Foreign Affairs | A self-doubting superpower

The superpower of self-doubt

法里德·扎卡里亚（Fareed Zakaria）

A vast majority of Americans believe their country is in decline. In 2018, the Pew Research Center asked Americans how they thought their country would be doing in 2050. 54% of respondents believe that the U.S. economy will become weaker, and even more, 60% of respondents, agree that the importance of the United States in the world will decrease. This shouldn't come as a surprise. For some time now, a feeling has permeated the American political landscape that the country was heading in the wrong direction. According to a long-running Gallup poll, the proportion of Americans who are "satisfied" with their current situation has not exceeded 50% in the past two decades. Currently it is 20%.

For decades, one way to consider who would win the presidential election was to ask: Who is the more optimistic candidate? From John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, the winners seem to be those who express the brighter opinions. But in 2016, America elected a politician whose campaign was premised on doom and gloom. Donald Trump stressed that the U.S. economy is in a "dismal state," the United States is "despised, ridiculed, and blackmailed" abroad, and the world is a "mess." In his inaugural address, he referred to "American carnage." His current campaign repeats these core themes. Three months before announcing his candidacy for president, he released a video titled "A Nation in Decline."

Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign was far more traditional. He has repeatedly extolled America's virtues and often recited the familiar line: "Our best days are ahead of us." But much of his policy is based on this statement: even under a Democratic president, and even The country has also been following the wrong course under Obama-Biden. In an April 2023 speech, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan criticized "quite a lot of international economic policy over the past few decades," blaming globalization and liberalization for America's The industrial base is hollowed out, exporting American jobs and weakening some core industries. He later wrote an article in "Foreign Affairs" and worried that "although the United States is still the world's leading power, some of its most core strengths have shrunk." This is a familiar criticism of the neoliberal era, in which a few prosper and many are left behind. (The article by Jack Sullivan quoted here, originally titled " The Sources of American Power ", appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of "Foreign Affairs". - Translation Note)

This isn't just criticism. Many of the Biden administration's policies attempt to repair the apparent hollowing out of the United States, promoting the logic that American industries and people must be protected and helped by tariffs, subsidies, and a variety of other support measures. In part, this line of thinking may be a political response to the reality that some Americans have been effectively left behind and happen to live in key swing states, making winning over them and their votes crucial . But the remedies are far more than political red meat, they are far-reaching and significant. The current U.S. import tariffs are the highest since the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. Washington's economic policies have become increasingly defensive, designed to protect a country that is thought to have failed over the past few decades.

An American grand strategy based on faulty assumptions will lead the United States and the world astray. The United States consistently leads across a range of measures relative to its major competitors and rivals. But it does face a very different international landscape. Globally, many major powers are growing in strength and confidence, and they will not meekly agree to U.S. directives. Some of these countries actively seek to challenge U.S. dominance and the order built around it. In these new circumstances, Washington needs a new strategy, one that understands that it remains a formidable force but operates in a world that is far less peaceful. The challenge in Washington is to run fast, but don't panic. But today, it is still gripped by panic and self-doubt.

Still the most powerful country

For all the talk of American dysfunction and decline, the reality is very different, especially compared to other wealthy countries. In 1990, per capita income (measured by purchasing power) in the United States was 17% higher than that of Japan and 24% higher than that of Western Europe; today, it is 54% and 32% higher respectively. In 2008, the U.S. and Eurozone economies were roughly the same size in current prices; today, the U.S. economy is almost twice the size of the Eurozone. Those who hold Washington’s policies responsible for America’s decades of stagnation might be asked a question: With which advanced economy of the past three decades would the United States want to trade places?

In terms of hard power, the country is also in an extraordinary position. Economic historian Angus Maddison believes that the greatest country in the world is often the country with the strongest leadership in the most important technological fields at that time, such as the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. Britain and Twentieth-Century America. America may even be more powerful in the twenty-first century than it was in the twentieth. For example, compare its status in the 1970s and 1980s with its status today. Back in the day, leading technology companies such as manufacturers of consumer electronics, automobiles, and computers could be found in the United States as well as in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea. In fact, in 1989, only four of the ten most valuable companies in the world were American, the other six were Japanese. Today, nine of the ten most valuable companies in the world are from the United States.

