s the UN-sponsored climate conference in Copenhagen last December was teetering on the verge of collapse, after two weeks of wrangling, President Barack Obama intruded on a private meeting of the leaders of China, India and South Africa, and forged a deal that prevented a total failure of the historic talks.

It was an imperfect ‘accord’ protested by many – especially the poor nations, who felt they were sold down the river – but in the end, the pact was agreed to by nearly all 193 nations at the conference.

No other leader of any nation in the world could have done what Obama did that day – not the leaders of China, India, Russia or Britain, not even of the European Union or the United Nations, for none of them has the power of the United States of America behind their punch.

The implication of the Obama intervention is much less that it saved the world’s worst polluters to fight global warming another day, but much more that it demonstrated the capacity of the United States to intervene between contending forces on the planet, whether it be about climate, politics, trade or anything else that makes the difference between war and peace. Often the US fails, but still more often than not, it succeeds.

There are those who say the United States is in decline. They have been saying that every now and then for the last 50 years, from the time the Soviets sent up the Sputnik. They ranted through the era of John F. Kennedy’s warmongering in the Bay of Pigs, when he sent ill-equipped amateurs to fight Castro knowing full well they couldn’t prevail without air cover – which he refused to provide – and his ill-fated venture to war in Vietnam. The latest scenario of the downfall of America is the ‘rise of China’, the dawn of the ‘Asian Century’, and the global financial crisis and economic meltdown.

Are these cries of America’s imminent demise greatly exaggerated, and is the obituary being written prematurely?

There is some reason to think the US is declining as a nation and a world power. Let us remember great empires and nations begin to decline when the rot sets from within. The decline does not happen suddenly or overnight. It comes quietly, with sighs and shrugs like two lovers parting company.

Certainly, since I arrived in the United States 35 years ago, the country’s infrastructure, public schools and the political decorum – not to mention the fierce independence of spirit – have deteriorated so much that there is a palpable feeling of a weakened democracy, political corruption and a general mediocrity of spirit.

There is a feeling that self-serving politicians are raiding the public treasury. An immediate case in point is the shameless horse-trading that paved the way to buy votes to pass the healthcare-reform legislation in the Senate. It was nothing short of bribery with taxpayer funds.

The international power of the United States is based on the country’s political cohesion and economic competitiveness across the world. In recent times, both have taken a beating. The federal deficit under the Obama administration is projected at US$ 1.75 trillion for fiscal year 2009. It will surely get even larger when the skyrocketing costs of social security and Medicare are factored in.

The national debt at the dawn of 2010 exceeds a staggering US$ 12 trillion. The United States of America is now the biggest debtor-nation in world history. No nation with such a massive debt can hope to remain a great power. Yet, politicians refuse to put the national good above partisan interests.

America’s problems are not irreversible. The core problem is not external. It is internal. It is about Americans themselves. If they are to reverse the current rush to the bottom, they need to confront their demons. They need to reaffirm their belief in their country – that it is worth fighting for at home, even more than abroad.

But for all their faults, they still remain citizens of a country that stands alone among nations that are capable of providing leadership to bring contending nations to the negotiating table, muster the strength to balance opposing convictions and maintain harmony. That is what Obama did in Copenhagen, albeit in an unobtrusive and non-confrontational manner.

If one were to look at the flip side of the coin, current estimates are that the US economy is worth US$ 14.5 trillion. This is three times as much as that of its nearest competitor – the world’s second-largest economy, Japan. Even more stunning is that it is about as much as those of the economies of the four nearest competitors combined – Japan, China, Germany and France.

There is only one seeming challenger to the supremacy of the US economy – the European Union, with an aggregate GDP of US$ 18 trillion. The EU however is an unwieldy conglomerate of 27 states that are hardly capable of making strategic decisions collectively because of the political and economic differences among them. A more reasonable comparison to the US is the 16 member Eurozone, which has a common monetary policy. Its GDP is US$ 13.5 trillion – still below the US level.

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