Time To Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline
By Edward Luce
Published by Little, Brown
The debate as to whether America’s days as sole global superpower are numbered is “seemingly endless”, says Bernd Debusmann on Reuters. However, Edward Luce’s “deeply researched” book makes a convincing case that those who doubt that the US is in decline are “holding an ‘intellectual ostrich position’”.
Luce, a Financial Times columnist, is “not the first to allude to the nature, or extent, of the problems facing” America, notes The Daily Telegraph’s Walter Ellis. But “his argument is cogent, stylishly written and persuasive”. He has two “principal concerns”.
The first is “education and the torpor of a demoralised and deskilled labour force. The other is what has become known as the 1%/99% divide.” In short, state education is failing, and social mobility has collapsed.
So what lies behind the problem? Luce lays much of the blame at the feet of politicians, “who seem to have forgotten why they were elected”. The Republicans in particular “block legislation aimed at reform while promoting the interests of the wealthy, themselves included”.
“If you believe the fantasy that America’s economic success derives from having had a government that stayed out of the way, then gridlock and vetocracy are just fine,” notes Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. “But if you have a proper understanding of US history – so you know that government played a vital role in generating growth… then a vetocracy becomes a very dangerous thing.”
The “fountain of declinist literature” shows no signs of abating, says The Economist. Yet “anyone who prefers their glass half-full can find grounds for optimism”. With a young workforce, world-beating universities, and huge reserves of natural gas, America “still has plenty of grounds to hope for a better future, no matter who wins the election”.
Yet a shift is inevitable, says John Gray in The Guardian. While “China is unlikely to replace the US as the world’s leading power”, the gradual rise of other nations means “America’s relative economic position is bound to decline”. Pundits who see this as “a choice” rather than a fact “are closing their minds”.
The real issue is “how the US will adjust to a descent from primacy that cannot be stopped”. This book is a “call to thinking”. What may prove to be America’s “greatest weakness is the adamant insistence that it can defy the normal course of history”.
• Time To Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline, by Edward Luce. Published by Little, Brown, £20.