Are We Living in a Post-American World

                       Weapons from the Peoples’ Liberation Army

Is the war in Ukraine a proxy war? Is NATO (and even the UN) refusing to commit its own forces but still battling with its traditional enemies? Can the world, facing a need for international coordination to stem the obvious increasingly horrible impacts of climate change, continue to fight military campaigns that make such cooperation exceptionally difficult?

Up until now, it has been the United States as the prime mover in post-WWII superpower military confrontation beginning in the 1950s but ending badly in virtually all its major direct military engagements since. But Ukraine is different. The US military (hence NATO) is relegated to a supply role, unwilling to risk a direct shooting war with Russia for fear of a nuclear escalation. But what does this say for the future of global power, alignment and conflict? Who are the winners? Are we being “replaced” (a new mantra in so many ways)? And how does the rest of the world perceive our future power and influence?

Despite Russian efforts to regain superpower status once accorded to the Soviet Union, today’s superpowers seem to be limited to two nations: the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of China. The struggle for global influence is massive, and while the United States has the edge on military power, that rippling mega-might is strewn all over the world in military bases and fleets, ultimately allowing China to secure its influence in Asia with supreme military power in that more limited quadrant. What China cannot control via her Peoples’ Liberation Army directly, her checkbook seems to be able to accomplish via long-term agricultural, fossil fuel and mineral leases and treaties plus her Belt and Road initiative to dominate shipping within Asia, Africa and even Latin America.

American prestige was already showing a downward trend before the body-blow from Donald Trump’s efforts towards go-it-alone isolationism, thinly disguised “America First” nationalism. He undermined treaty commitments, NATO and seemed disinclined to use foreign aid as at carrot to protect and enhance US interests. Even traditional and trusted allies watched as American promises and treaties, upon which they had relied, were often tossed aside. And China watched. After a brief “courtship” with China’s President Xi Jinping, even ignoring China’s repression of Uighurs in Western China and her reneging on Hong Kong’s treaty-built independence, Trump understood that a tariff war was his apparent best option to contain China’s growing aggression. That aggressive behavior was evidenced by China’s militarization of a manmade island in the South China Sea and escalating saber-rattling against Taiwan as properly belonging to the PRC.

Like many in the world, China believes that, notwithstanding climate change, the 21st century belongs to her. Xi sees the United States, hopelessly politically polarized, as a country plunging in global power and influence. It is a feeling shared by many nations, clearly an assumption that egged Putin into aggressive annexation efforts, even a war with a neighboring (and former Soviet) land. Thus, it is interesting to look at America’s global position from China’s perspective. Writing from Beijing for the July 29th Los Angeles Times, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict,” takes shot at describing this PRC perspective:

“In speaking with Chinese academics to understand how they view the world, I have found that they start from a fundamentally different position than many in the West do. It’s not just that they are more likely to blame the Ukraine war on NATO enlargement than on the Kremlin; it’s that many of their core strategic assumptions are also the opposite of our own.

“While Europeans and Americans see the conflict as a turning point in global history, the Chinese see it as just another war of intervention — one that is even less significant than those launched in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 75 years. To them, the only material difference this time is that it is not the West that is intervening… Moreover, while many in Europe think that the war has marked America’s return to the global stage, Chinese intellectuals see it as further confirmation of the incoming post-American world. To them, the end of American hegemony created a vacuum that is now being filled by Russia.

“Whereas Westerners see an attack on the rules-based order , my Chinese friends see the emergence of a more pluralistic world — one in which the end of American hegemony permits different regional and sub-regional projects. They argue that the rules-based order has always lacked legitimacy; Western powers created the rules, and they have never shown much compunction about changing them when it suits their purposes (as in Kosovo and Iraq).

“These are the arguments that lead to the Middle East analogy. My Chinese interlocutor sees the situation in Ukraine not as a war of aggression between sovereign countries but, rather, as a revision of post-colonial borders following the end of Western hegemony. Likewise, in the Middle East, states are questioning the borders that the West drew after World War I.

“But the most striking parallel is that the Ukraine conflict is widely regarded as a proxy war. Just as the wars in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon have been fueled and exploited by great powers, so too has the war in Ukraine. Who are the main beneficiaries? My Chinese friend argues that it certainly is not Russia, Ukraine or Europe. Rather, the United States and China ultimately stand to gain the most, and both have been approaching the conflict as a proxy war in their larger rivalry.

“The Americans have benefited by locking Europeans, Japanese and Koreans into a new alignment of U.S.-dictated priorities, and by isolating Russia and forcing China to clarify where it stands on issues such as territorial integrity. At the same time, China has benefited by cementing Russia’s subordinate position, and by prodding more countries in the global south to embrace non-alignment.” Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas may lead to its undoing, a factor that does not plague the United States… directly. But if we are rising, it may just be temporary and a desperate reaction to global realignment. The one clear winner in all of this is China. That long telephone call between Biden and Xi isn’t going to change that reality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and most of the damage the United States is experiencing in 2022 is self-inflicted.