America is not yet declining but appears willing to let itself down

Political resilience, university excellence and openness to immigration are all under threat in the US

The Indian Constitution—or the Samvidhan in Hindi—has rarely if ever been a campaign spearhead for national elections. This time, though, poll speeches have brought it up with a frequency that may suggest a deep divide over it. The irony: Both archrivals in the country’s electoral fray, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, have accused each other of planning to twist it for partisan ends. The issue at stake is affirmative action. The BJP has picked up the Congress slogan of proportional quotas (for jobs and education) to allege its rival will re-allot existing provisions to religious minorities in violation of the statute’s caste criterion. In contrast, the Congress-led opposition has used perceptions of BJP comfort with an ancient caste hierarchy to fan lower-caste fears of reservations being dropped at upper-caste behest. Half-truths being weaponized for attacks on straw-men are politics as usual. What’s true is that this year’s electoral result will probably pivot on the votes of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), as it did in 2014 and 2019. Quota-endowed OBCs constitute the bulk of India, evidently. Moreover, the BJP’s vote-share gains can be attributed largely to OBC favour and the opposition’s hopes rest broadly on reversing that trend. This is identity politics as usual. The silver lining, however, is this: With poll-rally rhetoric on both sides broadly in support of the Constitution, 2024 marks a signal moment of stability in how ‘We the People’ have chosen to govern ourselves.

Or is it too early to tell? As the Left has pointed out, the BJP’s core ideology is framed by its mentor, an organization whose post-1947 record includes a critique of the Constitution for its neglect of ancient Hindu texts such as the

Manu Smriti. The ruling party’s ‘Modi makeover,’ though, has included an agenda of caste inclusion that not only aligns with electoral incentives, but also conveys political evolution away on this matter. Notably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the Constitution as a “holy book” when he came to power nearly 10 years ago. That said, it is equally true that the document makes no claim to perfection, has been much amended, and—like all drafts—can and should be subject to debate and the force of reason. As Amartya Sen has shown, rationality and freedom are two sides of the same coin, and the rulebook we adopted captures the spirit of freedom won in peace. It’s a sign of fraught politics that even a personal view articulated by the PM’s economic advisory council chief arguing that a case exists to “embrace a new Constitution,” as Bibek Debroy did in Mint, was mistaken by some BJP critics as an omen of sorts. As a confident country with windows open to all, we must never make such topics taboo.

Wisdom demands clarity on what cannot change and what can—or should. The Judiciary has outlined a ‘basic structure’ of the Constitution that keeps us bonded as citizens. Wisely, it includes the Rights to Equality under Article 14 and to Life and Liberty under Article 21. As the glue of our bond, these must always be upheld. On this, a consensus is clearly rational among free people. Encoded as a basic aspect of justice, it satisfies this test: If we were, somehow, all to be reborn as someone else at random (like a wheel of fortune), what rules would we adopt? The rulebook’s other basics also serve the aim of Indian unity. These need salience as public ideals endorsed fully by all parties before we take up what to amend. The universal promises of our Republic assure us stability. is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.

Ispent the mid-2000s arguing why Indian foreign policy must make a decisive shift towards the United States. The shadow of the Cold War had not yet dissolved and memories of US support for Pakistan’s proxy war were still alive in the minds of the country’s strategic establishment. The Vajpayee government had initiated a shift in thinking after the 1998 nuclear tests and prime minister Manmohan Singh was pushing for a major breakthrough in the form of a nuclear deal. Many in New Delhi—from cabinet ministers to young officers—had misgivings about the relationship and argued that partnering with a superpower would undermine India’s strategic autonomy. With the exception of the formidable K. Subrahmanyam, very few were comfortable making the realist argument that a closer alliance with the United States was in India’s interest.

Towards the end of the George W. Bush presidency, it became fashionable in Washington—and helpful to Barack Obama’s election campaign—to talk about the decline of American power. Fareed Zakaria wrote a book about the post-American world in 2008. This played very well in New Delhi, both because the predicted shift in the global balance of power towards Asia was good news, but also because it buttressed the old claim that the US was on its way down. Time and again, I found myself in a minority pointing out that declinism was a favourite American pastime for decades and Americans have been lamenting the decline of their country for over 200 years.

I gave three reasons why fears of America’s terminal decline were exaggerated. First, the American political system is designed to recover from serious mistakes that its leaders (like all others) tend to make. Second, its higher education ecosystem is outstanding. And third, it has long been the magnet for the world’s most talented and enterprising people. As long as the US held on to these advantages, I argued, it will remain the world’s dominant power.

In the past 15 years, it is shocking how the US has inflicted serious damage on all three pillars of its strength. No, I still do not think you should short the US, but the harm it has inflicted on itself is perhaps unprecedented. Unless its self-correcting mechanism kicks in soon enough, a decline is possible. Even after the 2008 global financial crisis, I never thought I’d write this sentence.

Consider the first of my three reasons: political resilience. Frequent elections, presidential term limits, policy adversarialism and institutional strength created the conditions for the American system to change policies once it was clear they had failed. All political leaders and governments err, but not all systems can acknowledge errors and change direction. Mao Zedong and his policies are still not officially seen as wrong in China, but the mistakes made by the US from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden are not only discussed threadbare, but correctives are applied. Yet, in the past decade, extreme partisanship has wrecked its self-correcting mechanisms. The US Supreme Court has reduced itself from being a credible arbiter to just another player. The US Congress seems dysfunctional. The country is set for a highly controversial presidential election this year. There is, of course, a lot of resilience in the system at all levels, but it is under greater strain today than it has been in decades.

The US university system is still the world’s best, but it is caught in deep crises of its own. The ongoing campus protests expose the contradictions and dubious policies that the American university has come to embrace in the past decade. For years, a creeping climate of fear enveloped campuses as professors could be punished for falling foul of political correctness codes. Big donors and alumni groups became powerful. They abridged academic freedom, the single most important thing in education. As Timur Kuran wrote on X, “US universities should never have abandoned institutional neutrality. And they should never had allowed DEI to morph into a system that promotes identity politics. Sooner or later, these missteps would come to haunt them. That day has arrived.” Students have noticed the gap between US ideals and policy. The pro-Palestinian protests could jolt the university ecosystem to rethink the path it is on, but I cannot say for sure.

America still attracts good immigrants, despite controversies over how to deal with illegal immigration. The ability to acquire high-quality human capital without spending a cent is an advantage few of its rivals possess.

The best analysis of the rise and fall of great powers is still Paul Kennedy’s 1988 book, which the assemblage of experts in Washington seems to have forgotten. He showed that powers rise with economic growth and decline due to military overstretch. While the constituents of US dynamism are beginning to flash amber, it finds itself embroiled in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars. Taiwan is an iceberg that lies somewhere ahead. With the Biden administration losing moral stature and undermining the rules-based world order, the US will have to rely even more on hard power in pursuit of its goals. This risks the overstretch that Kennedy warned of.