Is America in crisis, or is the Biden presidency a flop?
It is fashionable today to argue that America is in crisis, and the great weakness of the current administration contributes greatly to spreading this thesis. We used to see a global superpower exercising its leadership without hesitation, often resorting to its enormous military might.
No doubt the overall picture was simpler when the United States had to face a certain but, all in all, predictable enemy like the defunct Soviet Union. Also because, then, the clash had a strong ideological connotation that facilitated the division into opposing blocs.
Nowadays there are more than one enemies and it is often not easy to identify them as such with sufficient clarity. Not only. China is undoubtedly a dangerous adversary, but it is impossible to ignore the inextricable economic and commercial intertwining that unites – whether we like it or not – Beijing to Washington and to Europe itself. The same discourse, albeit with considerable differences, applies to the very jagged Islamic world, where the atavistic hatred between Sunnis and Shiites among other things causes considerable problems when it comes to deciding on alliances.
However, I think it should be noted that the American crisis is more apparent than real. Or if you prefer, that it is a crisis due to contingent factors, which could be overcome in the future with the entry into the White House of a president with a clear strategy in terms of international politics. Some deluded hoped it was Biden, indicated as an "expert" in this field, but the Afghan disaster immediately made us understand who we are dealing with.
I'll explain. If you have the opportunity to visit in person (and not just by surfing the internet) countries such as China and Vietnam which – at least in theory – base their political and social order on values that are very different from those of America, it is easy to notice in the new generations the strong tendency to consider the US as a model to be imitated.
It may seem unbelievable, but it really is. The opinion of the ruling classes, in these cases, matters much less than the concrete behaviors that young people display in daily life, behaviors that are very similar to those of their Italian, French and, obviously, American peers.
Mao and Ho Chi Minh, while still exalted on an official level, appear distant figures, now shrouded in the fog of history. More important, in the eyes of young people – but also of those in their thirties – is the possibility of traveling abroad, of having access to social networks , of being in constant communication with everyone via their smartphone and – why not? – to have lunch frequently in fast food restaurants that are spreading like wildfire.
All this implies a certain availability of money, and governments take steps to stem social tensions within certain limits. The collective imagination of young people in the aforementioned nations is literally imbued with Western values in general and American in particular, with the influence of the American way of life making itself felt overwhelmingly in television programming, in standard clothing and even in university education. , in spite of a Marxism-Leninism still imparted on an obligatory basis.
I add – and this is even more surprising – that a similar trend is also perceptible in part of the Islamic world itself, with very high peaks in Pakistan, Indonesia and in some former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Fundamentalism is undoubtedly important but, on closer inspection, it imposes itself – and not always – only through violence and coercion. It cannot be excluded that, in the end, it will be defeated thanks to the "passive" resistance of the majority of the populations.
I ask, then, how a country can be considered in crisis that despite everything has managed to spread its values and its lifestyle globally. The only possible answer is that today, in the United States, political polarization has grown a lot, which is why the opposing sides even struggle to talk to each other. And this constitutes a serious danger since, previously, it did not happen. Perhaps, rather than a crisis, it is appropriate to speak of a pause due, as I said earlier, to contingent factors. Of course, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan humiliated not only the US, but the entire West, and it was foreseeable that the autocracies would immediately take advantage of it. The hope is that the next White House tenant will demonstrate leadership qualities that Biden lacks entirely (as does his deputy Kamala Harris). If that hope were to come true, then we could say that the "American century" is destined to last a long time.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/lamerica-e-in-crisi-oppure-e-un-flop-la-presidenza-biden/ on Mon, 06 Sep 2021 03:44:00 +0000.