Kaveh Sardari/sardari.com

From left, Fredrik Logevall, Stephen Hadley and Gretchen Ritter in Washington, D.C., April 1.

Is the United States in retreat as a global power? And does it really matter if we are?

Those questions were the launching point April 1 for a wide-ranging conversation in Washington, D.C., featuring three prominent Cornell foreign policy experts.

Their consensus answer to the first question was a qualified no; to the second, an unqualified yes.

Stephen J. Hadley ’69 was national security adviser to President George W. Bush. He currently leads an international consulting firm in partnership with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

“Are we past our sell-by date? No, we’re not,” Hadley said in regard to America’s global influence. “Are we still up to being a world leader? Yes, we are.”

Nonetheless, he criticized the Obama administration’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine; its “lose-lose relationship” with China; reductions in the defense budget; and the president’s theory of “leading from behind.”

On the plus side of the ledger, Hadley cited Secretary of State John Kerry’s “extremely active and engaged” diplomacy as well as the administration’s “very expansive” trade agenda. He also noted, “President Obama has been very aggressive in protecting the country against terrorism.”

Fredrik Logevall, Cornell’s vice provost for international affairs, director of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and the Stephen and Madeline Anbinder Professor of History, echoed Hadley’s reassurance that America remains an indispensable global power, but he was considerably more sympathetic to the current occupant of the White House.

“I find much to admire in [Obama’s] prudent approach, and in his belief that far-reaching change in the world happens only very slowly. He's in that sense a kind of Burkean conservative, which fascinates me,” noted Logevall, whose book, “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam,” won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for history.

Logevall suggested that the very notion of America in decline is a misguided meme that surfaces regularly in our domestic politics, citing the supposed “loss of China” in 1949, along with “the stalemate in Korea, the trauma of Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets and the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran.”

He also compared Obama to John F. Kennedy, the subject of a forth-coming book he is currently researching. “There is a certain coolness to both men that served them well. JFK [also] had a sense of the limits of American power,” Logevall said.

Hadley and Logevall’s conversation was moderated by Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of government.

Ritter said she wasn’t surprised to find broad agreement on the main questions under debate: “People of goodwill can generally find common ground regardless of political differences.”

More than 150 Cornell alumni, students and others attended the program, which was held under the auspices of the Cornell Club of Washington at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center complex, three blocks from the White House.

Other sponsors included the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell Alumni Affairs and Development, the International Trade Center and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Art Silverman is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C., area.