And this, of course, is why our government insists on the TPP.
Miriam
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > America Is Looking Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
________________________________________
America Is Looking Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
By Vijay Prashad [1] / FRONTLINE [2]
July 11, 2016
On June 22, Frances outspoken ambassador to the United States, Gérard
Araud, said: The next President will face a multipolar world where the U.S.
will be the main but not the only power. Realism is the only possible
agenda. It is unusual for such a close ally of the U.S. to make this
statement. After all, it has been one of the pillars of the U.S.
self-identification that it is the major force in the world. Political
leaders in the U.S. routinely speak of the country as the greatest in the
world, the only country with truly global ambitions and with global reach.
U.S. military bases litter the continents of the world, and U.S. warships
move from ocean to ocean, bearing terrifying arsenals. When the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in 1991, it became self-evident
that the U.S. was the sole remaining superpower. Unipolarity defined the
world order. So what is it that makes the French ambassador speak of a
multipolar world?
Araud is not alone in his realism. Some years ago, former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger alerted the political elite against its belligerent
rhetoric about China. In his 2011 book On China, Kissinger wrote of the need
for the U.S. and China to form a partnership which would be essential to
global stability and peace. Confrontations over the shipping lanes in the
South China Sea and disputes over currency manipulation dangerously flirt
with the language of war. Relations between China and the United States
need notand should notbecome a zero-sum game, wrote Kissinger. China had
become too important for the U.S. to indulge in Cold War theatrics. It was
far more important, Kissinger noted, for the two powers to come to an
understanding on how to confront global imbalanceswhether economic or
political.
The Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump, not known for his
political sobriety, is running on a campaign slogan that admits to todays
reality. Make America Great Again! says the slogan, which acknowledges the
weaknesses of the U.S. at this present time. At least Trump admits to this,
although he hastily suggests that somehow his presidency, miraculously, will
transform the vulnerabilities of the U.S. into strengths. Trump blames the
presidency of Barack Obama for the collapse of the countrys strength. He
condenses the right-wing antipathy to Obama in his belief that it is Obama
who has brought the U.S. into disrepute. Racism feeds into this rhetoric,
but so does masculinity. Obama is too dark and too feminine to keep the U.S.
great. It requires the machismo of Trump to do the job. What Trump does not
see, but what Araud and Kissinger recognise, is that the current weakness of
the U.S. is not somehow because of the policies of Obama.
Trump would like to channel Ronald Reagan, who said during his presidency in
the 1980s: Lets reject the nonsense that America is doomed to decline, the
world is sliding toward disaster no matter what we do. But Reagan came to
power in a different era. Then the USSR had been deeply weakened by economic
crises, China had not yet emerged as a serious economic powerhouse and few
other rivals threatened American supremacy. Reagan could afford to junk
the false prophets of decline. The U.S. could take advantage of its
financial power to reshape world affairs in its image. But times have
changed. No longer does the U.S. have the economic and political power to
thrust its tremendous heritage of idealism (as Reagan put it in 1981) onto
the world. It is not the U.S. culture and character that produced its
supremacy in the 1980s. It is not enough, as Trump does, to lean on culture
and character for another thrust towards world leadership.
Reagan could pillory President Jimmy Carter, a soft-spoken Democrat, for the
weakness of the U.S. Machismo came easily to Reagan. He had played enough
cowboys in the movies. Obama is not Carter. He has been President for eight
years, during which he has found that U.S. power has been depleted. What has
led to this decline of America?
First, the great social process of globalisation allowed U.S. firms to move
their production sites around the world. The global commodity chain
provided benefits to the owners of ideas and capital. This 1 percent, as
the Occupy movement called them, was able to earn ferocious returns on
investment, while the workers of the U.S. found themselves unemployed,
underemployed and certainly underpaid. Income inequality increased and
access to basic social goods declined for the bulk of society. Bank credit
allowed the workers to take enormous loans so as to manufacture a life along
the grain of the American Dream. What these workers received was not
credit but debtdebt rates on home mortgages, credit card, and college
tuition rose astronomically. The bursting of the home mortgage balloon in
2007 set off the global credit crisis, which is one of the great indicators
of the fragility of U.S. power.
Second, at the same time as the U.S. struggled with its financial crisis and
its military overextensions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Western alliance
system frayed. The most important emergence, under the shadow of the Western
alliance system, was the rapid growth of the German economy, which
essentially absorbed major gains from European unity. German banks dominated
the continent, as German firms took advantage of labour costs and its
technological advancement to make the most of the common market. Southern
Europe, from Portugal to Greece, suffered from the German success. European
unity was threatened by this disparity.
