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American Power | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #48

American Power

Be it resolved, America’s best days are behind it.

Guests
Gideon Rachman
Kori Schake
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About this episode

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.

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Guests

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.”

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.”

Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times. He writes a weekly column for the FT and hosts an international-affairs podcast. His main interests include geopolitics in Asia, US foreign policy and the future of the EU.  

Rachman has won the Orwell Prize for journalism (2016) and was also named commentator of the year in the European Press Prize awards in 2016.  

He has written two books on international politics – Zero-Sum World (2011) and Easternisation (2016). He is also a regular public speaker, appearing before both academic and business audiences. 

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.”

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.”

Kori Schake leads foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony, and with Jim Mattis the editor of Warriors and Citizens: American Views on Our Military. Dr. Schake has taught at Stanford, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and West Point. She has also had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council.

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