[Excerpt from Philip H. Gordon, Sydney Stein, Jr., Scholar at the Brookings Institution and Frank E. and Arthur Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University. He served as National Security Adviser to the Vice President in the Biden administration and as White House Coordinator for the Middle East in the Obama administration.]
Heutzutage sind sich die Amerikaner in Fragen der Politik und der internationalen Beziehungen kaum einig. Es besteht jedoch ein wachsender Konsens über zwei grundlegende Punkte. Zum einen ist die seit langem bestehende liberale Weltordnung – die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gegründet wurde und auf einem System von Bündnissen unter Führung der USA, multilateralen Institutionen, relativ offenem Handel und der Verteidigung von Regeln und Normen wie staatlicher Souveränität, Nichtangriffsfreiheit und Schifffahrtsfreiheit basiert – nun tot und begraben. Die Logik besagt, dass es seit einiger Zeit nachgelassen hat, aber die zweite Trump-Regierung erweist sich als der letzte Nagel im Sarg. Der zweite Punkt, an dem sich ein Konsens abzeichnet, ist, dass eine grundlegende Neugestaltung dieser Ordnung unerlässlich geworden ist. Die amerikanische Rolle bei der Aufrechterhaltung der alten Ordnung war kontraproduktiv und unhaltbar geworden, und es ist längst an der Zeit, dass die Amerikaner die Lasten abwerfen, die erforderlich sind, um zu versuchen, sie aufrechtzuerhalten.
Das Problem bei dieser Denkweise besteht darin, dass keine der beiden Behauptungen wahr ist und eine Annahme des Gegenteils zu einer gefährlichen, sich selbst erfüllenden Prophezeiung führen könnte. US-Präsident Donald Trump glaubt sicherlich nicht an eine liberale, regelbasierte, von den USA geführte Ordnung, und es gibt keine Garantie dafür, dass die Ordnung den Schaden, den seine Regierung ihr zufügt, vier Jahre lang überstehen wird. Gleichzeitig wäre es verfrüht, der fatalistischen Schlussfolgerung zu erliegen, dass es nach Trump keine Hoffnung auf eine prinzipientreuere und verlässlichere US-Führung gibt, dessen Politik nun viele Amerikaner daran erinnert, was sie verlieren, wenn diese Führung aufgegeben wird. Noch fehlgeleiteter wäre die Annahme, dass die von den USA geführte Weltordnung, wenn sie tatsächlich im Sterben liegt, nicht schmerzlich vermisst wird, wenn sie nicht mehr existiert. Um das zu paraphrasieren, was der britische Premierminister Winston Churchill einst über die Demokratie sagte: Eine von den USA geführte Weltordnung ist wahrscheinlich die schlechteste aller möglichen Ordnungen – abgesehen von allen anderen, die jemals ausprobiert wurden.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dont-give-global-order
9 Kommentare
America is too polarised a state to be considered stable.
the 2 political parties mean that we are just 4 years away from another trump.
The crackdown on press freedom is Russian/Iranian-esque.
The rules and laws that are there to prevent trump from destroying things have largely been ignored, so they don’t serve much purpose.
The US will never be trusted again, and the move away from fossil fuels by Europe and China mean, they will not have to.
At the current fossil fuels extraction rate, the US have only 10-15 years of reserves left anyway.
*to succumb to the fatalistic conclusion that there is no hope for more principled and reliable U.S. leadership after Trump*
But this is the reality I’m afraid. The faith in a reliable US is pretty much gone.
The authors are implying that Trump is a one-off, an anomaly that will not happen again. But first of all, Trump was elected 2 times. The second time was after all his ‚issues‘ were public knowledge. American voters seem to like a figure like Trump as president. They will vote for the next charismatic charlatan and criminal without issue.
