While Americans are busy with casting ballots for their new president, the period of unrivalled global dominance of the US has come to an end, not even two decades after it began with Uncle Sam’s triumph over its Soviet nemesis. Spirited by the victory of global capitalism, a buoyant high-tech economy, a record surplus, and unrivaled military power, the neo-cons of the Bush administration set out on an bold mission to establish a global Pax Americana—and ultimately failed resoundingly. After two terms with ‘W.’ at the helm, the new president of the United States will inherit an economy in shambles, an overstretched military exhausted by a war of attrition against an elusive enemy, ravaging anti-Americanism abroad, and a public at home that has grown wary about unfettered turbo-capitalism and unilateral military adventures. In a short eight years, Washington managed to gamble away its once uncontested status as only superpower on earth in an entirely home-made debacle. Now, America calls on Obama to fix it.
It all began with the War on Terror that unleashed the world’s most powerful and expensive military machinery in the name of a hunt for a small, shadowy, global network of fanatic terrorists. The glorious conquest powered by Shock and Awe in Iraq and Afghanistan however quickly turned into two vexingly costly and complex scenarios with much death and destruction, but little recognizable connection to 9/11, OBL or WMD. Along the way, premature talk of a ‘Mission Accomplished’ has had give way to the painful insight that a stepwise withdrawal of unpopular occupying forces is the best the Washington might hope for under the current conditions. Yes, the famous Surge saved America from outright defeat in Iraq, but it certainly did not win it. One should note the eerie irony in the fact that over the years, these ugly conflicts have begun to resemble the blown-up version of the type of botched peace-keeping missions US conservatives had so solemnly sworn to abstain from.
Despite the steady trickle of disturbingly ugly news footage, few US observers would have suspected a major threat to America’s global predominance from these bungled imperial forays. However mismanaged, they probably also would never have become one, had they not coincided with an economic tsunami in the making. Spoiled by fifteen years of seemingly crisis-proof US economic growth and Greenspan-voodoo, US consumers, Washington pundits and the world’s bankers had forgotten about first commandment in economics: there is no such thing as a free lunch! With the fundamentals of the US economy decidedly weak, all went surprisingly well —after all, America’s twin deficits, its low savings rates, the overvalued dollar, and even the housing bubble have been known to economists already for years. Everything went well until a year ago, when the world had to watch in disbelief how the US housing bubble first slowly busted into a brutal subprime mortgage crisis, then ignited into a global financial crisis of monumental proportions, until the fallout currently slowly starts settling in the form of a full-blown worldwide recession.
It is surprising of how little observers have made of the connection between the crisis and the ballooning bills for both wars, which after all surpass the size of the rescue-bill that passed with so many headaches in congress a month ago. Its a tough reality that taken together, exorbitant defense spending, expanding emergency measures to stem the financial crisis, and the likelihood of declining tax revenues in a recession-prone economy set US government spending on an increasingly unsustainable track. This is all the more true as the Bush administration is already operating with budget deficits not seen since the Reagan era and US public debt has reached record-heights.
With US consumers being as notoriously reckless spenders as their current president and foreign lenders having little interest in borrowing even more to the US, at least some degree of financial austerity by both governments and consumers is an unwelcome but hardly avoidable consequence in the years to come. Finally, add to all this a temporarily defunct asset and financial markets, as well as historically low interest rates that leave little room for the Fed to come to the rescue, and textbook-economics tells us we got together all the ingredients for a painful, prolonged economic slump in the US.
What does all of this have to do with Obama and the demise of the last superpower on earth? Well, the bottom line is that the next president will have little other option in the coming years than to concentrate on rebuilding America’s tanking economy. Pentagon hawks might not want to hear it, but this will have to include putting its outsized military back on the financial leech, which currently swallows more than the combined defense spending of the remaining G8 and China together. At least for a couple years, these two factors will severely limit Uncle Sam’s ability to wave around sticks and carrots on the world stage.
