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The Literature of Decline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Kenneth W. Thompson
Kenneth W. Thompson
Affiliation:
KENNETH W. THOMPSON is Director of the White-Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs and former Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation.
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Abstract

This article compares reflections from four sources on the state of the American democracy in the international community (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, by Paul Kennedy; 1999: Victory Without War, by Richard Nixon; “Communism at Bay,”The Economist; Long Cycles in World Politics, by George Modelski) within the framework of the 1980s, which was portrayed by leaders as “an era of good feelings.” Yet drastically different positions on American rise or decline are propounded by historians and officeholders, former presidents and scholars, journalists and aspiring candidates for political office. These four writings reveal the complexity of the analysis of the American decline. Yet, it is crucial for leaders to maintain public devotion to their nation, not through passion, but rather, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, through “the solid quarry of sober reason,”. America's capacity to preserve a strong and healthy resilience, the author concludes, is the exceptional value it continues to offer the world.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 3 , March 1989 , pp. 303 - 315
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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References

1 Nixon, Richard, 7999: Victory Without War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) p. 17Google Scholar.

2 Ibid, pp. 33–34Google Scholar.

3 Ibid, p. 48Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 321Google Scholar.

5 “Understanding U.S. Strength,”Foreign Policy, No. 72 (Fall 1988) p. 106Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 129Google Scholar.

7 Newsweek (May 30, 1988) p. 20Google Scholar.

8 The Economist (January 14, 1989) p. 15Google Scholar.

9 Ibid.Google Scholar

10 Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987) pp. 488–89Google Scholar.

11 The Economist (January 14, 1989) p. 15Google Scholar.

12 Quoted in “The Wake of the Cold War,”The Washington Post, June 14, 1988, p. DlGoogle Scholar.

13 Ibid.Google Scholar

14 Bassler, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VI (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953) p. 502Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 115Google Scholar.