The Last Superpower (Archive)

The world is changing and moving fast.

Throughout the globe are new technological breakthroughs, and major political upheavals. Rising industrial powers are taking their place on an increasingly crowded stage, vying with one another for dominance in their respective spheres of influence.

And no countries’ rise has been more meteoric than that of China, the world’s most populous country, and its second biggest economy. With every passing decade, China has developed an expanding consumer market, and has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. In the space of just over thirty years, it transformed from a dystopian state whose economy was shackled under state control to a major industrial power.

In doing this, it has defied virtually all conventions. Citizens of China have no freedom of speech and are still governed by a strongman. Human Rights are consistently violated in the authoritarian state. State control of the economy, and widespread censorship remain everyday facts of life in China. And yet, the countries’ influence is spreading. It is building highways, dams, stadiums, and bridges in developing countries the world over. In developed countries, it is buying up major corporations and financial assets.

The rising power has become aggressively imperialistic. The vision of Chinese foreign policy is clear: a relentless economic expansion into the world backed by military might, with the hope of installing China as the new kingpin of world trade. This strategy holds dangerous consequences for those caught in the snares of Chinese influence and is detrimental to China’s rivals. This raises a pertinent question:   

Where is the United States?

While America remains the dominant economic and military power on the globe, it is undeniable that we are experiencing a significant decline. In the past 25 years, the United States has experienced a profound reversal in many ways. Wealth inequality and our prison population have soared, while the quality of our infrastructure, quality of life indicators and education quality have all declined, and real wages have stagnated.

In the past two decades, our international image has been irrevocably tarnished. Anti-Americanism throughout the world is high, even in countries that are considered allies. Increasingly, our strategic allies have less and less confidence in our ability to lead and have a growing number of frustrations and reservations with our foreign policy.

Our International image has not been helped by our poor human rights record at home and overseas. The current administration illegally and inhumanely separated and detained thousands of children in what can generously be called “shelters”. Shootings of unarmed African Americans by police is an alarmingly regular occurrence. Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and all forms of hate are resurgent.

For over a decade, the political mechanisms of our democratic republic have been in perpetual deadlock, unable to address even the most urgent problems. Common sense issues, such as protecting schoolchildren from mass shootings, or giving people a decent minimum wage, are dying from neglect on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, resistance to measures to protect the environment is projected to cost America 10% of its economy by the end of the century.

The United States, the land of the free, is not even the freest country, nor the most equal. Increasingly, the United States is the outlier in the Western world, the notoriously unpopular kid in the school yard.

If you keep track of politics in this country, you probably already knew about most of these things.

So, what do we do? Well, politically, there is little we can do until 2020. But in the meantime, we as Americans need to radically rethink what our priorities ought to be for the future of this country. A reckoning for the political conscience of America is long overdue. The results of the 2018 midterm were encouraging, but they do not point to any imminent change which would ameliorate these problems. A radical change in our course needs to come, and needs to come soon.

For the time being, the United States remains in a slow-motion decline, the last superpower of a forgone age.

More than anything else, America needs to reject the isolationism and nationalism which is overcoming it, and open its heart, its mind, and its soul to the world. Americans need to realize that the world outside of America is vast and can teach us so much. To remain closed is to give in to narcissistic exceptionalism and a pompous unfounded sense of superiority. We need to get with the times, and make America welcome again on the world stage.

Americas rivals are prevailing today in no small part because they were willing to learn from our example, and from the example of others. It is time we start doing the same.


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