The American decline debate Posted By Clyde Prestowitz

• http://prestowitz.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/12/the_american_decline_debate

The American decline debate

Posted By Clyde Prestowitz Thursday, April 12, 2012

A spate of recent books and articles has brought the long running debate over whether it's morning or dusk in America back to the front burner of public debate.
Writers like Robert Kagan and Walter Russell Mead argue that American fears of being surpassed by the Soviet Union and Japan proved groundless in the 1980s and 1990s and that similar fears of being overtaken by China and the other BRICS today will prove similarly unfounded. America they say is not in decline but is rather in the process of re-ordering a global structure weakened by the decline of Japan and Europe. Acute observers like Edward Luce of the Financial Times say it's Time (for America) to Start Thinking -- the title of Luce's just published book.
While I respect all three writers and consider them friends and colleagues, it will surprise no one who has read my own 2010 book -- The Betrayal of American Prosperity -- that I line up with Luce on this one.