Last night I was watching the BBC's Newsnight coverage of the 9/11 10th anniversary. Generally speaking, I thought it was a fairly decent report, considering it's the BBC (generally speaking, the BBC tends to have an anti-USA bias). However, throughout the report, people kept mentioning this "decline" of the USA's power, starting with 9/11. Generally, I would dismiss this, as it's just the BBC doing what the BBC does best, but it's a claim that I frequently see made by various people and institutions. It's gotten to the point where this is almost seen as a self-evident truth, but it's one that I want to question.

Typically, these claims come from two angles - one from the "War on Terror", the other being the rise of China, so I'd like to address these separately.

The commonly accepted view is that the USA was at the peak of its modern power in the 1990s. The history of the USA is typically one of ever growing power up until this point. USA was born out of a war, with the colonies beating down the then-greatest power on the planet (the British Empire). After that (and the Civil War), America was then on the winning side against an even bigger threat, WWI Germany. The USA then beat down an even-bigger foe with Japan, and was again on the winning side against an even stronger Germany in WWII. Finally, after a 50 year struggle between the two greatest powers this planet had ever seen, the USA emerged victorious, cementing its position as the world's only super power just in time for the nineties to kick in.

The USA then enjoyed 10 years as the sole superpower, the 21st century hit, and now it's beginning the decline. Or so the common mantra goes. People often point at 9/11 attacks (my deepest respects), and the failings of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as evidence of this claim. First, I'd like to point out that since that fateful day on September 11th, 2001 neither Al Quida, nor any other terrorist group have managed to successfully launch another attack on US soil (with the exclusion of the Arkansas shooting in June 2009). It would seem to me, that rather than signaling decline in American power, the situation marks in increase in power. Before September 2001, the USA was almost oblivious about any terrorist attacks, and since, no one has successfully enabled an attack. Now, there is an increased risk of an attack in the coming weeks, as US officials have pointed out, due to the anniversary of 9/11 (combined with Al Quida needing to reassert itself after the death of Bin Laden), but the fact that the US is now aware and alerted about such an incident implies increased power, not decreased. Any terrorist attack is far more likely to fail today, than it was 10 years ago.

Now, people may just say that Al Quida simply haven't bothered to launch another attack since then. This is possible, sure, but it isn't likely. The failed Christmas day bombing (which, I admit, was down to luck, not anything that the USA is responsible for), and the bomb found in that car parked in Washington, show that Al Quida are at least attempting to attack the USA. The amount of terrorist attacks, globally, has also increased... so why would the USA have seen such a decrease? I think the far more realistic argument is that terrorists have been unable to attack America thanks to improvements in the USA's intelligence services, the war in Afghanistan, and the special operations and drone bombings in Pakistan and Yemen. The killing of Osama Bin Laden was more of a symbolic gesture which, to me, just showed how much the tides had turned against Al Quida.

Which brings me to the next point: Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not going to argue about their point, or justifications, instead, I'm going to talk about them in terms of declining American power. The first thing we have to address is that, with decline, is the implication that they were stronger before. To say that Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of American decline, is to suggest that the USA would have performed better at them at an earlier period. Is it reasonable to suggest that had these wars of taken place in the early 90s, rather than the earlier 00s, that the USA would have enjoyed greater success? No, I do not think it is.

One other thing to get clear about the Iraqi war is that the actual war, that is, defeating Saddam Hussein's troops, and ending his regime was won in about 6 weeks. Far quicker than the previous encounter with Iraqi forces during the Gulf War, which lasted about 7 and a half months. The problem with Iraq is that they were not prepared for such a fast fall of Iraq, and its sudden decent into Civil War.

As for Iraq, I often here critics coming out with lines like "Afghanistan is unconquerable, the British failed, the Soviets failed, the USA was doomed to fail". The ultimate problem with this quote, of course, was that the USA never set out to "conquer" Afghanistan, their main objectives were to disrupt Al Quida activities (which, as discussed earlier, we can say has been moderately successful, so far), and to replace the Taliban Government with a new one (they did this, but the new Government is so corrupt, anyway, it probably won't prove to be much better). Had the USA have treated Afghanistan the same way as they treated Japan and Germany (complete domination of the country, and setting up the country under Americanized systems, and ruling the country for a handful of years, before handing it back to the Afghan people in American-overseen elections), Afghanistan would have been in a far better situation, today.

