Editors’ note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered for The New Criterion’s third annual Circle Lecture.
The answer to the question that Roger Kimball gave me for reply is that no, the United States is not in irreversible decline at all. It is at a plateau that should be sustainable for a long time. It has had an untimely and even freakish confluence of unfortunate circumstances, but the United States is today no less important a country in the world than it was a year ago or ten or twenty or thirty years ago. It was only thirty years ago that it led the West to the greatest and most bloodless strategic victory in history, in the disintegration of its only rival as a superpower in the world. This disintegration occurred as a result of the inspired policy of containment followed by ten presidents. No shot in anger was ever exchanged between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Irreversible decline is what gradually drove down Spain, Turkey, and the Habsburg Empire from the late sixteenth century into the twentieth century. One hears a good deal of glib talk comparing the United States to the late Roman Empire. This is not informed opinion. There were, depending upon how you count them, fifty Roman emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus, 27 B.C.–453 A.D
