Why America still has the advantage on the world stage

On Oct. 25 — in reaction to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping assuming a third term in office, becoming the first Chinese premier to do so since Mao Zedong — Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng (HSI) Index fell 6.4 percent. This marked the largest decline for that stock-market index since November 2008. As Jack Hough cogently narrated at Barron’s under the headline “Chinese Stocks Are a Screaming Bargain. Don’t Buy Them,” investors, particularly foreign ones, are increasingly anxious about “autocracy risk.” It now looks increasingly to be the case that a given company’s viability in China could rely more on the whims of one man than its earnings or projected future growth.

Xi Jinping’s assumption of a third term coincides with other significant, recent developments from top-15 world economies — from Rishi Sunak becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, meaning that Britain would have its third prime minister in seven weeks, to the ongoing (and fraught) electoral contest in Brazil. Events such as these, along with Russia’s war in Ukraine and Britain’s recent economic crisis, have confirmed to me the truth of an idea I have, at times, doubted, especially amid the tumultuous period since 2020. It concerns my father’s long-standing rule of international affairs that was instilled in me growing up: As badly as the United States mismanages matters at times, particularly economically, things are even worse in other nations, and that is America’s saving grace.

Despite the United States’ many current challenges, from political violence to the vertiginous level of national debt to widespread (and founded) fears of further economic stagnation, one still gets the sense that the United States is the major world nation where it is still best to live and to invest.

During the admirable display of national unity in the United Kingdom that followed the death of Queen Elizabeth II, many Americans were rightly nostalgic for the sense of shared purpose that the British displayed and might have — at least for a moment — wondered if they might be better off on the other side of the Atlantic. And though Heather Mac Donald and the British essayist Henry George have both indicated their belief that Britain’s culture wars pale in comparison to those in America, it is important to recall that GDP per capita in the United Kingdom is $47,334 as compared to $69,287 in the United States. (If the United Kingdom were a state, it would rank 49th on this metric.) And on the crucial issue of civil liberties, the United States remains far and away superior; in Britain, a tweet deemed “grossly offensive” can result in police knocking on one’s door.

Even the much-maligned state of California was revealed to be the world’s fourth largest economy, surpassing Germany. And when it comes to household electricity prices, the United States fares better than Western Europe, with Denmark (a nation often cited as one the United States should emulate) holding the ignominious honor of having the world’s highest prices in that category. On social issues, despite some conservatives’ admiration, Russia is the country that has historically had some of the world’s highest abortion and divorce rates.

To be clear, none of these observations are intended to dismiss valid criticisms of certain recent policy decisions in the United States that have contributed to inflation, the nation’s most pressing domestic issue, or its questionable recent energy policies. Instead, they are to demonstrate that — relative to other nations — the United States is not all doom and gloom … and also that while it may be fashionable to wax on about the benefits of a European multi-party system or this or that new initiative being championed abroad, sometimes the United States actually does have it right.

As Antonin Scalia used to say, “the United States was settled primarily by people seeking, in one way or another, refuge from the ways of Europe. The men who founded our Republic did not aspire to emulating Europeans at all.”

Although it has been a long-standing American preoccupation to warn of American decline, with President Richard Nixon being a notable practitioner, there is reason to continue to believe that relative to other contenders for preeminent world powers, the United States retains the advantage.

At the very least, it has not succumbed to a purely authoritarian political system, and investors still maintain relative faith in its economy.

So though Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) may have been overly sanguine when he asserted in his 2017 book “The Vanishing American Adult” that “America’s best days lie ahead,” it is likely that at least relative to the rest of the world, America is the major nation that has it least wrong.

Erich J. Prince co-founded and runs Merion West (@merionwest), a Philadelphia-based group promoting civil discourse in the age of polarization; he also writes a weekly column at MediaVillage on how the news media covers politics. He previously served as a communications strategist for former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory.