ANALYSIS
Many Americans of different political persuasions – left, right and center – do agree on something. That is, the United States is neither a great power any longer nor the world’s moral leader. It is a nation in decline, beset by intractable domestic rivalries and laid low by decades of failure in foreign wars.
This argument may not be wrong – America does have its challenges at the moment – but it is old: the same thing was said about the state of the nation in the late 1970s, after stagflation, Watergate, Vietnam and more had cast a dark shadow over the shining city on a hill.
Declinism is trendy again. The Trump presidency, capped by the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, was a sign of democratic decline. Or, if you inhabit the other side of the political aisle, the Biden administration is bringing back the painful memories of the aforementioned Carter years and national malaise.
Or, aside from partisan politics, one can see China’s economic rise as an unavoidable international development destined to knock the U.S. off its perch as the world’s largest economy.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: Patterns in U.S. foreign policy
In this episode of History As It Happens, Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage argues that declinism is overrated. It’s become a self-satisfying trope that thwarts real progress in solving problems. And it may be impossible to actually measure.
“It’s in the eye of the beholder how grave you think the country’s problems are and what you think the solutions are, but decline is a very imprecise, confusing and unclear term. And my first worry is that people throw it around a lot and are not very clear in their own minds as to what they mean. It sounds profound. It’s an attention-getting claim to say the U.S. is in decline, but it is often unclear what is meant by that,” said Mr. Kimmage, who laid out his argument against the declinists by comparing our current problems to the fall of the Roman Empire in an essay in the journal Liberties.
Even after the foreign policy disasters of the post-9/11 period, the U.S. remains well-defended and militarily more advanced than any other nation. Its economy, despite major structural problems and yawning income inequality, remains the most productive. And America remains a magnet for immigrants the world over.
“Declinism is valid insofar as it consists in the recognition of actual problems. But it honors the problems too much: it merges them into a fate and prefers the consequent fatalism to an educated hope. Strangely, a narrative of decline also soothes: it rescues us from our challenges, and it comforts us with the certitude that tomorrow’s problems will be worse than today’s,” Mr. Kimmage wrote.
Listen to the episode with Mr. Kimmage by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
