America’s Self-Inflicted Wounds

America’s Self-Inflicted Wounds

Moisés Naím

http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/20/america-s-self-inflicted-wounds/i8tr?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRojuKXPZKXonjHpfsX57uQsW6Sg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YYBRcJ0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D
Op-Ed May 20, 2015 Atlantic

Summary

Political dysfunction is doing serious damage to U.S. economic power.

Will the United States remain the most powerful country in the world? Many think not. Those who feel this way also tend to think that China’s ascent will lead to America’s decline. Harvard professor Joseph Nye, who is not a declinist, begins his new book Is the American Century Over? noting that “in recent years, polls showed that in 15 of 22 countries surveyed, most respondents said that China either will replace or has already replaced the United Sates as the world’s leading power.” Its giant landmass and billion-strong population, combined with rapid economic, social, and military progress over the last few decades, make China an obvious candidate to overtake the United States as the primary shaper of world affairs. But the attention in the United States to China and other foreign threats obscures an important fact: America’s diminishment as a world power may be driven as much by the fraying of its domestic politics and chronic institutional gridlock as by the rise of rivals abroad.
Several recent developments reveal how political and institutional fragmentation in the United States has produced self-inflicted wounds for the U.S. abroad. In all of these instances, America’s ability to exercise economic power in the world has been deliberately curtailed through decisions made unilaterally in Washington by American political leaders. http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/20/america-s-self-inflicted-wounds/i8tr?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRojuKXPZKXonjHpfsX57uQsW6Sg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YYBRcJ0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEIQ7XYTLB2t60MWA%3D%3D