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How can the land of victories and optimism come to terms with a life after the imperial moment?

Learning to decline - is it doable? Can a world power that no longer presumes to dominate the world find a new role without depression or biting fear. Is there life after the imperial moment? That is the question that the United States faces, and that will define the term of the next American President.

The global image of the United States has not recovered since the days of the "dominance rush," when the Bush government made its land hated in the world due to the Iraq War and the excesses of Abu Ghraib. However, the superior power position has long begun to crumble.

The economic and political dynamic has shifted to Asia at the outset of the 21st century. A resurgent Russia can militarily force Georgia, a US client, to its knees without penalty. The fall of Saddam Hussein did not bring the democratic transformation of the Islamic world, but instead the end of the American era in the Middle East - control has slipped away from Washington.

The American people are reacting with an uncertainty that runs deeper than the political dissatisfaction with an extremely unpopular President. Even before the credit crisis, the motherland of capitalism was being eaten by doubts about capitalism, by the fear of cheap imports from Asia and by the consequences of free trade with Mexico. The collapse of Wall Street is such a significant event because it has hit a people for whom the trusted values of performance, justice and the reward of hard work have come into question.

The oil dependency of the USA is now seen as a national security risk of the first degree. It places the West at the mercy of Petro Regimes. The failure of Bush's war has shaken the trust citizens had not only in American power, but also in the American mission. The entire history of the United States to date was the story of its rise to the pinnacle of a world dominated by the West; but exactly this world, however, is no longer self-evident.

The competitors for the top global position have, in fact, glaring weaknesses: China can fall into a political crisis through social and ecological upheavals; Europe lacks the strategic ability to act and the appetite for greatness. The USA will remain the strongest and most important state for the foreseeable future.

But that changes nothing about the fact that wealth, influence and strength are shifting to the South and East. Ironically this is due to the incredible success of the original American model of the middle class dream of prosperity and personal freedom. Hundreds of millions have made it. They are competing economically with the United States.They are putting the USA under pressure politically and reducing its sphere of influence: It is the Americanization of the world that tears more at the superiority of the United States than any ideological or power politics opposition.

The eternal good mood is becoming a handicap

Learning to decline - that must be especially difficult for the USA. This is a nation of winners. Americans have experienced the history of modern times and capitalism to this point as the story of their own success. It is this mentality that made the United States great. It is also this mentality that will now be a problem because it opposes the self-doubt, humility and the peaceful process of growing historically old.

It may be that the USA will desperately cling to the idea of its exceptionalism and the remains of its fleeting excess of power. Despite his impressive personal stature, the candidate John McCain now seems to be the impression of a backwards looking defiance.

Barack Obama by comparison could become the first American President of a "post-American era." The land of immigration USA, the only universal nation, can win a different relationship to the world than that of dominance: It can mirror and represent it, play out and mediate its differences. Perhaps America will take the first step in that direction on November 4.

Jan Ross is foreign editor at Die Zeit.

This article first appeared in German in Die Zeit and has been translated and shortened for Atlantic-community.org with permission from the author.

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• Valentine Anatolevich Akishkin: The Shadow of Serious Transformation in US Foreign Policy
• Ethan Christian Arrow: Fareed Zakaria: The Post American World