A whole range of books crowd the shelves proclaiming the coming of the “Post-American Era.” Most say that we’ll soon be overtaken by other countries, and some analysts go as far as to predict that America will fall behind a whole pack of up-and-coming nations. Is that threat realistic? Or, is it just more ranting from pessimists trying to make a buck off the “crisis of confidence”? To answer this question, we need to assess America’s fundamental strengths and weaknesses, as well as some of the more significant threats and opportunities.

There are many terms that have been used to describe what has made the United States unique among nations in the modern era and perhaps even unique in human history. The one that seems to overshadow all of them is the single word: resiliency. Resiliency is a quality rarely found in the history books that detail the rise and fall of previous empires.

Yet, it’s this rare quality of resiliency that has enabled the United States to take what might be “lethal blows” to other countries and then rise with surprising rapidity and vitality, blasting right through seemingly insurmountable barriers and surging into the next period of growth and affluence.

Obviously, the United States and the rest of the world will be faced with problems that we can’t fully anticipate. Therefore, forecasting America’s future depends largely on understanding the basis of its resiliency and determining the likely internal or external changes that could undermine that resiliency.

Part of the answer can be found in the nation’s “business strategy.” We don’t usually call it that, but it is useful to view national strategy in terms of business strategy.

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Every business strategist knows that a firm’s strategic options are dictated by its competitive position within an evolving industry. Originally, the basis of competition in the automobile industry was cost. Henry Ford dominated the industry by building super-efficient integrated factories that took iron ore, coal, and rubber in one end and shipped Model Ts out the other. There were over 100 automobile manufacturers competing against Ford at the time,...