Impotence & Isolation – The Slow Death of Global American Influence

                                                                                            

 A Nation Out-of-Touch

 

It’s complicated. On paper, we seem to have it all when it comes to global power. We account for 41% of the entire world’s military budget, have bases and naval operations all over the world. We are the largest economy in the world, and even as China grows its power, on a per capita valuation, it is far behind the United States. The US dollar is the major reserve currency on earth; effectively, the United States sits at the fulcrum of international banking. We have more of the finest colleges and universities, by far, than any other nation on earth. We have an absolute veto power on the UN Security Council. We are still rich in natural resources and have some of the most productive farms in the world. We are tech leaders.

But then… Our military operations are so spread out over the globe that we have sacrificed true power in any one region to maintain power everywhere. In most of Asia, for example, China’s vastly smaller fleets of naval vessels, her air operations, and her ability to move ground forces are so concentrated, so much more present than any American military counterpart, that the PRC is absolutely the dominant military force in that region. That the United States has not won a major military engagement since World War II is not lost on Russia or China. They watched as long-term military efforts, in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, have bled American resources and uniformly have failed to achieve even modest success. 

We may be the most important reserve currency in the world and effectively control global banking, but … There are very powerful movements afoot, even among our purported allies, to demote the dollar as that trading reference (preferring a blended replacement) and to create new European trading exchanges to circumvent US trade boycotts that are enforced through that banking stranglehold. While the US is still the biggest economy in the world, all of our global competitors (especially China) are upping their foreign aid, updating and repairing their infrastructure to the max, pouring new money into education and research and reducing their reliance on economic trade with the US. 

As we continue to cut our own governmental support to education and research – adopting a downright hostility to science and scientific fact – we can also watch our infrastructure fall apart with little in the way of relevant countermeasures. Instead our government prefers to mount trade wars that are forcing former buying trading partners – particularly when it comes to our agricultural output – to find new permanent and more reliable exporting nations, countries that are unlikely to use tariffs to enforce heavy political agendas.

By excoriating leaders in allied nations, from Germany to Denmark, and supporting brutal autocrats – from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un – we make a mockery of our commitment to democracy and human rights. By embracing extremist views, from Boris Johnson’s vision of a hard Brexit to Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian residents’ rights to Saudi Arabia’s wonton bombing of civilians in Yemen, we are now viewed as a friend to extremist governments. We pulled out of the Iran nuclear accord under the assumption that our economic sanctions would force them to bow to our demands. 

Instead, we have European nations finding loopholes to circumvent our sanctions, creating permanent structures to dilute American economic power, and watch Iran escalate its regional military might and resume nuclear enrichment. Now, to placate Iran’s leadership, Europe is proposing a $15 billion economic lifeline to Iran, one which Trump is increasingly being forced to consider. Clearly, our 40 years of hardline policies against Iran, a commitment to immediate regime change, have failed and continue to fail. 

Our government’s recalcitrance to enter multinational treaties, a passionate belief that bilateral bullying negotiations are the right way to go, have created global efforts to do what other countries believe is right and create the necessary workarounds to obviate the need for American acceptance or participation. Europe has benefited greatly by the increased trade with China, at our expense, from the replacement treaties that spawned when the US pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Russia, despite its military support of the brutal Assad regime in Syria, is far more relevant to most of the Middle East than is the United States. We have made a lot of sworn enemies in our support of extremist views in Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Even when it comes to taming the rogue nation of Syria, it is increasingly obvious that the United States is powerless to impact any reasonable outcome. Instead, Russia has embraced NATO ally Turkey (which continues to treat pro-US, anti-Assad Kurdish fighters as terrorists) and Iran to create a new governmental structure in Syria. “The leaders of Turkey, Russia and Iran announced Monday [9/16] that an agreement has been reached on the composition of a committee tasked with rewriting Syria’s constitution as part of a political solution to the country’s civil war, now in its ninth year.

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told journalists at the end of the meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani in the Turkish capital, Ankara, that differences on one last committee member have been overcome, paving the way for the committee to start working as soon as possible.

“‘We portrayed a constructive and flexible attitude to determine constitutional committee members and rules of procedure. We made an effort for the political process to move forward. In short, hitches regarding the establishment of the committee were eliminated by our mutual efforts,’ Erdogan said… Russia and Iran are key allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad while Turkey backs Syrian rebels seeking to oust him.” Associated Press, September 17^th. Whatever the result, we have two likely results: a new Syrian governmental structure that will remain antithetical to US goals and confirmation of the irrelevance of US influence on regional solutions.

Without allies at our side, with an exceptionally unpopular reputation as an unreliable bully, most of anything we need to accomplish on the global stage – of critical importance to American companies in a global marketplace – will be increasingly at our sole expense… the price of go-it-alone bullying. In hard dollars, that arrogance will cost us trillions of dollars in the immediate future. Resetting our influence and reputation will take decades… and probably will never achieve what we had just five years ago.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect we just must be tired of winning so very very much.