America the dispensable

"A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US? they asked. Today the evidence of foreign cooperation to reduce American primacy is everywhere - from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.

It is true that the US remains the only country capable of projecting military power throughout the world. But unipolarity in the military sphere, narrowly defined, is not preventing the rapid development of multipolarity in the geopolitical and economic arenas - far from it. And the other great powers, with the exception of the UK, are content to let the US waste blood and treasure on its doomed attempt at hegemony in the Middle East.
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Ironically, the US, having won the cold war, is adopting the strategy that led the Soviet Union to lose it: hoping that raw military power will be sufficient to intimidate other great powers alienated by its belligerence. To compound the irony, these other great powers are drafting the blueprints for new international institutions and alliances. That is what the US did during and after the second world war.

But that was a different America, led by wise and constructive statesmen such as Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who wrote of being "present at the creation". The bullying approach of the Bush administration has ensured that the US will not be invited to take part in designing the international architecture of Europe and Asia in the 21st century. This time, the US is absent at the creation."

This from a must-read article by Michael Lind published in the Financial Times on January 25th.

The true legacy of the neo-conservative takeover of Republican foreign policy, supported by the evangelical fervor of the Republican Christian Right - both epitomized in George W. Bush - will be the demise of the United States' role as the preeminent superpower in the world. It's late and I've still got canvass packets to make tonight for the campaign, so I can't take the time right this moment to explain all of the reasons the trends are bad for America, but the implications for our way of life - particularly the assumption among the upwardly mobile middle class (of which me and my family are certainly members) that our children's economic opportunities will be better than our own - are immense and almost entirely negative. I will come back to this when time permits, but in the meantime: thanks, Dubya. Caleb will thank you, too, I'm sure.