Politics & Power Quote by Robert Kagan

Kagan’s sentence reads like a calm briefing, but it’s really a plea for emotional steadiness in a moment of geopolitical jitters. The opening gambit, “Based on all criteria,” performs technocratic authority: it suggests that the verdict of American primacy isn’t ideology, but arithmetic. That framing matters because the argument he’s smuggling in isn’t merely descriptive. It’s permission-giving. If the U.S. is still “number one,” then panic is premature, retrenchment is optional, and the expensive habits of hegemony can still be justified as reasonable upkeep rather than nostalgia.

The triad - “military power, economic influence, cultural dominance” - is doing careful rhetorical work. It collapses hard power and soft power into one scoreboard, implying that Hollywood, the dollar, aircraft carriers, and alliances all cash out in the same currency: leadership. It also preemptively rebuts the most common “decline” talking points (deindustrialization, polarization, overstretch) by widening the lens to areas where the U.S. still overperforms.

Then comes the crucial hedge: “even though other, new players are increasingly challenging it.” That clause acknowledges the obvious (China’s rise, regional powers asserting themselves, tech and capital flowing in new directions) while containing it. “Challenging” is not “replacing.” “Increasingly” signals motion, not arrival. The subtext is a warning against self-fulfilling decline narratives: if Americans start acting like a post-superpower, they’ll become one. Contextually, this fits Kagan’s broader project - defending a U.S.-led order by arguing that the alternative isn’t a tidy multipolar balance, but a rougher world where power vacuums get filled by states less interested in liberal rules.