Looking Through the Hourglass of American Declinism

Istorie recent` [i geopolitic` LOOKING THROUGH THE HOURGLASS OF AMERICAN DECLINISM Dr. SIMONA R. SOARE * Abstract his paper is taking a closer look at the hypothesis of US decline and investigates closely the arguments of the declinist school of American foreign policy. Keywords: relative power decline, declinist school, rise and fall of great powers, overstretch, deep engagement, ofshore balancing, disengagement, retrenchment, rebalancing America’s foreign policy “Without underrating the hardships of our situation, the long tragedy of the unemployed, the grievous burden of taxation, the arduous and painful struggle of those engaged in trade and industry, at any rate we are free from that fear which besets so many less fortunately placed, the fear that things are going to get worse. We owe our freedom from that fear to the fact that we have balanced our budget.”1 “Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home. After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over six million new jobs. We buy more American cars than we have in ive years, and less foreign oil than we have in 20. Our housing market is healing, our stock market is rebounding, and consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever before.”2 How well these words describe America at the beginning of the 21st century! Except they belong to diferent political igures set in diferent timeframes. he irst quote belongs to the British statesman Neville Chamberlain speaking before the House of Commons in 1933 about Britain’s struggle against its own relative power decline. Less than a decade later, World War II swept across the world with crushing brutality. he second quote is from President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union speech delivered less than a month before this article’s completion. here is always a reasonable limit to the comparison of historical similarities and certainly the United States’ development in the international system does not mimic that of the British Empire. Today’s world is far more complex than it was in the early 1900s. Yet the U.S. seems to have been constantly aware of * Simona R. Soare is a scientiic researcher with the Institute for Political Studies of Defense and Military History in Bucharest (IPSDMH) and the editor of the Strategic Monitor journal published by IPSDMH. She holds a Ph.D. (2011) in Political Sciences – International Relations from the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest (NSPSPA) where she currently teaches International Relations.  Revista de istorie militară  47 the burden of a great power’s inescapable demise. Even as Washington became the most powerful actor in the international system in the aftermath of World War II and proclaimed its exceptionalism and its liberal manifest destiny, the knowledge it would once face relative power decline has always been present in the back of the American statesmen’s mind; the possibility that they, too might one day share the tragic fate of all other great powers has constantly haunted them. Indeed, it seems there are cyclical American fears of relative power decline; during the Cold War there were several episodes of American declinism marked by the fear that the United States was falling behing the Soviet Union: in the late 1950s after the USSR launched the Sputnik; in the 1960s when the American political elite was concerned about the so-called missile gap; in the 1970s, after the Vietnam War as well as in the aftermath of a grueling economic crisis; or in the 1980s when Washington feared it would soon be economically replaced by close ally and economically-booming Japan. Today the U.S. is experiencing perhaps the second most severe recession in its history; this fuels the debate about American power and brings the fears of American relative power decline to the forefront of foreign policy agenda-setting once again. In the mid and late 2000s the United States entered its ifth wave of relative power decline by Josef Jofe’s count.3 here is a truly proliic literature on the rise and fall of great powers in the ield of International Relations. he literature on systemic change rests on the transitory character of world leadership and the rise and fall cycles of all great powers. he power transition theory’s foundations, which initially originated with Organski and Kugler in the mid-20th century, are twofold:4 on the one hand, the hegemonic transition theory of Gilpin argues systemic change occurs when a strategic near peer rises in the system and challenges the status quo in order to better provide for its own interests.5 he change in the systemic distribution of power inevitably shifts because of the uneven pattern of the rise and demise of the international actors’ relative power. Another version of systemic change is provided by Schweller’s argument that the 48 change in the systemic distribution of power occurs as new and revisionist great powers rise in the international system and challenge established hegemons in order to maximize their own power and gains. A diferent version of systemic change is provided by the hegemonic cycles theory. Modelski and Goldstein argue there is an immutable cyclical pattern to the rise and fall of hegemons in the international system.6 his particular branch of IR research rests on the assumption that there is a natural and unbreakable development of any great power’s resources. herefore, the main efort is to identify strong empirical evidence to support the downward trend of the respective state’s relative power. On the other hand, there is Kennedy’s theory of imperial overstretch which builds on the tragic fate of all great powers.7 He argues that great powers inevitably work their way into decline and eventually even demise by seeking to maximize their power; at some point, the costs of maintaining their power possessions outgrow their beneits; consequently, the respective great power becomes imperially overstretched. his is cause for both decline – a relative power downward trend, albeit not necessarily a constant one – or demise – the deinite and constant downfall of relative power. Unlike the irst type of research on systemic change, Kennedy’s theory is built on the premise that great powers’ demise is not necessarily an unbreakable historical law, but a historical recurrence fed by the wrong grand strategic choices these states tend to make. his is mainly a consequence of the great powers’ tendency to focus on the present rather than see things in historical hindsight. Kennedy’s argument much resembles the arguments put forth by Niall Ferguson or Aaron Friedberg in this respect. A variation of Kennedy’s argument is Taliaferro’s who argues decline might also be caused by the great powers’ being bogged down in periphery conlicts of marginal strategic importance.8 Unlike these authors, Immanuel Wallerstein (see Fig. 1) argues the structure of the system is in constant lux between the center and the semi-periphery and this drives the systemic change in the distribution of power.9  Revista de istorie militară  In the early 2000s a new brand of systemic change in IR theory was developed: the rise of the rest argument. Zakaria and Kupchan, for instance, argue that great powers experience relative power decline; but this may not necessarily be a result of their own economic or military underperformance or even of their inadequate grand strategic choices; rather, it may be caused by other great powers’ inevitable rise10 in the international system to eventually balance against and challenge the established hegemon. his is part of the natural cycle of change in the international system and, it would appear, it has nothing to do with America’s exceptionalism. However, the rise of new non-European great powers might just prove that American exceptionalism and American unipolarity are simply passing moments for new great powers will balance against the United States sooner rather than later. Against this solid theoretical background, at the beginning of the 21st century a brand new line of scholarly research was established, a school of thought otherwise known as the declinist school of American foreign policy. his new line of research practically monopolized  Revista de istorie militară  U.S. foreign policy analysis especially over the past decade. he declinist school refers to the decline of the American power by using a combination of the arguments of the aforementioned established IR theories;11 it also refers to alternative grand strategies the United States may choose in order to delay, mitigate, prevent or prepare for its inevitable decline. In particular, the declinists argue the United States, the superpower endowed with plenty of security in the system, is wasting lives and treasure on a forward-leaning, unnecessarily militarized and aggressive hegemonic grand strategy also known as primacy or for liberals in particular, deep engagament. his grand strategy is especially harmful to the narrow American strategic interests which at times ind themselves forced to compete with more general American interests such as ensuring the allies’ security – particularly, the European allies’ security; ensuring their access to scarce energy resources such as oil or natural gas from the Middle East; ensuring the spread of democracy worldwide; etc. All of these tasks represent heavy burdens on the United States federal budget which feed the ballooning deicit and foreign debt with which Washington is struggling nowadays. In other words, America is constantly and unnecessarily prioritizing the allies’ security before its own which is creating a negative spiral of relative power decline. At present, the declinists claim, the costs of maintaining America’s forward-leaning grand strategy far outweigh its beneits and with the onset of the economic crisis may have become prohibitive indeed; they inevitably lead America into a state of overstretch and rush its relative decline. he declinists also argue that empirical evidence does not matter as much as the unbreakable laws of the international system, those of the rise and fall of great powers. At the same time, there is a booming critical literature that emphasizes the solid and enduring bases of American power and ofers evidence to support its claim that the United States is in fact not experiencing relative power decline – at least not of the morbid kind. While there is a general acknowledgement that the United States is standing at a turning point in its history and it faces signiicant economic 49 diiculties, critics of the declinist school argue America simply needs “to reconnect with the values and ideals that made the American dream so compelling for so many generations of Americans, as well as for so many millions of people across the globe. (…) hat used to be us [the U.S.]