Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Kagan on the State of America
In NYT book Review article the author reviews two books on State of America. Robert Kagan argues “Usefully, Kagan states that much of the current decline talk is based on a “nostalgic fallacy,” imagining a golden past in which America was all but omnipotent. There never was such a time, he says, not even during those periods now remembered as the glory days of American might. Still bathing in the glow of total victory in World War II, the country watched events in China, Korea and Indochina that, Dean Acheson lamented, were “beyond the control of the . . . United States.” In 1952 Douglas MacArthur warned of “our own relative decline.” Indeed, Kagan shows that declinism is as old as America itself: in 1788, Patrick Henry was ruing the Republic’s fall from the days “when the American spirit was in its youth.” Kagan’s message is that America has been gripped by these fears before, only to bounce back: “Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation and the energy crisis, cannot really believe the present difficulties are unrivaled.”
Both argue;
“The two authors agree that it’s in everyone’s interest, not just America’s, for the United States to remain dominant. Kagan frames his essay with a device borrowed from the Frank Capra classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” imagining the world if America were not there to play global superpower. He provides a compelling demonstration that whether it’s protecting the sea lanes vital for free trade or nudging societies toward democracy, the world stands a better chance with America in prime position than it would with China or Russia in the lead. Brzezinski similarly asks us to imagine the Internet if it were under the de facto stewardship of Moscow or Beijing rather than Washington.”
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