Downsizing our dominance
The next president will have to deal with a world in which U.S. hegemony is a thing of the past.
It should be no surprise that the presidential campaigns have barely touched on foreign policy. One reason is that no candidate of either party has a solution to the nation's most pressing foreign problem, the war in Iraq (perhaps because there are no good solutions).
A larger reason, however, may be that no ambitious politician is willing to mention the discomfiting reality about America's place in the world -- that we are weaker today than we were a decade or two ago, and that we need a new foreign policy that acknowledges and builds on that fact.
President Bush's follies have accelerated the decline of U.S. influence, but he can't be blamed for its onset. It started, ironically, at the moment of our late-century triumph, when the Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War victory was ours. Some proclaimed that the United States was now "the sole superpower." But, in fact, the end of the Cold War left the very concept of a "superpower" in tatters.
Our leverage over half the world during the previous half-century had stemmed not just from American muscle but from the existence of a common enemy. Allies often acceded to U.S. interests, even to the detriment of their own national interests, because the looming Russian bear posed a greater menace still. But when the bear died, the alliance's threads loosened. Many of these nations would sometimes continue to follow our lead, but they also felt free to go their own way without so much concern about Washington's preferences.
As a result, wielding power in the post-Cold War world became a harder game. Alliances could no longer be taken for granted; they had to be crafted and nourished. American leadership might still be valued and necessary, but now it would have to be earned.
When Bush came to power, he and his top aides understood none of this. (In fairness, few did.) They believed, and acted, as if American power were not only undimmed but supreme and unchallengeable -- as if a president's grimace would still make tyrants tremble and the dispatch of light armies could remake the world.
So, for much of the last seven years, U.S. leaders stomped around the globe with wide-elbowed indifference to the consequences of their actions. Allies were alienated, enemies enraged and those in between -- especially those rich in key resources -- cut their own deals and created their own networks outside U.S. control.