. And because that used to be us, it can be again.”12 he American “liberal ascendancy is not over”13 yet. herefore, “the United States does, in fact, have an opportunity to revise the system – and, moreover, that this opportunity (…) long endure. (…) the United States can push hard and even unilaterally for revisions to the international system without sparking counterbalancing, risking the erosion of its ability to cooperate within international institutions, jeopardizing the gains of globalization, or undermining the overall legitimacy of its role.”14 But what empirical evidence lies beyond the ongoing theoretical debate on the American relative power decline? What are the declinist school’s main arguments? What is the history of American declinist fears? More importantly, what evidence is ofered to support them? he next pages will tackle each of these questions in detail. he purpose of this paper is to review the declinist school literature and underline its main arguments by reference to its historical and contemporary development. I refer to historical evidence to investigate the declinist school’s arguments, and their main critics, but it is not my purpose here to refute them. In particular, I argue that historical empirical evidence ofers little support for the declinist theses as well as for the critics of declinism albeit for very diferent reasons. While the declinist school’s arguments seem to be based on a self-fullilling prophecy especially because the declinist scholars’ reference to empirical evidence is more rethorical than probatory, their counterarguments are diicult to refute presumably because they ofer no comparison reference point either. In other words, the declinists argue the costs of maintaning a forward leaning grand strategy are causing American relative power decline because America has become overstretched, but fail to point to quantiiable beneits or costs of the grand strategies they propose 50 because these cannot be accurately estimated in advance. On the other hand, the critics of declinism use empirical evidence to point to the beneits of the current American grand strategy; yet the costs of switching to a more restrained grand strategy are also considered hypothetically, presumably be-cause they cannot be accurately estimated either. Both these approaches ofer incomplete empirical evidenciary support for their arguments; the latter are methodologically diicult to test, which is why they set the perfect background for self-fulilling prophecies. Symbolically, the debate about America’s relative power decline is very much like an hourglass. One gets the feeling the two sides of the hourglass are diferent and apparently transparent. One knows for sure the sand is running fast, but it simply diicult to tell whether it is running for or against oneself. America’s case of relative power decline today is an hourglass in which it is diicult to tell whether the sand is running in favor of the declinists’ arguments or against them; whether time is running against or in favor of the United States systemic power preponderance. For each side of the hourglass is representative of a diferent argument: the declinists and their critics. Yet, turn the hourglass and the sand will still be running in the opposite direction, regardless of what that is. he declinist school’s argument that the United States is on a downward economic trend, as a result of natural historical evolutions or overstretch does not seem to be suiciently supported by economic igures and estimated trends at this point in time. Basically, while it does rightly point to the American economic downturn since the mid-2000s and especially since the economic crisis hit in 2007, the declinist school does not seem to separate this short-term economic fallout from a postulated, but unproved long-term descendant economic trend; it ofers little empirical evidence as to why this particular recession of the late 2000s is so diferent from previous ones as to warrant such a bleak perspective of the American power’s future. Similarly, the declinists emphasize the United States became overextended because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as because it disproportionately sub-sidizes  Revista de istorie militară  the security of its European allies. Yet, the empirical evidence invoked to support this argument is circumstantial, not causal and conclusive. In part, the declinist school’s allegations seem to be nothing more than rhetoric, a misrepresentation of empirical facts in support of a speciic political and strategic preference entertained by the conservative declinists. he ongoing debate within the declinist school is itself caught up in the mirage of American exceptionalism as seen by four enduring American foreign policy traditions: the Wilsonian, the Hamiltonian, the Jefersonian and the Jacksonian traditions.15 he declinists focus less on decline as a result of the inescapable historical and systemic laws and more on decline as a result of the wrong grand strategic choices the United States made in the past. he reverse argument is, decline could be stalled or even delayed if the United States corrects these wrong historical choices – i.e. deep engagement or extra-regional hegemony – and adopts an appropriate grand strategy – that is, selective engagement, disengagement, retrenchment or ofshore balancing. Of course, the declinists themselves cannot agree which restrained grand strategy is more appropriate. here is a strong normative aspect to the declinist school of American foreign policy and one gets the distinct feeling it overpowers the historical and empirical arguments it is built on. he article consists of three main parts. he irst part reviews the declinist school literature as well as the main critical arguments to it. In particular, I ind there are three underlying layers to the declinist school’s claim the United States is experiencing relative power decline. he second part of this article briely investigates the history of the argument concerning the American relative power decline. In particular, I ind that there is a cyclical developement of American declinism that generally accompanies periods of domestic or international shifts in the American grand strategy, whether the latter are driven by international crises or not. Finally, I draw my conclusions ar-guing it is still too early to tell whether the United States will emerge out of this ifth wave of relative decline at least if not more powerful that it entered. he empirical  Revista de istorie militară  evidence I analyze seems to point to the fact that there does not seem to be an objective, longterm downward economic trend in America’s power beyond the immediate negative impact of the Great Recession. Rather, it points to the fact that the global race with other great powers is on in these times of austerity, as president Obama outlined in his call to Fix-It-First! he Five Cycles of American Declinism here is a long history behind the 21st century declinist school of American foreign policy. Indeed, there are cycles to the American fears about relative power decline. Since the end of World War II, Washington underwent a decline scare every single decade. Yet the United States has so far managed to successfully overcome every single one of these successive waves of declinism and even to become more powerful that before. Critics of the declinist school, like Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth, argue American decline has been preached many times, but did not actually happened; hence, there is little reason to believe it will happen this particular time around. After all, the United States is simply too big to fail. Surely, the critics of declinism are wrong: just because a phenomenon does not take place when expected or predicted it does not mean it will never occur. herefore, the argument about America’s relative power decline deserves further historical and empirical scrutiny before dismissing or accepting it. My purpose here is not to refute or conirm the declinist theses, but rather to look at the historical evidence on which they are built. I will irst look at the brief history of the declinist arguments’ development. After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik in 1957, the United States feared it was falling behind in the global competition and would soon experience decline. In the 1960s when the Soviet Union built the irst Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry vehicle (MIRV) and managed to place ballistic missiles in Cuba, just of the coast of the United States, Washington again feared it was losing the competition with the communist menace in what was largely known as the missile gap. Indeed, the latter was a serious cause for strategic concern in Washington as the Soviet 51 Union was believed to possess more ballistic missiles, more nuclear warheads, more strategic bombers than the United States. his, the argument went, was undermining America’s power in the global race and was a sign of America’s relative power decline. In the 1970s the United States was seriously concerned about falling behind the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, fearing the loss of the war would spark a domino efect and would eventually undermine Washington’s security guarantees to other allies. Moreover, domestic reforms such as the social security or healthcare reforms in the mid-1960s caused an economic stirr. Yet, between 1965 and the mid-1990s the American household’s income steadily and constantly increased; the foreign debt diminished from over 120% of GDP to just under 30% of GDP; the federal deicit fell from almost 14% of GDP to just under 2% annually; employment exploded, etc all as a result of the good performance of the American economy. In the late 1970s the United States experienced a period of economic recession of which the Carter administration skillfully managed to emerge in the early 1980s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s there were similar concerns about the growing federal deicit and foreign debt held by the American public. Critics of the Carter and Reagan administrations emphasized the sizable deicit of over 3.5% of GDP as well as the rapid growth of the foreign debt to over 50% of GDP after a decade of keeping it below 35% and at times even below 30% of GDP. he growth of the deicit and the foreign debt was believed to inevitably reduce the power of the United States and even undermine the American power in the competition with the Soviet Union. he Carter administration managed to heal the economic malaise and by 1982 it was morning in America again. And the 1980s were a period of booming economy for the United States; the Reagan administration managed not only to create jobs, but also to re-start the American economic engines by applying a Keynesianinspired sollution to the economic problems: large federal investments, particularly in the defense industry. Surely, the federal deicit hit levels unseen since World War II and the 52 foreign debt held by the public balloned to almost 60% of GDP.16 his was cause enough for concern without adding Japan’s skyrocketing economic performance to the mix, or the fact that the latter held a signiicant amount of the American foreign debt and an even larger share of incoming FDI. Economists in the United States feared or even professed that Washington was in relative power decline and that Japan might soon replace the United States as the world’s largest economy. But with the economy working at full-capacity there was no empirical evidence of relative power decline. In the late 1980s the United States emerged out of the Cold War victorious and wealthier than it had entered. More importantly, in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved, the United States became the only global superpower, the unipolar state. Its primacy over the system was debated, but not