{"id":8642,"date":"2012-05-13T15:13:33","date_gmt":"2012-05-13T14:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=8642"},"modified":"2012-05-13T15:48:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-13T14:48:09","slug":"is-americas-decline-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=8642","title":{"rendered":"Is America&#8217;s decline inevitable?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All civilisations rise and fall; all great powers ascend and descend. This is the lesson of world history. After all, Britain was once the greatest power on earth ruling one-fifth of the global population and covering a quarter of the planet&#8217;s area.<\/p>\n<p>Yet many American politicians and policymakers assume that the current American hegemony is permanent and are in denial about the growing signs of political quagmire, economic weakness and military limitations.<\/p>\n<p>I am more than usually interested in the prospects for the United States because I am about to make my seventh visit to the country. I think that I will take with me to read a new book by Edward Luce entitled &#8220;Time To Start Thinking: America And The Spectre Of Decline&#8221;. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2012\/may\/11\/time-start-thinking-edward-luce-review\">a review<\/a> of the work, John Gray concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;America&#8217;s difficulties are not fundamentally different from those all developed countries face in responding to the global shift of economic power. But by the same token, what may prove to be America&#8217;s greatest weakness is the adamant insistence that it can defy the normal course of history. Pundits who insist that American decline is not a fact but a choice are closing their minds to the only real issue, which is how the US will adjust to a descent from primacy that cannot be stopped. At present the auguries are not good.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All civilisations rise and fall; all great powers ascend and descend. This is the lesson of world history. After all, Britain was once the greatest power on earth ruling one-fifth of the global population and covering a quarter of the planet&#8217;s area. Yet many American politicians and policymakers assume that the current American hegemony is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8642"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8648,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8642\/revisions\/8648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}