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多年来，美国哈佛大学(Harvard University)教授约瑟夫•奈(Joseph Nye)一直在与美国衰落论者的异端邪说作斗争。1990年，他出版了《注定的领导》(Bound to Lead)一书，主张美国在接下来的许多年里很可能仍将是世界的主导力量——当时，预言日本或许最终将超越美国是一件很时髦的事。25年后的今天，奈写了一本类似主题的书，但靶子换成了另一个。在《美国世纪结束了吗？》(Is the American Century Over?)一书中，他向当前这波美国衰落论发起挑战——当前这波衰落论一般建立在manbetx3.0 将取代美国成为世界“头号强国”的观点上。