The endangered American dream

Is the United States losing a war it does not even know it is fighting? Edward N. Luttwak, the nation's most brilliant and controversial strategist writing today, asserts that we are - and that in the new struggle for economic supremacy, the United States could slide down into the status of a Third World country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States seemed poised to head a "new world order" of peaceful cooperation. But in the central arena of world. Affairs - in which North Americans, Europeans, and East Asians compete - old-fashioned geo-politics has merely been displaced by geo-economics. Guns and diplomats now count for much less than patient capital and highly skilled labor, while new weapons have emerged: aggressive "national technology programs," predatory finance, and ambush-like tariffs and technical standards. In this new geo-economic struggle, the United States will suffer defeat after defeat, unless its. Military strength (now useful only in less-developed regions) is matched by economic power. In the trenchant style that made his Pentagon and the Art of War a best-seller, Luttwak exposes how ill-prepared we are for the new struggle that will determine the future of America: schools that fail to teach either culture or skills; the disastrous lack of savings and investment; the widening gap between elite and mass incomes; the increasing paralysis of unrestrained legalism. And litigation, induced by an exploding population of lawyers; and our own already established inner-city Third Worlds. But The Endangered American Dream is more than an analysis of decline. Offering forceful policy prescriptions, Luttwak shows how we can reverse decline to prosper in the global marketplace. At the same time, he demolishes the myth of free trade, arguing that "globalization" can and should be controlled, instead of allowing it to drive non-elite. Americans into poverty. While The Endangered American Dream is bound to be controversial, it is a clarion call to rally the country for the new global struggle for economic supremacy.