challenged or denied. hough it was the most powerful country in the world, in the early 1990s the United States undertook the task of ensuring the security of other states in the international system through the spread of democracy, the maintenance of international strategic and economic stability, open markets, the spread of functional market economies and free trade, etc. Its policies met with international dissent, but rarely did the United States encounter near peer strategic resistance. In the 1990s the Clinton administration’s economic and iscal policies put the United States on a path of unprecedented economic growth path; and its indispensable nation Revista de istorie militară  inspired grand strategy made the United States the center, as well as the top of the international system. In the early 2000s the Bush jr. administration hanged the economic and iscal policies which economists like Krugman argue it brought about the economic recession America is now struggling to pull itself out of. Krugman claims that had Bush jr. decided to continue the iscal and economic policies of the Clinton administration, the United States would have managed by 2012 to completely pay of an increasingly burdensome foreign debt by 2012. he incredible irony is 2012 turned out to be the year the foreign debt held by the American public amounted to more than 70% of GDP. At the same time, especially over the past ten years, the United States became increasingly preoccupied with China’s rise to global power status. In particular, in 2010 China replaced the United States as the largest manufacturing market in the world, after it had previously replaced America as the largest car manufacturer and the largest energy consumer in the world. OECD estimates that by 2016 China will have replaced the United States as the world’s largest economy as well, thus oicially altering the hierarchy of power in the international system. And the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 and the IISS projections predict that all things equal, China will replace the United States as the world’s largest defense spender by the mid2030s.17 What does this mean, though, for the fate of the American power and the future of the American world order? Certainly, the previous waves of American declinism decried the tragic fate of all great powers, though American scholars continued to relish in the exceptionalism of American power. Has this exceptionalism run out? All those times before, the United States feared losing the strategic competition, but never did; Washington was never surpassed by the power of a rival near peer since the end of World War I. In less than a decade, the United States is facing something it has never experienced before – being surpassed in economic power by another great power. Does this mean that American decline is not a scholarly phantasm anymore? Under the impact of the wars in Afghanistan  Revista de istorie militară  and Iraq, of the rapid rise of China and of the negative fallout of the global economic crisis, there seems to be a growing agreement in IR literature on the American relative power decline. Surely, there are at least three diferent arguments to the declinist school which can be easily traced back to the previous waves of declinism. I will review the declinist arguments next. he Declinist School’s Arguments Scholars of the declinist school of American foreign policy argue the post-World War II grand strategy adopted by the United States is characterized by an extensive forward presence and an extensive global network of security commitments, an excessive engagement to the promotion of democracy, etc. his grand strategy has been extremely detrimental to American power and security, causing the unnecessary loss of both American lives and treasure. his is a consequence of the fact that the grand strategy largely deviates from the narrow American strategic interests and fails to take into consideration America’s truly exceptional geopolitical position in the international system which allows it the choice of when and how to engage with the rest of the international actors. For all these reasons, the grand strategy pursued by Washington after World War II ended up by eventually diminishing America’s relative power in the system: “Over the last decade (…) the country’s relative power has deteriorated, and policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to ight and how to ight them. What’s more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain current force structure – levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States’ ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.”18 Not only has America been living beyond its inancial means, but its security strategy has become increasingly costly because it has become so overstreched under the pressure of existing security commitments worldwide. he maintenance of the current strategic forward presence, however, has only led to de facto encouraging American allies to cut their defense expenses, to free-ride the American 53 security bandwagon, to allow Washington to strongly subsidize their security while they developed other sectors of their economies, to drag Washington into unnecessary wars, etc. Yet America’s ballooning foreign debt and budget deicit no longer warrant such a grand strategy:19 “he United States should replace its unnecessary, inefective, and expensive hegemonic quest with a more restrained grand strategy.”20 he harm caused by America’s unnecessarily militarized and forward-leaning hegemonic grand strategy can still be abandoned; it is not too late for Washington to chart a diferent course and switch to a restrained grand strategy based on the protection of America’s narrow strategic interests by means of a smaller expeditionary force and a smaller forward presence in the international system. here is a deep-seated paradox accompanying the declinist school’s arguments that has not escaped its critics: as the declinist school became an established line of research in IR literature in the mid-2000s, preaching the inevitable demise of American power, the United States was reaching the zenith of its post-Cold War global power; there was even talk of an American empire.21 here is practically no IR book on American foreign policy that does not recount the sheer size of the yet unrivaled American power! At the beginning of the 21st century the world is still experiencing an unrivaled America: “since the end of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as an unrivaled and unprecedented global superpower. At no other time in modern history has a single state loomed so large over the rest of the world.”22 Paul Kennedy similarly argues “A statistician could have a wild time compiling lists of the ields in which the US leads… It seems to me there is no point in the Europeans or Chinese wringing their hands about US predominance, and wishing it would go away. It is as if, among the various inhabitants of the apes and monkeys cage at the London Zoo, one creature had grown bigger and bigger – and bigger – until it became a 500 lb gorilla.”23 hat is the United States of America, a true Colossus towering over the entire international system.24 Indeed, so overwhelming is the American preponderance in the system that 54 “the unprecedented concentration of power resources in the United States generally renders inoperative the constraining efects of the systemic properties long central to research in international relations.”25 As a consequence, “We currently live in a one superpower world, a circumstance unprecedented in the modern era. No other great power has enjoyed such advantages in material capabilities – military, economic, technological, and geographical. (…) the United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global power. It became a “unipolar” state.”26 In a nutshell, the United States “is enjoying a preeminence unrivaled by even the greatest empires of the past. From weaponry to entrepreneurship, from science to technology, from higher education to popular culture, American exercises an unparalleled ascendancy around the globe.”27 Yet the 2000s that were celebrated by some scholars as the zenith of American preponderance were decried by others as the beginning of America’s inevitable decline. Resonating the words of the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain in the speech he delivered during the 1902 Colonial Conference – “he Weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate” – Timothy Garton Ash argued in 2005 “[t]he United States is now that weary Titan.”28 Consequently, the United States needs to rapidly change its grand strategy to cope with its relative power decline: “he changing distribution of power in the international system-speciically, the relative decline of U.S. power and the corresponding rise of new great powers-will render the strategy [of preponderance] untenable. he strategy also is being undermined because the robustness of America’s extended deterrence strategy is eroding rapidly. Over time, the costs and risks of the strategy of preponderance will rise to unacceptably high levels. he time to think about alternative grand strategies is now-before the United States is overtaken by events”29 because “America’s unipolar moment is over. It began with the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and ended with the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008.”30 As new great powers inevitably rise, the United States’ sheer preponderance will compel others to balance against it, which  Revista de istorie militară  will only rush the American power decline and harm the American security interests. Already there are signs of growing systemic resistance to the United States; these signs usually take the shape of soft balancing or antiAmericanism but they will sooner rather than later turn into hard balancing. And with that, America’s exceptionalism will be yet another thing of the past. By the mid-2000s the concern had shifted from the exuberance of preponderance to the worries about the limits of America’s primacy and preponderant power in the international system.31 An entire brand of reactionary literature criticized the declinist school’s premise that the United States was experiencing relative power decline. Critics, in general, fell into three main categories: those who refuted the American decline and argued the United States was still the unipolar state and would continue to be so for the foreseeable future;32 those that partially agreed with the ascertainment of American relative decline, but contested the degree of decline and its immediate consequences;33 and those that partially agreed with the ascertainment of American decline, but contested the root causes and consequently the type of grand strategic change the United States would need to make.34 hese critics are taylored to answer to the layers of the declinist school’s arguments. I will discuss these layers next in greater detail. a) he American decline as a result of inevitable historical and systemic laws As Krugman argues, economic crises and recessions are habitual in the international political economy.35 However, without a solid economic foundation, the American power might slowly be eroded. While great powers, like all other states, follow a sinusoidal path of economic development, moving from