Will US ever accept the truth?

It is a matter of routine for the media in the United States to carry articles written by top US scholars at the end of a year and the beginning of the next, expressing concern over the country's prospects.

In one such article, "The end of the American era", Stephen M. Walt, professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, wrote that as the dominant world power since 1945, the US has long sought to preserve that "privileged position", and understands that "primacy" brings important benefits and "it may be lonely at the top, but Americans have found the view compelling". But when the US stands alone at the pinnacle of power, "there is nowhere to go but down. And so Americans have repeatedly worried about the possibility of decline".

Their worry perhaps has never been more intense since the end of the Cold War. Scholars like Stephen Walt are not making ado about nothing. They are, in fact, reflecting on and drawing lessons from the past to safeguard the country's hegemony and rejuvenate US-style capitalism.