This Thursday, Robert Lieber, one of America’s leading scholars on the subject of
American leadership and its position in the international arena, will deliver a lecture that echoes
the message of his newest book, “Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why America is
Not Destined to Decline” at the Lubar Commons on the 7th floor of the Law School.

Lieber
argues the decline of America’s international status and standing has been overstated
and the discourse surrounding the rise of competitive, rival states has been exaggerated and
hyperbolic. He is right on the mark. Although the U.S., after the booming decade of the 1990s,
finds itself in a much more precarious and unstable position than when I was a child, its core
values, technological advantages and academic institutions still leave it unmatched in the global
context.

Lieber’s book focuses on several facets of the American economic and military situation,
from problems with domestic demand to issues of imperial overstretch. While he concedes America’s difficulties are significant and that our world is not as stable as we may like to
believe, his message is undeniably positive; the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency,
America’s civil society is healthy and its anemic economy should bounce back by the end of the
next presidential term, regardless of who takes office.

Don’t get me started on global “adversaries.” Anyone who thinks the Chinese
economy will replace America’s as the lynchpin of world economy has a difficult position to
argue. There’s also little chance this growth will raise the mean standard of life for the
average Chinese citizen.

At least
the Communists thought everyone deserved health coverage. As reported by The Raw Story, Chinese military spending,
although exceeding all prior levels of past decades, is minute compared to U.S. expenditures.
And the amount of funds dedicated to research and development by the American government
outpaces China by a longshot. Let me know when they move a few aircraft carriers into a body
of water outside of their hemisphere; I won’t hold my breath.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Lieber’s book is that it frames a key issue of the
upcoming presidential election: whether the U.S. has experienced an uncharacteristic
decline on President Barack Obama’s watch. Watching Mitt Romney, the inevitable Republican
nominee, campaign this season on the soapbox of “making America great again” has been about all I can stomach. Mitt’s campaign slogan, “Believe in America,” is an ethic that argues
our problems are more than skin-deep, that the problem with our nation is that we’ve lost the
skill set and the will to compete with other nations for jobs and influence.

One of Romney’s associated
Super PAC’s, Coalition of Americans for Political Equality, runs a website asking for donations
to help “reinforce the America we once knew.” There is an America “we once knew” folks,
and you’re living in it. That America does a great job of keeping the world relatively calm,
maintaining free commerce and moving progressive international issues of human and women’s
rights forward, albeit slower and more selectively than some of us would like. Lieber’s book
argues persuasively that we’re not on the highway to hell or the road to ruin, but maybe it
would not hurt to repave the driveway. In this, I think we can all agree.

Nathaniel Olson ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science, history and psychology.