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Hirsh: An Unnatural Disaster

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 15th, 2008

America bears much of the blame for its waning global clout:

In a month of horrific natural disasters—the China quake, the Burma cyclone—it’s instructive to consider what one of the biggest unnatural disasters in memory looks like. That is the decline in America’s position in the world from where we were when George W. Bush inherited power on Jan. 20, 2001, to what he will bequeath to the next president eight months from now.

In many articles and in book after book American “declinists” nowadays tend to portray America’s reduced stature as a largely natural phenomenon. Never mind that on the eve of the Bush presidency we were still seen as the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Decadent powers always wane in influence, and it seems we’ve just been doing a lot of waning very quickly. As other countries around the world partook of the ideas we pressed on them in the post-cold war era—free markets, democracy—they started to prosper and catch up to us. Meanwhile we grew fatter (literally) and more spoiled. It was all very organic.

Hirsh concludes:

Had we handled things right, what is now deemed American “decline” could have played out very differently. We will never know, of course. And we won’t know for a long time whether the next president can begin the titanic task of raising us up again. All is hardly lost: despite the rise of China and India, and Russia’s rumblings, there is still no credible rival to superpower status. But let’s not kid ourselves about the cause of our problems.

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