Do Autocracies Really Have an Advantage over Democracies?

‘The sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations,” according to a prominent geopolitical scholar, “is nowadays far larger than the country’s power to defend them all simultaneously.”

Labeling the U.S. a “declining number-one power” and citing the “global productive balances tilting toward the Pacific basin and the spiraling costs of weapons and armed forces,” the scholar wondered whether the American democratic “decision-making structure permits a proper grand strategy to be carried out.”