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The future of American power Francis Fukuyama on the end of American
hegemony
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Afghanistan does not mark the end of the American era;
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the challenge to its global standing is political polarisation at home,
says a foreign-policy expert
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THE HORRIFYING images of desperate Afghans trying to get out of Kabul this
week after the United
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States-backed government collapsed have evoked a major juncture in world
history, as America turned
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away from the world. The truth of the matter is that the end of the
American era had come much
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earlier. The long-term sources of American weakness and decline are more
domestic than
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international. The country will remain a great power for many years, but
just how influential
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it will be depends on its ability to fix its internal problems, rather than
its foreign policy.
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The peak period of American hegemony lasted less than 20 years,
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from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to around the financial crisis in
2007-09. The
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country was dominant in many domains of power back then—military, economic
, political and cultural.
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The height of American hubris was the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it
hoped to be able to remake
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not just Afghanistan (invaded two years before) and Iraq, but the whole of
the Middle East.
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The country overestimated the effectiveness of military power to bring
about fundamental
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political change, even as it under-estimated the impact of its free-market
economic model on global
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finance. The decade ended with its troops bogged down in two
counterinsurgency wars,
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and an international financial crisis that accentuated the huge
inequalities
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that American-led globalisation had brought about.
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The degree of unipolarity in this period has been relatively rare in
history,
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and the world has been reverting to a more normal state of multipolarity
ever since,
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with China, Russia, India, Europe and other centres gaining power relative
to America.
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Afghanistan’s ultimate effect on geopolitics is likely to be small.
America survived an earlier,
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humiliating defeat when it withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, but it quickly
regained its dominance
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within a little more than a decade, and today it works with Vietnam to curb
Chinese expansionism.
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America still has many economic and cultural advantages that few other
countries can match.
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The much bigger challenge to America’s global standing is domestic:
American society is deeply
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polarised, and has found it difficult to find consensus on virtually
anything. This polarisation
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started over conventional policy issues like taxes and abortion, but since
then has metastasised into
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a bitter fight over cultural identity. The demand for recognition on the
part of groups
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that feel they have been marginalised by elites was something I identified
30 years ago as an
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Achilles heel of modern democracy. Normally, a big external threat such as
a global pandemic
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should be the occasion for citizens to rally around a common response; the
covid-19 crisis
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served rather to deepen America's divisions, with social distancing, mask-
wearing and now
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vaccinations being seen not as public-health measures but as political
markers.
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These conflicts have spread to all aspects of life, from sports to the
brands of consumer
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products that red and blue Americans buy. The civic identity that took
pride in America as
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a multiracial democracy in the post-civil rights era has been replaced by
warring narratives over
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1619 versus 1776—that is, whether the country is founded on slavery or the
fight for freedom.
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This conflict extends to the separate realities each side believes it sees,
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realities in which the election in November 2020 was either one of the
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fairest in American history or else a massive fraud leading to an
illegitimate presidency.
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Throughout the cold war and into the early 2000s,
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there was a strong elite consensus in America in favour of maintaining a
leadership position in
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world politics. The grinding and seemingly endless wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq soured many Americans
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not just on difficult places like the Middle East, but international
involvement generally.
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Polarisation has affected foreign policy directly.
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During the Obama years, Republicans took a hawkish stance and castigated
the Democrats
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for the Russian “reset” and alleged naïveté regarding President
Putin. Former President Trump
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turned the tables by openly embracing Mr Putin, and today roughly half of
Republicans believe
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that the Democrats constitute a bigger threat to the American way of life
than does Russia.
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A conservative television-news anchor, Tucker Carlson, travelled to
Budapest to celebrate
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Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban; “owning the libs”
(ie, antagonising the
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left, a catch-phrase of the right) was more important than standing up for
democratic values.
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There is more apparent consensus regarding China: both Republicans and
Democrats agree
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it is a threat to democratic values. But this only carries America so far.
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A far greater test for American foreign policy than Afghanistan will be
Taiwan,
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if it comes under direct Chinese attack. Will the United States be willing
to sacrifice its
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sons and daughters on behalf of that island’s independence? Or indeed,
would the United States
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risk military conflict with Russia should the latter invade Ukraine? These
are serious
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questions with no easy answers, but a reasoned debate about American
national interest will
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probably be conducted primarily through the lens of how it affects the
partisan struggle.
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Polarisation has already damaged America’s global influence, well short of
future
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tests like these. That influence depended on what Joseph Nye, a foreign-
policy scholar,
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labelled “soft power”, that is, the attractiveness of American
institutions and society to people
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around the world. That appeal has been greatly diminished: it is hard for
anyone to say that
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American democratic institutions have been working well in recent years,
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or that any country should imitate America’s political tribalism and
dysfunction.
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The hallmark of a mature democracy is the ability to carry out peaceful
transfers
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of power following elections, a test the country failed spectacularly on
January 6th.
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The biggest policy debacle by President Joe Biden’s administration in its
seven
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months in office has been its failure to plan adequately for the rapid
collapse of Afghanistan.
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However unseemly that was, it doesn’t speak to the wisdom of the
underlying decision to withdraw from
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Afghanistan, which may in the end prove to be the right one. Mr Biden has
suggested that withdrawal
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was necessary in order to focus on meeting the bigger challenges from
Russia and China down the
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road. I hope he is serious about this. Barack Obama was never successful in
making a “pivot”
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to Asia because America remained focused on counterinsurgency in the Middle
East.
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The current administration needs to redeploy both resources and the
attention
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of policymakers from elsewhere in order to deter geopolitical rivals and to
engage with allies.
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The United States is not likely to regain its earlier hegemonic status,
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nor should it aspire to. What it can hope for is to sustain, with like-
minded countries,
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a world order friendly to democratic values. Whether it can do this will
depend not on
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short-term actions in Kabul, but on recovering a sense of national identity
and purpose at home.
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