At the same time, France made a dash to reclaim its central role amongst its
old colonies, particularly in Africa. French military intervention in West
Africa came alongside attempts to undermine the growth of a new African
currency, the Afric. It was Araud, after all, who persuaded U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton to pursue the war against Libya in 2011. Meanwhile,
the United Kingdom wheezed itself into isolation from the European Union, as
the Conservatives became churlish about the utility of Brussels. Brexit
indicates the end of European unity as a dream, a major partner of the
U.S. The old Western alliance systemthe G7 and NATOmight well become
collateral damage in this debate around Europe and in the rise of the old
European imperial powers towards illusions of greatness.
Third, as Europe implodes, Chinas rise seems secured by a crafty new
relationship with a defensive Russia. The attempt by the West to encage both
Russia and China seems to have failed. Europes gambit in Ukraine will fall
apart as its own energy needs imperil a reconsideration of the sanctions
against Russia. Meanwhile, on the eastern flank, Chinas economic dominance
has broken into the Western alliance system, with countries from Japan to
Australia eager for trade with China rather than to remain as ramparts for a
Western military project. Economic and military arrangements between Russia
and China seem to increase as each month goes by. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organisations (SCO) expansion into becoming a major Asian bloc, now
including India and Pakistan, is an indicator of regionalism that has kept
the West out. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC),
created in 2010, pioneered this approach, since it actively saw itself as an
alternative to the Organisation of American States, which was a U.S.-driven
regional body. Both the SCO and CELAC have kept the U.S. and its major
allies outside their decision-making process. It is a sign of the emergence
of global multipolarity.
Raised on a diet of American exceptionalism, the U.S. public was
unprepared for the compromises essential to Obamas presidency. The deal
with Iran and the inability to pursue regime change in Syria are two graphic
indications of Obamas sobriety. The Russian intervention in Syria, the
first major one since the Soviet entry into Afghanistan and the Cuban entry
into Angola, demonstrated the limitations of U.S. power. In February, two
aid workers corralled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a meeting in
Istanbul. They wanted to know why the U.S. had not been more robust against
the government of Bashar al-Assad. Kerry, irritated, replied: What do you
want me to do? Go to war with Russia? These are important questions, a
measure of the reality faced by the Obama team. A frazzled West and a
defensive Russia-China alliance provide a new balance to the world order.
The days of cowboy diplomacy are long gone. That is what Gérard Araud
implies with his message.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and the forthcoming The Death of a Nation and
the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016).
His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
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Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
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Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > America Is Looking Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
America Is Looking Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
By Vijay Prashad [1] / FRONTLINE [2]
July 11, 2016
AddThis Sharing ButtonsShare to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Google+More
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On June 22, Frances outspoken ambassador to the United States, Gérard
Araud, said: The next President will face a multipolar world where the U.S.
will be the main but not the only power. Realism is the only possible
agenda. It is unusual for such a close ally of the U.S. to make this
statement. After all, it has been one of the pillars of the U.S.
self-identification that it is the major force in the world. Political
leaders in the U.S. routinely speak of the country as the greatest in the
world, the only country with truly global ambitions and with global reach.
U.S. military bases litter the continents of the world, and U.S. warships
move from ocean to ocean, bearing terrifying arsenals. When the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in 1991, it became self-evident
that the U.S. was the sole remaining superpower. Unipolarity defined the
world order. So what is it that makes the French ambassador speak of a
multipolar world?
Araud is not alone in his realism. Some years ago, former U.S. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger alerted the political elite against its belligerent
rhetoric about China. In his 2011 book On China, Kissinger wrote of the need
for the U.S. and China to form a partnership which would be essential to
global stability and peace. Confrontations over the shipping lanes in the
South China Sea and disputes over currency manipulation dangerously flirt
with the language of war. Relations between China and the United States
need notand should notbecome a zero-sum game, wrote Kissinger. China had
become too important for the U.S. to indulge in Cold War theatrics. It was
far more important, Kissinger noted, for the two powers to come to an
understanding on how to confront global imbalanceswhether economic or
political.
The Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump, not known for his
political sobriety, is running on a campaign slogan that admits to todays
reality. Make America Great Again! says the slogan, which acknowledges the
weaknesses of the U.S. at this present time. At least Trump admits to this,
although he hastily suggests that somehow his presidency, miraculously, will
transform the vulnerabilities of the U.S. into strengths. Trump blames the
presidency of Barack Obama for the collapse of the countrys strength. He
condenses the right-wing antipathy to Obama in his belief that it is Obama
who has brought the U.S. into disrepute. Racism feeds into this rhetoric,
but so does masculinity. Obama is too dark and too feminine to keep the U.S.
great. It requires the machismo of Trump to do the job. What Trump does not
see, but what Araud and Kissinger recognise, is that the current weakness of
the U.S. is not somehow because of the policies of Obama.
