Regardless of the real political intentions, both North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's announcement that his country would further develop its nuclear arsenal and the Iranian parliament's decision to ask the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) auditors to leave if the sanctions, they came to emphasize, at least symbolically, that the US threats no longer have the same weight or deterrent power.
This marks the real limit – or the ultimate failure if you prefer – of Donald Trump's foreign policy, but in a way the broadest limits of American power today.
How America is constantly failing to convince itself that it can lead
The phenomenon is more comprehensive and signals a more “structural” weakness of the US to be able to lead the international system.
This goes through the way in which, especially in the Trump era, the United States withdrew from the fields in which it could secure this international leadership.
Withdrawing from discussions on multilateral trade and investment agreements also meant dismissing the US ability to put its own stamp on what we used to call “globalization.”
Instead, the United States has embarked on a “America First” tactic of trade wars, mainly with China, which have turned into technological wars, creating a more negative dynamic in international trade, while their geopolitical calculations transfer significant costs to partners, as evidenced by the implications for Europe of sanctions against Russia.
The exit from the climate and climate change agreements signaled the US refusal to play a leading role in collectively addressing the risk that within a few decades large parts of the world would have become lifeless.
A man walks dogs across a nearly empty 5th Avenue and closed luxury retail stores, during the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Manhattan, New York city, New York, US, May 11, 2020. REUTERS / Mike Segar TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
The price of the pandemic
The pandemic was also a blow to US leadership. At a time when China, which was first hit by the coronavirus, can now project the magnitude of its success, which has allowed it to return to economic recovery, the failure in the US has reached tragic proportions with more than 380,000 casualties. while the country has a huge annual medical expenditure and is home to some of the leading life sciences research centers.
Suffice it to say that the United States was able to implement the “American century” after the AD and especially after World War II not only because they could have larger and better equipped armed forces, but also because they were able to deploy a huge productive capacity. expressed in the mass production of weapons systems that changed the correlation on the battlefield.
Now the United States has by no means been at the forefront of the fight against the pandemic, failing to show practical solidarity with other countries and failing to set an example of a winning strategy against COVID-19, given that they have a of the relatively higher pandemic mortality rates.
The attack on the Capitol: an image of great weakness
At the same time, let us not underestimate the negative impact on US “leadership claims” that took place at the Capitol last week. The image of a large country, which does not yet have an agreed way of counting votes, which retains the anachronistic institution of the electorate and where the president himself insisted until the end to challenge the election result by mobilizing something that can only be described as a mob, is not is the image of a country with strong democratic institutions.
In fact, despite the effort in the United States itself to present the whole development as an ultimate victory of democracy, if this had happened in any other country we would be talking about a deep institutional crisis, or rather a structural inadequacy of democratic institutions.
Because the question is not whether in the end the American version of parliamentary democracy was able to stand on its own two feet, but the very fact that it was able to reach such a deep crisis.
All of this casts a heavy shadow over the overall US effort to maintain world leadership.
What is the picture of a political system where the previous government tried to undermine the next one in advance and where the outgoing president (and until the last minute with the formal right to declare nuclear war) is considered so irresponsible and dangerous that they do not even allow him to use it? twitter?
How credible is a political system that today denies Trump in every way possible, but for four years had given him the right to make extremely critical decisions?
What optimism does he have for the future that such far-right logic and practice could have such an impact?
The changing planet
The crisis of American leadership, of course, preceded the diversions in the Capitol. After all, the very transition to an increasingly multicentric world, despite the escalation of sanctions and other forms of American pressure, is what it is all about.
Simply put, the way in which the last acts of a deep-rooted political drama unfolded crystallized the image of an America that can only export its own contradictions.
At the same time, regardless of US intentions and any projections of power that the US can make at this time, including various forms of blackmail to ally with its allies, it is clear that the US monarchy will probably be a historic break and certainly not the perpetual treaty.
On the one hand, Russia, as shown by recent announcements by President Putin himself, has made that kind of investment in its weapons systems, namely strategic ones, which means that there are at least two nuclear superpowers in the international landscape and this cannot to be easily overtaken by the US.
On the other hand, China, despite the delays in the “one road – one zone” strategy, is investing heavily in its technological self-sufficiency, in the depths of its own market and economy and in claiming an increased economic presence, starting with its closest region.
At the same time, even if Europe continues to be dominated by a largely “Euro-Atlantic” foreign policy perspective, more and more countries around the world are choosing a much more flexible defense or economic policy. relations, showing the limits of American pressure.
That seems to be the real historical dynamic, and that in a way is the core of the American leadership crisis.
in.gr
