Superpowers in decline? Economic performance and national security

Abstract

Two developments have conspired to raise the status of economic performance to a critical position in the superpower strategic competition. The potential for future technologies capable of reshaping the strategic environment—technologies that will demand strong and technologically sophisticated economies—has emerged, while at the same time the economies of both superpowers have been locked in the throes of a long‐term decline. Whichever superpower solves its own entrenched problems and is thereby able to reverse the long‐term downward economic trendlines will gain a crucial strategic advantage; whichever fails will face a growing “economic dimension of security vulnerability.” In examining the source of the special problems plaguing the Soviet and U.S. economies and the nature of the mutual interdependence between the defense and civilian components of both economies, this article describes what both superpowers must accomplish in this century in order to ensure strategic competitiveness in the next.