The past few months have tarnished America’s image as the world’s leading economic power. After the demoralizing last few years of the Bush era, our nation seems to cruise from bad to worse news nowadays.

Just as Iraq begins to stabilize six years after the American invasion, the spring thaw brings fresh Taliban activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. My friends in England call the world economic meltdown “the American economic crisis.” Foreign and American academics warn of an end to “American exceptionalism.”

All countries are hurting, but not equally so. Growth in developing economies (like China, India and Brazil) has certainly slowed, but their relative performance seems strong when compared with Japan’s 50 percent decrease in exports last month. The most advanced economies and the world’s poorest nations are faring worst.

For the United States, the world slump hurts not only our bank accounts, but our international prestige and reputation as well. The global scope of our interests makes any diminution in our long-term power particularly dangerous. American power and influence are at a low not seen since the Great Depression, and international competitors clearly see that the time is ripe to chip away at an American-built world system. Russia’s challenge to the United States in Central Asia and China’s recent push for a global currency to replace the dollar are reminders that our moment of economic weakness has implications for important American interests.

A little over a century ago, Great Britain faced problems not unlike those confonting the United States today. Mired in South Africa fighting the fiercely independent Boers (predominantly Dutch colonists), the British military was stretched to its limits. Britain poured national blood and treasure into an increasingly unpopular war that stripped the varnish off the Victorian Era. During the war, international competition from Russia, Germany and France threatened the formal and informal empire that Britain’s greatness was built upon.

Britain’s moment of weakness, however, was passing: Economic and military reform followed checks to imperial power, and Britain’s go-it-alone “splendid isolationism” gave way to a more sober, reflective diplomacy.

The United States is in the middle of its own “Boer moment.” Economically and diplomatically, the country will recover with time. Reforms of our military, our still-potent economic system and the conduct of our diplomacy are so obviously needed that Republicans and Democrats should find much common ground between them.

Far more dangerous than a momentarily weakened economy, however, is a long-term crisis of morale. It’s impossible to disentangle our domestic woes from our preeminent international role. To lose the will to ensure our interests is the first and most important step on a long road to decline. History is replete with examples: Most Britons were resigned to the loss of their empire before it became economically or even politically untenable. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s cool optimism, not so much the panoply of government organizations he created, that gave Americans hope during the Depression.

Recession or not, we are still looked to with a sort of jealous admiration by much of the rest of the world. In traveling across the Balkans and Turkey, I was astonished by how many Croats, Serbians and Turks still looked to the United States for aid and leadership. Just months since the end of the Bush administration, the sense of faith in the new presidency is still palpable. FDR got it right – for Americans to have any less faith in our nation and its ability to rebound from the greatest calamities would be a grave mistake.

Adam Kemal is a junior in the College currently studying abroad at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, England. He can be reached at kemalthehoya.com. It’s a Long Way to Tipperary appears every other Friday.

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