Airstrip One

Can the American Empire go on for ever?

Yes says Linda Colley. You see it's a culture thing. Everyone can understand American culture. Of course small matters such as economic self interest and strategic security don't matter to the post-modernist academics that the Guardian calls on. They probably found economics or geography too difficult at A Level.

No says The Nation, and American old-left rag. It's all to do with the evils of free trade and the free movement of capital and America will die by its own capitalist sword, evil laugh. (I paraphrase this a bit liberally).

Almost says David Ross. America is still relatively strong, don't you know? The problem is whether other countries who spend less on government in general (so that doesn't include the EU) and the military in particular may find that without the dead weight spending they start to pull ahead. Then when ahead economically they start to comparatively effortlessly put the extra money in the armed forces (I know this will end in tears but they're at a different stage in the cycle). Then the old power finds himself overstretched and with a whole sheath of previously latent emnities. This is not the American present but the English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Mughal and Chinese pasts.

Perhaps America's not past her peak, we'll only know for sure in fifty years time. That is an entirely different thing from saying that there will be no peak.