Reports of US Decline Greatly Exaggerated

Don’t believe the “faddish declinism” of naysayers arguing that America’s best days are behind her, Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post. Francis Fukuyama and his ilk praise Barack Obama’s “realism” in facing the “post-American world,” but in reality, Obama’s rhetoric remains perfectly optimistic, Kagan writes—a good thing, as there’s precious little evidence of this so-called decline.

Yes, the US has been hit by the economic crisis, but so has every other country. Washington may not dominate the world, but when did it ever? “Declinists imagine a mythical past when the world danced to America's tune,” writes Kagan, but in reality the US has been plagued by countless disasters since World War II, many far larger than any it now faces. (More Barack Obama stories.)