The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana
The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana
The problem isn’t weakness at the top. It’s the enemy within.
...Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.
Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?
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To be fair, a lot of countries started scrutinizing the US after the Bush election in 2000.
The Iraq war, intelligence about Guantanamo, the whole thing with PRISM and Snowden, and the entire Trump administration has made the US look increasingly unstable internationally.
The Iraq war, intelligence about Guantanamo, the whole thing with PRISM and Snowden, and the entire Trump administration has made the US look increasingly unstable internationally.
It looks that way because that's what we've become. The question is how much damage are we going to do to ourselves and the rest of the world as we scrabble to keep the influence that we're losing.
I don't care how much you damage yourselves, just stop interfering around and role playing world police.
But then Republicans couldn't play out their favorite fantasy of authoritarian strong man.