What's more, the combined market capitalization of the ten most valuable U.S. technology companies exceeds the value of the Canadian, French, German and British stock markets combined. If the United States completely dominates many technological fields today centered on digitalization and the Internet, then it seems to be expected to succeed in future industrial fields such as artificial intelligence and bioengineering. In 2023, as of this writing, the United States has attracted $26 billion in venture capital for artificial intelligence startups, approximately 6 times that of second-ranked China. In the biotech sector, North America accounts for 38% of global revenue, while Asia as a whole accounts for 24%.

Additionally, the United States leads in energy, which historically has been a key attribute of a nation's strength. Today, the United States is the world's largest oil and gas producer, surpassing even Russia and Saudi Arabia. The United States is also undergoing a massive expansion of green energy production, stemming in part from incentives in the Inflation Lowering Act of 2022. As for finance, look at the list of banks that are “systemically important globally” by the Financial Stability Board, a Swiss-based regulator; the United States has twice as many such banks as the next country, China. The US dollar remains the currency used in nearly 90% of international transactions. Although central bank dollar reserves have declined over the past two decades, none of its rival currencies even come close to the dollar's status.

Finally, if population determines the fate of a country, then the United States has a bright future. Among the world's advanced economies, the U.S.'s demographic characteristics remain fairly healthy, despite deterioration in recent years. The U.S. fertility rate is currently about 1.7 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1. However, this figure is still favorable compared to Germany's 1.5, China's 1.1 and South Korea's 0.8. Crucially, the United States compensated for its low fertility rate through immigration and successful assimilation. The country receives about a million legal immigrants each year, a number that fell during the Trump administration and the pandemic but has since risen. One-fifth of all people on Earth who live outside their country of birth live in the United States, which has an immigrant population nearly four times that of the second-largest immigrant center, Germany. For this reason, China, Japan, and Europe are expected to experience population decline over the next few decades, while the United States is expected to maintain growth.

Of course, America has a lot of problems. Which country doesn’t have this? But it has the resources to solve these problems far more easily than most other countries. For example, despite various government stimulus measures, the legacy of China's one-child policy, plummeting birth rates, is proving impossible to reverse. Moreover, the country does not intend to accept immigrants as compensation because the government wishes to maintain a single culture. In contrast, America's weaknesses often have ready-made solutions. The country has a heavy debt burden and rising deficits. But its overall tax burden is low compared with other rich countries. The U.S. government can raise enough revenue to stabilize its fiscal position and maintain relatively low tax rates.

A simple step could be to introduce VAT. Some form of VAT exists in every other major economy in the world, usually at a rate of around 20%. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 5% VAT would raise $3 trillion over ten years, and higher rates could obviously raise even more.

This is not a picture of structural failure leading inevitably to collapse.

Wandering among several worlds

Despite its power, the United States does not dominate a unipolar world. The 1990s were a world without geopolitical rivals. The Soviet Union is collapsing (and soon its successor, Russia, will be faltering as well), and China is still an infant on the international stage, with a GDP that accounts for less than 2% of the global economy.

Think about what Washington could have done in that era. To liberate Kuwait, it launched a war against Iraq with broad international support, including diplomatic approval from Moscow. It ended the Yugoslav wars. It convinced the Palestine Liberation Organization to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel, and it persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Arafat on the White House lawn. In 1994, even North Korea seemed willing to sign a U.S. framework agreement and end its nuclear weapons program (this was only a brief lapse into friendly cooperation, which it soon retreated from). When the financial crisis hit Mexico hard in 1994 and East Asian countries in 1997, the United States organized large-scale bailouts to save the situation. All roads lead to Washington.

Today, the United States faces a world with real competitors and more countries actively asserting their interests, often with disdain for Washington. To understand this new dynamic, don’t think about Russia or China, think about Turkey. Thirty years ago, Turkey was an ally that respected the United States and relied on Washington for its security and prosperity. Whenever Turkey experiences a cyclical economic crisis, the United States will lend a helping hand to help it get out of trouble. Today, Turkey is a much wealthier and more politically mature country, run by a strong, popular, populist leader in Erdogan. It often defies the United States, even when demands are made at the highest levels.

