The US, and other nations on the decline, are also suffering due to diminished future prospects and lack of a clear policy direction that can help them address it. While I understand that the World Economic Forum projects its ratings based on economic criteria, the resulting descriptors, like competitiveness, nimbleness and adaptability, remind me a lot of Geert Hofstede's indices and cultural framework as factors that limn business relations. I wrote a few papers on the subject for school and found it to be pretty fascinating material. National character determines whether a people are risk adverse and the attitude they take in forming partnerships, but I wonder how these influences look in reverse. Does an injury to one's national security change the scales from cultural individualism towards collectivism--or vice-versa, and for entrenched ideas for power distance? Culture is more permanent, surely, than daily shocks and sputters and definitely not monolithic, but historically, I feel, one's dealings matched and were supported by their cultural totems.