Giant Cut Down to Size, Or America Playing Short-handed?

[unhappycamper]

Giant Cut Down to Size, Or America Playing Short-handed?
SME, Slovakia
By Tomáš Lisánsky
Translated By Mark Nuckols
14 November 2010
Edited by Mark DeLucas

Is the Obama administration a presage of the U.S.’s new role in the world? And does the tea party movement wish to resurrect something irretrievably dead?

American politics is distinguished by many characteristic traits, thanks to which the average European perceives it as peculiar, idealist and even downright naïve in its faith in the goodness of man and his power as an individual. These specific traits have created in the U.S., from its very beginnings, various deviations and crises (e.g., the slaveholding of the “founding fathers,” creators of the famous “All men are created equal”; or the fight against racism, which lasted up until the 1960s). In the spirit of these phrases, America pursued its domestic and, by its rejection of isolationism during World War I, its foreign policy as well. And let us agree that, whether we are fans of America or not, it has quite fundamentally and significantly changed the world in this manner.

However, after the Cold War and the end of the bipolar world, the U.S. has not been able to find its new place. Under George Bush, Sr. it remained an America of bold mottoes, but those mottoes were already disputable and outdated. When President Bush, Sr. expressed his desire for a “new world order,” he aroused polemics on whether the world would grow weary of this order, even supposing it was feasible. The vision of American-Soviet divisions doing battle in Iraq or the suitability of the U.S. for the role of the global cop called to mind the unhappy times of the Vietnam War and the antiquated philosophy of Wilsonianism, slowly giving way to a global balance of power.

The arrival of Bill Clinton meant for America and its denizens a time of prosperity and peace, since the U.S. more or less managed not to get itself involved in any conflicts (other than the incident in Somalia, when a unit of American Rangers and Army Delta Force came under siege during the abortive operation aimed at capturing Mohammed Farah Aidid, one of the key “warlords” in a Somalia which remains dysfunctional to this day — everyone has seen the wonderful film “Black Hawk Down,” the title of which epitomizes the entire operation). This prosperity, however, left the United States unprepared for the worst crisis of American power in the world, a crisis which has continued into the present.

On Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York, the U.S. closed ranks and George Bush, Jr. declared war on global terrorism. Bush’s genes, to put it succinctly, couldn’t be denied and together with the trauma following the aggression of the Islamic terrorists, created a destructive combination. America consequently got entangled in the two “Bush wars,” one of which is destructive in terms of its doubtful results and utter lack of gains for the U.S., the other unwinnable by any president or general. Both wars have nonetheless robbed America of its energy and money in a multi-polar world, which doesn’t remotely resemble the one in which America was an excellent player and leader. China is smothering America in spite of its economy, which rests on a shaky foundation — but China nevertheless fulfills its task of weakening America by 100 percent. New powers like India and Brazil are practicing nuclear diplomacy and, along with Turkey, are courting Iran. Israel's casual assumption that America will stand continually by its side leads Israel at times to make unnecessary mistakes and escalate tension in the Middle East. And finally, America is being weakened by the European Union, which has sent out signals of independence and sparked something of a renaissance on the old European continent.