ascendancy to stalling to recession and eventually demise, recessions are not enough to cause a great power’s inal decline: “one recession, or even a severe economic crisis, need not mean the beginning of the end for a great power. he United States sufered deep and prolonged economic crises in the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1970s. In each case, it rebounded in the following decade and actually ended up in a  Revista de istorie militară  stronger position relative to other powers than before the crisis. he 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1980s were all high points of American global power and inluence.”36 However, unlike the preceding waves of American declinism, the current situation begs a detailed scrutiny of the possibility that the American power might actually face, for the irst time, bankruptcy.37 Indeed, the U.S. economy is still the largest in the world, but the International Monetary Fund estimates it will be replaced by China by 2017, whereas the OECD estimates China will replace the United States as the world’s largest economy in 2016.38 Just a few years ago, these same estimates were looking at time horizons of over two and a half decades. Consequently, the declinist argument goes, the American power decline is indeed accelerated. he Congressional Budget Oice’s (CBO) estimates suggest the American GDP will see a moderate increase over the next decade, but the federal deicit will only be reduced in the short-term through president Obama’s measures. he structural conditions that feed America’s longterm deicit – aging population, growing social security and healthcare costs, growing defense budgets, etc. – will still be in place in a decade or beyond; and while the federal deicit will slowly diminish to an average 3.3% of GDP, the foreign debt held by the American public will most likely endure at 65-70% of GDP for at least the next ten years.39 his particular declinist argument emphasizes two aspects: one of these aspects is the negative fallout of the economic crisis and the deep economic recession experienced by the United States. he economic crisis may have had its immediate consequences, but these are ultimately signs of the inevitable American power decline’s structural causes. In particular, the focus is on the pursuit of a Keynesian solution to coming out of the recession not only in the ield of infrastructure investments, but also in terms of social security, healthcare and education policies. Paradoxically, the conservative elite that now relishes in criticizing the American power decline does not seem mindfull of the fact that America has dealt with such high levels of deicit and foreign debt before. If anything, the Reagan years thought the American power 55 elites, and the Republicans in particular, that deicits don’t matter. Yet the republicans are now among the most active critics of Obamacare, the ballonning federal deicit and foreign debt. he second aspect has to do with deicits and this perhaps is the most prominent economic argument nowadays. he United States reached a deicit ceiling that is no longer sustainable. If Washington wants to maintain its lead in global afairs then it better step up its eforts to deal with the federal deicit and the record-high foreign debt held by the American public. By comparison to the irst aspect’s Keynesian-inspired solution, this argument emphasizes austerity measures as a way of coming out of the economic recession. he challenge is for the United States to cut down on public spending, to reduce the federal deicit, to cut down on and re-balance the social security, healthcare and education budgets and to reduce the foreign debt held by the American public. So urgent have these measures become that the United States Congress enacted a law in August 2011 called the Budget Control Act (BCA) which places caps on discretionary (defense and non-defense) public expenditure in general as well as on mandatory public spending (sequestration) starting January 1, 2013 if the United States Congress does not compromise by the end of 2012 on how to alleviate these structural, macroeconomic problems. As in most cases, there is no consensus among IR scholars on which of these two aspects ofers a better solution for the consolidation of the American economy. But the proof on both sides of the argument is not solid enough. On the one hand, the Keynesian-liberals, such as Krugman and Stieglitz argue the American economic engine needs to be rekindled with a massive infusion of state capital and large infrastructure in vestment projects. Even scholars such as Friedman and Mastanduno support this view, emphasizing it is unacceptable a superpower like the United States has less than state-ofthe-art infrastructure. hey compare China’s new airports, bridges, high-speed railways and highways with America’s decaying bridge infrastructure that has not been modernized in over two decades; with America’s decaying 56 airport infrastructure such as the old Dulles airport, the largest international airport servicing the nation’s capital city; with America’s railways that have yet to be modernized almost a decade into the start of repairment works.40 If there is any urgency that Washington needs to address in re-balancing its economic power, it is certainly that of capital infusions into rebuilding the national critical transportation infrastructure. Moreover, as the United States stands face to face with the retirement of the ‘baby-boom’ post-World War II generation, the United States needs to rebalance its discretionary and non-discretionary expenses to accommodate larger costs of social security and healthcare beneits for the retired while reducing unemployment and maintaining a healthy and numerous working population to pay for these increasing costs – estimates range in the hundreds of billion of dollars in the next decade.41 And, the argument goes, now is a favorable moment for enacting such policies because the costs of borrowing are very low – with record interest rates close to 0%.42 On the other hand, the debate emphasizes the importance of reducing the federal deicit and the foreign debt held by the public. his is a debate that has regularly spilled over into the political spectrum with scholars arguing the American political elite is now more polarized than ever before. As the United States is heading into the 21st century, the annual federal deicit is counting into the trillions of dollars – $1.3 trillion in 2009 and $1.1 trillion in 2012.43 Even the White House and the Department of Economy acknowledge the United States needs to shave of at least $50 billion on an annual basis for the next decade to reach a sustainable federal deicit of approximately 3.3% of GDP on average. here is an ongoing debate between the liberal and conservative American scholars as to such a policy’s estimated suc-cess. he liberals emphasize tax increases, albeit non-discretionary ones, as a means of raising more money to the federal budget and promoting a more equal income distribution. he conservatives, particularly those associated with the Republican Party oppose any kind of tax increases and profess tax reductions as a means of stimulating demand and consumption, while cutting public  Revista de istorie militară  expenses. In reply, the liberals emphasize cutting public expenses will only lead to a spike in unemployment; and a drop in the relatively low, albeit stabile consumption which will only exacerbate the recession’s negative efects.44 Moreover, the liberals tend to emphasize that the republicans artiicially overturned the discution from the Reaganite dictum that deicits don’t matter to the power-breaking American deicit while income and wealth are more and more unequally distributed in the American economy. he average American household’s income has not been rising for the last ive years and the American economy45 is targeted by social movements such as the 99% Occupy Wall Street. All in all, though, the Bush-era tax cuts already cost the American federal budget approximately $1.6 trillion, and if maintained, they will reduce the budget by an estimated $3.5 trillion in the next decade. his is, actually, a far larger budgetary problem than the costs of the stimulus package in the aftermath of the Great Recession ($800 billion) and the economic losses ($3.5 tril-lion). And the issue here is not necessarily political, but rethorical: Americans seem to want a powerful state, but are critical about paying for the allies’ security. However, it would seem they are reluctant not about paying for others’ security, but actually about paying for the basic necessities of a modern, powerful state. he emphasis is on cutting public expense, especially non-discretionary defense expenditure. Declinist scholars such as Posen and Layne argue the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as the costs of maintaing Euro-pean security are unafordable for the United States. he tragic decisions of the Bush jr. administration hurt the American economy incredibly. However, the funny thing is the Bush-era deicits  Revista de istorie militară  were almost half the size of 2009 federal deicit; during the second Bush jr. administration the federal deicit ranged between $120 and $480 million. Federal de-icits only started to sky-rocket in 2009, when the Obama administration took over the White House, ranging from $1.3 trillion to $1.1 trillion in 2009-2012. Surely, president Obama did inherit a signiicant debt from the Bush administration and his administration had to stimulate the economy, reform the healthcare system and end two major overseas combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, defense budgets did not decrease in Obama’s irst mandate, but rather increased. During the campaign, president Obama criticized the Bush jr. administration for requesting too large a budget for ballistic missile defense – nearly $7 billion in 2009; however, once in the White House, the Obama administration requested nearly $1.5 billion in addition to the Bush-era ballistic missile defense budget.46 Adding up the defense deicits of 2002-2012 does not result in the $1.3 trillion in annual federal deicit; in fact, the defense deicit for the 2002-2012 period amounts to roughly $1.8 trillion in total – that is, $180 billion annually on average. he American defense budget has been growing larger than the 2012 dollars equivalent of the Cold War era budget; but the average defense budget between 2002-2012 was roughly 4% of GDP, which is far less than the average 7.6% of the Cold era. herefore, arguing the United States is overstretched because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan does not seem to be supported by empirical evidence47 and the evidentiary support ofered by the declinists is coincidental, not causal and probatory. Critics like Brooks and Wohlforth emphasize in their 2008 book, A World Out of Balance that the basis of American economic power is as solid as ever, despite the economic recession the United States is experiencing; basically, the largest American economic partners and FDI donors are also its closest allies. he United States “has sufered through ten such recessions since the Second World War, sometimes in unfortunate synchronicity with its major European and Japanese trading partners.”48 But this time around, instead of helping the United States bounce back