The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis transits the Pacific Ocean. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kenneth AbbateWhy The World Needs America -- Robert Kagan, Wall Street Journal
Foreign-policy pundits increasingly argue that democracy and free markets could thrive without U.S. predominance. If this sounds too good to be true, writes Robert Kagan, that's because it is.
History shows that world orders, including our own, are transient. They rise and fall, and the institutions they erect, the beliefs and "norms" that guide them, the economic systems they support—they rise and fall, too. The downfall of the Roman Empire brought an end not just to Roman rule but to Roman government and law and to an entire economic system stretching from Northern Europe to North Africa. Culture, the arts, even progress in science and technology, were set back for centuries.
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My Comment: As someone who is not an American, I do not necessarily share Robert Kagan's point of view. The world will survive (of course), and it will progress. America has played a pivotal role in the 20th century .... but it has changed .... and so has the world .... but the real big loser will not be the world .... but America itself. The grandparents of a close of friend of mine (they immigrated to the U.S. from Italy right after World War II) summed up the new world .... and America's role in it .... to me perfectly. They fled Europe and came to America to escape the cultural/political/social society that they felt imprisoned in .... to come and embrace the American ideal of individualism, freedom, and opportunity. But since their arrival .... through small steps and increments .... everything has changed. As they tell me .... the America of today is what they escaped from Europe 60 years ago .... and what is worse .... while they are old enough to know what it was once like, the American youth of today do not even realize what they have lost .... or even care.
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