The American Century Reimagined: Adapting to Global Shifts and Domestic Challenges

In this contentious election year, one of the most significant questions is whether we are witnessing the end of an age in which the United States has been the dominant power. In my new memoir, A Life in the American Century, I make a case for optimism.

I have lived through eight decades of an American era that included World War II, Hiroshima, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Cold War ended without the nuclear catastrophe that hung over our heads, but it was replaced by a period of hubris as the United States became the world’s sole superpower. That unipolar moment was soon replaced by fears of transnational terrorism and cyber wars. Analysts today speak about a new cold war with a rising China and fear of nuclear escalation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our mental maps of the world have changed dramatically over my lifetime.

For those eight decades, we have lived in what TIME publisher Henry Luce, in March 1941, baptized “the American Century.” In the nineteenth century, the global balance of power was centered in Europe, which sent its imperial tentacles around the world. The United States was a bit player with a military not much larger than that of Chile. As the twentieth century began, the United States became the world’s largest industrial power, and accounted for nearly a quarter of the world economy (as it still does today).

When US President Woodrow Wilson decided to send two million troops to Europe in 1917, the United States tipped the balance in World War I. But afterwards, the United States “returned to normal” and, in the 1930s, became strongly isolationist. It is more accurate to date the American century to US President Franklin Roosevelt’s entry into World War II in 1941. It was in that context, to resist isolationism and urge participation in the war, that Luce coined his famous term. Some have referred to an American empire, but our power always had limits. It is more accurate to think of the American century as the period since World War II during which time, for better or for worse, the United States has been the preeminent power in global affairs.

The United States remains the world’s strongest military power as well as the largest economy, but since the 2010s China has become a near-peer economic competitor, and large parts of our country have reacted negatively to the disruptions caused by globalization. As yet, this contemporary era has no fixed label.

So what sort of a world am I leaving to my grandchildren and their generation? I tried to examine part of it in my 2015 book Is the American Century Over? and concluded that the answer to that question was “no,” but that American primacy in this century will not look like the twentieth century. I argued that the greatest danger we Americans face is not that China will surpass us, but that the diffusion of power will produce entropy, or the inability to get anything done.

China is an impressive peer competitor with great strengths but also weaknesses. In assessing the overall balance of power, the United States has at least five long-term advantages. One is geography. The United States is surrounded by two oceans and two friendly neighbors, while China shares a border with fourteen other countries and is engaged in territorial disputes with several. The United States also has an energy advantage, whereas China depends on energy imports. Third, the United States derives power from its large transnational financial institutions and the international role of the dollar. A credible reserve currency depends on it being freely convertible, as well as on deep capital markets and the rule of law, which China lacks. The United States also has a relative demographic advantage as the only major developed country that is currently projected to hold its place (third) in the global population ranking. Seven of the world’s fifteen largest economies will have a shrinking workforce over the next decade, but the US workforce is expected to increase, while China’s peaked in 2014. Finally, the United States has been at the forefront in important new technologies (bio, nano, and information). China, of course, is investing heavily in research and development and scores well in the numbers of patents, but by its own measures its research universities still rank behind US ones.

All told, the United States holds a strong hand in this great-power competition. But if Americans succumb to hysteria about China’s rise or to complacency about its “peak,” they could play their cards poorly. Discarding high-value cards—including strong alliances and influence in international institutions—would be a serious mistake. China is not an existential threat to the United States unless US leaders make it one by blundering into a major war. The historical analogy that worries me is 1914, not 1941.

My greater concern, however, is about domestic change and what it could do to US “soft power” (a concept I invented in 1990 to describe the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment) and the future of the American century. Even if its external power remains dominant, a country can lose its internal virtue and attractiveness to others. The Roman empire lasted long after it lost its republican form of government. As Benjamin Franklin remarked about the form of American government created by the founders: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Political polarization is a problem, and civic life is becoming more complex. Technology is creating an enormous range of opportunities and risks that my grandchildren will face as they cope with the internet of things, artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, deep fakes, and generative bots—to name but a few. And even larger challenges are approaching from the realms of biotechnology, not to mention coping with climate change.

Some historians have compared the flux of ideas and connections today to the turmoil of the Renaissance and Reformation five centuries ago, but on a much larger scale. And those eras were followed by the Thirty Years’ War, which killed a third of the population of Germany. Today, the world is richer and riskier than ever before.

I am sometimes asked whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the United States. I reply, “Guardedly optimistic.” The United States has many problems—polarization, inequality, loss of trust, mass shootings, deaths of despair from drugs and suicide—just to name a few that make headlines. There is a case for pessimism. At the same time, we Americans have survived worse periods in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s. For all its flaws, the United States is an innovative and resilient society that, in the past, has been able to recreate and reinvent itself. Maybe Generation Z can do it again. I hope so.

By: Joseph S. Nye Jr. – the former dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors. He is the author of a new memoir, A Life in the American Century, from which this article is adapted.

Image: A general view of the statue of former US President Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, August 13, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt