Is America a Global Winner or a Global Loser?

US elections are too important for the whole planet to ignore or to dismiss them as a routine political event in another country. State leaders, diplomats, scholars and opinion-makers in all corners of the world follow the US election campaign not out of idle curiosity—the future of the rest of us depends to some extent on the political dynamics within the US. The US impact on the world economy, on global and regional stability, on many armed conflicts, on technological breakthroughs, on the performance of key international organizations can hardly be overestimated.

This is why it is not only entirely legitimate, but also fully appropriate to ponder on the fortunes of the US leadership and on the limits of the American power. What do we see today: a revival of the US former hegemonic positions within the international system, a successful restoration of the turn of the century unipolar world, or rather a predestined US decline, an irreversible, albeit reluctant and inconsistent, US retreat from its former hegemony exacerbated by the deepening in-house political and social crises?

While the US officials use all the appropriate “politically correct” rhetoric of multipolarity and multilateralism, the Biden team is undoubtedly determined to restore the old unipolar world exactly as it existed in the 1990s under the Clinton Administration. To use a well-known quote from the days of the Bourbon restoration to the French throne after the Napoleonic wars, one can state that Washington strategists “have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing.” Donald Trump, despite apparent differences with Joseph Biden on specific foreign policy issues, shares with the latter the overall picture of the world, where the United States should remain the ultimate decision-maker like it seemed to be some thirty years ago. This strange meeting of minds demonstrated at the Biden-Trump debates in late June should really be not very surprising when you consider what age group Biden and Donald Trump belong to.

It would not be a gross overstatement to argue that tor the US, the Ukrainian crisis has become a kind of political anesthetic that allowed Washington to brush aside many of its long-term problems and to score points with US allies, partners and to some extent—even with its adversaries and opponents. Still, if a patient has, say, a severe form of peritonitis, no medicine can replace surgical intervention.

The Ukrainian crisis has already clearly demonstrated the fundamental impossibility of reviving the unipolar world—at least in its old format of 1990s. The White House has not been able to regain the trust of even its traditional partners and allies in the non-Western world. Countries like India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Egypt and other regional leaders approached the crisis as an opportunity to enhance their autonomy within the international system. This trend in no way means that all these countries are going to support Russia against the United States, but they are definitely not ready to take direct orders from Washington either.

In other words, the crisis has demonstrated the natural boundaries of the Western world and the geographical limits of the US political outreach. It is not a problem of communicating the US narrative to nations in the Global South, as many US analysts believe it to be. The reality is that the United States does not seem to be in any way interested in inviting the Global South to discuss the Ukraine crisis or other crises of today together in any depth in order to find appropriate balanced and long-lasting solutions. Instead, the Biden Administration implicitly or explicitly suggests that the Global South should simply subscribe to all the positions already carved in stone in Washington.

As it was the case in 1990s, the US approach to the Global South is not very different from its approach to US Western allies and partners: both groups of nations appear to be not full-fledged sovereign decision-makers, but rather as disciplined decision-takers with somewhat limited sovereignty. This is not a very appealing vision of the future world order for aspiring nations in the Global South trying to position themselves not as speechless objects, but as vocal subjects of global politics. To cut it short, what works for the time being in Europe or in the North-East Asia, does not work the same way in South Asia, in the Middle East, in most of Africa and Latin America.

Of course, the main potential threats to international leadership lie within the US itself. The overwhelming majoring of the US public are fully aware of this reality. Americans observe the continuous decline of the national transport and logistics infrastructure, poor quality of the vocational training system, excessive costs for legal business services, serious problems with work ethics, numerous political uncertainties and many other internal factors that erode the US leadership abroad. Real wages in the US economy have been stagnating for decades, social inequality is growing rapidly in the country, labor productivity growth is slowing down and even — alas! — life expectancy is also shrinking.

Of course, the main potential threats to international leadership lie within the US itself. The overwhelming majoring of the US public are fully aware of this reality. Americans observe the continuous decline of the national transport and logistics infrastructure, poor quality of the vocational training system, excessive costs for legal business services, serious problems with work ethics, numerous political uncertainties and many other internal factors that erode the US leadership abroad. Real wages in the US economy have been stagnating for decades, social inequality is growing rapidly in the country, labor productivity growth is slowing down and even — alas! — life expectancy is also shrinking.

A return to the former US hegemony in international relations is not in sight. Not necessarily because America is inevitably becoming weaker and helpless in all areas, but because other players are gradually gaining strength, experience and confidence in their ability to influence the future of our common planet. The maturation of emerging actors might go slowly and precariously, but this process is still continuous and irreversible. That means that America will more-so have to adapt to the emerging world than to adapt the world to itself.

Americans will hold their next national elections on November 5—in less than four months from now. These are not the only elections that take place in the world this year. In 2024 millions and millions of voters have already come to the polling stations in many countries—in Senegal and in South Africa, in Mexico and in Venezuela, in India and in Iran, in France and in the United Kingdom, in Russia and in Indonesia. We have observed elections to the European Parliament and elections for five non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council. Yet, the US election stands out as the main political intrigue of the year. Today, when the election campaign in America is still taking off, the global media are full with stories speculating about its likely outcome and on potential impact of the elections results on the US domestic political landscape and on Washington’s foreign policy.

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Why do all of us attach so much importance to elections in the United States? After all, foreigners do not case their votes in the US and have no real abilities to influence the election results—no matter what some exalted journalists or even politicians can claim about the Russian or Chinese interference into the US election process. Let US citizens decide for themselves what they would like their country to be; after all, US elections seldom focus on foreign policy matters and usually the real fight is on predominantly domestic matters like migrations, public health, climate change, affirmative action, street crime and inflation.

Nevertheless, US elections are too important for the whole planet to ignore or to dismiss them as a routine political event in another country. State leaders, diplomats, scholars and opinion-makers in all corners of the world follow the US election campaign not out of idle curiosity—the future of the rest of us depends to some extent on the political dynamics within the US. The US impact on the world economy, on global and regional stability, on many armed conflicts, on technological breakthroughs, on the performance of key international organizations can hardly be overestimated.

This is why it is not only entirely legitimate, but also fully appropriate to ponder on the fortunes of the US leadership and on the limits of the American power. What do we see today: a revival of the US former hegemonic positions within the international system, a successful restoration of the turn of the century unipolar world, or rather a predestined US decline, an irreversible, albeit reluctant and inconsistent, US retreat from its former hegemony exacerbated by the deepening in-house political and social crises? This is not an easy question to answer, but the author, coming from Russia’s academic community, has taken the liberty to present his views on the future of the US leadership.

Restoring the Western cohesion

Most of the ongoing discussions about the resurrection of Pax Americana are in one way or another related to the unfolding conflict between Russia and Ukraine. There are various views on whether and how exactly the United States contributed to the outbreak of the military confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv. Nonetheless, it is hard to deny that Washington turned out to be one of the main net beneficiaries of this conflict and made full use of the situation to consolidate its leadership positions in the Western world.

The current crisis has undoubtedly came in handy for President Joe Biden’s Administration. Russia’s special military operation immediately overshadowed the not-so-successful conclusion of the US’ own 20-year military presence in Afghanistan. It also incentivized the community of Western nations to unite once again under the US leadership, disciplining previously not-always compliant European and Asian allies. In this sense, the United States has become significantly stronger than it was some four or five years ago, when French President Emmanuel Macron allowed himself to describe NATO as a brain-dead alliance.

After the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, NATO quite unexpectedly acquired two new members that has kept their neutral status for many decades. Incorporation of Finland and Sweden into the North Atlantic Alliance is very different from the most recent other enlargements of NATO to Montenegro and North Macedonia—both Helsinki and Stockholm have very significant military capacities of their own. The two Nordic nations can also boast of fat defense budgets that they are willing to contribute to NATO’s activities in the European North.

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Furthermore, the US defense contractors have received a golden shower that they had not seen in many decades. US European allies are currently dumping their old military hardware in Ukraine and are standing in line for the newest US made systems. This is also the case with the US allies and partners in the Pacific: Japan, South Korea, Australia, and many other nations are implementing ambitions rearmament programs constituting new lofty markets for the US military-industrial complex.

Yet another graphic manifestation of the rising American power is the new role that the United States has acquired in the global energy markets. The conflict in Europe opened truly unprecedented export opportunities for US energy companies, which are increasing the supply of their expensive liquefied shale gas to Europe as an alternative to the cheap Russian pipeline variety. It would be an over exaggeration to argue that the United States has become the ultimate deal-maker in the global energy markets, but it cannot be denied that the overall US positions in the critical sector of the global economy are getting stronger.

Among other things, the ongoing conflict has demonstrated with the utmost clarity that the intellectual and psychological inertia of the old unipolar instincts and habits is alive and well in many corners of the world. The burden of independent thinking and political self-reliance turned out to be too heavy for many state leaders and heads of international organizations. The spectacular unanimity displayed by the countries of the European Union in their willingness to abandon any form of “strategic autonomy” from the United States makes one wonder how serious the desire for this very autonomy was in the first place. A similar shift took place in the North East Asia, where both Tokyo and Seoul have promptly declared their full allegiance to the US strategy.

It is not that hard to trace the ongoing recurrence of some elements of the old unipolar system in many locations other than the West. For instance, the threat of secondary sanctions by the US in many instances proved a decisive factor in determining the opportunities and constraints for non-Western countries’ private sectors to maintain economic, technological, financial and other forms of cooperation with Moscow. Even though in the Global South they mostly abstained from subscribing to US and/or EU financial sanctions against Russia, many non-Western countries had to stop serving Russian credit cards.

The pressure of the US financial system affects large countries like China: in order to provide for unrestricted interbank transactions between Moscow and Beijing, the two sides have to move away from the US controlled SWIFT system and to switch to the Chinese CIPS system and the Russian SPFS system. Such a switch is not easy to manage and in the meantime, the United States will not miss a change to continue exploiting its central position within the international system.

The Biden Administration National Security Strategy approved in fall of 2022, explicitly bets on America getting stronger and exercising more power within the international system. The document unambiguously rejects the assumption that time has come for the US to start working on a foreign policy retrenchment, adjustment or a withdrawal. On the contrary, the Strategy speaks of the indispensability of the American leadership, the unchanging task of “containing” China and Russia, the promotion of liberal values around the world, etc.

While the US officials use all the appropriate “politically correct” rhetoric of multipolarity and multilateralism, the Biden team is undoubtedly determined to restore the old unipolar world exactly as it existed in the 1990s under the Clinton Administration. To use a well-known quote from the days of the Bourbon restoration to the French throne after the Napoleonic wars, one can state that Washington strategists “have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing.” Donald Trump, despite apparent differences with Joseph Biden on specific foreign policy issues, shares with the latter the overall picture of the world, where the United States should remain the ultimate decision-maker like it seemed to be some thirty years ago. This strange meeting of minds demonstrated at the Biden-Trump debates in late June should really be not very surprising when you consider what age group Biden and Donald Trump belong to.

Limits of the US resurgence

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“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. They attribute this quote to Albert Einstein though there is no documented record of the famous physicist having said anything like that. Still, the quote accurately reflects the main problem of the US foreign policy strategy. The apparent weakness of the Biden Administration is in its undisguised desire to reverse history back to the golden age of American hegemony of 1990s. If the United States failed to achieve this goal when the overall international environment was exceptionally favorable for Washington, how the US can hope for a better result in a world, which is much less conducive to accept willingly the American hegemony? Especially when this hegemony is getting less and less benign and more and more self-serving?

A dramatic political and military conflict in the center of Europe can and will leave a deep imprint on the overall picture of the international system. It can and will distort foreign policy priorities of many nation-states, change their predominant perceptions of security, and force them to put some important interests on a backburner. However, no regional conflict can undo objective long-term trends in the development of the world, including the shifting balance of powers on the planet. Eventually, these objective trends will outweigh the immediate repercussions of the regional conflict in Europe and many of the current unattainable US political gains will naturally deflate.

It would not be a gross overstatement to argue that tor the US, the Ukrainian crisis has become a kind of political anesthetic that allowed Washington to brush aside many of its long-term problems and to score points with US allies, partners and to some extent—even with its adversaries and opponents. Still, if a patient has, say, a severe form of peritonitis, no medicine can replace surgical intervention.

Abuse of analgesics or tranquilizers tends to do no good. The current crisis in Europe, for all the tactical dividends the Biden Administration is drawing from it, is inevitably distorting the system of US foreign policy priorities. It forces Washington to focus mainly on immediate European problems, postponing for an indefinite future the more important strategic task of managing relations with Beijing in the era of China’s growing military and economic power. During the three and a half years of the current Administration, the White House has not even been able to begin solving this problem, which many in the US political establishment, especially in the Republican part of it, perceive as an obvious and unforgivable shortcoming of the Democratic Administration.

Moreover, the Ukrainian crisis has already clearly demonstrated the fundamental impossibility of reviving the unipolar world—at least in its old format of 1990s. The White House has not been able to regain the trust of even its traditional partners and allies in the non-Western world. Countries like India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Egypt and other regional leaders approached the crisis as an opportunity to enhance their autonomy within the international system. This trend in no way means that all these countries are going to support Russia against the United States, but they are definitely not ready to take direct orders from Washington either.

In other words, the crisis has demonstrated the natural boundaries of the Western world and the geographical limits of the US political outreach. It is not a problem of communicating the US narrative to nations in the Global South, as many US analysts believe it to be. The reality is that the United States does not seem to be in any way interested in inviting the Global South to discuss the Ukraine crisis or other crises of today together in any depth in order to find appropriate balanced and long-lasting solutions. Instead, the Biden Administration implicitly or explicitly suggests that the Global South should simply subscribe to all the positions already carved in stone in Washington.

As it was the case in 1990s, the US approach to the Global South is not very different from its approach to US Western allies and partners: both groups of nations appear to be not full-fledged sovereign decision-makers, but rather as disciplined decision-takers with somewhat limited sovereignty. This is not a very appealing vision of the future world order for aspiring nations in the Global South trying to position themselves not as speechless objects, but as vocal subjects of global politics. To cut it short, what works for the time being in Europe or in the Northeast Asia, does not work the same way in South Asia, in the Middle East, in most of Africa and Latin America.

Of course, the main potential threats to international leadership lie within the US itself. The overwhelming majoring of the US public are fully aware of this reality. Americans observe the continuous decline of the national transport and logistics infrastructure, poor quality of the vocational training system, excessive costs for legal business services, serious problems with work ethics, numerous political uncertainties and many other internal factors that erode the US leadership abroad. Real wages in the US economy have been stagnating for decades, social inequality is growing rapidly in the country, labor productivity growth is slowing down and even—alas!—life expectancy is also shrinking.

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Therefore, the current political priorities manifested during ongoing election campaign of 2024 (migrations, climate, inflation, crime, etc.) speak more to the common sense and pragmatism of Americans than to an increasingly isolationist sentiment in the US society. “All politics is local”—a phrase associated with Tip O’Neill, the former U.S speaker of the House of Representatives, is still valid in the United States. The fundamental problem in the US is not even some specific manifestation of current economic and social malaise, but that American society remains deeply divided: right wing factions are growing stronger in the Republican Party and left wing factions in the Democratic Party. The political center is losing its former stability and right wing and left wing radicalism is gaining strength.

One can conclude that the neo-liberal political and social model that the Biden Administration sticks to has exhausted its former potential and needs a fresh infusion of new ideas. Even if one dismisses as untenable the dire prophecies about the inevitability of a civil war and the subsequent collapse of the US, one has to state that a country with deep internal divisions cannot claim to be a confident and long-term leader in international affairs. In 1990s, many in US and in other countries believed in America as the ultimate embodiment of modernity and as the global laboratory where they design and produce future. In 2020s, this is no longer the case—there are many alternative versions of modernity in the world and many competing labs where they manufacture future of the humankind.

Primus inter pares

Nothing of the above-mentioned means that the time has come to write off America as a once mighty, and now rapidly declining superpower that has long lost its former strengths and appeal. The United States still has the largest and most technologically advanced economy in the world. This economy is still surprisingly flexible and truly innovative. All the numerous forecasts about the imminent economic collapse of the United States in the very near future are unfounded and politically biased. Nevertheless, even an ardent admirer of America today finds it difficult to deny that this country is not at its best, and that trying to bet back to the unipolar international model is not a suitable cure for its many economic and social ills.

One has to admit that, despite all of its obvious weaknesses and limitations, the US remains an indispensable global power, and without its participation (and especially with an active opposition from its side) solutions of many regional and global problems are impossible or extremely difficult. America’s unique position in the modern world is determined not only by the strength of the United States itself, but also largely by the weakness or, more precisely, by the immaturity of most other actors in world politics. These actors are not yet quite ready to take on the difficult role of generating and protecting global and regional public goods, let alone of stepping to the fore as main architects of the new world order.

Nobody is in a position to stop the Russian-Ukrainian conflict without an active American participation. For all the undoubted successes in the de-dollarization of global finance, the greenback remains—and will remain—the world’s main reserve currency for a long time to come. Most transnational technological chains in one way or another pass through America. The potential and use of American “soft power” will long be the envy of allies and adversaries of the United States, whether it concerns movie productions from Hollywood or the research programs of American universities. The position of the USA in international institutions (especially when it comes to their bureaucracy, which represents a kind of global Deep State) is now largely much stronger than that of any other country in the world.

Nevertheless, a return to the former US hegemony in international relations is not in sight. Not necessarily because America is inevitably becoming weaker and helpless in all areas, but because other players are gradually gaining strength, experience and confidence in their ability to influence the future of our common planet. The maturation of emerging actors might go slowly and precariously, but this process is still continuous and irreversible. That means that America will more-so have to adapt to the emerging world than to adapt the world to itself.

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The task of adapting to the new realities faces all the countries of the world without exception. Still, this will be particularly difficult and painful for the American political class, which is accustomed to the lack of an alternative to US global leadership. The longer it takes to adapt, the more painful it will be in the end. Today, the Biden Administration is actually trying to maintain the global status quo, and this strategy makes it difficult to expect major gains.

Instead of trying to once again to shift problems from a sore head to a healthy one, the political class of the United States should coordinate and implement a long-term reindustrialization strategy that could once again unite a divided nation around common goals and aspirations. The task is comparable in scale to that faced by the team of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s during the long fight against the Great Depression. Nine decades ago, Roosevelt's "New Deal" gave Americans a sense of a common national project and hope for the realization of the "American dream." Only revived social unity, not foreign policy adventures and aspirations for a US-dominated world, will make America great again.

There is a feeling that today neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump are ready to offer the American society an updated version of the "New Deal", adjusted to the realities of the XXI century. One can only hope that a new generation of American political leaders will eventually fill this dangerous gap.

First published in Chinese in the Guancha.cn.