JOSEPH S. NYE JR., professor of international relations at Harvard University and former US assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs
Idea: Why the US isn't Rome
Mr. Nye writes: Sixty percent of Americans think the US is in decline. A recent poll shows 47 percent think China's economy is stronger (though the Chinese economy is unlikely to equal the size of America's for another 20 years).
Why does it matter? Because a fearful, inward-looking US is less likely to provide leadership that the world needs to solve transnational challenges such as climate change, financial stability, cyber-security, and terrorism.
Americans are prone to cycles of belief in decline. Polls showed a belief in decline after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, after Nixon's economic adjustments and the oil shocks in the 1970s, and after the closing of Rust Belt industries and the budget deficits of the Reagan administration in the '80s. Such cycles of "declinism" tell us more about American psychology than real shifts in power.
As I show in my new book, "The Future of Power" (February 2011), rather than declining, the US is likely to have more military, economic, and "soft power" resources than any other country in the coming decades.
But to play a positive international role will require reforms at home: particularly in improving K-12 education, coming to terms with the budget deficit, and making repairs to the political process.
In recent years, American politics and political institutions have become more polarized than the distribution of opinions in the American public. As The Economist concludes, "The basic system works; but that is no excuse for ignoring areas where it could be reformed."
Top on the list should be eliminating the gerrymandering of safe seats in the House of Representatives and the blocking procedures in Senate rules and filibusters. Neither requires a constitutional amendment to change. The US political system is not as broken as implied by critics who draw analogies to the domestic decay of Rome.
