Reality CheckMarch/April 2020 47
with China, have demurred to Washing-
ton’s more confrontational approach
toward Beijing. With its voters over-
whelmed by the burden o global leader-
ship and its alliances fraying, the United
States lacks the domestic and coalitional
unity necessary to pursue a confronta-
tional and costly foreign policy.
Some may dispute that so much has
really changed. After all, many measures
o national power (±½Ä per capita, total
defense spending, and the metrics o
economic innovation, to name just a few)
suggest that the United States remains a
geopolitical titan. And many people
hope that perhaps after a brie dalliance
with reckless chauvinism, democratic
peoples around the world will decide they
prefer the old, safer order.
But this optimism is misguided.
Opponents o the U.S.-led order
around the world have discovered that
they can resist U.S. inuence even i
they lag far behind the United States in
aggregate power. Recall that the Soviet
Union competed with the United
States for more than four decades
without ever having the equivalent o
more than 40 percent o U.S. ±½Ä. China
already vastly exceeds that threshold.
The United States’ great-power rivals
have the added advantage o being able
to apply their military and political
resources close to home, whereas
Washington must spread its capabili-
ties across the world i it is to maintain
its current status. Nor will the domes-
tic backlash against the liberal order
subside quickly. Even i voters decide
to reject the most extreme and incom-
petent populist standard-bearers, the
sources o their dissatisfaction will
remain, and more eective leaders will
arise to give voice to it.power ush with pride in its achievements
and brimming with a sense o righteous-
ness from the regime’s narrative about
past national humiliations. Although the
country has good reasons to take a deal,
there is no guarantee that it will.
BACK TO NORMAL
The challenges to American primacy do
not end with its great-power rivals. U.S.
power has also weakened from within.
In the United States and among several
o its core allies, large parts o the
public have lost con¥dence in the liberal
project that long animated Western
foreign policy. The disillusion is in part
a reaction to the twin forces o economic
globalization and automation, which
have decimated employment in manu-
facturing in the developed world. It is
also reected in growing opposition to
immigration, which contributed to the
United Kingdom’s vote to leave the ̄º,
the rise o chauvinist parties across Eu-
rope, and the election o¤ Donald Trump in
the United States. In his 2017 inaugural
address, Trump lamented the “American
carnage” that he asserted the former
presidents and assorted o¾cials sitting in
the gallery behind him had caused. Their
policies, he said, had “enriched foreign
industry at the expense o American
industry” and bene¥ted other countries
even as the United States’ own wealth,
strength, and con¥dence had crumbled.
Trump’s political ascent, his disdain for
U.S. allies, and his administration’s
controversial policies—on matters such as
trade, Syria, and Iran, for example—have
all dismayed longtime U.S. partners.
Doubts about the United States’ reliabil-
ity as a military ally have grown. And
allies across Asia and Europe, keen to
maintain valuable economic relationships