from 57 the recession, the allies are even deeper in it. he Eurozone is in recession, the second time in less than two years and the European Union is torn by political turmoil. It would seem the days of 9/11 when the dollar could rest on the Euro for support during a crisis are long gone. To top it all of, the federal authorities have been slow and inadequate in responding to the 2007 economic crisis; the $787 billion stimulus package was severely under-estimated for an economic problem that required at least twice if not three times as much to be solved.49 Moreover, because of the political squirmishes in the United States Congress, the stimulus package was awarded far later than it was actually needed to efectively level the economy and the international markets. And certainly, last but not least, the entire world was looking at the United States for political and economic guidence on how to overcome the recession; this, too, came later than actually required. here is a relative consensus that the way to bring the United States economy back to active growth is to re-consolidate and stimulate the healthy and strong middle class. he more economic growth is accelerated, the more the GDP growth rate is stimulated through state capital infusions, the more this will help the American economic power for the United States can now aford to borrow cheap. his will not increase the federal deicit in the shortterm, but it will be sustainable because a higher GDP growth rate will mean a lower foreign debt share of the GDP and a larger chance to eventually reduce the deicit and build a solid economy. Any policy Washington decides to promote that fails to address these structural economic problems will make the move from recession to decline that much more likely as the historical laws of economics suggest. And this might severely impact the manner in which the United States will be able to inance its global role in the future. Within less than a decade, the United States has moved down on the list of top global economies. he United States is no longer the lender of last resort, but rather the largest systemic borrower to inance its growing deicit; decreasing domestic consumption is threatening America’s role as a last-resort market in the international economy, especially if the trend is not fastly 58 reversed; the number of attacks on the dollar as a reserve currency appear to be multiplying; etc. he declinists thus argue that the American economy is now weaker and may be unable to sustain the American global inluence for much longer if conditions don’t change rapidly. Unfortunately, American economists like Krugman, Stieglitz and Greenspan do not see any chance for a rapid turn-around of economic conditions. he political deadlock, they claim, is the main cause for this bleak outlook. Yet the United States political elite has always been very polarized; to argue that it is that much more polarized now seems somewhat repetitive, which does not lend much credibility to the argument. Why does this political deadlock carry more structural impact on the economy than previous ones? Indeed, on December 31, 2012 the Republicans and the Democrats reached a partial agreement on the American Taxpayer Relief Act which postponed the BCA and the sequestration for two more months. And on March 1, 2013 when the BCA and sequestration entered into efect, the United States Congress immediately pulled through and passed legislation – public law no. 113-6 – which allevitates the caps of sequestration and the BCA for the 2013 federal budget. And the funny thing is, the law was proposed and supported by a Republican senator; a signiicant number of Democrats and Republicans voted for it. his seems to suggest the declinists’ argument about the structural rustiness of the American political and party system is not necessarily fully validated by empirical evidence. b) he American decline as a result of the wrong grand strategy choices he most representative layer of the declinist school’s argument has traditionally been the one revolving around the United States’ inadequate grand strategic choices. In particular, this argument revolves around the issue of the American grand strategy. More speciically, what grand strategy the United States should adopt to maximize its chances of maintaining its preeminent position in the international system and avoiding the tragic fate of all great powers – decline and, eventually, demise? he debate  Revista de istorie militară  on the appropriate American grand strategy is carried out between the proponents of basically several types of grand strategies, one which is generally blamed for getting the United States into the situation that it is in now – i.e. deep engagement, hegemony or primacy – and three alternative grand strategies considered as suitable replacements – i.e. selective engagement, disengagement (a variasion of it – isolationism), retrenchment, colective security and ofshore balancing.50 All of these strategies seek to postulate the appropriate relationship the United States should build with the rest of the international system. However, isolationism is refuted by a majority of IR scholars; collective security is in many ways confused with selective engagement or retrenchment; and primacy is usually confused with hegemony. herefore, I will only be comparing ive types of grand strategies: deep/selective engagement, disengagement/ retrenchment, and ofshore balancing. While some strategies appear more conservative than the others, in fact the purpose behind all of them – how to ensure a longer preservation of America’s top position in world afairs – is equally conservative and hegemonic. Diferences between these strategies, sensible as they certainly are, represent operational and tactical, not ideological shifts in the American grand strategy. In particular, the grand strategy of deep engagement which is harshly refuted by the declinists’ emphasis that Washington should continue to remain engaged and maintain its current security commitments. Among the most signiicant beneits of deep engagement are the political, security and economic ones. More speciically, deep engagement allows the United States the possibility of leading the world and building/maintaining a liberal global order – what Ikenberry calls the liberal leviathan. In the economic ield, deep engagement fosters an economic international order favorable to free trade, open international markets, the maintenance of the dollar as the international reserve currency, the relatively free movements of people and capital, etc. As it recently became evident, the pursuit of free trade agreements in the Atlantic and the Paciic would be less simple  Revista de istorie militară  for Washington were it to disengage from the world or retrench from the international system. While the estimated beneits of global disengagement would amount to $900 billion over the course of a decade, the beneits of the proposed Transatlantic Free Trade and Investment Agreement are estimated to more than $100 billion annually; pure arithmetics seems to suggest that beneits are higher if the United States follows the second option. But declinists claim this expands the American security interests in Europe while maintaining the European security is already too expensive. Forgoing these burdensome costs will most certainly result in more security for America than continuing this overstretch. However, enjoing more security does not necessarily mean America will continue to maintain its national power relative to other international actors for there is no pertinent empirical evidence it will alleviate or delay the decline; nor is there any pertinent evidence engagement hightens counterbalancing againts the U.S. In the political ield, deep engagement allows the United States to pursue a grand strategy that relects its most deep-seated liberal, democratic values and principles that continue to be the very essence of the American way of life and to inspire and attract other states and peoples around the world. Moreover, in the security ield, deep engagement allows the United States’ forward military presence and pervasive alliances to prevent, prepare for, deter, retaliate and prevail over an existing or potential threat to America’s security and strategic interests;51 they also facilitate America’s “strategic solvency.”52 his translates into an enhanced American global inluence which helps Washington get things the way it wants and increases its leverage power in relation to other states. According to Layne, these are the foundations of the Open Door Doctrine which has guided the American hegemonic grand strategy since World War II: “Perhaps the biggest challenge (…) will be to rebuild U.S. authority, respect, and credibility and regain the ready support of its allies and other states. he United States’ strongest characteristics are its moral authority and capacity to command respect and build partnerships and alliances.”53 59 And these can only be maintained through solid deep engagement and liberal institutionalism. Even if there are costs attached to this role of liberal leviathan (i.e. counterbalancing), they will not squander American power because other states in the system treasure the public goods the United States produces for them as the unipolar state. Indeed, the United States would be making a great error to pass on this historical opportunity to remake the international system into a more democratic, prosperous, open and peaceful one. he rise of China, or any other great power for that matter, should not concern the United States as much, for even if it will become the world’s second largest economy, Washington will remain the world’s uncontested military superpower. And this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.54 By contrast, selective engagement would require that the United States still enact an active, engaged strategy based on forward American presence that underlines six major American interests: defend the United States homeland against attack; maintain a deep peace among the Eurasian allies (which requires the maintenance of two alliances – NATO and the U.S.