Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University has been battling the declinist heresy for more than two decades. In 1990 — at a time when it was fashionable to predict that Japan might eventually eclipse the US — he published Bound to Lead, arguing that America was likely to remain the world’s dominant power for many years to come. Now, 25 years later, Nye has written a book with a similar theme but a different target. In Is the American Century Over?, he takes on the current wave of declinism — which these days is usually based on the idea that China will displace America as “number one”.
20多年來，美國哈佛大學(Harvard University)教授約瑟夫?奈(Joseph Nye)一直在與美國衰落論者的異端邪說作斗爭。1990年，他出版了《注定的領導》(Bound to Lead)一書，主張美國在接下來的許多年里很可能仍將是世界的主導力量——當時，預言日本或許最終將超越美國是一件很時髦的事。25年后的今天，奈寫了一本類似主題的書，但靶子換成了另一個。在《美國世紀結束了嗎？》(Is the American Century Over?)一書中，他向當前這波美國衰落論發起挑戰——當前這波衰落論一般建立在中國將取代美國成為世界“頭號強國”的觀點上。