The Strategic Implications of Relative Economic Decline

The debate over decline is about to enter a new, more complex, and perhaps more interesting phase. In the initial stage, as so often happens when a large and important subject first emerges, the participants divided into two opposing camps. On the one hand there were those who pointed with alarm to fragmentary evidence of U.S. economic decline and argued that the erosion in its relative strength would soon require a substantial diminution in America's world role. Responding to this view were critics who denied that the indications of decline were as compelling or as worrisome as was being claimed and who maintained that no drastic changes in American foreign policy and military strategy were either necessary or desirable. It now seems clear that each side in the early debate was roughly one-half right. The United States no longer dominates the world economy as completely as it once did, and in some important ways it has indeed been passing through a period of relative decline. The changes that have become evident in recent years will have an impact on U.S. strategy. Nevertheless, the precise nature of that impact is likely to be less direct and less immediate than is often claimed. In particular, the trends now visible do not compel the United States to withdraw from its overseas commitments, nor are they sweeping the world quickly and inevitably into an era of genuine multipolarity. Over the next ten or twenty years, however, an increased American reliance on foreign goods, technology, and capital and the increased

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