Reporter’s Podcast: What’s Next for America’s Role in the World?

As many things become global — trade, communications, the economy — the question arises of how long the United States can remain No. 1 in a globalized world.

NewsHour senior producer for foreign affairs Michael Mosettig gets two perspectives in this Reporter’s Podcast.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: I’m Michael Mosettig, senior producer for foreign affairs and defense at the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

There’s been a lot of talk lately in academic and think tank circles about the future of American power in the world: Is it declining, or is the U.S. still the dominant nation for the foreseeable future?

A recent and provocative book has stirred this pot anew. The book is called “After America.” The author is Paul Starobin, a writer with the National Journal and Atlantic and a one time Moscow correspondent.

Joining him in our discussion is Joseph Nye, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and former official in the Carter and Clinton administrations. He has written extensively about the application of American power and his most recent book is titled “The Power to Lead.”

Paul Starobin, let’s start with you. You write that America has a rendezvous with history, that we have seen the end of American ascendency. What do you mean?

PAUL STAROBIN: Well, rendezvous with history meaning that the myth of American exceptionalism that America is unique in the world and uniquely destined for great things is just that — a myth — and we need to put it in historical context.

Also that our ascension itself was at least in part somewhat of an accident of history in the sense that Europe pretty much destroyed itself during the first part of the 20^th century, and countries like China and India were under colonial domination. So that period had to come to an end.

And the second thing that I mean by that is that America itself has become something of a middling in terms of its performance, economically, politically, culturally. And so it’s not just about the rise of the rest of the world, as some have said, but it’s about a kind of sagging America, too.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: So Joseph Nye, based on what he said, do you see the United States at the moment in a situation similar to Britain post-Suez or even more dramatically, Rome in the 5^th century?

JOSEPH NYE: No, I don’t. For one thing, we’re going through a difficult period right now in the aftermath of substantial crisis, but I suspect that’s not going to be a permanent decline. What you’re seeing is something that I think where Paul is correct is that there’s a diffusion of power in the world. But if you asked me which country will have more power than any other, let’s say in 20 years, it’ll still be the United States. And I don’t see this as a sagging of the United States, I see it more as a rising of the rest.

And in that sense I think if you look at the strengths that the United States still has in military power, the Americans are not likely to be equaled in the next two decades. In economic power, I think there clearly is going to be a change. We’ll probably lose, or shed, 3 or 4 percent of gross domestic product, which we now have, to mostly Asian countries China and India.

But in soft power, the ability to attract others through culture and values, recent polls have shown that the United States is indeed the dominant country in this despite some of the problems we’ve been through in the last decade. So I’m not as pessimistic as Paul is.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: Let’s take some of these elements. Paul, you wrote that our military power has seen a definite decline in that the United States has not been able to work its will in either Iraq or Afghanistan, and that’s a sign of the decline of our military power. But what seems somewhat analogous is that 16 years after we left in humiliation from Vietnam, we won one of the most one-sided military victories in the last couple of centuries in the first Persian Gulf war. So how do you define what you see as our loss of military power?

PAUL STAROBIN: Well, I think we’re over-extended. Yes, that was a very short war in the Gulf. But I think we’re both over-extended and I think we’re being attacked in a kind of an asymmetric way, you know, rather effectively by those who wish to do us harm. And we’re seeing that in new dimensions as well with this whole issue of cybersecurity.

I think that some of the early warnings of decline may have been premature. I mean, these go back some decades, but I don’t think that they were fundamentally wrong. And what worries me is that I don’t think America has a fundamental plan to deal with this overextension of its military. There’s a lot of talk about it, but there doesn’t seem to be much action.

And in fact we may be seeing with what we’re now doing in Afghanistan a worsening of this situation because it’s really not very clear how effective we’re going to be in that theater as well. And I would remind you that in Iraq, it’s very much the jury is out whether the withdrawal or the retreat of American forces from the major cities is going to destabilize the situation we’re seeing, you know, the rise in violence there, which follows I think premature predictions that the surge was so successful.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: Well, on another aspect, Professor Nye, on economic power, has this current recession taken such an effect and also particularly in the sense of making the American economic go-for-it model of capitalism much less admired in the world. Is this going to have a much deeper effect than the normal recession and the kind of long-term economic effect that the two world wars had on Britain’s economic decline?