-Japan alliance); preserve the free access to energy resources (particularly oil); preserve an open international economic order; spread democracy, rule or law and the protection of human rights; and avert severe climate change. However, this selective engagement strategy will have to adapt to the profound changes of the austerity era that America is experiencing. In particular, the United States would need to limit its security-military role and all associated expenses, but it could not and should not compromise or reduce its ability to provide collective goods in the international system.55 his includes its military power projection capabilities. However, both deep engagement and selective engagement predispose the United States to balancing from other great powers in the international system. Surely, the unipolar system may be a unique power coniguration from the point of view of the distribution of power; but balancing is still present, be it in the form of political and diplomatic resistance – typically refered to as soft balancing – or anti-American feelings. he declinist argue 60 the international system has already started to push back against the United States. And Waltz, Posen and Layne argue soon this resistance will inevitably turn into outright hard balancing. With the rise of new great powers such as China, which has a long history of using coercive power in international conlicts, as well as the resurgence of other great powers such as the Russian Federation which was willing to use military force in Georgia, hard balancing is no longer a possibility, but a future certainty. Critics of declinism, however, argue most of the post-Cold War realist IR literature is bewildered by the obvious lack of hard balancing against the United States. Brooks, Ikenberry and Wohlforth argue that the declinists’ claim that China, Russia, and other great powers might start to balance against the Unitd States hardly counts as evidence of counterbalancing efort in the international system. Possibilities are not empirical evidence. And in fact, systemic resistance is natural and the United States is in a much better possition to make use of it than the rising great powers. Disengagement and retrenchment are similar strategies, though they are not identical. he irst calls for a complete withdrawal of American troops and an isolationist policy towards the rest of the international system; it argues the American interests would be best served if America stopped spending precious, scarce resources to serve the interests of other states, some of which have become security free-riders. Retrenchment, which is roughly similar to selective engagement or collective security, entails a partial, selective American disengagement from some security commitments and geographical areas that are not crucial for the strategic or vital American interests alongside avoiding any embroilment in land wars or state-building adventures on the continent in Europe and/or Asia. However, critics such as Ikenberry, Brooks and Wohlforth argue in a 2013 article in International Security that the beneits of these two strategies are diicult to estimate, while their costs are immediately obvious. Under these circumstances, it is virtually impossible to predict whether the estimated beneits of a world in which the United States is disengaging from the international system, are in any way  Revista de istorie militară  larger than those of a world in which America is engaged with the system and governs it relatively well albeit at a considerable cost. Last, but certainly not least, ofshore balancing assumes the United States will continue to pursue the national interest of avoiding the rise of a regional hegemon in Europe – as well as a regional hegemon in the Middle East where U.S. oil interests might thus be imperiled. Ofshore balancing is a realist grand strategy that assumes there are structural limits to America’s power, the most important of which is the rise of new great powers that will inevitably balance against the United States: “Ofshore balancing is predicated on the assumption that attempting to maintain U.S. hegemony is self-defeating because it will provoke other states to combine in opposition to the United States and result in the futile depletion of the United States’ relative power, thereby leaving it worse of than if it accommodated multipolarity. Ofshore balancing accepts that the United States cannot prevent the rise of new great powers either within (the EU, Germany, and Japan) or outside (China, a resurgent Russia) its sphere of inluence. Ofshore balancing would also relieve the United States of its burden of managing the security afairs of turbulent regions such as the Persian Gulf/ Middle East and Southeast Europe.”56 But the United States need not stay engaged and cover the huge costs of a hegemonic grand strategy simply to promote this particular interest. Rather, Washington could rely on the regional balance of power dynamics and retrench to a role of over-the-horizon balancer: “An ofshore balancing strategy would permit the United States to withdraw its ground forces from Eurasia (including the Middle East) and assume an over-the-horizon military posture. If – and only if – regional power balances crumbled would the United States re-insert its troops into Eurasia.”57 his would entail a radical shift in America’s global role from the global policeman towards the balancer of last resort, from the irst line of global security to the defender of last resort, from the governor of the system to the holder of the systemic and regional balance of power.  Revista de istorie militară  Unlike disengagement which favors breaking all existing security commitments and full retrenchment of American forward military presence on a global scale, ofshore balancing points out disengagement is not suicient and it does not presume the true American strategic interests are misrepresented by the grand strategy Washington pursues. Instead, much like the case of selective engagement or retrenchment, the United States must maintain suicient and adequate air and naval power projection capabilities to ensure a solid and credible deterrent against the potential rise of a continental hegemon in Eurasia. In a nutshell, ofshore balancing calls for limiting the American global military presence “because that presence generates resentment, fuels more terrorism, and threatens [American] liberty at home. Finally, ofshore balancing recognizes that there are limits to U.S. power.”58 And speciically because of the fact that even American preponderant power has its inherent limits, “the paradox of U.S. power will not disappear. (…) the big question confronting U.S. strategists in coming years is how to reduce the risks of U.S. hegemony. To lower the risk, the United States must change its grand strategy.”59 Ofshore balancing is the most appropriate grand strategy because unlike hegemony or primacy, it shifts the security burden of American shoulders: “Ofshore balancing is a grand strategy based on burden shifting, not burden sharing.”60 And this particular grand strategy might ensure a more enduring American leadership of the international system because it might decrease its costs and make American power less disagreeable to the other powers in the system. In general, the declinists argue in favor of limiting America’s engagement abroad by refering to the material limits of American power and American exceptionalism. he implied assumption behind this argument is that limiting America’s expensive and extensive engagement abroad will reduce the federal deicit, the foreign debt and help rebalance the American economy. However, disengagement will also cost a lot of money. Declinists argue the United States will save up to $900 billion 61 if it disengages and brings all troops back home, thus alleviating the federal deicit and the public debt because America will no longer need to borrow money to maintain its huge defense budget; however, this argument overlooks the fact that disengaging at a moment like the present would put that much more presure on the short-term federal deicit amounting to $1.1 trillion in 2012. Moreover, there is no real guarantee the saved $900 billion will automatically be deducted from the American deicit and/or public foreign debt, not with the structural problems the U.S. is struggling. If the point is to alleviate the United States’ economic problems in the short- and mid-term, then wouldn’t the costs of disengagement be intuitively more harmful? Also, alleviating the short-term pressures on the American budget will prove of no avail in the mid-term if the costs of America’s selective engagement or „over-the-horizon” balancing posture incurs growing cost for each individual foreign adventure. And these are not costs one can estimate or know in advance, but the critics of declinism presume they are prohibitively high, whereas the declinists presume they are incentively low. In a nutshell, the debate is very tight because neither the declinists, nor the critics bring solid empirical evidence to support their arguments, because neither argument is based on balanced and relatively complete evidenciary support for the harms and blessings of one grand strategy or another. c) he American decline as a result of the rise of the rest he third layer of the declinist argument behind America’s relative power decline is a counterintuitive one: it is not that America’s power is diminishing – indeed, how could it when the United States is still so far ahead militarily and it is still too big to fail? But the systemic power gap has started to close as a result of the rise of other systemic great powers such as China, India, Brazil or of the resurgence of others, such as the Russian Federation. he rise of these global powers might, in the mid- or long-term endanger America’s global leadership position not merely because of the 62 intense economic competition, but also because there is a greater chance they may start balancing against the United States to pursue their own narrow strategic interests. his particular layer is the most intimately related to the power transition, hegemonic transition or power shift theoretical background. It basically emphasizes that the United States “confronts a world in transition” from uni- to multipolarity.61 At the same time, the United States is facing a rising aspiring regional hegemon – the People’s Republic of China – which may very well challenge the basis of the American hegemonic world order at some point in the future. Some of the declinist school’s scholars, such as Friedman, Mandelbaum and Friedberg argue the United States is already losing its strategic advantage in its hegemonic competition with China because Washington has become so strategically distracted by secondary interests (e.g. the wars in the Middle East, providing security for the European allies, etc.) that it has so far failed to address this strategic rivalry with China appropriately. As a result, China has been gaining increasing lead on America in economic, technological and even military terms.62 However, the United States needs to pay more attention to this strategic relation with China and to refocus its strategic attention towards Asia – what the White House used to call the pivot to Asia which has nowadays been rebranded the rebalancing of American foreign policy; the latter sounds much more neutral especially to worried European ears. he United States is no longer just the indispensable nation, but since 2002 it has also become the Paciic nation. Such a refocus on Asia should come with the clear realization of the limits of deep engagement in the Paciic. In other words, the United States should deinitely avoid being dragged in any kind of conlict and war on the Asian continental mass. American power should be exercised from ofshore bases and be built on economic appeal and the projection of naval and air power.63 Essentially, Washington’s strategy in Asia must avoid the errors of its grand strategy and deep involvement in Europe and/or the Middle East.  