Washington was unprepared for this turn of events. In 2003, the United States planned to invade Iraq from two fronts: Kuwait in the south and Turkey in the north, but failed to win Turkey's support in advance because the United States assumed that it could obtain the country's consent as it had done in the past. The fact that when the Pentagon made its request, the Turkish parliament declined, the U.S. invasion had to proceed in a hasty and ill-planned manner that may have had something to do with how events unfolded. In 2017, Turkey signed an agreement to purchase a missile system from Russia, a brazen move for a NATO member. Two years later, Turkey once again thumbed its nose at the United States, attacking Kurdish forces in Syria, where U.S. allies had just helped defeat the Islamic State.

Scholars are debating whether the world is currently unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar, and there are metrics one can use to explain each situation. Taking into account all hard power indicators, the United States remains the single most powerful country. For example, the United States currently has 11 aircraft carriers in active service, while China only has two. Looking at countries like India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey flexing their muscles, it’s easy to imagine a multipolar world. But China is clearly the second most powerful country, and the gap between the top two powers and the rest of the world is huge: China’s economic and military spending exceeds the next three countries combined. The gap between the world's top two powers and everyone else is the principle that led scholar Hans Morgenthau to popularize the term "bipolarity" after World War II. He believed that as Britain's economic and military power collapsed, the United States and the Soviet Union were the alliance ahead of every other nation. Extending this logic to today, one might conclude that the world has once again fallen into polarization. (Hans Morgenthau, born in 1904 and died in 1980, American international relations scholar. - Translation and Annotation)

But China's power also has its limitations, which stem from factors other than its demographic situation. It has only one treaty ally, North Korea, and a few informal allies such as Russia and Pakistan. The United States has dozens of allies. In the Middle East, China has not been particularly active, despite its recent success in presiding over the restoration of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In Asia, it is economically ubiquitous but faces ongoing resistance from countries including Australia, India, Japan and South Korea. In recent years, Western countries have become wary of China's growing technological and economic power and have taken actions to limit its access.

China’s example helps clarify the difference between power and influence. Power consists of hard resources in economic, technological, and military terms. The influence is not so real and tangible. It's the ability to make another country do something it wouldn't otherwise do. Roughly speaking, it means tilting another country's policies in your favor. That's ultimately where strength comes from: being able to turn it into influence. According to this standard, both the United States and China face a world full of constraints.

Other countries improved in terms of resources, which fueled their self-confidence, pride, and nationalism. In turn, they may assert themselves more forcefully on the world stage. This applies not only to the smaller countries surrounding China, but also to many countries that have long been subservient to the United States. There is also a new group of middle powers, such as Brazil, India and Indonesia, which are looking for their own unique strategies. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has pursued a policy of "pluralistic alliances", choosing when and where to pursue common goals with Russia or the United States. In the BRICS group, it has even formed an alliance with China, and as recently as 2020, it had a deadly border conflict with China.

In his 1999 article "The Lonely Superpower," published in Foreign Affairs, political scientist Samuel Huntington attempted to move beyond unipolarity to describe an emerging world order. The term he gave was "uni-multipolar," an extremely awkward phrasing that captured something real.

In 2008, when I tried to describe the emerging reality, I called it the "post-American world" because the most striking feature of it that struck me was that as the unipolarity of the United States began to decline, every country tried to control the world. This still seems to be the best way to describe the current international system.

new disorder

Consider the two major current international crises: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, his country has suffered humiliation in the unipolar era. Since then, largely due to rising energy prices, Russia has been able to return to the world stage and become a superpower. Putin has rebuilt the strength of the Russian state, which can draw revenue from its vast natural resources. Now he wants to undo the concessions Moscow made during the unipolar era when it was still weak. Russia has sought to regain some of the territories of the Russian Empire that are at the forefront of Putin's vision of a Greater Russia: first Ukraine, but also Georgia, which it invaded in 2008. Moldova could be the next target, with Russia already gaining ground in its breakaway republic of Transnistria.

Putin's aggression in Ukraine is based on the argument that the United States has lost interest in its European allies and that they are weak, divided and dependent on Russian energy. He annexed Crimea and Ukraine's eastern border region in 2014, then decided to attack Ukraine head-on just after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which carries Russian gas to Germany, was completed. He hopes to conquer the country and reverse Russia's most significant setback in the unipolar era. Putin misjudged the situation, but it was not a crazy move. After all, his previous aggression had met with little resistance.

