A number of recent polls show that more Americans than ever before -- nearly 60 percent, in some cases -- believe U.S. power is waning….

In other words, a greater number of Americans are worried about diminishing U.S. influence today than in the face of feared Soviet technological superiority in the late 1950s, the Vietnam quagmire of the late 1960s, the 1973 oil embargo, the apparent resurgence of Soviet power around the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, and the economic concerns that plagued the late 1980s…

This anxiety is real and justified, and it lies behind much of the public's support for withdrawing from the world… The relative economic decline of the United State is a fact. For the first time in 200 years, most growth is occurring in the developing world, and the speed with which that shift -- a function of globalization -- has occurred is hard to fathom. Whereas in 1990 just 14 percent of cross-border flows of goods, services, and finances originated in emerging economies, today nearly 40 percent do. As recently as 2000, the GDP of China was one-tenth that of the United States; just 14 years later, the two economies are equal (at least in terms of purchasing power parity)…

Worsening productivity growth has played a particularly large role in the U.S. slowdown, dropping to around 0.5 percent annually, which the Financial Times has referred to as a "productivity crisis." A range of factors are responsible, including a decline in the skill level of the American workforce and a drop in resources allocated to research and development…

The resulting deterioration in American military superiority has already begun, as the countries benefiting most rapidly from globalization are using their newfound wealth to build military capacity, especially in high-tech weaponry. As Robert Work and Shawn Brimley of the Center for a New American Security wrote this year: "[T]he dominance enjoyed by the United States in the late 1990s/early 2000s in the areas of high-end sensors, guided weaponry, battle networking, space and cyberspace systems, and stealth technology has started to erode. Moreover, this erosion is now occurring at an accelerated rate." (Work has since been confirmed as deputy secretary of defense.)

Article “Have we hit peak America’ in Foreign Policy, the most important US magazine on foreign policy, by Elbridge Colby, fellow at the Center for a New American Security & Paul Lettow former senior director for strategic planning at the U.S. National Security Council.