The slow decline of the American empire

With its defeat in Afghanistan, the United States, the world's greatest superpower, has lost its influence and credibility. Biden is the third US president in a row to show that his country is no longer willing to play global policeman, while Xi Jinping and Putin look on smugly.

166
American Empire Friedman

by Alan Friedman | Is the United States condemned to irreversible decline? Are the divisions that run through it now irremediable, and is its empire doomed to dissolution after generations of decadence? Or can the American people somehow awaken, reverse course, halt the decline, climb back up the slope and recover some national unity, some common purpose? The debate is intense and open, the opinions are many.

A series of failures

use pixabay

The indelible images of crowds swarming into Kabul airport, the poor desperate people clinging to C130 transport planes and crashing to their deaths - an overall picture of defeat and bloodshed - are likely to be seen by future historians as a prime example of a whole series of US foreign policy failures, following the 1975 Vietnam debacle, the 1980 Iran hostage crisis and the isolationist drive to entrench itself within its own borders under the cry of America first, a trend accelerated by Trump.

The Century of China

Even before the Kabul debacle, many well-informed members of the business, political and media elites already knew that the 21st century would be China's century.

Like it or not, the fact that the Dragon is becoming the new global economic superpower is taken for granted by many. The only open question is the timing: will China overtake the US GDP in 2028, 2030 or a few years later? The process, in and of itself, is inexorable, or nearly so.

The decline of the American empire is now accelerated by the defeat in Afghanistan and the humiliation of seeing a Taliban terrorist government take office in Kabul while America commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the attack launched by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who received help and hospitality from the Taliban in Afghanistan. President Xi Jinping seems delighted to see Washington floundering, and has used the Kabul catastrophe as propaganda material.

Vladimir Putin, who manipulated Trump while preaching the death of liberal democracy, is in turn delighted by the US embarrassment. Surely he will take further encouragement from it to perpetrate his plots on the geopolitical chessboard.

The implications for the West

For the Europeans, the real problem inherent in the Afghan collapse is not a lack of coordination, it is not not having been consulted, and it is not even the big question of how competent the Americans really are.

The point is that Biden is now the third US president in a row, after Obama and Trump, to blatantly demonstrate that his country no longer wants to be a global policeman, and indeed no longer wants to worry about chronic conflicts in remote corners of the world, let alone export democracy. Biden is the third president to ignore, if not betray, the values and traditions that have long underpinned US foreign policy.

A very large proportion of the American people have no interest in Afghanistan, the Middle East or even Europe, and of course the Trump era has thrown fuel on the fire of ignorance and xenophobia. In a cynical calculation, Biden thought he could afford a chaotic withdrawal, because within a couple of weeks Afghanistan would have disappeared from the headlines, people would have forgotten. Unfortunately for him, a jihadist terrorist blew up thirteen US soldiers at the Kabul airport.

A brutal 'realpolitik

The national mood is sombre and despondent, the nation is divided. Biden needs to shake things up, and now, if he does not want to risk losing control of the Senate, and perhaps even the House in the November 2022 mid-term elections.

Because if that were to happen, a Trumpian majority would block any attempt to reassert the authority of American foreign policy.

But even if the president were to retain control of the legislature until 2024, what might be called the 'Biden doctrine' is already in place, in stark disagreement with the idealistic rhetoric of defending democracy and human rights. It is a brutal realpolitik of abandoning allies and paying formal homage to American values without actually defending them.

At the international level, Mario Draghi is rightly trying to achieve some form of international unity of purpose on Afghanistan, leveraging his chairmanship of the G-20. G-20. But this will not be easy.

In the United States, meanwhile, Biden is mired in a new wave of Covid infections, with a Trumpian Republican Party that had previously strongly supported the tycoon's signature on the 2022 agreement with the Taliban in Doha, while now it has no qualms about criticising Biden for mishandling the withdrawal.

The geopolitical consequences of the American defeat in Afghanistan are a net loss of influence and credibility for the world's greatest superpower. Future historians may see the Kabul fiasco as a milestone in the abdication of empire.


You might also be interested in:

The Biden era begins and Europe and the G7 welcome back America

Previous articleRutronik is EMEA Distributor of the Year for component manufacturer JAE
Next articleFarnell's battery podcast hosts Hioki brand

LEAVE A COMMENT

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here