In the Middle East, over the past 15 years, the US government has been hoping to withdraw militarily from the region, which has affected the geopolitical atmosphere there. The policy began under President George W. Bush, who was punished by the disastrous war he launched in Iraq. This policy continued under President Barack Obama. Obama made clear that it was necessary to reduce U.S. influence in the region so that Washington could confront the more pressing matter of China's rise. This strategy is promoted as a "pivot to Asia", but it is also a strategy of "pivot away from the Middle East" because the Obama administration believes that the United States has invested too much military investment in the Middle East. In the summer of 2021, Washington's sudden and complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan highlighted this shift.

The result is not a happy new balance of power, but regional players actively seeking to fill the vacuum. Iran expanded its influence thanks to the Iraq war, which upset the balance of power between Sunnis and Shiites in the region. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime, Iraq is ruled by a Shiite majority whose leaders include many with close ties to Iran. This expansion of Iranian influence continues into Syria, where Tehran supports the government of Bashar al-Assad, allowing it to survive a brutal insurgency. Iran supports the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Israeli-occupied territories.

The Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and some other moderate Sunni countries were frightened by this and began to form a tacit cooperation with Israel, another enemy of Iran. This rapidly growing alliance, with the 2020 Abraham Accords as a major milestone, seems destined to culminate in the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The obstacle has always been the Palestinian issue, but Washington's retreat and Tehran's advance have made the Arabs happy to ignore what was once a central issue. Iran's ally Hamas, who was closely following the developments, decided to set fire to the house, thrusting the group and its cause back into the spotlight.

With the rise of China's power, the most significant challenge to the current international order comes from Asia. If China attempts to use force to reunify Taiwan, thereby testing the resolve of the United States and its allies, this could trigger another crisis far larger than the previous two. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hesitancy to use force so far is a reminder that, unlike Russia, Iran and Hamas, his country has benefited greatly from close integration with the world and its economy. But whether this restriction can be maintained is still a difficult problem to be solved. Compared to twenty years ago, the possibility of mainland China invading Taiwan has increased today. This once again shows that the unipolar world is weakening and the post-American era is rising.

But in another sign of declining U.S. influence in the emerging order, informal security guarantees may give way to more formal guarantees. Saudi Arabia has lived under the U.S. security umbrella for decades, but it was a gentleman's agreement. Washington has made no promises or guarantees to Riyadh. If the Saudi monarchy was threatened, it could only hope that the then-President of the United States would come to the rescue. In fact, in 1990, when Iraq threatened Saudi Arabia after invading Kuwait, Bush did dispatch military force to rescue him, but he was not required to do so by any treaty or agreement.

Today, Saudi Arabia considers itself much more powerful and is being aggressively courted by another world power, China, by far its largest customer. Under its assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom has become more demanding, demanding from Washington security guarantees that extend to its NATO allies and the technology to build a nuclear industry.

It is unclear whether the United States will agree to those demands (the issue is related to the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel), but the very fact that the Saudi demands are being taken seriously suggests that the dynamics of the great powers are changing.

maintain strength

In many ways, the international order that the United States created and maintained is being challenged. But it remains the most powerful player in the order. Its share of the global economy remains roughly where it was in 1980 or 1990.

Perhaps more importantly, it amassed more allies. By the end of the 1950s, the alliance of the "free world" that fought and won the Cold War consisted of NATO members, namely the United States, Canada, 11 Western European countries, Greece and Turkey, plus Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. Today, the coalition supporting Ukraine's military or imposing sanctions on Russia has grown to include almost all countries in Europe, as well as a handful of others. Overall, "West+" includes 60% of the world's total economic output and 65% of its military spending.

The challenge of countering Russian expansionism is real and daunting. Before the war in Ukraine, Russia's economy was ten times the size of Ukraine's, its population was almost four times that of Ukraine's, and its military-industrial complex was massive. But its acts of aggression cannot be allowed to succeed. One of the core features of the liberal international order established after World War II is that the international community does not recognize borders changed through brutal military force. Such successful aggressions have been rare since 1945, in stark contrast to earlier times, when borders around the world frequently changed hands due to war and conquest. Russia's success in its naked conquest would break hard-won precedent.

