The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy, and the Future of American Power

The age of American global dominance is ending. In recent years, risky economic and foreign policies have steadily eroded the power structure in place since the Cold War. And now, staggering under a huge burden of debt, the country must make some tough choices–or watch its creditors walk away. In The Reckoning, Michael Moran, longtime foreign policy journalist and geostrategy analyst at Renaissance Capital, Roubini Global Economics, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other leading institutions, explores how a variety of forces are converging to challenge U.S. leadership–including unprecedented information technologies, the growing prosperity of countries like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey, and the diminished importance of Wall Street in the face of global markets.
This shift will have serious consequences for the wider world as well. Countries that have traditionally depended on the United States for protection will have to adjust their policies to reality. Each nation will be responsible for its own human rights record, energy production, and environmental policy, and revolutions will succeed or fail unaided. Moran describes how, with a bit of political leadership, America can transition to this new world order gracefully–by managing entitlements, reigniting sustainable growth, reforming immigration policy, and breaking the poisonous deadlock in Washington. If not, he warns, the new era will arrive on its own terms and provide a nasty shock to those clinging to the 20th century.