![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Think of Greece and Rome, both part and parcel of the classical civilization. But they share the same cultural heritage, and their fates are bound together, whether they like it or not. “They agree on little and understand one another less and less,” he wrote, adding, “When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.” In his influential little book of 2003, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, he famously suggested Americans are from Mars whereas Europeans are from Venus. Thus, no serious analysis of America’s fate as a global power can be undertaken without placing it within the context of the West, meaning primarily Europe. America is a product of Western civilization-part and parcel of it, inseparable from it. But the question is front and center and inescapable. Still others-Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and Stratfor’s George Friedman, for example-dispute that America is in decline at all. Others-Yale’s Paul Kennedy included-contend that America has fostered, at least partially, its own decline through “imperial overstretch” and other actions born of global ambition. Some-Parag Khanna’s work comes to mind-suggests the decline is the product of forces beyond America’s control. A QUESTION haunts America: Is it in decline on the world scene? Foreign-policy discourse is filled with commentary declaring that it is. ![]()
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