China poses a different challenge. Whatever its precise trajectory in the coming years, China is a superpower. Its economy accounts for nearly 20% of the global economy, and its military spending is second only to the United States. While less influential than the United States on the global stage, its ability to influence countries around the world has grown, in large part because of its massive loans, grants and aid. But China is not a spoiler like Russia. It has grown rich and powerful in the current international system and is far less comfortable overturning it.

More broadly, China is looking for ways to increase its power. If it believes that it can find no other way to increase its power other than as a disruptor, then it will disrupt the situation. The United States should embrace China's legitimate efforts to increase its influence in line with its growing economic power, while curbing its illegitimate efforts. Over the past few years, Beijing has seen how its overly aggressive foreign policy can backfire. It has now retreated from its assertive "wolf diplomacy" and some of Xi Jinping's earlier arrogant remarks about a "new era" of Chinese dominance have given way to an acknowledgment of American superiority and the China problem. Xi Jinping appears to be seeking a temporary compromise with the United States, at least for tactical reasons. In September 2023 (thought it was October - translation annotation), he told a group of visiting U.S. senators: "We have a thousand reasons to make Sino-U.S. relations good, and there is not a single reason to ruin Sino-U.S. relations."

Regardless of China's intentions, the United States has significant structural advantages. It enjoys a unique geographical and geopolitical advantage, surrounded by two vast oceans and two friendly neighbours. And China is rising on a crowded and hostile continent. Every time it demonstrates its power, it alienates a powerful neighbor such as India, Japan and Vietnam. Several countries in the region, such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, are de facto treaty allies of the United States and have U.S. military presence. These dynamics surround China.

Washington’s alliances in Asia and elsewhere serve as bulwarks against adversaries. To maintain this reality, the United States must make strengthening alliances a centerpiece of its foreign policy. In fact, that is already at the core of Biden’s approach to foreign policy. He has repaired relationships that were damaged under the Trump administration and strengthened those that were not. He has put in place checks on China's power and strengthened alliances in Asia, but he has also begun to build a working relationship with Beijing. The speed and skill with which he responded to the Ukraine crisis must have surprised Putin, who now faces a West that has weaned itself off dependence on Russian energy and imposed some of the toughest sanctions in history on a major power.

None of these measures eliminates Ukraine's need to win on the battlefield, but they create an atmosphere in which "West+" has significant influence and Russia faces a bleak long-term future.

The dangers of American decline theory

The biggest flaw in Trump’s and Biden’s approaches to foreign policy — and the two do converge here — stems from their shared pessimism.

Both countries believe that the United States is an important victim of the international economic system it created. Both believe that in a world of open markets and free trade, the United States is incapable of competing with other countries. It would be reasonable to place some limits on China's access to America's most high-tech exports, but Washington has gone further, imposing tariffs on commodities and goods from its closest allies, from lumber to steel to washing machines. It requires that U.S. government funds be used to "Buy American," terms even more restrictive than tariffs. Tariffs raise the cost of imported goods; Buy American prevents foreign goods from being available at any price. Even smart policies like a push for green energy are being eroded by pervasive protectionism that alienates America’s friends and allies.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization, believes rich countries are acting with extreme hypocrisy. The Western world has spent decades urging developing countries to implement liberal reforms and participate in an open world economy, and condemned various countries' protectionism, subsidies and industrial policies, but it no longer practices the policies it has long advocated. Some wealthy countries that have developed into great powers in terms of wealth and power under such a system have decided not to serve as wedding dresses for other countries. In her words, they “no longer want to compete on a level playing field, but would rather move to a system based on strength rather than rules.”

U.S. officials spend considerable time and energy discussing the need to maintain a rules-based international system. The core of this system is the open trade framework established by the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement and the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Politicians emerging from World War II had witnessed the consequences of victorious nationalism and protectionism and were determined to prevent the world from repeating the same mistakes. They succeeded, creating a world of peace and prosperity in every corner of the earth. The free trade system they designed made poor countries rich and powerful, making it less attractive for everyone to wage war and try to conquer territory.

