The US trails badly in K-12 education – a huge problem – but its universities, especially at the graduate level, dominate the global rankings.
Views of American decline are not new, of course.
While a methodical study is needed to compare the US with its challengers over time, and while America faces truly severe challenges at home and abroad, which it will have to surmount to prevent decline, it remains far stronger than national pessimism suggests.
We should appreciate that fact, even while also developing serious, bipartisan, and longer-term solutions to America’s energy, educational, budgetary, and economic challenges. We must also work to can prevent rivalries from worsening with rising powers like China.
Steve Yetiv is a professor of political science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. He is the author of “The Petroleum Triangle” and “The Absence of Grand Strategy” and is working on a book on US decline.
