Two interesting articles below....
America Didn't Decline. It Went Global (found on Politico, but interesting none the less)
By Sean Starrs | 2/24/2014
We’ve been obsessing over the decline or persistence of American power for more
than three decades now. The latest example is a Gallup poll out Monday
showing rising dissatisfaction with the United States’ standing in the world —
but it all started with a wave of declinism in the 1980s, set off by the rise of Japan. Then the
doom and gloom suddenly vanished amid the triumphalism of the 1990s, which
transformed the United States into the world’s only superpower. After the Sept. 11 attacks
and the invasion of Iraq, many thought “empire” was a better moniker, with the United
States apparently able to reshape world order virtually at will. And then just a few years
later — poof! — declinism returned with a vengeance, with American power supposedly
crashing like the latest Hollywood reality queen. China supplanted Japan as a hegemon on
the rise, and the biggest global financial crisis since 1929 — emanating from the United
States itself — was allegedly the final nail in the coffin of the American century.
But really? Is it really possible for American power in the world to flip-flop so wildly over
the decades? Surely, the economic underpinnings of national power run deeper than that?
And throughout these waves of conventional wisdom over the decades, there have always
been contrarians, including in the present. So how is it possible for commentators to look
at the same data and come to completely opposite conclusions?