Rather, I think that the case for inevitable Western decline and Asian growth needs to be interrogated more thoroughly than it has been so far. As a long-time observer of the US 'empire', I have never been attracted to either US apologists-willing to forgive the state anything-or anti-Americanism-which condemns the USA as the root of much international evil. To me, the USA is a central fact of international life that I happen to find extraordinarily interesting. As I have discovered before, it is remarkably easy to underestimate its staying power-and by implication that of the west. Intellectuals in the west and elsewhere foresaw immanent US decline in the 1970s following its defeat in the Vietnam War and the recession that followed the OPEC oil crisis. We did it again just before the end of the Cold War in 1989, and again ended up eating our words. Perhaps we should be more careful about predicting the end of US power?