Trump would like to channel Ronald Reagan, who said during his presidency in
the 1980s: Lets reject the nonsense that America is doomed to decline, the
world is sliding toward disaster no matter what we do. But Reagan came to
power in a different era. Then the USSR had been deeply weakened by economic
crises, China had not yet emerged as a serious economic powerhouse and few
other rivals threatened American supremacy. Reagan could afford to junk
the false prophets of decline. The U.S. could take advantage of its
financial power to reshape world affairs in its image. But times have
changed. No longer does the U.S. have the economic and political power to
thrust its tremendous heritage of idealism (as Reagan put it in 1981) onto
the world. It is not the U.S. culture and character that produced its
supremacy in the 1980s. It is not enough, as Trump does, to lean on culture
and character for another thrust towards world leadership.
Reagan could pillory President Jimmy Carter, a soft-spoken Democrat, for the
weakness of the U.S. Machismo came easily to Reagan. He had played enough
cowboys in the movies. Obama is not Carter. He has been President for eight
years, during which he has found that U.S. power has been depleted. What has
led to this decline of America?
First, the great social process of globalisation allowed U.S. firms to move
their production sites around the world. The global commodity chain
provided benefits to the owners of ideas and capital. This 1 percent, as
the Occupy movement called them, was able to earn ferocious returns on
investment, while the workers of the U.S. found themselves unemployed,
underemployed and certainly underpaid. Income inequality increased and
access to basic social goods declined for the bulk of society. Bank credit
allowed the workers to take enormous loans so as to manufacture a life along
the grain of the American Dream. What these workers received was not
credit but debtdebt rates on home mortgages, credit card, and college
tuition rose astronomically. The bursting of the home mortgage balloon in
2007 set off the global credit crisis, which is one of the great indicators
of the fragility of U.S. power.
Second, at the same time as the U.S. struggled with its financial crisis and
its military overextensions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Western alliance
system frayed. The most important emergence, under the shadow of the Western
alliance system, was the rapid growth of the German economy, which
essentially absorbed major gains from European unity. German banks dominated
the continent, as German firms took advantage of labour costs and its
technological advancement to make the most of the common market. Southern
Europe, from Portugal to Greece, suffered from the German success. European
unity was threatened by this disparity.
At the same time, France made a dash to reclaim its central role amongst its
old colonies, particularly in Africa. French military intervention in West
Africa came alongside attempts to undermine the growth of a new African
currency, the Afric. It was Araud, after all, who persuaded U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton to pursue the war against Libya in 2011. Meanwhile,
the United Kingdom wheezed itself into isolation from the European Union, as
the Conservatives became churlish about the utility of Brussels. Brexit
indicates the end of European unity as a dream, a major partner of the
U.S. The old Western alliance systemthe G7 and NATOmight well become
collateral damage in this debate around Europe and in the rise of the old
European imperial powers towards illusions of greatness.
Third, as Europe implodes, Chinas rise seems secured by a crafty new
relationship with a defensive Russia. The attempt by the West to encage both
Russia and China seems to have failed. Europes gambit in Ukraine will fall
apart as its own energy needs imperil a reconsideration of the sanctions
against Russia. Meanwhile, on the eastern flank, Chinas economic dominance
has broken into the Western alliance system, with countries from Japan to
Australia eager for trade with China rather than to remain as ramparts for a
Western military project. Economic and military arrangements between Russia
and China seem to increase as each month goes by. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organisations (SCO) expansion into becoming a major Asian bloc, now
including India and Pakistan, is an indicator of regionalism that has kept
the West out. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC),
created in 2010, pioneered this approach, since it actively saw itself as an
alternative to the Organisation of American States, which was a U.S.-driven
regional body. Both the SCO and CELAC have kept the U.S. and its major
allies outside their decision-making process. It is a sign of the emergence
of global multipolarity.
Raised on a diet of American exceptionalism, the U.S. public was
unprepared for the compromises essential to Obamas presidency. The deal
with Iran and the inability to pursue regime change in Syria are two graphic
indications of Obamas sobriety. The Russian intervention in Syria, the
first major one since the Soviet entry into Afghanistan and the Cuban entry
into Angola, demonstrated the limitations of U.S. power. In February, two
aid workers corralled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a meeting in
Istanbul. They wanted to know why the U.S. had not been more robust against
the government of Bashar al-Assad. Kerry, irritated, replied: What do you
want me to do? Go to war with Russia? These are important questions, a
measure of the reality faced by the Obama team. A frazzled West and a
defensive Russia-China alliance provide a new balance to the world order.
The days of cowboy diplomacy are long gone. That is what Gérard Araud
implies with his message.
Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring,
Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of
the Global South (Verso, 2013) and the forthcoming The Death of a Nation and
the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016).
His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.
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Source URL:
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age
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/vijay-prashad
[2] http://www.frontline.in/
[3] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on America Is Looking
Increasingly Frazzled on the World Stage
[4] http://www.alternet.org/
[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
