Europe, Britain and America's Fading Primacy
A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress leads a formation of aircraft including two Polish air force F-16 Fighting Falcons, four U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons, two German Eurofighter Typhoons and four Swedish Gripens over the Baltic Sea, June 9, 2016. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Erin Babis)
America’s quest to spread its freedom, abundance and security has ended up reducing its freedom, abundance and security.
Freddy Gray
September 2, 2016
Who wants to be policeman of the world in the twenty-first century? America has tried the role, bless it, and the results have yielded little joy. The greatest military machine mankind has ever seen can’t seem to win a war. The conflicts in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq all proved to be great wastes of American treasure and blood. Even the apparently successful U.S.-led interventions, such as in Libya in 2011, have led to disaster. What the historian Andrew J. Bacevich calls America’s “War for the Greater Middle East” has proved to be its unmaking as the world’s undisputed superpower. America’s quest to spread its freedom, abundance and security has ended up reducing its freedom, abundance and security.
The age of American primacy, as we know it at least, is approaching its end. The “unipolar moment,” which followed the Cold War, was always fleeting. The American super-supremacy of the 1990s and early 2000s has faded. A strange, arguably “post-polar” world order, in which nothing is as it seems, has emerged in its place. The United States, under the presidency of Barack Obama, has adopted the strategy of “leading from behind”—much to the chagrin of neoconservatives everywhere. But what Obama really meant was America still trying to lead from the front, as before, but with added reluctance. China the rising giant, but its economic growth international ambitions are mysterious and opaque. Russia is often said to be a diminishing force—its economy too reliant on outdated fossil fuels—yet it is achieving its strategic goals where every other major power is failing. Thanks to a sophisticated information machine, the Kremlin’s soft power is more potent than at any time in the last thirty years.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/europe-britain-americas-fading-primacy-17577
