Volume 28, Number 4 · March 19, 1981
Insolvent America
By James Chace
For some time now we Americans have had a double image of ourselves, as being both powerful and inadequate. Yet the characterization is more than an image; it is also true. We are powerful beyond the measure of any other nation in history and, as time passes, we are becoming more ordinary, more like the others, subject to unaccustomed constraints. How can we reconcile these two truths with each other and with what Walter Lippmann, over a generation ago, laid down as a fundamental principle of a wise foreign policy: that it be solvent? By this he meant that a nation must bring into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, its commitments—economic, political, military—and its power. For well over a decade we have not done so. As a consequence, the central question for American foreign policy is how to manage our domestic and foreign affairs in order to bring about a solvent foreign policy, if indeed we can.
Feature, 3425 words
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