Some years ago, the internationally respected, American academic, Professor Joseph Weiler, argued that there are three types of governance legitimacy: process or input (democratic) legitimacy, performance or output legitimacy, and vision legitimacy. Now a prominent Harvard academic has employed a related analytical framework to compare the contemporary operational performance of the US and China, especially with respect to foreign policy.

Professor Stephen M. Walt, a leading commentator on international, relations, has just published a stimulating article in the eminent US journal, Foreign Policy, entitled: What the United States Can Learn From China.

Professor Walt maintains an unsurprising spotlight on what the US needs to do to retain its hard-wrought global primacy but he stresses how Americans need to move beyond constantly blaming China and: ask themselves what China is doing right and what America is doing wrong. There is an emphasis, throughout the article, on understanding the remarkable outcomes which Chinas political-economic performance have delivered over the last 40-plus years.

In particular. Professor Walt argues, that: US leaders would do well to contemplate how well Chinas broad approach to foreign policy has worked, adding that:

First, and most obviously, China has avoided the costly quagmires that have repeatedly ensnared the United States. Even as its power has grown, Beijing has been leery of taking on potentially costly commitments abroad. The United States, by contrast, seems to have an unerring instinct for foreign-policy quicksand.

Walt selectively mentions the US propensity to topple dictators and spend trillions of dollars trying to export democracy, while avoiding mention of Americas also entrenched propensity to topple democracies - for example in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. And subsequently embrace autocrats or dictators in those places.

Foreign Policy ran another what-ails-America interview-article at about the same time entitled: Capitalism is Broken Heres How to Fix It. The deep worry here, for America, is argued to be the zombification of capitalism. The narrative, which is fundamentally US-centric, suggests a plutocracy that is staggering badly due to its abandonment of market rigour.

The Walt article is a more elevated and clear-headed in its analysis and ultimate focus and, thus, more thought-provoking. Reading the two articles together is a useful comparative exercise, however.