A final point I'd like to make on these two wars is how they are by no means heavily-committed to, by the USA. There are more US troops in Germany than in Iraq (53,951 (2007) versus 45,600 (2010)). There are over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, but when you consider the 60,000 in South Korea and Japan, 10,000 in the UK, 10,000 in Italy, and the various other deployments of hundreds and thousands of troops in other countries across the globe (not to mention the million+ troops that are still at home), that 100,000 doesn't seem like it's an over-stretch. To argue that these wars are stretching the USA's military is just simply not true, the main problem, really, is that they under-committed.

I'm not saying, by the way, that either Iraq or Afghanistan are successful... they have had their successes, and their failures. But the failures have been down to tactical errors and under-commitment, not a decline in US power.

I'll talk about China, and my views on what will cause the US decline in another post, if this one proves to be popular.

I feel most comments on the US decline are more economics centered that military based (though there is an element of this).

I think anyone (sensible) that believes in the decline of US power means a "relative" decline of US power.

These are the issues generally attributed to the rise of China, which I was going to do a post on, another day.

I read a paper recently (written from an Australian strategic policy perspective) talking about where and how our economic and military efforts should be distributed in the coming decades (primarily between China and the USA). The paper was well researched, and generally held that against a standard base, the US was not declining economically, and certainly not militarily.

Against the shifting base that is the global geo-political relality, the paper acknowledged that the influence of the US was become relatively weaker, but that general comments on the matter GREATLY exaggerate the speed and intensity of this decline.

I guess power is often a matter of perception. The one who's perceived as powerful has power.

Right now, there is a perception that the US is losing power, which in turn it makes it so, as other nations lose fear or respect.

From an objective standpoint, I guess you can argue that the US has lost its influence in Latin America and its share in the global GDP has diminished.

But the IMO the US is going to remain one of the main powers for a long time. Just maybe not the sole main power.

Im guessing the majority of the prognosticators a hoping for some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy just look at the countries that you usually hear this chatter from (Russia, the Arab world and pro-hardcore socialist states).
In terms of military strength i wouldn't even go there, the phrase "demons with clubs" (or is it demons) comes to mind. Economically, i agree with starcraft it's all relative though America does have problems they seriously need to address.

Honestly i see the USA as a super power still but i was born and raised here so i am biased on that view. Although i have been against the United States relying so much on China for borrowing purposes. Anyway The US technically isn't weaker, As some Europeans like to think. For example if North America was to fight a war with another country other than current middle east who do you think would win? let me get more specific The US is backed by Multiple powerful nations like the UK, Japan, pretty much all of the EU, and Even Australia, and to a lesser extent India and South America. Economically yes the US has weakened but what country hasn't felt the effects of the Economy? (other than China and India). So you have to dig a little deeper to really understand what position the US is in right now.

Not saying it's true, but there have been lots of reports charting the balance of power shifting with US power declining. There was a report a few years back from US intelligence agency itself stating this.

To use an apt metaphor its inevitable it will wane a bit currently. US is like Sony with PS2 and China is like MS releasing 360. They only result can be loss of market share (or power) to the new entrant. With the BRIC countries rise in importance this requires a trade off somewhere else and the US is taking the brunt of that.

So with US position globally weakening you get lots of references to that fact everywhere.

To be honest rumors about the decline of America started with the fall of the USSR in the early 90's. Before that, many countries feared so much the USSR (or the USA, on the other side) that they decided to blindly follow one or the other superpower. As the threat posed by the USSR disappeared many countries began to follow their own agendas and so even the USA lost a lot of foreign support in favor of smaller regional powers.
That was critical for the american economy, in the past the US kept alive their economy imposing their own will: in the early 70's they imposed the OPEC to sell oil in dollars (forcing other countries to buy dollars to buy oil, that is to buy the american debt), in the 80's they forced Japan to revaluate its currency to limit the American trade deficit (causing the greatest economic crisis of Japan).
Today there's no one willing to please the US at its own expense, China refused multiple times to revaluate its currency like Japan did and the American trade deficit is widening, while Iran chose to sell oil in euros. People talk about the decline of American power because they don't see an easy way-out to the current economic crisis.

I think it's based more on influence being on a decline wise.

I mean when you think about it... when the USSR was around it was a huge game of back and forth chess with both countries basically manipulating half the world.

Then the USSR collapsed, and the US still had plenty of that cold war influence.

Now a days, the US is still influential, but not cold war level influential because there is no USSR to freak people out, and the US isn't the USSR.

When the US started doing a few unpopular things, it actually hurt influence a bit, where as back in the past the US could do almost anything with token disagreement at best.