How refreshingly simple and powerful. The authors statements are, in my opinion, completely irrefutable. Leadership comes from a record of success, and success comes from sound planning and taking on manageable tasks. In short, a highly plausible explanation for the perceived decline in American power.

A well aimed bullet is more effective than a barrage of machine gun fire. Just ask any sniper. Also, most people would rather have the sniper watching your back (friendly fire anyone?)

Although the US may have lost some respect, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter to the US what happens outside of North America. The incompetence is neither new nor going away any time soon. The US it is still an island nation will little to fear. The clumsiness is not just a coincidence or even purposefully. It just happens because there nothing in place to make Americans and our politicians care.

India could have helped so many of their own people with the billions that were wasted (and unaccounted for) with the CWG. Australia has pulled out and the UK most likely will as well today

It's a good thing that partisan bickering did not exist before 2008 and/or the rise of the Tea Party, or no one would have ever taken the U.S. seriously for so long. /sarcasm

Gridlock comes and goes. Even when it comes, it is not terribly effective in reigning in foreign policy/strategy, given that the executive has so much unfettered power in that sphere.

Whether one likes or dislikes the U.S. political system, he cannot deny that it has proven remarkably stable and resilient to the whirlwind ebbs and flows that have swept away countless regimes in the other great powers for the past 230 years.

The China comparison is, as usual, misleading

1) You say that China is not doing anything "silly": then what do you call its heavy-headed saber rattling with Japan and Vietnam over a bunch of uninhabited islands? Wen Jiabao has taken to threatening Japan directly! And his PLA generals have entrenched themselves further and further into the government, setting up potentially drastic, destabilizing policy shifts. Ask ASEAN or the Japanese government how "competent" it thinks China is right now.

2) The growing competence assigned to China usually stems from observation of its business deals with unsavory regimes. Of course North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Iran will gravitate toward a regime that does not give any currency to human rights or arms control. China's foreign concerns are oriented toward business, without any ideological grand strategy, which makes a direct comparison with America difficult. In most cases, America's grand strategy (however flawed) extends beyond calculations of economic benefit. America waged the Afghanistan and Iraq wars despite knowing that they would not bring economic benefit. Those wars have, however, allowed China to exploit resources in both Iraq (Kurdish Oil deals) and Afghanistan (copper mine investment). In light of this reality, I ask: who is the true "imperial" power raiding wealth from the world?

3) Furthermore, China cannot even theoretically commit an error like Afghanistan or Iraq since it does not have the material capacity to do so. It's like applauding a man for not shooting at a target, while ignoring that he does not have access to a gun.

Tibet came to mind. But in contrast to the US, China has several benefits going for it, including proximity, the ability to move its own Han populace into the region. Most importantly, it has a repressive government that takes action against all political dissidents and a control of the media that limits what information gets out.
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While the US is lambasted about Guantannamo Bay, China's gulag system holds tens of thousands of prisoners and has no trouble playing by Hama rules, (per Tom Friedman), noting last year's anti-Chinese riots that were forcefully and lethally put down by the government.

The US has not chosen easy battles, and in doing so has risked what is potentially it's greatest asset: the image of a better future, or at least the stable platform to sell it.

The economy, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, China, engagement with Iran. Obama has gotten a lot of big, critical questions wrong. Or actually, he's gotten them half-right when there was no margin of error.

But he's also doing many smaller things very well. He's made some very smart moves with Indonesia in general. His state department very deftly pushed a new American-authored constitution through in Kenya. Those moves are obviously part of a greater strategy to bring ASEAN and the East African community into the American orbit, which may or may not pay off, but represent good strategic thinking. He's handling allies like Rwanda and Georgia on a shorter leash than Bush did, preventing them from becoming little Israels. He hasn't stepped (publicly, yet) on the rapprochement between Colombia and Venezuela. We're close to a new START treaty.

I could probably name more, but I think the Obama administration's record on small things has been very impressive. Those are going to bear fruit.

So, assuming he doesn't go all stupid in Central Asia (I know that's a big IF) I say he'll be remembered very favorably.

...the American final solution.

While it is quite understandable that after eight long years of Afghan war under Bush, Obama wants to avoid the pitfalls of ‘nation building’ and ‘democracy spreading’ enunciated by Bush and reduce the casualties of US/NATO troops, the problem is Obama will not be able to achieve his goal of preventing Afghanistan from becoming Al Qaeda/Taliban terrorist heaven again because of Bush’s fatal mistakes and Obama continuing those mistakes.

Three Bush blunders haunt US mission and Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

First, during the siege of Kunduz in November 2001, the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan from where Mullah Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Second, in order to chase Saddam’s imaginary WMDs, Bush administration allocated huge military resources to Iraq, thereby denying Afghanistan sufficient troops to provide security against Taliban.

Third, Bush recruited Musharraf’s Pakistan to fight the very terrorist threat that Pakistan itself created. So Musharraf played duplicitous game of running with the hare while hunting with the hounds. While capturing and killing some Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders based on US intelligence, Musharraf continued to shelter, protect and support Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban in Quetta, provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network in North Waziristan.

Obama administration has compounded those Bush blunders by continuing to ignore Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

Obviously Karzai is frustrated by Obama also giving a free pass to Pakistan just like Bush as he told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/2010 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

Even Afghanistan’s national security advisor Rangin Dadfar Spanta has asked the same question in a Washington Post article on 8/23/2010: “While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists’ main mentor (Pakistan) continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified? Despite facing a growing domestic terror threat, Pakistan “continues to provide sanctuary and support to the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar group and Al Qaeda. Dismantling the terrorist infrastructure “requires confronting the state of Pakistan that still sees terrorism as a strategic asset and foreign policy tool”.

Poor Karzai’s call to his Western allies ‘to destroy Islamist militant sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan’ is falling on deaf ears in Washington where powers to be are hell bent on sacrificing Afghanistan to mollycoddle Pakistan.

competence comes from individualism with high standards and not from government ways that has low standards. Excellent article!!

...

Consider Marty Martel's comment.

Clearly, America's biggest problems today
are not military but economic.
An outstanding new book suggests that
part of the reason for America's economic impotence
is that its leaders
have privileged geopolitical objectives over
maintaining American prosperity (not to mention solvency).
The book, by Clyde Prestowitz, is
The Betrayal of American Prosperity.
Extensive excerpts from this book are at
http://kwharbaugh.blogspot.com/2005/03/betrayal-of-american-prosperity.html
Find the book at Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-American-Prosperity-Delusions-Post-Dollar/dp/1439119791/

I feel that the money India spent of the Commonwealth Games could have been spent on their people. They spent billions on the CWG, when they have a country that is struggling. To me that just doesn’t make any sense.

I feel that even if you do not like the United States political system, you have to agree that we are stable and resilient to the flaws that have wiped other countries political system out.

I agree with the fact that what we are doing in Afghanistan makes the U.S. look like children. We are over their trying to fix their economy and political system. They don’t want our help so we are looking a little stupid wasting our time, money and men over there.

I believe we need to bring all our troops home, and worry about us for once. We need to get our economy back on the ground and stable. For once the U.S. needs to worry about the U.S. and no one else.