“WE can focus on what's necessary for each party to win the news cycle or the next election. We can do what we've been doing. Or we can do what this moment demands, and focus on what's necessary for America to win the future,” said President Barack Obama in a meeting with his supporters a few moments before he struck a deal with the Republicans in the US Congress on extending, among other things, the tax cuts passed during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The deal was popular with the Republicans but was received with anger by the president's Democratic supporters. They called it a capitulation. But Obama began to sell it as “our generation's Sputnik moment”. The reference to the Sputnik was to remind the Americans that they can be provoked into action once challenged. That happened in October 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite into space. The United States reacted by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nasa, that put an American on the moon in 1969, 12 years after the Sputnik launch.

This could become a 'Sputnik moment' if the Americans are able to set aside their deep differences and save the country from sliding into history, no longer the pre-eminent and most prominent power militarily and economically in a fast-changing world. Which way America will go matters not only for Americans but for the rest of the world as well. If history is any guide, each time the leading power has been brought down from the pedestal on which it has stood, a period of extreme chaos has ensued. If such a transition occurs it will have enormous consequences for Pakistan and the countries in its neighbourhood.

Pakistan's neighbourhood is full of countries in which the old and new rising powers will need to compete; for the former to retain power, for the latter to acquire it. The flurry of recent activities such as President Obama's visit to India and that of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Pakistan in December indicate that that competition has already begun and will intensify for as long as the global system remains in a state of flux. That may be for a very long time. Chaos inside its borders and around it are the last things Pakistan needs at such a delicate moment in its history.

Some historians argue that the moment of transition has already arrived. It began perhaps in 2003 when President Bush launched an ill-advised and unnecessary invasion of Iraq that was to cost more than 4,000 American lives, lead to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths plus an expenditure of trillions of dollars. The burden left by the war in Iraq has weighed America down.

According to historian Alfred McCoy, “despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.”

Going by this calculus, the United States is likely to quit the world stage as the sole superpower by the year 2025. It would have occupied that position for 34 years starting with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. When 2025 arrives it may not entirely leave the stage but make space for such rising powers as China and India.

As historians tell us wars not won usually lead to the demise of empires and the fall of the imperial power. It does not happen quickly; it takes many years of chaos and confusion before the new order establishes itself. The situation for America is more complicated than those faced by the powers that had dominated the world in earlier times. Washington has done poorly in the two wars it fought recently. It is in the process of getting out of Iraq but still does not know how not to get trapped in Afghanistan. But this indifferent performance in two conflicts is not the only reason why so many are now talking about America's decline. The New York Times

The United States faces a different kind of challenge. As Thomas Friedman wrote recently for , “We don't seem to realise: we're in a hole and still digging. Our educational attainment levels are stagnating; our infrastructure is fraying. We don't have enough smart incentives to foster both innovation and manufacturing; we're not importing enough talent in an age when we have to compete for jobs with low-wage but highly skilled Indians and Chinese — and we're still piling up debt. Responding to all this will require a whole new hybrid politics for where to cut, where to save, where to invest, where to tax and where to untax. Shaping that new politics is a revolutionary role I still hope President Obama will play.”

In other words, what is failing for America is not lack of success on the battlefield but the inability of its political system to make to the country move forward. This movement is needed in particular in an area in which America had excelled for many decades and which had contributed to the country's rise. It was quality education which made it possible for America to invent and innovate. It is the slippage in education that will lead to America's fall from the pedestal it has occupied since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

How poorly America is doing compared to several rising powers is revealed by a test developed by the Programme for Student Assessment and given to 15-year- old students by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD. With a score of 511 in science, 500 in reading and 487 in mathematics America ranks well below a number of Asian countries including Singapore, Korea and Taiwan.

The test was given separately to the students in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Macao in China. All three ranked higher than the US with Shanghai on top of the table in all three areas. China is preparing well to ascend the ladder as America loses its step.