The decline of the American superpower

Forum

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 2007, Pages

  Fry, Earl H ^a  

^a BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

America's decline; Superpowers

Indexed keywords

EID: 34948814487     PISSN: None     EISSN: 15408884     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2202/1540-8884.1153     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. Bruce Russett, "America's Continuing Strengths," International Organization 39 (Spring 1985): 213-214.
2. Fareed Zakaria, "The Arrogant Empire," Newsweek, 23 June 2004.
3. World Bank data on national GDPs for 2005, and U.S. Department of Commerce data on gross U.S. state products, 2005.
4. See Colin Dueck, "New Perspectives on American Grand Strategy: A Review Essay," International Security 28 (Spring 2004): 197-216.
5. U.S. Census Bureau, "U.S. Interim Projections by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin," 18 March 2004.
6. Neil Howe and Richard Jackson, "Rising Populations Breed Rising Powers," Financial Times, 9 February 2007.
7. Annual GDP data compiled by the World Bank.
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Series ID LNS12000000.
9. U.S. Census Bureau, "Geographic Mobility: 2004/2005."
10. David Levey and Stuart Brown, "The Overstretch Myth," Foreign Affairs 84 (March/April 2005).
11. Kenneth Rogoff, in his article "Betting the House's Money," The Guardian, 7 February 2007, adds to a sense of disbelief concerning why Washington's deficits have been so high when he stresses that the United States has enjoyed "stunning prosperity" over a period of a quarter of a century, punctuated by only two short and very mild recessions.
12. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, "Fiscal, Social Security, and Health Care Challenges," presentation at the Awakening Conference, Sea Island, Georgia, 7 January 2007. Also see David S. Broder, "Red Ink Run Amok," Washington Post, 13 April 2006.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Dennia Cauchon, "Retiree Benefits Grow into 'Monster,'" USA Today, 24 May 2006.
16. Alicia H. Munnell and Annika Sunden, Coming Up Short: The Challenge of 401(k) Plans (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004),
17. and Eduardo Porter and Mary Williams Walsh, "Retirement Turns Into a Rest Stop as Benefits Dwindle," New York Times, 9 February 2006.
18. Statistics compiled by the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) whose membership includes all of the major Western nations. Also see "Desperate Measures - America's Health-Care Crisis," Economist, 28 January 2006.
19. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2007 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2007), online edition with quoted tables updated on 8 February 2007.
20. Jeff Green, "U.S. Has Second Worst Newborn Death Rate in Modern World, Report Says," CNN.com, 10 May 2006. The report was released by the Save the Children organization.
21. Ibid.
22. Mark Trumbull, "Burdened by Healthcare Costs, U.S. Businesses Seek a Shift," Christian Science Monitor, 13 February 2007. Statistics in the article are based on research findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
23. Ibid., and Lisa Pickeroff-White, "More Americans Opting Out of Health Insurance," The National Academies, 12 May 2006,
24. and Economic Policy Institute data found in Robert Kuttner, "Another Year, Another Wage Loss," Boston Globe, 2 September 2006.
25. Ray Uhalde and Jeff Strohl, America in the Global Economy (Washington, D.C.: National Center on Education and the Economy, 2006), 35-36.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 50.
28. Congressional Budget Office, "The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update," July 2000.
29. Statistics compiled by the Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-partisan organization, and quoted in Caroline Baum, "Americans Went to Polls with the GOP They've Got," Bloomberg.com, 13 November 2006.
30. Some on Capitol Hill argue the costs in fiscal year 2006 may have been several billion dollars lower than the organization estimated. See Ronald Brownstein, "Bush's Tax Cuts Far Outweigh Congressional Pork," Los Angeles Times, 14 May 2006.
31. "The Other Defense Budget," Washington Post, 6 February 2007.
32. Paul Krugman, "The Green-Zoning of America," New York Times, 5 February 2007.
33. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq S Green Zone (New York: Random House, 2006).
34. Research by Jeffrey Birnbaum discussed in Drew Lindsay, "How Big Money Has Changed Washington," Washingtonian, November 2006, 5.
35. Roger Lowenstein, "Who Needs the Mortgage-Interest Deduction," New York Times, 5 March 2006.
36. Ibid., and Sebastian Mallaby, "Attacking Inequality," Washington Post, 4 September 2006.
37. Lowenstein.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Christopher Swann, "Tax Panel Seeks Cap on Break for Homeowners," Financial Times, 11 October 2005.
41. Leonard E. Burman, William G. Gale, Matthew Hall, and Peter Orszag, "Distributional Effects of Defined Contribution Plans and Individual Retirement Accounts," Urban Institute TPC Discussion Paper No. 16, 19 August 2004.
42. Mallaby.
43. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America 2006/2007 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), chapter 5.
44. Ibid.
45. David Cay Johnston, "Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows," New York Times, 29 March 2007. The study was completed by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics.
46. Brownstein, "Bush's Tax Cuts."
47. Martin Crutsinger, "Savings a Bust for Boomers," Deseret Morning News, 2 February 2007.
48. Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto, Chapter 5.
49. Kuttner, "Another Year."
50. E.J. Dionne, "Perfect Storm for the Poor," Washington Post, 1 September 2006.
51. Hillary Clinton, Tom Carper, and Tom Vilsack, "Saving the American Dream," Real Clear Politics, 31 July 2006.
52. Economic Policy Institute data quoted in Niala Boodhoo, "Americans' Productivity Rising Faster Than Paychecks," Deseret Morning News, 4 September 2006,
53. and Kurt Andersen, "American Roulette," New York Times Magazine, 8 January 2007.
54. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics findings reported in the New York Times, 26 January 2007.
55. Data compiled by George Galster and his fellow demographers at Wayne State University and discussed in Nancy Cleeland, "Rich, Poor Live Poles Apart in L.A. as Middle Class Keeps Shrinking," Los Angeles Times, 23 July 2006.
56. U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 Housing Survey, Haya El Nasser, "Gated Communities," USA Today, 15 December 2002,
