American power was a reality. It was only a question of who was actually going to wield it.

And I think that remains true to this day. There's nothing intrinsically bad about American power.

It's really up to us to decide what America does in the world. We are still a democracy, however, flawed.

And that's a great thing about democracies.

It's also the scary thing about democracies is we get the government we deserve and we also get

the foreign policy we deserve. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

How should we think about power in international relations?

And how should we think about American power?

Is American power something to be worried about?

Something that has inflicted suffering on the world in Vietnam and many other junctions, or is American power something that's necessary, something that's necessary, something that even if at times it might go wrong,

is much better than the alternative represented by a vacuum of power or by Russia or China becoming the most powerful

country in the world. Well, this is the set of questions that Shadi Hamid is asking in a new

book called, Spoiler alert, it tells you what his answer is going to be, the case for American

power.

Now, this is an interesting argument coming from Shadi, who has been on this podcast a few

times before, who is a columnist for the Washington Post, somebody who very much sees himself

as being on the left, a progressive, who is Egyptian-American,

deeply marked by the experience of being in college during 9-11.

He is somebody who definitely sees the potentially negative or corrupting impact of American power. And yet, he argues,

all things considered, it is much better than the alternative. We talk about many aspects

of this, including questions about whether or not America is declining and being eclipsed by China,

including how it is and why it is that having the most powerful country in the world be democratic

...