US needs reality check

WITH THE WORLD'S MOST DYNAMIC ECONOMY and peerless military, "America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world," US President Barack Obama declared at the US Military Academy at West Point.

He could have presented a much longer list of symbols of American dominance - Apple, Google, Amazon, and surely the National Security Agency, whose eavesdropping is literally omnipresent in the increasingly connected world.

As it has been for the past century, the United States will remain indispensable "for the century to come".