57. and Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Fortress America (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997).
58. In his book, The Great Risk Shift (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), Jacob S. Hacker addresses the growing economic insecurity felt by many American households and criticizes "America's enfeebled public-private framework of health insurance and retirement pensions."
59. Jacques Mistral, "Growing Inequality Is Turning America Inward," Financial Times, 17 July 2006.
60. "The Interest Must Be Paid." New York Times, 29 May 2006.
61. Benn Steil, "Why Deficits Matter (Condensed Version)," Council on Foreign Relations Special Report, September 2006, Peter G. Peterson, "Costs of Being a Superpower," Foreign Affairs 83 (September/October 2004), and Rogoff, "Betting." Rogoff adds that one day the United States will have to pay for its "spendthrift ways," and he wonders whether foreign creditors will readily accept payments in U.S. dollars.
62. Between its peak value in early 2002 to the beginning of 2007, the U.S. dollar was down by 15 percent in real terms against a basket of other major currencies.
63. William E. Kirwan, "Security Through Education," Washington Post, 14 August 2006.
64. Ibid.
65. National Center for International Statistics, The Condition of Education 2006 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2006), 2-23.
66. National Center for Education Statistics, 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2005).
67. Uhalde and Strohl, 18.
68. Ibid., 9-10.
69. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
70. The World Bank estimates Iraq's GDP in 2005 was 12.6 billion dollars, compared with the U.S. Department of Commerce's estimate of a 23 billion dollar GDP for Vermont.
71. Chalmers Johnson, "Empire vs. Democracy: Why Nemesis is at Our Door," TomDispatch.com, posted 30 January 2007.
72. David A. Lake, "American Hegemony and the Future of East-West Relations," International Studies Perspectives 7 (2006): 23-30.
73. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "Recent Trends in Military Expenditures," at www.sipri.org. The Institute estimates that the U.S. accounted for 48 percent of the world's military expenditures in 2005. See also the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook 2007, which estimates U.S. military spending to be in the range of 48 percent of total global expenditures.
74. UNCTAD annual data on total stock of foreign direct investment.
75. U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, Economic Report of the President to the U.S. Congress, 12 February 2007. The share of employment provided by foreign-owned firms declined from 5.1 percent of total employment in 2000 to 4.7 percent in 2004, and output was stagnant as a proportion of total output.
76. Also see Krishna Guha, "White House Fears Foreign Investors Being Put Off U.S.," Financial Times, 13 February 2007.
77. World Trade Organization (WTO) annual data on merchandise exports.
78. Uhalde and Strohl, 44.
79. Ibid., 48.
80. Kenneth Rogoff, "No Grand Plans, But the Financial System Needs Fixing," Financial Times, 8 February 2007.
81. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, "International Investment Position, Yearend Positions, 1976-2005." These figures are based on direct investment being computed on a current-cost basis.
82. Corporations are ranked in terms of revenues, and the statistics are based on Fortune global 500 listings for the years indicated.
83. Jon Gertner, "From 0 to 60 to World Domination," New York Times Magazine, 18 February 2007.
84. Peter Marsh, "U.S. to Lose Role as World's Top Manufacturer by 2020," Financial Times, 24 May 2007.
85. Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, "Goldman Sachs Global Economy Paper No. 99: Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050," October 2003. Also consult Emilio Casetti, "Power Shifts and Economic Development: When Will China Overtake the USA?" Journal of Peace Research 40 (No. 6, 2003): 661-675.
86. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2004), 9.
87. In terms of health care, the public sector already pays for 45 percent of all expenses, and that increases to 60 percent when one includes tax subsidies for employer-based insurance. Federal and state governments assuming the final 40 percent should not be an insurmountable task as long as the new system is relatively efficient and cost-effective.
88. International Monetary Fund Statistics Department COFER database, and Floyd Norris, "Dollar Still Almighty, for Now," New York Times, 2 February 2007.
89. Heather Timmons, "London Moving Up Fast as a World Financial Capital," International Herald Tribune, 27 October 2006,
90. and Cahal Milmo, "Spend! Spend! Spend! London Is the New Plutocrats' Paradise," The Independent, 9 February 2007.
91. See the National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future, for a discussion of some of the major challenges which will face the United States internationally over the next few decades.
92. Interview with Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2007), Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio, 24 February 2007.
93. Michael Krepon, "Target Practice in the Final Frontier," Washington Post, 4 February 2007.
94. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1942).
95. th Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy (Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2005). Agriculture's contribution to total U.S. GDP also fell from 7.7 percent in 1930 to 0.7 percent in 2002.
96. Data from Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted in Robert M. Kimmitt, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, "Why Job Churn Is Good," Washington Post, 23 January 2007.
97. William J. Clinton, "Remarks by the President to the National Association of Attorneys General," Washington, D.C., 12 March 1998.
98. Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "Folly's Antidote," New York Times, 1 January 2007.
99. Fareed Zakaria, "Zakaria: Preview of a Post-U.S. World," MSNBC.com, 5 February 2007.
100. In "Zakaria," the author expresses some concerns about a post-U.S. world: "We are certainly in a trough for America - with Bush in his last years, with the United States mired in Iraq, with hostility toward Washington still high almost everywhere. But if so, we might also be getting a glimpse of what a world without America would look like. It will be free of American domination, but perhaps also free of leadership - a world in which problems fester and the buck is endlessly passed, until problems explode."