Carter: American Decline ‘Inevitable,’ but Not Obama’s Fault

On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, former President Jimmy Carter elaborated on the remarks he had made late last month regarding the decline of the United States.

According to Carter, the U.S. decline was inevitable, and he said it is a decline that was of the cultural and economic nature. However, he did not blame President Barack Obama.

“We’re in an inevitable relative decline in world-wide influence,” Carter said. “Not because of any fault of ours, but it’s, as I said, inevitable. I think that the combination of China and India and Brazil and South Africa and others as they increase in economic and cultural influence will replace a lot of the power and preeminence that the United States has enjoyed in the past. So we’re having, whether we like it or not, to accommodate that necessity of realizing other people are going to be as powerful and influencing as we are in some aspects of life.”

“Not militarily, we’ll stay preeminent there for a long time,” he added. “But I think economically, China will soon, you know, succeed the United States as the number one economic power in the world. I think influence in politics is also shifting inside the United Nations and in the ability of the United States to use its influence to change situations that we don’t like around the world. That’s commonly what it is. It’s not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States. It’s just happening as an historical, evolutionary, unavoidable circumstance.”

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