We’re Still No. 1!

Robert Kagan thumps his chest on The Washington Post op-ed page today, offering a provocative takedown of the "faddish declinism" taking over America. America's share of the global economy—21 percent—is consistent with its stake throughout the past five decades, and the American military still outstrips the Russian and the Chinese. It's true, Kagan concedes, that America's image is damaged, but is it really any worse than it was in the 1960s and 70s, when it suffered Vietnam, My Lai, the Watts Riots, and the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King? "The danger of today's declinism," Kagan writes, "is not that it is true but that the next president will act as if it is."