Dan Drezner pours cold water on claims that the debt ceiling debacle means America's global leadership is done for:
The eurozone remains a basket case, Japan and Russia remain demographic disasters, and China has domestic political problems that make partisanship in the United States look like child's play. Even a cursory glance at military spending reveals no peer competitor to the United States. So yes, the United States will endure a rain of rhetorical horses**t for a while… right up until the next crisis in which the world demands America "do something" because it's still the only superpower still standing.
His colleague Joshua Keating collects international tut-tutting on the issue. But the truth is that American leadership will still matter not because we are strong, but because the rest of the world is not much better; and China and India are too preoocupied with their internal struggles to make too much mischief. But the leadership we offer will be more modest, less decisive and more marginal in impact.
I have to say that doesn't alarm me. The last decade has persuaded me that military power is not an efficient way to shift the direction of world events. Those events are being driven by deeper forces – of economic and social change, technological innovation, the response to modernity by religion – than any military can alter, shape or prevent.
The Dish 