The Myth of America's Decline

September 9, 2013
Editor of Germany’s esteemed weekly Die Zeit, Joffe (Überpower) builds his latest book around the idea of the U.S. as the world’s “default power.” Joffe rebuts those doomsayers who, over the course of the last half-century, have predicted that American influence was secondary to the Soviet Union, or Japan, and now China. While Joffe’s counter-argument that indeed America is not in relative decline is persuasive on the issue of military power, he sidesteps domestic issues such as education, urban deterioration, and racial conflict. Joffe’s detailed catalogue of economic and civil weaknesses in the Chinese police state is the book’s high point, however, with the author observing that repression has been the Chinese way since the Ming Dynasty. Aggressively capitalistic and resolutely optimistic, Joffe revisits familiar conservative talking points about American vitality, private enterprise, and individual freedom. For readers tired of blame-America-first critics or who want to find out what a smart, influential European thinks of the country’s prospects, Joffe’s book is a useful place to begin.