Despite recent challenges to U.S. pre-eminence, from the Iraq War to the financial crisis, the international order remains an American one.
Asked whether Toys RR" Us could ever hope to recapture its pre-eminence, from Wal-Mart, Ms. Moran's answer was a surprising no.
Last week, presenting the book's findings at a London Travelwatch event, she summarised the city's cycling pre-eminence as resulting from "a kind of coincidence".
Post-war, the bank sought to regain pre-eminence by converting from a partnership into a private company in 1957 and, two years later, to a quoted public company.
The most ringing endorsement of the London dealers' pre-eminence comes from the connoisseurs of Chinese art wishing to part with their treasure after a lifetime of collecting.
This pre-eminence resulted from its absorption of the ethnic-minority homelands that now make up 60 percent of its landmass and are the origin of all the international rivers flowing out of Chinese-held territory.
Every one of the gallery of grotesques that have tried to challenge Obama for the presidency interprets America's slide from pre-eminence as the result of Democrat policies, while Obama himself dismisses all talk of decline.
And by extension, how far might we expect the country's continued economic uncertainties today to accelerate some form of withdrawal from its pre-eminence during the cold war?
In a fractured world, President Obama struggled to define a grand strategy for America's role, apart from preserving its pre-eminence while relying increasingly on a changing cast of partners.
By 1741, Handel's pre-eminence in British music was evident from the honours he had accumulated, including a pension from the court of King George II, the office of Composer of Musick for the Chapel Royal, and most unusually for a living person a statue erected in his honour in Vauxhall Gardens.
Back then, the pre-eminence of the British capital was far from assured.
