Many of the responses to my last post on America insisting on being no. 1 were excellent. Let me clarify my thinking. First, and most strikingly, questioning whether American has to insist on being no. 1 and "having no peer competitor" is NOT the same as "betting against American power," as Architect claims. I am not arguing that America is certain to decline -- as Ben P reminds us, it was very fashionable to argue that America was in decline at the end of the 1980s, so much so that Joe Nye coined the term "declinism" and wrote his book "Bound to Lead," which looked quite visionary after by the early to mid-1990s. My point was not that we are bound to fall but that other powers are bound to rise -- are rising now -- and what matters most is what kind of powers they are.

Brooksfoe got it right: "What's important is that human rights-respecting democracies remain preponderantly powerful, not that the US do so." Exactly. The U.S. has an enormous stake in making sure that the current human-rights respecting democracies (I think of them as PARR governments -- Popular, Accountable, Representative, and Rights-Respecting) are preponderantly powerful, just as the U.S. has a continuing stake in maintaining its own power sufficient to defend itself and to continue as a great power with a critical leadership role in the international system. But that means working to engage China and helping/encouraging it to democratize in as many ways as possible -- see Teddy Bard's excellent post.

Second, not insisting on being no. 1 is NOT the same as not wanting to lead in the building of an international order. On the contrary, John's point in his post on the Security Trap and in many of his writings -- just as Joe Nye argues in his more recent book, The Paradox of American Power -- is that insisting on being no. 1 is hampering our ability to shape that international order, because other countries, including our traditional allies are beginning to doubt that we do intend to use our power not simply in our interests but also in theirs, as someone has recently noted has been a great source of our power.

Third, and most importantly, the vast majority of Americans feel strongly that "this is the best country in the world," not that it is necessarily the absolute most powerful country in the world. That distinction matters. "Best" is based on values, not brute strength; "best" is also based on building ourselves up, as Bruce Jentleson puts it, rather than insisting on tearing everyone else down.

More coming on the Walt-Mearsheimer debate. For now, check out Roger Cohen in the Washington Post on the McCarthyite tactics of some of the Walt-Mearsheimer attackers, smearing by association.