Ever since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, a number of leading intellectuals, from both liberal and conservative points on the political spectrum, have been predicting the decline of the United States. The London School of Economics philosopher John Gray responded to the GFC by declaring: “The era of American global leadership is over.” The Yale historian Paul Kennedy revived his doctrine of “imperial overstretch” to argue that American military spending and the consequent increase in federal debt would soon bankrupt the country.
The conservative Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson was the most pessimistic of all. In a 2010 paper “Empires on the Edge of Chaos: The Nasty Fiscal Arithmetic of Imperial Decline,” Ferguson said America’s fate would be sealed very quickly. Like other great powers of history, it would not decline gradually, but would suddenly “fall over a cliff.” The tipping point would come when the costs of servicing government debt exceeded the defense budget, which, he said, would occur some time within the next five years, that is, by 2015.
With that ominous year now almost upon us, the debate has recently attracted two formidable conservative contrarians. In his book The Myth of America’s Decline, Joseph Joffe bases his case largely on economic comparisons: the United States remains much more economically viable than its detractors imagine, and the rival Chinese model, on which most critics base their vision of the future, is already facing diminishing rates of growth. Suddenly,
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Keith Windschuttle's latest book is The White Australia Policy (Macleay Press).
This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 33 Number 4, on page 74
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https://newcriterion.com/article/a-nation-in-retreat/
