US is
no longer exceptional, but it takes time to accept this fact
By
Martin Jacques
September
09, 2021 -- "Information
Clearing House
- "Global
Times"In
historical retrospect, America's reaction to the 9/11 attacks on
New York's Twin Towers was breathtakingly disproportionate.
Tragic though it was, a death toll of 2,977 barely registers on
the Richter scale of military conflict and acts of terrorism. If
the same had happened to the magnificent Twin Towers in Kuala
Lumpur, it might have been on the front pages of Western
newspapers for a day or two, and then it would have been
forgotten. But 9/11 happened in America.
The US had never experienced an invasion. The many wars that it
has fought were overwhelmingly in faraway lands. This, however,
happened on American territory, in New York no less. Revenge was
inevitable. The American public demanded that those responsible
be punished. The fact that a bunch of terrorists were
responsible made any proportionate revenge unacceptable given
the public outcry. America was in no mood for proportion.
Certainly, proportion was not in the mind of the Bush
administration. America was the sole superpower.
Ever since the end of the Cold War, America had presided over a
unipolar world. It was the global policeman. It needed to show
the world who was boss, and that America could not be messed
with. Proportionality was no consideration. The neo-conservative
administration believed that the new century was destined to be
an American Century. With the implosion of the USSR, there was
not a rival in sight. This was also the Age of American Hubris:
anything was possible.
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There were no limits to what America could do. Rarely has a
government made such a catastrophic miscalculation. The Bush
administration made two fateful decisions: to invade Afghanistan
in order that it could no longer be a breeding ground for
terrorism; and to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein, and
turn the country into a Western-style democracy. The former at
least bore some relationship to 9/11, as Al Qaeda was based
there. Iraq had zero connection with 9/11. The US exploited the
opportunity offered by 9/11 to remake the Middle East.
The two wars proved hugely expensive in terms of loss of life
and financial cost. The Iraq war is estimated to have cost
between $2 trillion and $3 trillion and the number killed to
have been in excess of 400,000. The cost of the Afghan war is
estimated at $2.3 trillion. There are no reliable figures for
deaths in the Afghan war, but they were undoubtedly in excess of
100,000, probably far greater. The Brown University Costs of War
project estimates that America's War on Terror has cost over $8
trillion and resulted in 900,000 deaths. For what?
Both wars ended in disastrous and abject failure. After 20
years, the longest war in American history, the Afghan war saw
America humiliated in a spectacle reminiscent of its retreat
from Vietnam in 1975. Apart from killing Saddam Hussein, the US
achieved none of its objectives in Iraq.
America's ignominy resulted from a total misreading of the world
at the turn of the century. It believed the world was unipolar
when in fact it was becoming increasingly multi-polar. It
thought it had the world to itself when already it was evident
that China was in the process of emerging as a major global
player. The consequence was one of the most remarkable
demonstrations of over-reach since the World War II, or even the
last two centuries.
The US learnt the hard way that its power was not infinite, that
it could not do whatever it wanted, that there were severe
limits to what it could achieve. And it has paid a huge price in
terms of lives and dollars, and how it is regarded in the world.
9/11 and its immediate aftermath marked Peak America and by
engaging in reckless over-reach the US has over the last two
decades served to greatly hasten its own decline. That decline
is now more or less universally recognized, even in the US,
though in 2001 the very mention of the word would have been
dismissed as absurd.
9/11, and the 20 years since, are a textbook example of the
chronic failure of American governance. There was the failure to
understand the world, a basic prerequisite for any superpower.
Then, even when it became clear that the wars were failing,
successive presidents - Bush, Obama, and Trump - failed to
muster the courage to acknowledge that a huge mistake had been
made and pull out. Twenty years is an extraordinarily long time
for such a lesson to be learnt.
There is another factor at play here. For the best part of two
centuries, Americans have believed that being No.1 in the world
is part of the country's DNA. An admission of failure would, as
Biden has found, not have gone down well with its people.
America is a prisoner of a past that is in rapid retreat. No
longer exceptional it is becoming a normal country. But it will
take a very long time before it learns to accept that fact.
The author was until recently a
Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International
Studies at Cambridge University. He is a Visiting Professor at
the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua
University and a Senior Fellow at the China Institute, Fudan
University. He is the author of When China Rules the World.
Follow him on Twitter @martjacques opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
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