Mark Steyn I: China may be Number One in 2016 and the president of 2012 the last to preside over the greatest nation on earth.

"Whoever's elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world's dominant economic power .. if the IMF is correct (a big if). China will be the planet's No. 1 economy by 2016.  The world's economic superpower not only will be a communist dictatorship with a largely peasant population and legal, political and cultural traditions as alien to its predecessors as possible, but it doesn't even use the Roman alphabet.

America has had two roles in a so-called "globalized" world: America's government was the guarantor of global order; America's economy was the engine of global prosperity. Right now, both roles are up for grabs".

Mark Steyn.  A sombre column. h/t Small Dead Animals.