Be it resolved: America’s best days are behind it

Falling wages. Failing infrastructure. Soaring public debts. Many believe that America’s future looks anything but bright. Stark ideological and partisan divisions have fractured the country at home while a string of failed foreign military interventions have soured Americans on the country’s role as defender of the liberal international order. Add in exploding disparities between rich and poor, a bungled pandemic response, and lacklustre economic growth and you have all the markers of a country in decline. Others argue that betting against America has always been a losing proposition. Declinists fail to account for the country’s amazing ability to adapt and re-invent itself time and time again. From world beating technological innovations in Silicon Valley to vaccine breakthroughs to the frontiers of commercial space exploration, America has proven it can rise to meet new challenges and opportunities. The strength of its diversity, size of its population, its entrepreneurial drive, military might, and financial prowess all ensure its continued dominance as a global power in the 21st century. In a world beset with authoritarian regimes, statist economies and the absence of human liberty, America will remain a powerful magnet for talented people the world over committed to democracy and freedom.

Arguing for the motion is Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of the Financial Times and author of Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond.

Arguing against the motion is Kori Schake, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?

QUOTES:

GIDEON RACHMAN

“I've never seen the country in the state it's in now...it seems to me to be of a different order and one that does raise quite profound questions about the enduring success of the American experiment.” 

KORI SCHAKE

“Don’t underestimate the loud raucous conflictual way America solves its problems... that’s how we have traditionally clawed our way towards being a better republic and I believe that continues to happen now.”

Sources: The Hill, CNET, Global News, CNN, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Thames TV, ABC

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