The fact that, say, India and Brazil “don’t hesitate to assert narrow national interests that often have little to do with Washington’s agenda” tells us very little about whether America’s headed for a long-term slide, any more than the mere existence of France, Austria, Spain and Prussia spelled Gibbonesque doom for the eighteenth-century Britain. ~Ross Douthat

Agreed.  The National Journal piece is unpersuasive, since it takes as its point of departure the fantasy that being the “lone superpower” has entailed being able to rule the world and dictate the policy priorities of all countries.  India and Brazil assert “narrow national interests” (as opposed to the broad national interests of another country?), and this is different from the past…how exactly?  It is not the assertion of their national interests that is notable, but that both countries are now relatively much wealthier and more developed than they were even 15 years ago.  Their disagreements with the U.S. matter more to us today, because they have more significance in the world than they did at the end of the Cold War.  This is a new situation.  It is not inevitably a path to decline, unless successive administrations mismanage the situation so badly that we fail to turn the rise of these countries to our advantage.  This rise of India and Brazil is why Americans have started paying much more attention to both and why Washington has been trying to butter up both of them with different kinds of incentives (lower duties on ethanol for some, nuclear technology for others). 

Not that long ago, India and Brazil used to be stalwart NAM states that viewed U.S. policies with tremendous suspicion and kept themselves at a distance.  Now that they are aspiring to higher, regional power status themselves, they are finding points of agreement and mutual benefit, as well as points of conflict.  This is what some call “international relations.”   

What is interesting about Indo-American relations is not how fraught or difficult they are, but how much more often India and America are cooperating (two Presidents have now visited India after exactly zero had visited previously).  Under old Congress governments, this would have been unlikely.  Under Manmohan Singh and a Congress chastened by a decade of BJP rule, it is now not that surprising.  Arguably, the rise of a wealthier, stronger India that has some real pro-American tendencies is good news for American power, provided that Washington knows how to handle this changing situation.  If Mr. Bush’s treatment of an emboldened Europe is any indication of how Washington responds to changing international realities, I wouldn’t hold my breath that the government will know how to correctly bind India to the U.S. 

According to National Journal, now that this imagined ability to rule the world by diktat is supposed to be ending, it’s all downhill from here.  Well, this is, to put it mildly, silly.  The “rise of China” didn’t spring out of nowhere–it has been happening for my entire lifetime (or, to take a Zhou En-Lai-like perspective, the apparent rise began in 1945 but it still remains too early to tell at this point whether China is actually rising or falling), which would be the same period during which America has continued to be the predominant power in the world.  Everything depends on knowing how to bind strong allies to oneself, divide hostile powers and set them against each other and wield one’s own power in a limited, conservative fashion.  If there was broad public consensus that the Iraq war was still a great idea and there were people advocating that we engage in a lot more such wars, we might start prophesying an age of decline.  The healthy response of the public to regard this war as rather mad and pointless at this point is a good sign that there will not be another such wasteful, useless, power-depleting display for some time.

One point where the article is least persuasive is when it talks about Venezuela:

That Chavez feels free to constantly bait Washington and attempt to revitalize Fidel Castro‘s populist socialist revolution in Latin America is a testament to perceived U.S. weakness.

Viewed another way, the correct way, giving Chavez all the rope he wants to hang himself (and ruin Venezuela in the process) seems to be a confirmation of just how irrelevant and unthreatening Chavez and Chavismo really are.  Venezuela is basically a Latin American Zimbabwe, but with oil instead of agriculture as the source of the wealth that the ruling clique will exploit until the system collapses, and it will continue to descend into the depths of the basket-case nightmare states of the world.  People let Mugabe say and do what he wants because he is impotent beyond his borders; Washington puts up with Chavez’s bloviating and mockery because I think they know that he isn’t the dire threat that the Santorums and Romneys of the world try to make him out to be.

The one part of the article that’s really worth reading is the Luttawak section.  (Luttawak doesn’t buy the decline theory, and he also says that we should ignore the Near and Middle East as much as possible–he’s two for two this month!)  Luttawak is mostly talking about underlying structural strengths and not at these accidental ups and downs.  The section after that is marred in a number of ways.  Yes, Constantine XI probably did have a sense that the “scales of history hung in the balance” in May 1453, since an important strain in Byzantine religious ideology held that the fall of the empire would coincide with the end of the world.  Gavrilo Princip was not a “Bosnian nationalist” for two simple reasons: he was a Serbian nationalist, and there is no such thing as the Bosnian “nation.” 

The article is also somewhat interesting for including a Kagan quote that captures the paranoia and irrationality of the prominent neocons better than anything I have seen lately:

“That worries me more than anything,” Kagan said, “because already we’re seeing Iraq treated like a political football even though our very existence could be at risk….”

Our very existence is at risk…from Iraq?  What is it that threatens our very existence?  Kagan has no idea.  This is just the sort of alarmist stuff they have become so accustomed to saying that they probably don’t even know what they mean at this point.  This is crazy stuff.