JOSEPH NYE: Well, let me first mention disagreement with Paul’s answer on military power. This danger of the golden glow of the past. You know we weren’t able to prevent the loss of China at a time when we had 50 percent of world product and unilateral nuclear weapons. We were the only country with them. So there’s great danger in thinking that because we don’t prevail in Iraq or Afghanistan that that’s a huge decline. It may be a change in what military power can do.

But on the economic question of where are we in the United States, we do have the American model, the go-go financial model, of the early part of the 21^st century has clearly been damaged. But if you look at the world economic forum, and it’s assessment of which economy is most competitive in the world, it ranks the United States as No. 1 and China as No. 33. I think there’s a great danger of extrapolating long-term trends from short-term cyclical changes. If you really want to look at the long-term, in 1945, as I mentioned, the United States represented about half of world product for the reasons that Paul said which is that Europe had basically destroyed itself in World War II. So we were artificially high.

By 1972, when people thought we were in decline, it was actually a return to normal. We were back to about a quarter of world product, which was where we were before World War II. And today if you look at where we are, we’re essentially at about a quarter of world product. As I mentioned earlier, I think we will because of the rise in China and India shed about another 3 or 4 points of gross domestic product over the next decade or two. It’s a lot different, though, than saying we’re sagging and going through a decline. It helps to have a longer perspective on these things and not extrapolate the long-term just from short-term cyclical change.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: Just briefly, in wrapping this up. Whether we’re talking in terms of 20 years as Joseph Nye mentioned, or a shorter time span that Paul Starobin mentioned, do we look ahead and see a genuinely multi-polar world, to use a French expression, or do we see a new hegemon, again to use another French expression, rising to replace the United States as the lead power?

JOSEPH NYE: I would argue that neither of those is accurate as a way to describe what we’re seeing. Power has become more diffuse in a sense that in different areas you find different distributions of power. In military power, I don’t think anybody’s going to equal the United States for another two decades. In economic power, the world already is multi-polar. The United States is balanced by Europe, Japan, China. That’s been true for a decade or more. And in soft power, I think the United States still is ahead but others are gaining in their soft power.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: Paul?

PAUL STAROBIN: I think what we’re seeing, and I do think it’s a long-term trend. You know, my book really was not prompted by the global economic crisis, but by a series of deteriorations across the board in things like our ability to do health care effectively, our response — our failed response really — to the energy crisis of the 1970s, a growing inequality in our income. These kinds of things I think have lessened the power of the American model in the world.

There was this great phrase back in the 1950s used by the writer Max Lerner called the “imperialism of attraction.” He said that there was this kind of tropism toward the American sun. I think it’s that tropism that really has abated greatly, and it’s because of that that I expect that there will be something next in the world. And we don’t know quite what it will be. It could be a new hegemonic power in the form of China, although I think that will take a long time to emerge. I think yes, in many respects, the multi-polar world is already arriving, and it could also be a period of chaos in various forms. A kind of interregnum that we often see in the twilight of empires.

But I think fundamentally, this is not just about America’s share in the global domestic economic product, it’s about the power of the American model — our model as a civilization, as a way of life. That is what I think has really been on the wane.

JOSEPH NYE: And it’s interesting to note that the recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll showed that the United States had more of that soft power, that tropism or attraction than any other country.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: Well, this is a discussion that clearly has a lot of room to grow and will continue on, but we thank both Paul Starobin and Joseph Nye for this latest add-on to a continuing debate about the future of the United States in the world. Thank you both very much.

JOSEPH NYE: Thank you.

PAUL STAROBIN: Thank you.

MICHAEL MOSETTIG: This has been Michael Mosettig of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.