Refuting U.S. declinism, sort of.

• Author: Kim, Anne
• Position: Unleashing the Second American Century: Four Forces for Economic Dominance - Book review

Unleashing the Second American Century: Four Forces for Economic Dominance

by Joel Kurtzman

PublicAffairs, 320 pp.

Don't worry about America losing its dominant position in the global economy. Worry instead about whether average Americans will benefit.

For as long as the United States has dominated the world as its economic, military, and cultural hegemon, fears of American decline have been as much a part of our national psyche as pride of place in our power--this even as our strongest challengers have failed to topple us. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, while Japan slid into recession just three scant years after Japanese investors bought New York's iconic Rockefeller Center. Still, our anxiety over the threat of subjugation to a foreign rival persists.

Today's pessimists especially worry about China. Over a single decade--in part through its invasion of American shelves and closets with cheap goods--the nation has catapulted into becoming the world's second-largest economy. Since 2002, its gross domestic output has exploded from a mere $1.4 trillion to $8.2 trillion in 2012, fueling fresh concerns about a pending American twilight. As Carl Minzner of the Council on Foreign Relations observed in 2007, "China's steady rise in economic and political influence is the single event that will reshape international politics in the 21st century."

To counter the doomsayers, Milken Institute senior fellow Joel Kurtzman argues that America has nothing to fear and much to anticipate from its economic future. In Unleashing the Second American Century, Kurtzman, former editor in chief of the Harvard Business Review, makes the case for why America will continue to dominate the global economy and why its best days are yet to come. "[Ejven in an ailing world," he writes, "America will grow stronger still."

But while Kurtzman presents compelling evidence that the American economy as a whole will prosper, he doesn't answer two questions of equal current salience: Who will benefit, and at what cost?

To build his case, Kurtzman identifies four interlocking forces that he sees as the foundation for future U.S. growth. First, he points to what he argues is a uniquely American brand of creativity rooted in a desire for "self-improvement." The American way of thinking ("We are antsy, eager to move upward and onward") enables the kind of "game-changing" innovation that other countries can't match.

For example, Kurtzman points to the burgeoning robotics...