November 19, 202:
Information Clearing House
-- "MME"
The
horrifying images of desperate Afghans
trying to get out of Kabul after the Western-backed
government collapsed in August seemed to signify a
major juncture in world history, as America turned
away from the world. Yet in truth, the end of the
American era had come much earlier. The long-term
sources of American weakness and decline are more
domestic than international. The country will remain
a great power for many years, but just how
influential it will be depends on its ability to fix
its internal problems, rather than its foreign
policy.
The peak period of
American hegemony lasted less than 20 years, from
the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the financial
crisis of 2007-09. The country was dominant in many
domains of power—military, economic, political and
cultural. The height of American hubris was the
invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it hoped to remake
not just Iraq and Afghanistan (invaded two years
before), but the whole Middle East. America
overestimated the effectiveness of military power to
bring about deep political change, even as it
underestimated the impact of its free-market
economic model on global finance. The decade ended
with its troops bogged down in two counterinsurgency
wars, and a financial crisis that accentuated the
inequalities American-led globalisation had brought
about.
Termites in the floorboards
The degree of
unipolarity in this period has been rare in history,
and the world has been reverting to a more normal
state of multipolarity ever since, with China,
Russia, India, Europe and other centres gaining
power relative to America. Afghanistan’s ultimate
effect on geopolitics is likely to be small: America
survived an earlier, humiliating defeat when it
withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, but regained its
dominance within little more than a decade. The much
bigger challenge to America’s global standing is
domestic.
American society is
deeply polarised, and has found it difficult to find
consensus on virtually anything. This polarisation
started over conventional policy issues like taxes
and abortion, but has since metastasised into a
bitter fight over cultural identity. Normally a big
external threat such as a global pandemic should be
the occasion for citizens to rally around a common
response. But the covid-19 crisis served rather to
deepen America’s divisions, with social distancing,
mask-wearing and vaccinations being seen not as
public-health measures but as political
markers.These conflicts have spread to all aspects
of life, from sport to the brands of consumer
products that red and blue Americans buy.
America’s
influence abroad depends on its ability to fix its
internal problems
Polarisation has
affected foreign policy directly. During Barack
Obama’s presidency, Republicans took a hawkish
stance and scolded Democrats for the Russian “reset”
and alleged naivety regarding Vladimir Putin. Donald
Trump turned the tables by embracing Mr Putin, and
today roughly half of Republicans believe that the
Democrats constitute a bigger threat to the American
way of life than Russia does.
There is more apparent
consensus regarding China: both Republicans and
Democrats agree it is a threat to democratic values.
But this only carries America so far. A far greater
test for American foreign policy than Afghanistan
will be Taiwan, if it comes under direct Chinese
attack. Will the United States be willing to
sacrifice its sons and daughters on behalf of that
island’s independence? Or indeed, would it risk
military conflict with Russia should the latter
invade Ukraine? These are serious questions with no
easy answers, but a reasoned debate about American
national interest will probably be conducted
primarily through the lens of how it affects the
partisan struggle.
The biggest policy
debacle of President Joe Biden’s administration in
its first year has been its failure to plan
adequately for the rapid collapse of Afghanistan. Mr
Biden has suggested that withdrawal was necessary in
order to focus on meeting the bigger challenges from
Russia and China. I hope he is serious about this.
Mr Obama was never successful in making a “pivot” to
Asia because America remained focused on
counterinsurgency in the Middle East. In 2022, the
administration needs to redeploy both resources and
the attention of policymakers to deter geopolitical
rivals and engage with allies.
The United States is
not likely to regain its earlier hegemonic status,
nor should it aspire to. What it can hope for is to
sustain, with like-minded countries, a world order
friendly to democratic values. Whether it can do
this will depend on recovering a sense of national
identity and purpose at home.
Francis Fukuyama:
senior fellow at Stanford University
■
This article
appeared in the United States section of the print
edition of The World Ahead 2022 under the headline
“The end of American hegemony”
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