However, the USA losing its superpowers was about more than guns and dollars. The loss of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye famously called ‘soft power’ has been perhaps even more precipitous: Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, secret CIA detention centers, warrantless wiretapping, waterboarding, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the defiance of Kyoto, Dick Cheney and Halliburton, lying to the UN about Iraqi WMD—all of these negative headlines have done much damage to the brand-appeal of the Star-Spangled Banner. Under the Bush administration, the number of people around the globe who see the American Way of Life as part of the problems of the world, rather than as part of the solutions, has been rapidly increasing. This matters decisively because—and this was the crux of Nye’s argument—it means that the US needs much more sticks and carrots than before to hold sway in global affairs. The loss in soft power thus compounds the loss of hard power the US is experiencing today.
Skeptics might argue that the US has experienced—and overcome—similar crises before without having lost its status as a superpower. Indeed, one might point e.g. to the simultaneous loss of power, prestige, and confidence the US experienced during the 1970s, where it had to grapple with defeat in Vietnam and the profound economic crisis triggered by the Oil Shocks. Its different this time though, because Uncle Sam’s home-made power crisis occurs in a fast-changing global environment, which contrasts radically with the relatively static, bipolar international system of the Cold War: the stellar ascendancy of China and, at a more moderate pace, of India, a resurgent Russia, an enlarged and more self-confident European Union, as well as an entire array of growing regional powers that scramble to expand their influence; they all have multiplied the range of strategic options for each player in the system—and made each of them less dependent on Washington.
The US may remain the most single most powerful entity in the world at least for some time to come, but it clearly no longer commands the overwhelming power that would allow it to go it alone, wherever and whenever it chooses so. Americans will have to adjust to the fact that their government lost its superpowers in the current crisis and that it doesn’t look like as if they would be coming back anytime soon.
The US power crisis has also been accompanied by a slow-creeping identity crisis: If not the sole superpower on earth, what else could Americans place be of in a rapidly integrating world? Besides one man who claims he has it, few in the US seem to have an answer. It is not a surprising that this makes Mr. Obama into one of the few obvious winners from this crisis: In times of rampant recession angst and justified doubts about the viability of two protracted wars, US voters flocked to an unlikely candidate and his message of ‘Change’; despite that few Americans seem to know what exactly he means by that.
Indeed, its Obama’s ability to lend a credible voice to the American mainstream’s feelings of disenfranchisement and disenchantment with the simplistic recipes of their leaders in Washington, as well as his beaming confidence that he can change things for the better, which explain America’s—and the world’s—enthusiasm for an unconventional newcomer in the White House. Now the US calls on the Senator from Illinois to fix its standing in a complex world that most Americans don’t—and often do not care to—understand. Obama is undoubtedly American, but undoubtedly different too; and is precisely this weird mix that makes him the right choice for president in these difficult times.
In the tough, post-election world of Washington realpolitik, fulfilling all the enormous expectations America and the world have laid on Obama will be a mission impossible. Despite Obamamania, America’s superpowers won’t be miraculously restored and even with the smartest policies, the economy or the two wars won’t be fixed overnight. While the election of this, by all measures exceptional, black man certainly is a boost to America’s tarnished image, even a President Obama will need time to restore trust into America.
Much of Obama’s success in bringing an ailing Uncle Sam back on track, will depend on the steadiness of the support the American public is willing to lend their new president beyond the election-day honeymoon. From the Middle East to global warming, from immigration to Guantanamo, from the UN to free trade and the global financial architecture, in order to fix it, Obama will have to make choices that will change America from a global bully into a global team player. Most of these decisions are likely to be a tough sell to America’s mainstream, which generally sticks to its unilateral instincts and prefers things to be done in the Good Ol’ Way. On top of that changing America will also mean for Mr. Obama to confront a system of well-entrenched lobby-groups in Washington that stand ready to defend their interests tooth and nail.
It is the broad popular support that swept him into power which will be necessary for him to prevail in this struggle. With the election won, Obama stands ready to change America for the better over the next four years. Now, the question is if America has the resolve and courage to change itself. Much of what we know about American politics suggests otherwise. Then again, if anything, the presidential elections ending today have been defying conventional wisdom about American politics. So we shall cautiously side with those that have the audacity of hope.
