Ever since the United States ascended to global leadership at the end of World War II, American leaders have regularly been stricken by bouts of anxiety that the country is in decline and losing ground to a rival. The Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite prompted such fears, as did Soviet expansionism in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Washington was seized by the worry that American industry was incapable of competing with Japan’s economic juggernaut. Even in 1992, just after the Soviet Union collapsed, an article in the Harvard Business Review asked, “Is America in Decline?”
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