheless.

Remaining Challenges to Keep American Civilization Thriving

Of course, many, not only at home, but abroad, decry America's drugs, crime, and low educational standards. But, as we started out by conceding, Americans are but imperfect humans in an imperfect world.