WEB EXCLUSIVE: Intelligence Squared debate report – ‘The era of American dominance is over’

There were few facts and plenty of fictions last night as Intelligence Squared debated whether the era of American dominance is over. Oliver Kamm, journalist and author, proposed the motion. He strode about the stage Cameron-style, with the sound bites to match. “America was on the wane because Americans had lost the appetite to lead.” US dominance rested on guaranteeing “public goods: international trade, currency reserves and collective security.” His vision of American decline owed nothing to the “tendentious deterministic theories of the milieu of anti-American Oxbridge educated Europhiles, such as Michael Moore and Harold Pinter”, (neither of who went to Oxbridge). Rather, Kamm’s vision was “rooted in indisputable facts”. The recession’s price is that America can no longer guarantee public goods. Low yielding dollar assets will encourage Asian savers to invest elsewhere, robbing America of its financial lifeblood. Kamm highlighted Kuwait’s withdrawal from the dollar currency peg as indicative of the upheavals America cannot sustain.