New America Foundation

This essay draws lessons for great-power grand strategy from the history of Great Britain and its effort to manage the hegemonic power transitions that spawned World War I and World War II. It focuses on two main issues. The first is the diplomacy of managing power transitions. At the turn of the twentieth century, Britain faced a rapidly changing strategic landscape. London had to deal with the simultaneous rise of three major powers – the United States, Germany, and Japan.

The Master said: “To worship gods that are not yours, that is toadyism. Not to act when justice commands, that is cowardice.” The Analects of Confucius, 2:24

During the Cold War, the U.S. position in the world was a lot like the ancient philosopher-astronomer Ptolemy’s theory of the universe. For Ptolemy the Earth was at the center with the other planets, indeed all the other celestial bodies, revolving around it. So too, the United States was at the center of the Cold War world. We were the wielder of power, the economic engine, and the bastion of free world ideology.

A recent Gallup Poll captured the social zeitgeist of an America attempting to emerge from the 2008 Great Recession. The nationally representative survey showed that feelings of psychological distress such as worry, anger, and depression increased with the duration of joblessness. Less than 40 percent of those who had been searching for a job for at least 11 weeks rated their lives as ‘thriving’, while most unemployed Americans expected that they would have to settle for a job that they did not want.

On July 11, 2011, the Early Education Initiative submitted comments about the draft guidelines for a new federal program to promote early learning called the Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge. The comments were sent to the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S.

The Asset Building Program responded to a request for public comment on the proposed rule to implement provisions of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 affecting the eligibility, benefits, certification, and employment and training requirements for applicant or participant households in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This statement, focusing on changes made to the asset limits governing eligibility, can be found here.

A decade after 9/11, despite growing concerns over Yemen, Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and swaths of the country’s northwest arguably remain al Qaeda ’s main safe haven, and the area from which it can hatch its most dangerous plots against the West.[i] Al Qaeda’s presence in these areas has long threatened international security.

The evolution of certain aspects of the American social contract has lagged behind that of other developed countries for decades, but the insecurity resulting from our lack of social protections has traditionally been offset by high employment levels, a stable middle class and widespread perceived opportunity for upward mobility. The value of this trade-off has been undermined, though, by unequal wage growth and polarization of the labor market into low and high skill jobs, with a decline of middle income jobs and the retirement and health benefits that accompanied them.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has updated its “Realistic Baseline” using projections from the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent Long-Term Budget Outlook.

Amidst the doom and gloom surrounding the labor market, there are bright spots that offer some hope for the return of good jobs in the United States. Foremost among them is the resurgence of employment in durable goods manufacturing.