Charles Krauthamer.

• Author: Abrahamson, James L.

Decline is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the End of American Ascendancy

www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/056lfnpr.asp

By Charles Krauthammer

In his recent Wriston Lecture at the Manhattan Institute, Charles Krauthammer challenges those who assert the inevitability of America's decline. He argues that for America, however, decline is a matter of choice, an outcome revealing a loss of "moral self-confidence and will."

After World War II, the United States abandoned its historical isolationism and became a global co-hegemon. Following the Cold War, Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation" had no peer and, writes Krauthammer, used its power in a benevolent way, becoming the first hegemon in modern history whose conduct did not "immediately catalyze the creation of a massive counter-hegemonic alliance."

Krauthammer sees nothing inevitable about the major threats to the U.S. economy and the dollar's role as a global currency. By ending its thirty-year nuclear-power plant holiday and tapping its immense oil and natural gas reserves, the U.S. could end the oil imports that account for two-thirds of its trade imbalance. America's second economic threat comes from fiscal deficits being perpetuated by those who regard a financial crisis as a terrible thing to waste.

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