Is US fading as superpower?

Is US fading as superpower?
Critics argue that war in Iraq has sapped US ability to influence world events.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

For the past five years, since the 9/11 attacks, US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have helped shape key world events. But now, some influential media and political critics are saying that both men, and the US in particular, no longer can get the world to do as they wish. In a recent article entitled, "Axis of Feeble," the Economist argues that "the debacle in Iraq and problems at home have turned both leaders from soaring hawks into the lamest of ducks."

This week Mr Bush's popularity drooped to 31 percent in the polls; his party faces a beating and the possible loss of one or both houses of Congress in November's mid-term elections. In Britain meanwhile, much of the Labour Party, which Mr Blair reinvented and led through three consecutive election victories, wants to bundle its saviour into retirement and replace him with Gordon Brown.

Neither man is going right away. Mr Blair may hang on for another year. Unpopular lame duck though he may be, Mr Bush will stay in office until January 2009. And the path may not be all downhill: the dysfunctionality of the Democrats may yet let the Republicans limp home in the mid-terms. But an era is plainly drawing to an end. No matter how long they remain in office, the self-confident and often self-righteous political partnership that shaped the West's military response to Al Qaeda and led the march into Afghanistan and Iraq is now faltering.

For those who would "rejoice" at the end of this partnership, because of the idea that "in a world of one superpower, some say, people are safer when its president is too weak for foreign adventures," the Economist says they are wrong.

That Mr. Bush has made big mistakes in foreign policy is not in doubt. He oversold the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, bungled the aftermath, betrayed America's own principles in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, ignored Mr. Blair's pleas to restart peace diplomacy in Palestine. But America cannot fix any of these mistakes by folding its tents and slinking home to a grumpy isolation. On the contrary. In his belief that America needed to respond resolutely to the dangers of terrorism, tyranny and proliferation, Mr. Bush was mainly right. His chief failures stem from incompetent execution.


WBUR.org's OnPoint recently looked at the question "Is America losing its luster?" (audio link). The conclusion reached by panelists on the show was that while the US continues to be militarily powerful, the "notion of irresistible power" no longer is the case. David Kennedy, professor of history at Stanford University, argued that the US is learning "[t]he world is a recalcitant place and does not yield itself to us easily." He added that the notion the US could shape the world as it wished proved to be an illusion. The US is learning the lesson that all great powers have learned, Kennedy said, that no matter how much power a country has, the world will not just go along with its wishes.

Kennedy also argues that after World War II, the US used its position as a dominant power to work with other countries to create new global initiatives. But since the start of the Bush administration, the notions of cooperation, diplomacy, and multilaterialism have been replaced by a unilaterial approach that has led much of the world to "push back" or even work to "check our power."

United Press International reports that a new survey by the Pew Research Center, part of a new book "America against the World," also illustrates the problem for the US. More than 70 percent of the 91,000 people around the world interviewed for the survey believe that the US needs a rival superpower.

It found individualistic traits, such as US military operations, have turned off the rest of the world that considered the United States to be the light of democracy in the past. Suicide attacks on US forces in Iraq are OK according to half of Lebanese, Jordanians and Moroccans polled. The survey found anti-American sentiment is at its highest level ever – even higher than in 1983 when a Newsweek survey found about 25 percent of French, Japanese and German citizens were supportive of US policies.

President Bush's troubles at home are also playing a role in the global reaction to US intiatives. CBSNews.com's editorial director Dick Meyer wrote earlier this week that Bush is "a lame duck."

Short of another disaster on the scale of 9/11, George Bush no longer has the power, credibility or ability to effectively govern for the rest of his term in office. Contrary to what you hear on television, governing remains more important than campaigning. Government is more important than elections — to the extent the two can be differentiated anymore.

Bush's realm of efficacy will be limited to areas where he can make unilateral decisions, mostly in war and foreign policy. The tax cuts that oozed through Congress last week may well be his last "significant" piece of domestic legislation; I put quotations around significant because they are, in fact temporary. The entire menu of Bush tax tinkering is set to expire in 2010 on someone else's watch, an apt metaphor for this administration.

Jonah Goldberg, of the National Review, argues that President Bush should be getting a lot more credit on several fronts, especially how well the economy is doing. The war in Iraq, however, colors everything else the President does.

In the 1990s, the James Carville catechism "It's the economy, stupid" was hailed as the distilled essence of all electoral wisdom among liberals. Nonpartisan political scientists assure us that economic performance is the indispensable factor in presidential popularity. The main reason Bush doesn't get a lot of credit for the booming economy is almost surely Iraq. The war makes many people feel the country is "on the wrong track" - a view normally, but not necessarily, prompted by a weak economy.

Finally, David Wood writes in a column for the Newhouse News Service that while surveys like the Pew Research Center poll show that there is an ominous turn against the US, it's important to keep the big picture in mind.

No question this is bad news [the Pew survey] – but put it into perspective, urged Richard Solomon, the veteran diplomat and negotiator who is president of the US Institute of Peace, a federally funded think tank. "It's an attractive aspect of our culture that we worry about what other people think," Solomon said. "The French couldn't care less if they make people unhappy." Much of the enmity aimed at the United States is because Americans have tackled difficult jobs like removing Saddam Hussein from power, Solomon said, while the Germans and French took a pass. "One of the costs we bear for taking on these responsibilities is that people get nervous when they see an 800-pound gorilla willing to jump. "But being liked is important," he added, because public support goes either "to us or to the bad guys."