The world has been multi-polar before and it will be multi-polar again. But we will be the most powerful nation for generations to come, I dare say. And even as other powers rise, we are likely to be friends and allies with most of them.
The most likely power to rise that may not be our friend is China. And they will face rising powers Japan and India as well as a Russia that will grow wary of China more than they want to go on nostalgia trips about their Soviet past.
Add in smaller powers like Vietnam, South Korea, and Taiwan who fear China, and China's rise will provoke neighbors to arm up in self-defense. China's rising power may well rise in absolute terms, but lead to no net gain relatively speaking.
And this scenario assumes that China doesn't collapse and break up into smaller states.
The basic problem is thinking that the so-called cause of our pending decline is a result of thinking history began in 2003. Says Rieff:
The war in Iraq has demonstrated the limits of even America's vaunted military strength -- the one arena in which the U.S. is likely to remain supreme for decades to come. In an era of asymmetric threats, conventional military power is rapidly becoming an anachronistic measure of a country's strength.
Please. First, we are winning this fight in Iraq. And we are doing it with losses that are low by historical standards and at a cost that is below our peacetime military expenditures during the Cold War. This war will not break us on casualties or cost.
Second, insurgents throughout history have challenged conventional militaries. This is nothing new. So imagining that conventional military power is anachronistic because of Iraq is simply foolish, even if we are losing in Iraq.
Those future rising powers--whether friends or foes--will be powerful because of conventional military strength.
And as other powers rise up, they will be glowering at each other, with their increased military power committed to watching close neighbors whose military power is rising.
We, by contrast, will have the most free military power usable for power projection to support our allies and oppose our foes.
Writing us off is a fun game for some to play. But it won't happen any decade soon.
