The U.S. isn’t in decline it is being outgrown by other countries, though. Things won’t get worse for Americans over the next 50 years, despite the rantings of people obsessed with concepts like extreme trade protectionism, the end of all jobs in America and other things which are just internet hyperbole the most likely scenario is that 50 years from now America and other OECD countries will have dramatically improved quality of life compared to now. Technology is going to advance tremendously during that time.
I do wonder what is going to happen as China and India slowly catch up with the first world. I don’t expect that in 50 years time they will be caught up, in terms of standard of living or any of those measures. Their military power will probably be significantly improved.
People talk about the weaponization of space by the Chinese like they are getting ready to achieve some sort of advantage that once achieved no one else could ever match. The truth of the matter is we probably could have weaponized space during the Cold War, we didn’t because of the foreign policy implications. If a country did weaponize space, other countries would do the same. It’s just like the atom bomb, we created it but anyone who thought we now had a “super weapon” that made us untouchable was quite foolish. In very short time the Soviets had one too, that’s the way the world works. I’ll tie that in with the rare earth mineral fiasco. Yes, China can use their current monopoly of rare earths production to harass the economy of the world. However at the end of the day all that would happen is other countries would start producing rare earths again, end of story.
During the Cold War both the Soviet Union and the United States embraced their role as superpower. The leadership of both countries, throughout the period, thought and truly believed they were locked in a battle for dominance of the globe. Soviet leadership genuinely believed they could export communism to the entire globe, the United States genuinely feared it and fought against it.
With China things are a lot different. Our relationship with China, despite rocky issues, is far and away better than our relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While we can expect “economic clashes” to increase, at the end of the day we’re China’s best customer and we have shown no limit to how much we love buying their stuff. There’s too much money made off of the U.S.-Chinese relationship for us to enter into Cold War era types of relationship with the Chinese just because they are moving to be on par with us economically and militarily.
The other thing that is very different about China is it does not appear to be lead by ideologues who want to control the globe. The Chinese leadership appears very insular, with a strong desire to have freedom of action within its “sphere of influence” but little desire to become the next United States or even the next Soviet Union. The USSR was propping up regimes on the other side of the planet, at a true loss. The Chinese engage in trade with questionable regimes all over the planet, but from everything I have seen they reap material gain from the trade. Especially since often times they are the only people willing to trade with said countries. The Chinese aren’t interested in having client states in South America. What the Chinese seem to really want is enough deterrent power that any war against them would be hugely devastating for their enemies. Namely, they want to build up their military to the point that the United States would look at China and say “going up against it with them isn’t worth it.” I’d argue they are already there but Chinese leadership doesn’t agree. One of the big things for them is they want enough naval power that they can operate in spite of U.S. presence in the seas of Asia.
China wants to be a regional hegemon, and they want enough power that no outside entities like the United States can get “in their way” in Asia. Unlike the Soviet Union China has no desire to “spread” to cover the whole world. Chinese leadership isn’t very ideological even though it is still officially communist. Instead it is basically a group of technocrats who are all pretty much devoted to one thing: strengthening the stability of China and giving China free reign over its immediate neighbors.
From what I’ve seen, aside from Taiwan, this doesn’t imply China is out for conquest. China just wants to be able to more or less have Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and other countries in the region “under its thumb” in all aspects of their relationship. As long as the United States has vast military resources it can deploy in the region the Chinese feel that they can’t quite “get there.”
India seems even less expansionist than China, and for all its problems it is the world’s single largest democracy.
Something I’d mention about both India and China, from my experiences with people from both countries, these aren’t people who see themselves on a trajectory of conflict with the United States. These are people who want their country to be like the United States, in terms of economic opportunity and quality of life. Neither country has a huge ideological population that is interested in becoming a world superpower.
In truth, I don’t know that the United States does either. If we weren’t already global policemen, I really doubt our population would sign off on us becoming such. It’s really just because the American public bought into the Cold War that our military and political leadership has been able to continue keeping us as global policemen.
In the long run, I think that if the United States ceases being the world’s superpower, we won’t see another one rise up. China and India just do not have any interest in filling the role we fill. China wants power over its portion of Asia, it doesn’t want to be intervening in the affairs of other countries to the level that the United States does. What China instead would want to do is send token forces with U.N. missions so it keeps its international reputation looking rosy, but it has no desire to or wish to engage in large scale unilateral action across the other side of the globe. There is an infrastructure that has to be built for that which I do not believe any other country will seek to build over the next century.