Another article from the Ottawa Citizen courtesy of George Shafer in Almonte, Ontario.
By Andrew Cohen
It is not new, unusual or original to consider the decline of the United States. Many have, at different times, for different reasons, since the end of the Second World
War.
The country emerged as the world’s lone nuclear power in 1945, but others caught up. After Sputnik in 1957, the future seemed to belong to the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev declared the superiority of Communism, famously promising to “bury” the United States.
If it was not Russia displacing the U.S. in the postwar era, it was Japan, Germany or the European Union. As great powers, all claimed their moment.
Much of this sense of American decline was driven by wasting wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. lost them all, draining its blood and treasure.
A generation ago, in Vietnam, the U.S. was rich enough to afford “guns and butter.” Its tragic misadventure in Indochina killed 57,000 Americans and cost the earth, but the U.S. won the space race and watched Communism collapse.
If the American Empire follows other empires, its wars will be seen as its undoing. Its imperial overreach has brought crushing debt and diverted resources from health care, which has been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
No wonder observers predict the country’s demise. They cite its failure to deal with racism, its huge deficits, its income inequity and its tilt to authoritarianism in the suppression of voting rights.
Given all this, you could conclude that the Age of America is over. That it is a failing state. Hello, China.
And yet. Betting against America is always risky. It has a world-beating presence in culture, diplomacy, science, technology, commerce and higher education. And sports.
Behold, the Olympic Games. If you want to see the face of dominance, watch the U.S. at the Olympics, any time, any year. Like the Nobel Prize, it just keeps winning and winning.
By one count, it has won more than 2,800 medals since the modern Olympics began in 1896. That’s more than double the Russian total.
Predictably, it is dominating the Summer Games in Tokyo. This reflects a country that is competitive, ambitious and wealthy. Sports are at the core of its character. It likes sports, funds sports, venerates competition.
It loves to win, and that’s not a good thing for Americans who lose. The intensity of competition here now extends to the militarization of sports, which often includes waving the flag and saluting the troops at high school football matches and college baseball games.
But here we are, at another Olympics, and the Americans are doing extraordinary things. This week two American women — Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad — competed against each other in the 400-metre hurdles. McLaughlin set a world record to win gold, while Muhammad ran the fastest time of her life to take silver. “Iron sharpens iron,” McLaughlin has said of their rivalry.
The Guardian, the British newspaper less given to hyperbole than the Americans, asked: “Was this the greatest ever track and field race?”
The Americans are not the only ones soaring at the Olympics. Canada is having a great run. Andre De Grasse won gold in the 200-metre sprint, his fifth medal overall. Penny Oleksiak has won three medals, adding to the four she won in 2016.
Canada’s women’s soccer team is assured a silver medal, perhaps a gold. Our swimmers, divers, rowers, runners and others are excelling. For those who remember Team Canada struggling in Montreal in 1976, this is a new, aggressive and successful Canada.
In the Summer Olympics, which is less our thing than the Winter Olympics, we are in the top 12 or so nations. We have become an all-round Olympic power, which is remarkable for a country of 38 million people.
But Canada — as well as Russia, Germany, Britain, Australia, France, Italy and China, which is rising quickly in the Olympics, as almost everywhere else — still play in the shadow of the United States.
Whatever its flaws, in the Olympics this country stands alone.
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