Revista de istorie militară  But what are the costs incurred by operating an „over-the-horizon” or restrained grand strategy? What are the economic and strategic costs – or what Kennedy calls the invisible costs – of this restrained grand strategy? What and how does this grand strategy contribute to alleviating the economic problems with which the United States is struggling nowadays? How long would it take for such a grand strategy to alleviate them? And how is this diferent from or more beneicial than the alternative solutions ofered by the current grand strategy? Similarly, how does one know deep enagement is any better strategically than its more restrained alternatives if the costs and beneits of the latter are impossible to measure? Historical evidence also points to the fact that great powers rarely shift their grand strategies in so radical a fashion as the move from deep engagement to retrenchment or ofshore balancing would entail. Is President Obama’s pivot to Asia or rebalancing of its foreign policy between the Atlantic and the Paciic such a radical shift? A few concluding thoughts “I propose a “Fix-It-First” program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deicient bridges across the country. And to make sure taxpayers don’t shoulder the whole burden, I’m also proposing a Partnership to Rebuild America that attracts private capital to upgrade what our businesses need most: modern ports to move our goods, modern pipelines to withstand a storm, modern schools worthy of our children. Let’s prove that there’s no better place to do business than here in the United States of America, and let’s start right away. We can get this done.”64 “As we peer into society’s future we (…) must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”65 How relevant are these words in describing the current American economic strategy! Yet they belong to diferent American political leaders set in very diferent  Revista de istorie militară  timeframes. he irst quote is from President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Address while the latter belongs to President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in 1961. I started the article with two diferent historical quotes and I will end it with the same historical comparison to serve as a reminder all historical moments are unique; yet none is so unique as to escape historical comparisons altogether. Similarly, the American experience and fears of relative power decline are not unique in history. President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address underlines a double-edged proposal: on the one hand there is a plan – Fix-it-First! – to take the American economy out of recession and rebuild it irst among the rest of the global economies now experiencing economic diiculties as well. On the other hand there is a national bi-partisan plan – Partnership to Rebuild America – to reconsolidate America’s economy, one that addresses structural problems, several of which have been repeatedly addressed by the declinist scholars. Could this focus on rebuilding America’s national power basis be Washington irst step in the battle against its relative power decline? While the White House outlined in 2013 a balanced grand strategy between the deep engagement’s beneits and the harms pointed out by the declinists, its foreign policy looks more like a compromise between the two approaches rather than a clear choice between them. For instance, declinist scholars such as Layne or Posen demanded that the United States disengage from Europe and shift to an ofshore balancing position to prevent the rise of hostile regional hegemons. However, one such potentially hostile regional hegemon is already rising in Asia, i.e. China. he United States is already reducing its forward presence in Europe and shifting a large part of those troops to Asia to balance China.66 At the same time, though, the American grand strategy is now focusing inward in order to rebuild and rebalance the (domestic) sources of American power – from reindustrialization and creation of new jobs, to rebuilding America’s decaying transportation infrastructure, to rebalancing the distribution of income and re-empowering the middle class, emphasizing high education and research, boosting equality 63 and non-discrimination, etc. In other words, America’s journey of rediscovery has already begun. And it is a race against other great powers in the international system and a search for the next model of international and domestic political and economic success. But this grand strategy will only do the trick half way assuming it is successful. China, India, Brazil, Russia and other great powers will still be rising. And they might still hard balance against the United States; they might still make decisions amongst themselves, decisions within which the United States will either not be invited, or it will ight a lot harder to be admited into. If the international system moves from unipolarity to bipolarity again, it will be a mistake to believe it is familiar to Washington; a Sino-American bipolarity will be nothing like the Soviet-American bipolarity. And if the system moves towards multipolarity, then it will be a completely new strategic environment for the United States. At this point it is simply too early to tell whether the ifth wave of American relative power decline is supported by empirical evidence or if this will be just a scare as the previous four waves have proved to be as well. Whether America’s future is to be the Weary Policeman or the Systemic Colossus is just too early and too inconclusive to tell. he empirical evidence provided by the declinists as well as by their critics are not complete enough to make this judgement at this point. And the choice between the two schools of thought seems a matter of political or theoretical preference rather than a decision based on clear empirical evidenciary support. In fact, both the declinists and their critics provide insuicient and incomplete empirical evidenciary support. he declinists focus more on the costs of the hegemonic grand strategy while presuming the beneits of a more restrained grand strategy which cannot be measured for comparison. By contrast, the critics of declinism ofer plenty of empirical evidenciary support for the beneits of a deep engagement grand strategy and for the huge costs entailed by its even partial abandonment; but they do not ofer any terms of comparison assuming the costs and 64 beneits of a restrained grand strategy cannot be calculated precisely. In a sense, the American grand strategic hourglass has been reset by the second Obama administration on February 13, 2013. Whether time is running in favor of America’s relative power preponderance in the international system, or against it, time will tell. For at this moment, the sands of America’s grand strategic hourglass do not reveal themselves completely. NOTE 1 Neville Chamberlain, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Speech in the House of Commons, April 25, 1933. 2 President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Speech before the U.S. Con-gress, February 12, 2013. 3 Josef Jofe, “Declinism’s Fifth Wave” he American Interest January/February 2012, online edition. 4 For a comprehensive analysis of power transition theory, in all its forms and variations, see Simona R. Soare, „Tranziția de putere” [Power Transition heory] in Lucian Dîrdală and Daniel Biro, Introducere în relațiile internaționale. Teme centrale în politica mondială [An Introduction to International Relations: Great Issues in World Afairs] (Iași: Polirom, 2013), forthcoming. 5 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 6 George Modelski, Long Cycles in World Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987) and Joshua S. Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 7 Paul Kennedy, he Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conlict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 1987). 8 Jefrey Taliaferro, Balancing Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). 9 Immanuel Wallerstein, he Decline of American Power: he U.S. in a Chaotic World (New York: he New York Press, 2003).  Revista de istorie militară  10 Fareed Zakaria, he Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008) and Charles A. Kupchan, No One’s World: he West, the Rise of the Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5. 11 he declinist school is very extensive. Among the most representative studies are: Charles Krauthammer, “he Unipolar Moment” Foreign Afairs70:1 (1990/1991), 23-33; Christopher Layne, “he Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise” International Security 17:4 (1993), 5-49; Kenneth Waltz, “he Emerging Structure of International Politics” International Security18:2 (1993), 44-79; Barry R. Posen, “he Case for Restraint,” American Interest, 3:1 (2007), 7–17; Barry R. Posen, “Stability and Change in U.S. Grand Strategy” Orbis 51:4 (2007), 561–567; Walt, Taming American Power; Stephen M. Walt, “In the National Interest: A Grand New Strategy for American Foreign Policy” Boston Review 30:1 (2005); John J. Mearsheimer, “Imperial by Design” National Interest, 111 (2011), 16–34; Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Come Home, America: he Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation” International Security 21:4 (1997), 5–48; Eugene Gholz and Daryl Press, “Footprints in the Sand” American Interest 5:4 (2010), 59–67; Benjamin H. Friedman, Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, “Restraining Order: For Strategic Modesty” World Afairs, Fall 2009, 84–94; Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, “Graceful Decline? he Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment,” International Security 35:4 (2011), 7–44; Christopher A. Preble, Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009); Christopher Layne, he Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006); Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Ofshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy” International Security 22:1 (1997), pp. 86–124; Christopher Layne, “Ofshore Balancing Revisited” Washington Quarterly 25:2 (2002), 233–248; Christopher Layne, “Less Is More: Minimal Realism in East Asia” National Interest 43 (1996), 64–77; Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, “A New Grand Strategy” Atlantic Monthly, January 2002, 36–42; Christopher Layne, “America’s Middle East Strategy after Iraq: he Moment  Revista de istorie militară  for Ofshore Balancing Has Arrived” Review of International Studies 35:1 (2009), 5–25; Richard K. Betts, American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: he Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005); Robert A. Pape, “Empire Falls” National Interest, No. 99 (2009), 21–34; Robert A. Pape, “It’s the Occupation, Stupid” Foreign Policy, October 18, 2010; Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: he Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Max Boot, he Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of the American Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Ted Galen Carpenter, Smart Power: Towards a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (Washington, D.C.: CATO Institute, 2008); Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: he Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Michael Desch, Power and Military Efectiveness: he Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008); Colin Dueck, Hard Line: he Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Colin Dueck, Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and Neoconservative Legacy (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2006); Leslie H. Gelb, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper Collins, 2009); G. John Ikenberry, homas J. Knock, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Tony Smith, he Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Robert Jervis, American Foreign Policy in a New Era (London: Routledge, 2005); Charlmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010); Charlmers Johnson, he Sorrows of Empire: Military, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004); Robert Kagan, he Return of History and the End of Dreams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); 65 Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); Melvyn Leler and Jefrey Legro, To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Steven E. Lobell, Norrin Ripsman, Jefrey W. Taliaferro (eds.), Neoclassical Realism, he State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Michael Mandelbaum, he Frugal Superpower. America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (New York: Public Afairs, 2010); Norrin Ripsman and T.V. Paul, Globalization and the National Security State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Robert J. Lieber, “America In Decline? It’s a Matter of Choices, Not Fate” World Afairs 175:3 (2012), 88-96; Robert J. Lieber, he American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); David P. Calleo, “American Decline Revisited” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 52:4 (2010), 215-227; Paul Krugman, he Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Freefall. America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010). 