Secondly, it’s not just Trump. There’s the authors of Project 2025, the politically powerful Heritage Foundation, that has gone full mask-off. And then there are the far-right billionaires and their media empires. Their plans do not entail any *principled and reliable US leadership.* No, they want to destroy the current world order. Starting with their former allies, Canada and the EU. Why would they trust US leadership, that can apparently change 180 degrees, depending on who’s in power? Especially in a 2 party system, where the odds are 50% of getting another power hungry fascist behind the wheel, in a country where all checks and balances seem to have failed. That even goes for a majority of judges in the highest court of the US. Some of them openly support a one party rule.
Besides, the rest of the Republicans have proven to be meek followers of the party line, or enthousiastic fascists. They have the power to stop Trump, but haven’t intervened. By choice.
It’s only a matter of time before another Trump gets into power.
How can any country afford to rely on such a country and its leadership?
What is left of the US to hope for a more principled and reliable U.S. leadership?
Sovereignty for civilized states and not so much sovereignty for uncivilized states, full sovereignty for the liberal West but not for the rest.
The liberal international order—anchored by American hubris is going to run into the zero-sum security problem, China got too powerful for the US liking and the Russia – NATO thing.
True, lifts too many boats – everywhere. We all have a single problem tho – too many billionaires bending the narrative and the will of govts .. everywhere
There will be a rules-based global order again, but it won’t be the USA leading it.
(Or Russia, or the billionaires)
This article is representative of the bargaining stage of grief.
However, the problem is that the American led order was always underpinned by the assumption that America likes being the top dog. To give an analogy, if I’m afraid that you’re shooting your own foot, then we are not meeting in my living room where I have expensive carpet.
I personally don’t think it is a good thing for this global order to rely too much on a single country, whether the US or another, because when that country fails to uphold that order, there is no one to replace it. Single point of failure and all that. A multipolar world is likely to be much more stable than one dominated by the US for obvious reasons, even if the US doesn’t like it.
Also, this has increasingly been an US-led Global Disorder, particularly in the Middle East. The US was not exactly doing a good job of maintaining this global order even before Trump came to power.
The problem with this assessment is assuming America will have a choice in the matter
The liberal global order depended on a America that was present, capable, and willing to uphold it, with a network of alliances across Europe, Africa, and Asia who were also willing to uphold it, whether for reasons of self-interest, genuine interest, or long-standing friendships with the US.
However, Trump 1 rocked those beliefs to the core, as the world got a taste of what kind of leader Americans could elect, and with Trump 2 now every world leader has to contend with the fact that every 4 years they could end up with a new Trump leading the most powerful country in the world.
And given Trump has proven to be just as if not more dangerous to his allies than his enemies, every one of America’s allies are now going to have to re-evaluate whether it is worthwhile or safe to keep being aligned to America, to find someone else to be allied too or to try and go their own way.
Look at the Strait of Hormuz, a decade ago when we were gathering a coalition to fight ISIS, there was barely any hesitation amongst our European allies, 2 decades ago leading up to Iraq we formed the Coalition of the willing that included all of Europe sans France. Today, in what is probably the worst geopolitical crisis of the decade barring a countries full-scale collapse, Europe has been dragging their feet to do even the bare minimum of protecting their own interests in the region, let alone participate in whatever campaign would be necessary to secure the strait from Iran, a country who has very few friends internationally and is regarded by almost everyone as a terrorist regime.
America has lost a significant amount of its influence in a handful of years, and its entirely because we have proven ourselves to be unreliable and idiotic, picking fights with our allies and cozying up to long-time enemies for no good reason. Any future President is going to be fighting uphill to restore our place in the world, and frankly, that may never happen.
The internal polarization of US politics, racial tensions and wealth disparity creates a charged environment that is unpredictable. If the US addresses these concerns internally perhaps his argument is valid but as it stands the rest of the world doesn’t know which extremist group is going to seize power next.
The other thing is that the old order isnt good enough anymore. There are many countries and groups that have been penalized by it and they won’t want to go back to it.