When the Berlin Wall came down, there was much discussion about how the world would reorganize itself in the post-Cold War world. During the 1990s, the United States established itself as the world’s lone superpower, leading the globe through a decade of relative prosperity. With unprecedented superiority in economic and military prowess – the two measures central to the Cold War – American dominance on the global stage seemed to have no end in sight.
Yet with the arrival of the 21st century, it became increasingly apparent that the metrics used to measure power during the Cold War no longer captured the whole story. Sometime between 1989 and 2001, a shift in how to measure global power occurred. And with this shift came the realization that though still the world’s only superpower, the United States no longer wielded the amount of power it once had. That Bush Administration has come face to face with that realization, albeit reluctantly, as it has sought to assert America’s will on the world with varying degrees of success.
As Harvard’s Samantha Power puts it, in thinking about power today, we’d be better served thinking in terms of influence. In other words, power in the 21st century depends not only on the strength of a nation’s economy and military, but on the extent to which it can affect the way the rest of the world behaves. Part of the reason American influence is on the wane, Power argues, is that influence stems from two variables that American leaders think too little about: (1) other nations’ trust that the United States will use its power legitimately, and (2) other nations’ faith that the United States is capable of achieving what it puts its mind to. American policies have dealt severe blows to each of these variables and the consequences are being felt all over the globe.
As a result of the Cold War battle for hearts and minds being waged all over the world, it was in the United States’ interest to act – or at least appear to act – in a legitimate way with respect to other countries. With the alternative being Soviet authoritarianism, the global sense was that the United States could be counted on to do the right thing. With its rich and progressive culture, the U.S. was the global good guy. With the contrast of the Soviet superpower removed, the United States is now held to a different standard. Every decision is analyzed with increasing scrutiny all over the world, analysis that is made all the easier by the instant information allowed by the internet. Considered under this microscope, there is an increasing sense that American power is not being used legitimately. With the ascendancy of the Bush administration, skeptical of international opinion and unilateral by nature, that sense has been exacerbated.
The Bush administration has also unwittingly diminished American influence by undermining the global faith that the United States can accomplish what it sets out to achieve. Although perhaps no less effective than the administrations that preceded it, the Bush administration’s failures have been particularly visible – the inability to capture Osama bin Laden, the inability to rescue American citizens after Hurricane Katrina, and, most damaging, the inability to secure Iraq.
It is, of course, Iraq that has had the most severe impact on American influence. The buildup the war occurred amid the perception that war was a foregone conclusion, a perception fed by the fact that the rationale for the war has shifted constantly. The execution of the war, meanwhile, has exposed weaknesses in the decision-making process governing the American military. The current momentum for withdrawal confirms a lack of public will often cited by the most zealous anti-Americans.
When President Bush says that leaving Iraq would send the wrong message to the world, he is correct. However, the wrong message has already been sent. As a result of American policies and the limitations those policies have exposed, we are on the brink of what was not conceivable as recently as a decade ago – a world where American dominance is no longer assumed and where stateless leaders of insurgent groups who capture the hearts and minds of their constituencies can stop the world’s superpower from having its way.
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