Dan Drezner lists three reasons he is buying what Beckley is selling. Number One:
The United States is successfully deleveraging. As the McKinsey Global Institute notes, the United States is actually doing a relatively good job of slimming down total debt — i.e., consumer, investor and public debt combined. Sure, public debt has exploded, but as MGI points out, that really is the proper way of doing things after a financial bubble.
Phil Arena defends one argument for a rising China. Erik Voeten also pushes back. Walter Russell Mead sides with Drezner and Beckley:
Drezner skewers the newly fashionable notion that America is in decline. It’s a refreshing and badly needed corrective to the chorus of naysayers who start at every shadow. There is a kind of hypochondria of power that is all too prevalent among US pundits; part of it is simple ignorance of history and the nature of US aims and capabilities, part is a general pessimism about capitalism and the human condition, and part is a healthy concern for trends that, left unchecked, could well result in big problems down the road.
The Dish 