Think the American century is over? Think again.

Joseph S. Nye Jr.

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In this contentious election year, one of the most significant questions is whether we are witnessing the end of an age in which the United States has been the dominant power. In my new memoir, A Life in the American Century, I make a case for optimism.

I have lived through eight decades of an American era that included World War II, Hiroshima, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Cold War ended without the nuclear catastrophe that hung over our heads, but it was replaced by a period of hubris as the United States became the world’s sole superpower. That unipolar moment was soon replaced by fears of transnational terrorism and cyber wars. Analysts today speak about a new cold war with a rising China and fear of nuclear escalation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our mental maps of the world have changed dramatically over my lifetime.

For those eight decades, we have lived in what TIME publisher Henry Luce, in March 1941, baptized “the American Century.” In the nineteenth century, the global balance of power was centered in Europe, which sent its imperial tentacles around the world. The United States was a bit player with a military not much larger than that of Chile. As the twentieth century began, the United States became the world’s largest industrial power, and accounted for nearly a quarter of the world economy (as it still does today).