The Futures of American Power - Dominance and Decline in Perspective
![handle is hein.journals/fora89 and id is 896 raw text is: The Future ofAmerican Power
Dominance and Decline in Perspective
7Oseph S. Nye, 7r.
The twenty-first century began with a very
unequal distribution of power resources.
With five percent of the world's population,
the United States accounted for about a
quarter of the world's economic output,
was responsible for nearly half of global
military expenditures, and had the most
extensive cultural and educational soft-
power resources. All this is still true, but
the future of U.S. power is hotly debated.
Many observers have interpreted the zoo8
global financial crisis as the beginning of
American decline. The National Intelli-
gence Council, for example, has projected
that in 2025, the U.S. will remain the
preeminent power, but that American
dominance will be much diminished.
Power is the ability to attain the out-
comes one wants, and the resources that
produce it vary in different contexts. Spain
in the sixteenth century took advantage
of its control of colonies and gold bullion,
the Netherlands in the seventeenth century
profited from trade and finance, France in
the eighteenth century benefited from
its large population and armies, and the
United Kingdom in the nineteenth century
derived power from its primacy in the
Industrial Revolution and its navy. This
century is marked by a burgeoning revo-
lution in information technology and
globalization, and to understand this
revolution, certain pitfalls need to be
avoided.
First, one must beware of misleading
metaphors of organic decline. Nations
are not like humans, with predictable life
spans. Rome remained dominant for more
than three centuries after the peak of its
power, and even then it did not succumb
to the rise of another state. For all the
fashionable predictions of China, India, or
Brazil surpassing the United States in the
next decades, the greater threat may come
from modern barbarians and nonstate
actors. In an information-based world,
power diffusion may pose a bigger danger
than power transition. Conventional
wisdom holds that the state with the
largest army prevails, but in the informa-
tion age, the state (or the nonstate actor)
with the best story may sometimes win.
[ 2]
JO SEPH S. NYE, J R., is University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard
University. Parts of this essay are drawn from his forthcoming book, The Future
ofPower (PublicAffairs, 20n).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/fora89&div=90&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Futures of American Power - Dominance and Decline in Perspective
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