The United States (US) is committed to what can be called a new Cold War against Russia and China. While this is conveyed as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism, people are not buying it. The obvious reason for the US move appears to be a desire to maintain its global primacy against the challenge of China.
Overall, it can be argued that notions of decline in the US are premature. The country continues to have a vibrant economy, with significant financial support and research and development capacity, and is demographically comfortable. It also remains the world’s leading military power. However, his soft power has been hampered by developments at home and inconsistent behavior globally.
Standard measures of prosperity such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) show that America’s share has not changed much for the past forty years as it remains around 25 percent of world GDP. In 1980, the US share as a share of world GDP was 25.16 percent; today, forty years later, the proportion is roughly the same, at 24.2 per cent. The United States nearly matches its share of global GDP by spending about 27.3 percent of global spending on research and development compared to China’s 21.9 percent. The continuing attraction of the United States as the leading international destination for research and education gives it the ability to acquire talent from all over the world.
And yet, in the eyes of the world, the United States’ obstacles — the start of the war in Vietnam and then the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan — have given room to its competitors to move forward.
Domestic developments
The real obstacle for the United States has been its soft power and this has manifested itself in various ways. One measure of this is the deep political division in his domestic politics, where polls consistently show that 70 percent of Republican voters do not see Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential elections. The country’s financial sector also almost got gutted by the global financial crisis of 2008. As a result, the wealth of American families has yet to recover from the impact of that event. Read also : Saudi Arabia is leaving the United States. Income inequality in the United States has increased since 1980 and is greater than in peer countries. Over time, the country has taken for granted that its system of democracy and superior governance will trump any competition. However, it appears that this system is now hopelessly locked up. The ability of its political system to operate in a bipartisan manner no longer exists.
Given this situation, the country seems unable to deal with its growing social problems, ranging from mass shootings and gun-related violence to chronic poverty, homelessness, and drug abuse. This has inevitably led to the view that the United States is in a state of irreversible decline.
Globalisation
Related to this is the US’s faltering approach to globalisation. The United States, largely unscathed by the Second World War, helped to shape the so-called liberal international order. It is based on three pillars—the United Nations system to maintain international order, liaison agencies to promote health and labor standards, and finally, agencies such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank to regulate the global economic system. To deal with the challenge of the former Soviet Union, the United States also created a global chain of military alliances – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Central Treaty Organization, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization – and only the first named survived.
The global trading system created by the United States was skillfully used by China to emerge first, as the world’s factory, and then, as a constantly growing military power. With its focus on the War on Terror and disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States began to neglect large parts of the world. See the article : The survey examines the acceptance of political violence in the US. Within the United States as well, political trends emerged questioning America’s global role and the position of liberal internationalism, which further questioned the United States paying a disproportionate share for everything – global security and the United Nations system .
This led to the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016 and many of the simmering issues came to a boil. The Trump administration focused on a trade war with China, discrediting international institutions, and walking out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Worse, the President was dismissive of America’s own military allies and partners and demanded that they pay a fair share for their security. And when the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States refused to take the global leadership to fight it.
China
Compared to China, the United States has seen a decline. In terms of purchasing power parity, the US share of global GDP has fallen from 50 percent in 1950 to 14 percent in 2018, while China’s share has surpassed it at 18 percent. The Chinese population is four times that of the United States and its economy has been growing three times faster. To see also : Politics Two: Surprising January 6th. Other areas such as research and development and STEM education are also growing rapidly in China. If the current trends are projected 20 years ahead, one can get an idea of the coming Chinese dominance.
Where once, in the 1950s and 1960s, American aid sustained Europe and transformed the educational and agricultural sector in India and other countries, China has created the Belt and Road Initiative to provide hard infrastructure around the world. Although there is a lot of talk about how countries have fallen into a debt trap through Chinese projects, the reality is that the Chinese are the only game in town. Between 2001 and 2018, China provided loans worth US$126 billion to African countries and invested US$41 billion. While the US has been trying to match the Chinese, it currently has little to show for it. The G7’s latest proposals to release US$ 600 billion are only on paper.
Retaining hegemony: The new Cold War
As the new Cold War looms, the overwhelming impression is of a lack of coherence in the US response. The Trump administration despised Obama’s emphasis on domestic reforms such as the Affordable Care Act as well as the TPP to defeat China in the economy. He used a variety of methods such as tariffs, export control regulations, and restrictions on certain categories of Chinese students to control China. However, he also made it clear that China was the main threat to US hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.
On the other hand, the Biden administration has yet to issue an official version of its China policy. But her efforts to make huge public investments in social, infrastructure and environmental programs have failed to overcome the political gridlock in the US Congress.
The Ukraine War and the future
Much of this analysis is contingent on the developments unfolding with the Ukraine war, but equally and crucially, it depends on the political developments unfolding in the United States. As for the war, it certainly revived and strengthened the US alliance system in Europe. But two years later, the possibility of Trump or a Trumpist in power could once again question the usefulness of the alliances and introduce uncertainty and inconsistency to US global policy.
The Ukraine war, with its ‘no limits’ alliance between Russia and China poses its own challenges. Where Russia was once an entity of declining importance to the United States, today, it has emerged as a major distraction that could stop the American project of challenging China in the Indo-Pacific. The structural issues plaguing the United States are obvious. Although it is still the largest military power in the world and its dominance of the financial system, although less complete, is still formidable, perhaps the time has come for the United States to change their worldview. like the City on a Hill, one that can be seen. lead the world
Global hegemony, which he won in 1945, remains key to his global position. As long as the United States was leading in the economic and military areas, this was considered logical. But we are at a point where the Chinese economy has already overtaken the US economy and in the next 20 years, it may be several times larger, enabling China to match US military spending as well. China has its own vision – born of its own global position in history – that it is the Middle Kingdom.
Whether the US can maintain its current hegemonic status is debatable. But without a doubt, it will remain a major, if not dominant, world power well into the future. However, in order to maintain that status and successfully compete with China, it needs to restart its soft power, based on the attractiveness of its social, political and economic system. He must become as much a leader in security and trade-related issues, as in women’s rights, in environmental protection, and in the fight for democracy and racial equality. He already has a formula for dominance in his league system, but he needs to make them more transparent and practical. More than that, it must find a way to live with other power centers like China, a path that does not necessarily depend on its global hegemony. The world is learning about the global consequences of the Ukraine war the hard way. A conflict between the US and China, perhaps involving Taiwan, could have even more serious repercussions.
