Having followed America’s competitiveness for some time now, I was particularly excited to receive last week’s Newsweek featuring its first-ever Best Countries issue.
Like other studies before it, the Newsweek study found that the United States is slipping. The United States ranked 11th. But, unlike the other studies, Newsweek found a glimmer of hope for our nation.
Among the chief arguments for America’s decline that these other studies have made include fewer college graduates (particularly in science, technology, engineering and math), less R&D and patent creation, and decreased manufacturing and exports. Newsweek did not ignore these indicators. Rather, Newsweek agreed that “America has clearly suffered some decline, relative to other nations, and a loss of prestige.”
But Newsweek argued, the future is not as bleak as the “declinists” suggest. “But even battered and beaten down, American power is more resilient than the naysayers give it credit for. And so is the international system that depends on American power as its central stabilizer.”
Simply put, Newsweek said the United States just doesn’t have a rival. Not even China. Its “model of autocratic capitalism, successful as it has been at home, is hardly something most others want to emulate, and it may well be close to peaking. …
“Looking again at the Newsweek list, the ‘best’ countries tend to be small, homogenous and fairly harmless: Finland (No. 1), Switzerland, Sweden. All wonderful places – but they are nations that have almost no geopolitical role to speak of and never will. They’re just too tiny. Yet in the category of ‘large’ – read significant – countries, the United States still finishes handily ahead of China in every major index, including economic dynamism, education, health and ‘political environment.’”
Indeed, Newsweek said the United States will retain its status because of its position as “the enforcer of the international system.” As long as other countries continue to look to it for military support, globalization will proceed.
But what do you think? Is Newsweek right to be hopeful? Or is the decline as serious as previously suggested?
Some previous studies:
