Book of the week: The World America Made by Robert Kagan

(Knopf, $21)

Despite widespread chatter to the contrary, “the United States is as strong as ever,” said Mark DeSantis in the Pittsburgh Post-Gaz­ette. Just ask neoconservative scholar Robert Kagan, who mounts an argument in his “accessible, thought-provoking” new book that has been embraced by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Measured by various indicators of economic and military strength, the U.S. has actually been remarkably steady in its standing as the world’s supreme power, Kagan says. Despite our recent recession, we’re still responsible for about a quarter of the world’s GDP, and our military remains stronger than the next 12 largest militaries combined. The idea that our influence is declining, says Kagan, has been propagated by politicians and policy wonks who believe in an American golden age that is partly myth. The truth, says Kagan, is that we were never as powerful as we thought we were.

That’s not an argument for resting on our laurels, said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. Kagan argues that decline is possible, if we’re not vigilant enough in maintaining our military strength and standing up to China and the rest of the world in defense of open markets and democratic ideals. In fact, it’s amusing that the president has apparently failed to grasp that Kagan’s book is in many ways “a damning takedown of an administration that has tried not to lead, slashed defense spending, excessively relied on multilateral institutions, and failed to formulate a coherent policy on democracy promotion.” Kagan’s underlying point is that decline is a choice. “Obama, unfortunately, seems to be choosing it.”

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Obama might indeed want to look more closely, if only to review Kagan’s facts, said Edward Luce in the Financial Times. Since 1969, Kagan tells us, the U.S. has generated “roughly a quarter” of the world’s income. But a more precise accounting indicates that America’s share of the world’s GDP has fallen since ’69 from 36 to 23 percent, including a whopping 7 percent drop between 2000 and 2010. China’s economy has meanwhile grown in the past decade from an eighth to nearly half the size of the U.S. economy. In that light, American pre-eminence starts to look “very shaky.” As useful as Kagan’s argument is, his book is full of “debatable assertions” and “less than coherent reasoning,” said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. That such a “scattershot” work has gained favor in both the Romney and Obama camps is at least curious, and maybe even troubling.