There was a time when America was synonymous with modernity

There was a time when America was synonymous with modernity. Who regularly makes the trip between Boston and New York, via a train allegedly, such an association is no longer current. Along the way, remnants of industrial civilization evoke more landscape of decline of Britain from the end of the 20th century as the triumphant modernity, generally associated with the image of the United States. The arrival in Manhattan is always impressive beauty, but the vast majority of the skyscrapers are of relative modernity.

The challenge America faced today is similar to that of Europe when Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber wrote "The American challenge" in the 1960s. Asia has become today, in America, the equivalent of what were the United States for Europe, yesterday. The response of the Asian challenge America be more convincing than that given yesterday by Europe to the American challenge

What are the maps of America, where actually its comparative advantages This is certainly not the demographics will make the difference. With more than 2 billion Chinese and Indians, the 300 million Americans do not weight. Of course, the military superiority of the United States is always real, but what is the significance The Afghanistan in Pakistan through the Iran, which strikes all the observer informed, are the limits of the power to compel America. The "hard power" is what it was and America will be more only to dispose of it. China today, the India tomorrow, probably, will develop the military means power that America's sentence to assume and that European nations have already lost the means, nor without doubt the willingness, to finance.

Economic power remains crucial. But in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis that we are crossing, Anglo-Saxon capitalism and more generally the Western kind have the legitimacy and the ability to still appear as models Since September 2008, the Asian countries believe that they have more lessons to America and the West in General.

If there is one area where America still has a comparative advantage that it must strengthen, it is one of the ideas and ideals. No one dreams of becoming Chinese. There are still millions of people around the world, dreaming to become Americans. The universalist ideal of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, embodied by the founding fathers of the American Republic, the simple and strong idea, worn by men as various Jefferson and Madison yesterday and Obama today, that "men are born free and equal in law" remains the master of the United States map.

The "Asian challenge" for America is not only of "re - legitimize" America in the eyes of the world and "re - legitimate" policy in the eyes of citizens of the Western democracies. He is reinventing somehow "democracy in America", to find the right balance between ethics and pragmatism on the question of the human rights, as at Guantanamo Bay, between social justice and financial balances, including on the central issue of the reform of the health care system each time.

To face these enormous challenges, the United States have two exceptional weapons; their ability to attract and integrate masses of migrants still wishing to participate in the American dream, but also the cult of goshawks of the values of education and research excellence. Over the last 15 days, President Obama multiplied the speech to the youth at graduation ceremonies. Unthinkable speeches in the atmosphere attack and cynicism dominant French universities, but the speech received with enthusiasm by a youth wishing to contribute to the public and seeking only to believe in the strength of its ideals universalistic and pragmatic. The modernity of America is no longer and will be more "real." It must remain strong and creative in the field of ideas and ideals.