12 homas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, hat Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How Can We Come Back (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011), 356. 13 G. John Ikenberry, he Liberal Leviathan: he Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 9. 14 Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Pri-macy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 217. 15 his argument is developed in great detail in Simona R. Soare, “Pax Americana: Pacea Paradoxurilor și Paradoxurile Păcii” [Pax Americana: he Peace of Paradoxes and the Paradoxes of Peace], Introductory Study to the Romanian translation of Christopher Layne, Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the present (Iași: Polirom, 2011), 9-51. 16 he Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023 (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2013), 2 – Table 1; also see he 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2012), 25 – Figure 1-5. 66 17 he Military Balance 113: 1 (2013), 42 and Long-Term Implications of the 2013 Future Years Defense Program (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2013). 18 Barry R. Posen, “Pull Back: he Case for a less Activist Foreign Policy” Foreign Afairs, January/ February 2013, online edition. 19 Layne, “he Almost Triumph of Ofshore Balancing,” online edition. 20 Posen, “Pull Back,” online edition. 21 A representative analysis is Niall Ferguson, Colossus: he Rise and Fall of the American Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). 22 G. John Ikenberry, “Is American Multilateralism in Decline?” Perspectives on Politics 3 (2003): 533. 23 Paul Kennedy, “he Eagle Has Landed: he New U.S. Global Military Position,” Financial Times, February 1, 2002. 24 Ferguson, Colossus, 3. 25 Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, 3. Also see John G. Ikenberry (ed.), America Unrivaled: he Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). 26 G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno and William C. Wohlforth, “Introduction: Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences” World Politics 61:1 (2009), 1. 27 Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 17. 28 Timothy Garton Ash, “Stagger On, Weary Titan: he US Is Reeling, Like Imperial Britain after the Boer War –but Don’t Gloat,” he Guardian, August 25, 2005. 29 Layne, “From Preponderance to Of-shore Balancing,” 86-124. 30 Robert J. Art, “Selective Engagement in an Era of Austerity” in Richard Fontaine and Kristin M. Lord (eds.), America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration (Center for A New American Security, 2012), 13. 31 Joseph S. Nye, Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: he Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). 32 Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance; and Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America: he Case against Retrenchment” International Security, 37:3 (2012/13), 7–51.  Revista de istorie militară  33 David P. Calleo, “American Decline Revisited” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 52:4 (2010), 215-227. Calleo diferentiates between morbid and relative power decline; he argues the U.S. is experiencing relative power decline from it can always recover provided it adopts sound, rational policies. Also see, David P. Calleo, of Power. America’s Unipolar Fantasy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 31. Also, see Michael Cox who argues the American relative power decline is exaggerated, especially when the rise of the rest is concerned. See, for instance, Michael Cox, “Power shifts, economic change and the decline of the West?” International relations, 26:4 (2012), 369388; Michael Cox, “Power shift and the death of the West?: not yet!” European political science, 10:3 (2011), 416-424; Robert J. Lieber, he American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 34 See Zakaria, he Post-American World and Kupchan, No One’s World. 35 Paul Krugman, End his Depression Now! (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012). 36 Robert Kagan, “Not Fade Away: he Myth of American Decline” he New Republic, January 11, 2012, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/99521/americaworld-power-declinism. his point is made quite poignantly by Kennedy, he Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and Goldstein, Long Cycles. 37 Jofe, “Declinism’s Fifth Wave;” also see Stiglitz, Freefall. 38 For a diferent perspective see National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030 (Washington D.C.: National Intelligence Council, 2012). 39 he Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023 (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2013). 40 Freidman and Mandelbaum, hat Used to Be Us, 3-17. 41 A great analysis of this particular challenge is in Stiglitz, Freefall, especially part 1. 42 Krugman, End his Depression Now! 43 he Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023 (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2013). 44 Jofe, “Declinism’s Fifth Wave.” 45 “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income between 1979 and 2007” (Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Oice, 2011).  Revista de istorie militară  46 Simona R. Soare, „Planul Obama privind sistemul de apărarea anti-rachetă în Europa. Implicații pentru securitatea națională a României” [Obama’s European Ballistic Missile Defense System. Implications for Romania’s National Security] Strategic Monitor 3-4/2011, 51-61. 47 For a much more comprehensive analysis of the contemporary empirical evidence to measure the American relative power decline and especially for an in-dept analysis of the misrepresentation of declinist arguments co-necrning the American subsidizing European security and NATO see Simona R. Soare, „Washington’s Cri de Coeur in the Battle against Relative Power Decline?” Strategic Monitor 1-2 (2013), forthcoming. 48 Dana H. Allin and Erik Jones, Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Aus-terity, Chapter 4 “he causes and co-nsequences of austerity” Adelphi Series, 52:430-431 (2012), 139. Also see data of the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) counting 11 business cycles since 1945. See http://www.nber.org/cycles.html. 49 Krugman, End his Depression Now! and Allin and Jones, Weary Policeman, 146. 50 he concept was coined by Joseph S. Nye jr., “East Asian Security: he Case for Deep Engagement” Foreign Afairs 74:4 (1995), 90–102. However, this type of strategy is also known as hegemony, liberal interventionism, etc. For other alternative strategies see Art, “Selective Engagement in an Era of Austerity” 13-28; Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for Grand Strategy,” International Security 21:3 (1996/97), 5–53; and Art, A Grand Strategy for America; John J. Mearsheimer, he Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001); Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Ofshore Balancing” 86124; Christopher Layne, “he (Almost) Triumph of Ofshore Balancing” he National Interest, January 12, 2012. For a diferent argument, see John G. Ikenberry and Stephen Walt, “Ofshore Balancing or International Institutions? he Way Forward for U.S. Foreign Policy” Brown Journal of World Afairs XIV: 1 (2007), 13-23. For a critical overview see G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: he Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011); Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton, N.J.: 67 Princeton University Press, 2008); Robert J. Lieber, Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States Is Not Destined to Decline (New York: Cambridge University Press,2012); and Stanley A. Renshon, National Security in the Obama Administration: Reassessing the Bush Doctrine (New York: Routledge, 2010). 51 G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America: he Case against Retrenchment” International Security, 37:3 (2012/13), 7–51. 52 Fontaine and Lord (eds.), America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration, 8. By “strategic solvency” the authors mean “keeping America’s external commitments in line with the domestic resources available to back them.” 53 G. John Ikenberry and Stephen M. Walt, “Ofshore Balancing or International Institutions?” 15. 54 For more details on this particular perspective concerning the United States’ status as systemic military Goliath see Simona R. Soare, “Global Goliath vs. Global Leader: the United States’ Diicult Strategic Choice” Strategic Monitor issue 1-2/2013. 55 Art, “Selective Engagement in the Era of Austerity,” 17. 56 Christopher Layne, “Ofshore Balancing Revisited” he Washington Quarterly 25:2 (2002), 245. 68 57 Christopher Layne, “Who Lost Iraq and Why It Matters: he Case for Ofshore Balancing” World Policy Journal 24:3 (2007), 38. 58 Ikenberry and Walt, “Ofshore Balancing or International Institutions?” 14, emphasis added. 59 Layne, “Ofshore Balancing Revisited,” 245, emphasis added. 60 Ibidem. 61 Fontaine and Lord (eds.), America’s Path: Grand Strategy for the Next Administration, 5. 62 he paradoxal character of this argument is tackled in Simona R. Soare, “he China Factor in U.S. Grand Strategy” Journal of East European and Asian Studies 3-4 (2012), 295-310. 63 For more details, see Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Books, 2011) and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2012). 64 President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address speech before the US Congress, February 12, 2013. 65 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 19, 1961. 66 Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement” Foreign Afairs, January/February 2013. Also see Kyle Haynes, William R. hompson, Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent, “Correspondence: Decline and Retrenchment – Peril or Promise?” International Security 36:4 (2012), 189-203.  Revista de istorie militară 