A rules-based order is not just about trade, but also about international treaties, procedures and norms: a picture of a world that highlights a degree of order and justice rather than the law of the jungle. Here too, America is better at preaching than practicing. The war in Iraq seriously violated the United Nations principle of opposing unprovoked aggression. Washington systematically picks and chooses which international conventions it abides by and which it ignores. Beijing has criticized China for violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) when it claims waters in East Asia, even though Washington itself has never ratified the treaty. When Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran that all other major powers had signed, he destroyed hopes for global cooperation on a key security challenge, despite evidence that Tehran was adhering to its terms. He then maintained secondary sanctions to force other major powers not to trade with Iran, a move that abused the power of the dollar and accelerated efforts by Beijing, Moscow and even European governments to find alternative dollar payment systems. In a unipolar world, U.S. unilateralism is tolerated. Today, even among America’s closest allies, this unilateralism is creating the tools to evade, counter, and challenge it.

Part of America's charm is that the country has never been an imperialist power on the scale of Britain or France. It is a colony in itself. Far from the main arena of global power politics, it entered the two world wars of the twentieth century late and reluctantly. It rarely seeks territory when venturing overseas.

But perhaps most importantly, after 1945, it crystallized a vision of the world that took into account the interests of others. The world order it proposes, establishes and underwrites is good for the United States, but also good for the rest of the world. It seeks to help other countries gain more wealth, confidence and dignity. This remains America's greatest strength. People around the world may want loans and aid from China, but they have a sense that China's worldview is primarily intended to make China great. Beijing often talks about "win-win cooperation," and Washington has a track record of actually delivering on it.

keep the faith

If the United States fails to fulfill this grand, open, and generous vision of the world out of fear and pessimism, it will lose many of its natural advantages. For too long, it has rationalized individual actions contrary to its professed principles as exceptions that it must implement in order to stabilize its own position and, therefore, the order as a whole. To get quick results, it breaks the rules. But you can't destroy that rules-based system to save it.

The rest of the world is watching and learning. Countries have entered a competitive race and are formulating subsidies, preferential policies and barriers to protect their economies. Countries are violating international rules and justifying Washington's hypocrisy. Unfortunately, this pattern includes the former president’s lack of respect for democratic norms. Poland's ruling party has spun Trumpian conspiracy theories after its latest election defeat. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's claims of electoral fraud drove his supporters to launch a Capitol Hill-style attack on the capital.

The most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order comes not from China, Russia or Iran, but from the United States. If the United States is consumed by excessive fears about its own decline and retreats from its leadership in world affairs, it will open a power vacuum around the world and embolden all kinds of powers and players to try to intervene in the chaos. We have already witnessed what the Middle East is like in the post-American era. Imagine a similar situation unfolding in Europe and Asia, but this time with superpowers rather than regional powers causing the disruption, with consequences that would shake the world. It is disconcerting to observe that some elements of the Republican Party have returned to the isolationism that characterized the 1930s, when the party was staunchly opposed to U.S. foreign intervention, even as events in Europe and Asia raged on.

Since 1945, the United States has debated the nature of its engagement with the world, but not whether it should engage in the first place. If the country does turn inward, it could signal a retreat from the forces of order and progress. Washington can still set the agenda, build alliances, help solve global problems, and deter aggression while using limited resources well below the levels it spent during the Cold War. If order collapses, rogue powers rise, and the open world economy collapses or becomes closed, it will have to pay a much higher price.

Since 1945, the United States has been at the center of a new kind of international relations that has grown and expanded in strength and depth over the past few decades. This system serves the interests of the vast majority of countries in the world, as well as the interests of the United States. It faces new pressures and challenges, but many powerful countries benefit from peace, prosperity and a world of rules and standards. Those who challenge the current system have no alternative vision that can unite the world; they seek only a narrow advantage for themselves.

Despite domestic difficulties, the supreme United States remains uniquely equipped and positioned to play a central role in sustaining this international system. As long as the United States does not lose confidence in its own plans, the current international order can thrive in the coming decades.

(The author is an American TV political commentary program host, and his recent book Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present will be published soon. The original title of this article is " The Self-Doubting Superpower ", which appeared in the January/February 2024 issue of the US "Foreign Affairs" . The translator listens to the bridge, segments the original text, and proofreads the translation initially formed by the machine.)