It would seem entirely reasonable to conclude that the world has taken several turns for the worse since President George H.W. Bush delivered his famous “new world order” address. The United Nations estimates that more than 250,000 people have perished in Syria’s civil war, and another million or so have been injured. With vast swathes of the Middle East collapsing, the Islamic State continues to wreak havoc, increasingly inspiring and coordinating attacks outside the region.

WASHINGTON — With China accelerating its military modernization, Russia continuing its slow-drip incursion into Ukraine, and an expanding section of the Middle East devolving into chaos, it has once again become fashionable to argue that the United States is in decline. Strangely, Americans are often far quicker to accept this diagnosis than their counterparts abroad.

Any commentary with a title such as this one should begin with a disclaimer: distilling a country of 1.34 billion people down to a construct called "China" is presumptuous, verging on preposterous. Who best represents "the views of China?" Its government? Its dissidents? The individuals who may be critical of government policies, but choose to go about their daily business rather than investing the time and energy to express their criticisms?

Both in the United States and abroad, many influential observers argue that the U.S. is in systemic decline. Not so, says Lee Kuan Yew, the sage of Singapore. Lee is not only a student of the rise and fall of nations.  He is also the founder of modern Singapore. As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, he led its rise from a poor, small, corrupt port to a first-world city-state in just one generation.